Clinton Administration, William

Looking back, there are many achievements from the two terms of President Bill Clinton's administration that deserve praise. In foreign policy, his administration's multilateral approach would be seen by many in America and abroad as preferable to unilateral approaches both before and since his years in office. At an economic level, the nation paid down the deficit inherited from the Reagan years, produced new jobs, and ended the two terms with a budget surplus. Clinton himself had been vocal about being focused on reducing inequality among Americans, and one would expect no less of a Democratic president.

On drug policy, however, the Clinton years present a blurred sense of achievement, as the administration approached the issue with more continuity to the growing governmental approach to drug policy and sanctioning. There had been hopes expressed that the first ‘baby boomer” president might signal the shift back to the more tolerant laws and policies that were emerging through the 1970s, in states and [Page 132]even the federal side. After all, his Democratic (and southern) predecessor Jimmy Carter had argued as president for the federal decriminalization of marijuana 16 years prior (before domestic and foreign priorities, as well as bureaucratic intransigence and scandal led to a backing away from that premise).

But whereas Carter had served at a time of rising state decriminalization of marijuana, Clinton began his term following the Reagan and George H. W. Bush years, administrations during which the dominant issues were border interdiction, First Lady Nancy's Reagan's emphasis on “Just Say No” drug abstinence programs, the crack epidemic, and mandatory minimum growth (with the crack sentencing admittedly a bipartisan effort). Remarkably, in 1989 the Gallup poll reported that 63 percent of Americans had considered drugs the “number one problem in America,” a fact that has been termed “one of the most intense preoccupations by the American public on any issue in polling history.”