When Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey talks about an "unraveling of physical and spiritual well-being" in the U.S. Army, he refers not to wartime Vietnam, where he pulled two combat tours and was badly wounded, but to peacetime Germany during the 1970s, in a military garrison ravaged by drug and alcohol abuse.
"I don't mean to sound like a moralist, but I was a serving infantry officer in Germany and the impact on us was devastating," said McCaffrey, who related incidents of gang rape, vandalism and other problems in troop discipline. "And it was fundamentally the result of drug use and alcohol."It took the Army more than seven years, he said, to win its battle with illegal drugs and alcoholism, discharging soldiers who would not stay sober, finding treatment for others willing to shake their addiction.
"And the rest of us stood together," McCaffrey recalled in an interview, "and said, `Look, no more, not on our watch.' " Today, as he tells it, the armed forces are essentially drug-free.
For all his determination, McCaffrey, 53, may now be facing an even more daunting task. As the new drug czar - the head of the nation's campaign against drugs - he assumes control of a White House office frayed by official neglect, one that has seldom been taken seriously by the giant agencies that enforce drug laws.
Present and former law-enforcement officials, some speaking on condition of anonymity, said that until now, the drug czar was regarded as little more than a political appointee without much influence in important policy discussions.
"I see it more as a bully pulpit than as an office that can get things done," said Robert H. Silbering, the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for New York City, "because how does the drug czar tell Janet Reno how the Justice Department should fight drugs?
"The coordination of all the government's programs to fight drugs would be very difficult for anyone."
The general's appointment also comes as critics are raising more questions about the effectiveness of the government's much-heralded war on drugs. Silbering, who agreed that someone of McCaffrey's stature was needed in the White House, said, "What we've had in the past is a very unfocused and uncoordinated effort to deal with a very complex problem."
The Office of National Drug Control Policy, which McCaffrey heads, was created with great fanfare in 1988 to coordinate the anti-drug budgets of 50 government departments and agencies. Not surprisingly, they balked at having their priorities second-guessed by an outsider.
"The whole notion that someone could be a drug czar simply reflects ignorance of how the American government works," said Professor Mark A.R. Kleiman, a drug-policy expert at Harvard University.
In 1993, Clinton slashed the size of the office to 25 employees from 146, to fulfill a campaign pledge to reduce the overall White House staff by 25 percent. Last December, the previous drug czar, Lee A. Brown, the former New York City police commissioner, resigned to teach at Rice University in Houston after the budget was cut for the office.
By most accounts, McCaffrey insisted upon genuine authority as a condition of taking the job, a Cabinet-level position. Clinton promptly asked him to find ways to spend an additional $250 million, reallocated from the Pentagon, on top of the government's total anti-drug budget of $14.5 billion for this fiscal year. The general has also been invited to look at next year's budget.
The general, who was sworn in early this month, has consolidated his authority quickly. He announced on Friday that he would lead a delegation to Mexico on March 26 to discuss with President Ernesto Zedillo how to stem the flow of drugs from Mexico to the United States. He also said Clinton was creating a Cabinet council on the anti-drug effort.
Yet McCaffrey, who has gained a place in National Security Council meetings, sees himself not as the commanding general of a national offensive against illegal drugs but as the team's quarterback, calling the signals on which programs work best.
"It doesn't take much to understand how important the issue is," he said. "It's clearly not an overstatement to say that abuse of illegal drugs and alcohol is at the root of the majority of the serious social challenges this country faces."