The appointment of a highprofile professional such as Brown was widely regarded as a sign of Clinton’s good intentions. The two previous drug czars were the contentious ideologue William Bennett and Bob Martinez, whose major qualification lay in being an out-of-work Republican governor. Jerry Spicer, head of the Hazelden drug-treatment organization, even forgave Clinton’s slicing the Office of National Drug Control Policy staff budget by 60 percent, since it was offset by promoting the director to cabinet status. (The much larger operational budget for drug control actually went up slightly to $13 billion.) “What we need is leadership and a leader with access to the top,” Spicer said. In Brown, they have one.
