On Monday, Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy announced his resignation, effective January 6, 2001.
During the past six months, McCaffrey’s office has been embroiled in a number of controversies which may have led to his decision to leave. Two weeks ago the General Accounting Office crime fraud unit told the Government Reform Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee that they uncovered an estimated $8 million in inflated advertising costs for the ONDCP’s $1 billion national anti-drug advertising campaign. The payments included bonuses to executives and improper travel charges.
In the previous few months McCaffrey had been accused of lying to Congress, paying off networks to include anit-drug messages in television shows, secretly taping phone calls, bullying his employees and attempting to block all industrial hemp imports and products.
“McCaffrey is reported to have often uttered to his cowling subordinates, ‘I’m sometimes wrong, but never in doubt,'” said Allen St. Pierre, NORML Foundation Executive Director. “Unfortunately for the American public and the international community, ‘Fibber’ McCaffrey was often wrong and undoubtedly a failed czar.”
For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre NORML Foundation Executive Director at (202) 483-8751.
