Obama's Drug Czar

Each new day seems to bring another Obama cabinet announcement -- yesterday physicist Steven Chu was named Energy Secretary and other energy/environment team leaders were selected; today Chicago Public Schools director Arne Duncan was named Secretary of Education. Still, though, I have yet to hear anything official about the one cabinet appointment I am most eagerly anticipating: drug czar.

I've been doing Internet research trying to figure out whether the Obama team has a person, or persons, in mind for Director of ONDCP. So far the name that has popped up over and over again is Republican MN Congressman Jim Ramstad. Politico.com identified Ramstad as a possible drug czar candidate back in November, noting that he is a "longtime proponent of treatment for drug abuse" and an "advocate for mental health parity," but that he also "has consistently voted against medical marijuana in Congress." More recently, Maia Szalavitz at The Huffington Post criticized Ramstad's rumored candidacy on the grounds that the congressman reportedly endorses Christian anti-addiction programs* and opposes needle-exchange programs for intravenous drug users. However, Join Together, a treatment-oriented advocacy agency affiliated with the Boston University School of Public Health, calls Ramstad a "strong advocate for addiction treatment and recovery."

Of course, all of this is speculation at this point. Indeed, Join Together reports that several other names have been bandied about the blogosphere as well, including LAPD Chief (and Broken Windows enthusiast) William Bratton. No matter who is eventually selected, though, there are some important qualifications the nominee must possess:

Peter Reuter, professor of the School of Public Policy and Department of Criminology at the University of Maryland and founder of RAND's Drug Policy Research Center, sees two key qualification for an effective drug czar under Obama: stature and substantive balance.

"The office has lacked prestige since William Bennett; though General McCaffrey was a visible public figure he did not have much standing in the senior levels of government," Reuter told Join Together. "If the new director is to be taken seriously by cabinet agencies, he or she must be sufficiently well known and respected to get phone calls returned. Without that, the director reverts to a minor budget and operational coordinator."

Added Reuter: "The major challenge for the new director is to tame the enforcement machine, initially at the federal level but then at the state level. This requires someone whose credentials will not be challenged by law enforcement but who has enough knowledge of the rest of the field to make a good case for what can be accomplished through other programs."

This is all I've been able to find so far. I've stated before how much I hope the eventual candidate is a drug policy researcher and not a displaced government official or military person. I will be sure to post about the drug czar selection once a nominee is confirmed; in the meantime, perhaps I will contact the presidential Transition Team to emphasize how crucial it is for the ONDCP Director to be a drug policy expert who acknowledges, rather than denies or defends, the colossal failure of the U.S. War on Drugs to date.

*I should be more precise: Ms. Szalavitz's issue is not just that he endorses Christian anti-addiction programs, but that he sponsored an earmark for one controversial evangelical Christian program in particular, Teen Challenge, that "believes that recruiting people into the Assemblies of God ministry will cure their addiction" (because addiction is viewed as a sin, not a disease) and "tries to 'complete' Jews."