DRUG CZAR PROMISES PUNISHMENT.(Main)

Byline: Combined wire services

Federal anti-drug director William Bennett, in a preview of his national strategy against drugs, called Wednesday for a policy of "consequences and confrontation" that would guarantee punishment for recreational drug users and hold parents accountable for their children's drug offenses.

"Casual use is no casual matter," Bennett said in a speech before an anti-drug forum sponsored by the Washington Hebrew Congregation. Bennett suggested that the way to keep people from dabbling with drugs was to scare them.

"We need to reorient our process of justice where drugs are concerned and adopt the principle that certainty of punishment is more important than severity of punishment," he said.

Among the proposals put forth in Bennett's speech are laws that would empower local authorities to seize the automobiles of those arrested for drug offenses and require weekend incarceration for first-time drug offenders.

Another plan would subject parents to steep fines or even jail sentences if their children were found guilty of drug-related crimes. The measure - similar to new anti-gang legislation in California - would make clear that parents "must bear responsibility for the behavior and activities of minors in their charge," Bennett said.

Last month, Bennett made prison construction the central element of an $80 million plan to help rescue the District of Columbia from inundation by drug-related crime, arguing that the city's principal problem was its inability to imprison convicted drug offenders.

At the federal level, Bennett has decided to use a $136 million fund composed of assets confiscated from drug traffickers for an ambitious program of prison construction to further ensure that drug offenders can be punished, senior administration officials said Wednesday.

That will be part of a comprehensive federal anti-crime and anti-drug package the White House is prepared to introduce soon to Congress.

While neither the prison construction program nor the model anti-drug legislation has yet been formally introduced, Bennett's forceful advocacy offered a clear indication of an approach that he and his office of National Drug Control Policy are taking in their anti-drug planning.

Together, the proposals suggest that Bennett believes that those selling or using drugs are more likely to refrain if they are certain they will face punishment upon conviction.

Bennett has a September deadline for completion of a national anti-drug strategy.

In his speech, Bennett decried a national "crisis of authority" that has allowed drug traffickers to believe that the nation's narcotics laws lacked power and could be violated without consequence.

"Those guilty of drug offenses must believe that punishment is inevitable," Bennett declared. "As long as they don't, the deterrent effect of incarceration will be neutralized."

Bennett made clear for the first time Wednesday in remarks to reporters that he intended to include some specific plans "as part of our model legislation for the states."

One such plan, now in place in Phoenix, Ariz., would require casual users convicted of first-time drug offenses to pay fines and spend a weekend in jail. Another, based on a Philadelphia initiative, would seize an individual's automobile if he were arrested for a drug offense and confiscate it if he were convicted. Cars are seized routinely in federal drug cases, but often are not in state and local cases.

The proposed parental-responsibility law for drug offenders is based on a system now in place in Toledo, Ohio, where parents face the prospect of civil penalties imposed by juvenille courts if their children are convicted of drug-related crimes. Another plan endorsed by Bennett for enactment by state and local governments would suspend or even revoke the driver's licenses of drug offenders - an effort he said would deter those regarding the right to drive as an "elemental freedom."

As for treatment and rehabilitation of drug offenders, Bennett told the coalition that "in many cases, rehabilitation is the wrong term to use.

"In the case of 15-year-old offenders who have grown up essentially without parents, some therapists I have talked to have found it necessary to serve as substitute parents, complete with a tuck-in and bedtime story at night," he said.

Bennett's speech, scheduled for noon, was delayed for two hours. His wife Mary was in the hospital giving birth to their second son.

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