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In 1971 [the same year Republican President Nixon declared the "War on Drugs"], the Nixon White House set up a special-action office to prevent drug abuse and, to head it, named Dr. Jerome Jaffe, a psychopharmacologist widely recognized as the nation's leading expert on drug addiction.

Jaffe was given hundreds of millions of dollars to open up treatment facilities around the country, and by the summer of 1972 treatment was available on request.

Almost immediately, crime, heroin overdose deaths and hepatitis transmission rates declined.

And the treatment network Jaffe had set up was given much of the credit.

That network remained intact throughout the 1970s, and the nation's drug problem remained largely under control.

In the 1980s, however, the Reagan administration -- believing that the government had no obligation to help addicts -- gutted the federal treatment budget.

By the time crack hit, in the mid-1980s, treatment facilities were completely overwhelmed, and the many new addicts who wanted help were turned back onto the street, there to commit more crime and cause more mayhem.

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