"Czar" itself is a word that newspapers love because it's short, and it has a "z" in it. Headline writers almost never get to use the letter z, so in the months ahead you'll be seeing many news items such as: "Drug Czar Says Crack is Very Bad."

Or: "Czar to Smugglers: Stay Out of Florida!"

One of the czar's most vital jobs will be to call press conferences in order to "put the drug smugglers of the world on notice." This should be done at least twice every year.

One problem facing the new czar is that so many different law enforcement agencies are fighting Florida's drug war, it's hard to know who should get the praise for a big seizure.

To avoid having Customs and DEA and FDLE and the Coast Guard and the FBI and OCB and ATF trample each other dashing for the microphones at press conferences, we need a drug czar who can claim credit for each and every kilogram, and do the speaking for everybody.

We also need someone who knows something about camera angles, so that the contraband can be displayed in a fashion that is dramatic, without being garish.

To show that he means business, Gov. Martinez gave his new task force exactly seven months to come up with its first batch of recommendations. You can bet that Escobar and his pals are marking that time on their calendars, knowing that the clock is finally running out.

Of course, they should be careful not to confuse the Governor's Drug Czar's Task Force with the Vice President's South Florida Task Force, or the Blue Lightning Strike Force, or the Congressional Task Force, or the joint DEA-FBI Task Force, or the Joint Legislative-Executive Task Force, or any of the other nine jillion task forces already deployed in the war on drugs.

The usual cynics have implied that the czar/task force idea is nothing but a naked grab for publicity, but I don't buy it.

Ask any expert and he'll tell you that Gov. Martinez is so right. Winning the war on drugs is easier than any of us dreamed. All we really need is more bureaucracy.

Mason jars won't make roads safer

February 17, 1989

Great Moments in Urinalysis (continued):

Now Gov. Bob Martinez has proposed drug-testing for all first-time applicants for a Florida driver license. The screening would cost each driver an extra $30 and would be conducted one month before applying.

Again Bladder-Buster Bob has come up with an idea that commands headlines but defies logic and common sense. Our current driver system is hardly a triumph for public safety. Ask any state trooper about the thousands of licensed motorists who are hopelessly impaired without the influence of narcotics. They are simply inept.

Up at Emission Control, Martinez insists that urine tests for Florida drivers will deter drug use and weed out the serious abusers. Yet in its present form, his plan would do neither.

The flaws reflect either ignorance or naivete by two panels, one an "advisory council" and the other a "task force" assigned by the governor to tackle the drug problem. The gaps in the urine-testing program are bad enough, but the premise is based on a fantasy.

There's not a shred of good evidence—medical, sociological, criminal or otherwise—-that mandatory preannounced drug screening either discourages or prevents abuse. Only a half-wit or a hapless addict is going to get loaded on the day before his urine test—and most users don't fall into either category.

Martinez is correct when he says that driving is a privilege, not a right. But he's daft if he thinks urinalysis of driver applicants is going to make for safer streets—not unless they invent a car with a spectrom-* eter built into the dashboard; a car that won't start until the driver fills a specimen jar.

By far the most lethal drug is alcohol, but I didn't hear the governor explain how his new plan was going to keep drunks off the road. If Martinez is serious, why stop with a urine test? When a driver goes for his license, give him a Breathalyzer, too. It would make about as much as sense as what he's suggesting now.

In fact, the governor's urine screen for drivers is not a drug test so much as an intelligence test. Anybody who couldn't beat it is certainly too stupid to get behind the wheel of a car.

It's so simple. Lay off the coke for a couple days and your specimen will be as pure as a mountain stream. A month later, when you go for your driver license, your nostrils can sparkle like the valleys of Aspen but it won't matter, as long as you can parallel park.

And consider the estimated $30 that each driver will pay to get his urine analyzed. Under the most rigid clinical conditions, urinalysis is never error-free. Imagine the quality of the lab work when the state starts handing out contracts to hacks and phonies looking to cash in on the new gold rush.

The governor's plan to test new drivers means more than a million urine samples a year. At $30 a clip, that adds up to serious money. And in Florida, serious money attracts serious sleaze.

Don't be surprised if the same guys who used to peddle time shares and oil leases suddenly turn up in Tallahassee with white coats and a van full of Mason jars. And don't be surprised if they get a piece of the action.

A most mystifying aspect of Martinez's urine manifesto is that it applies only to first-time applicants for a driver license.

Though the governor exhibits grave concern about our drug-riddled workplaces and neighborhoods, notice that he doesn't suggest urine testing as a condition of license renewal for Florida's current 10 million drivers—which would include, coincidentally, most legislators, Cabinet members and Supreme Court justices, not to mention major campaign contributors.

Rather, Martinez's bold new attack on the drug plague focuses on two nefarious groups of would-be motorists—retirees moving to Florida and teenagers just turning 16.

For years lawmen have been scheming for a way to outwit these dope-crazed renegades, and now they've got the break they need.

So you wanna drive, huh? Then line up and tinkle, Gramps.

Cops making crack makes little sense

April 26, 1989

"It's sort of like making fudge."

—Lab director of the Broward Sheriffs Office, explaining his recipe for crack cocaine.

So Broward County is manufacturing its own crack. Why not? Nothing better illustrates the misguided, haphazard state of the so-called war on drugs.

Talk about mixed-up priorities. Talk about headline-grabbing. Talk about a Keystone Kops mentality. Naturally you're talking about Nick Navarro, Sheriff Willie Wonka himself.

Of all the goofball stunts he's tried (including his comical TV partnership with Geraldo Rivera), a crack factory is the screwiest of all.

In a seventh-floor lab of the Broward Sheriffs Office, a county chemist cooks up a plate of fresh crack cocaine. The crack is cut into $20 rocks, packaged in tiny plastic baggies and sold on the streets. Sold by cops. When people come up to buy, they get busted.

You might wonder why no other law enforcement agency in the country has tried this clever scheme. There are plenty of reasons, starting with common sense.

The technique by which undercover cops "sell" drugs is known as a reverse sting, tricky enough under the best of circumstances. Typically, police officers posing as drug sellers must display or "flash" a package of real dope to the prospective buyers. Once the deal is made and money changes hands, the cops can make the arrests.

The danger is obvious: rip-offs. The bad guys arrive not with cash, but with guns. The plan is to steal the cocaine and take off. This is what happened when Miami Beach officer Scott Rakow was murdered—a reverse sting gone bad. Years ago, DEA agents nearly lost a truckload of marijuana when a reverse sting turned into a bloody rip-off at a South Dade warehouse.