WEDGE:

An issue for Bush: Drugs (Dick Morris, Dec. 2, 2002, Jewish World Review)

Polls show that over 70 percent of Americans support mandatory drug testing in high schools, provided that parental consent is required.
The U.S. Supreme Court has, at least partially, cleared the way for widespread drug testing by its decision this year affirming drug tests as a prerequisite for participation in any high school extra-curricular activities.

Bush should propose a national program to cut drug use, both to save a generation of American kids and to dry up funds that permit narco-terrorists to wreak havoc in the civilized world. Drug use is just the kind of good vs. evil issue at which this president excels and about which he can speak with passion and conviction. [...]

Politically, the issue will split the Democratic Party in half. The left will be unable to endorse drug testing and the center will be unable to oppose it. Bush will have found the perfect political issue to rally his troops.

But, more to the point, he will have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, both of students who will not be ensnared with drugs and of Latin Americans who will not find their nations vandalized and, ultimately, captured by drug lords and their mercenary troops.

Two other big benefits for the President are that the treatment programs and the type activities you'd propose to keep kids out of trouble both tie into the Faith Based Initiative and, second, it gives him an entree to address AIDs and treat it as a moral issue without seeming like he's attacking sexuality in particular. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 2, 2002 8:10 AM