The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Tuesday, there were seven more bomb explosions apparently drug related in Colombia. Pres. Bush promised full cooperation with Colombian efforts to fight the drug cartels. The U.S. economy grew faster than first estimates showed. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Judy Woodruff is in Washington tonight. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: After the News Summary, we turn first to a report on Afghanistan [Focus - Afghanistan - Rebels Without a Cause], a country still torn by war, where rebels are fighting among themselves now that the Soviet troops are gone. Then we hear the assessments of three experts, former Ambassador to Afghanistan, Robert Neumann, the finance minister of the interim government, Hedayat Amin-Arsala, and State Department official Teresita Schaffer. Next a look at [Focus- The Roemer Revolution] the frustrations facing one Southern governor as he attempts to impose new solutions on old problems, Louisiana's Buddy Roemer, and finally Charlayne Hunter-Gault [Conversation - Talking Drugs] talks with Harvard Psychologist Robert Coles about why Americans use drugs.NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: More bombs exploded in Colombian cities today as Justice Minister Monica De Greiff vowed not to bow against death threats and Pres. Bush promised full cooperation against the drug cartels. Bombs blew up six state liquor stores in the city of Medellin, headquarters of the cartels. Another bomb damaged a travel agency in Bogota. Police believed a group linked to the cartel planted the bombs as part of the war it declared on the Colombian Government. At Kennebunkport, Maine, Pres. Bush interrupted a drug strategy session with top advisers and afterward spoke with reporters.

PRES. BUSH: We will cooperate with Colombia to the best of our ability. We support what the President of that country is trying to do and every one of our cabinet officers here, all of us, agree that this is an important step.

REPORTER: Did you see Pres. Barco's appeal to the users to stop their use?

PRES. BUSH: And I agree with that too. I was talking to our drug czar Bill Bennett. We were talking about that at lunch with great respect for what he had to say as a matter of fact.

MR. MacNeil: In Washington, Colombia's Justice Minister, Monica De Greiff, who was holding talks with the U.S. Government told a news conference she will not bow to threats on her life.

MONICA DE GREIFF, Colombian Justice Minister: Contrary to what you may have heard, I intend when my discussions here are finished next week to return to Colombia and to continue my job as Minister of Justice. I am determined that the integrity of our justice system survives this crisis and I hope to play my full part in ensuring this. As a country and as individuals we are under enormous pressures, yet, we have a job to do and much rests on our success.

MR. MacNeil: Ms. De Greiff appealed for $19 million in new U.S. aid on top of the 65 million in military aid by Pres. Bush. She said Colombia would use the extra money to protect judges threatened by the drug cartel. Also today, FBI Director William Sessions said extradition of drug kingpins to the U.S. could spur revenge attacks in this country. Justice Department officials said the first extradition could come in two weeks. We'll have a conversation about another element of the drug story, why Americans are such heavy drug users, later in the program. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: The U.S. economy is expanding faster than originally thought. The Commerce Department reported that the Gross National Product for the second quarter of this year grew at an annual rate of 2.7 percent. That's faster than a projection of 1.7 percent, which was made only a month ago. It also helps dispel fears that a recession is imminent. And in another economic report, the Commerce Department said that new home sales were up 14.4 percent in July, the biggest monthly increase in almost three years. Much of that increase was attributed to a decline in mortgage interest rates.

MR. MacNeil: The National Football League today said 13 of its players have been suspended after testing positive for anabolic steroids. All of the more than 200 NFL players were tested during training camp. Those banned will sit out the last exhibition game and three regular session games without pay. Anabolic steroids have been linked to kidney and liver damage and psychological disorders. Yesterday the Players Association tried to block the league in court, claiming that the NFL's testing procedures were sloppy and sometimes inaccurate.

MS. WOODRUFF: In Lebanon today, Syrian troops shelled a tanker 11 miles North of Beirut as it was attempting to run a Syrian blockade and deliver fuel to Christian forces. The tanker exploded in flames. Nine crew members are feared dead. The shelling set off a five hour gun battle between the Syrian Army and Christian gunners. Three people are reported dead in that battle.

MR. MacNeil: A human rights group said today there are major abuses going on in China. Amnesty International accused the Beijing Government of mass arbitrary arrests, perhaps running into the tens of thousands since the pro democracy movement was crushed in June, and it said there was evidence that suggests the police have been using torture. But those are not the only methods that are being used by the government to keep the pro democracy movement down as we hear in this report from Beijing by Jeremy Thompson of Independent Television News.

MR. THOMPSON: Martial law troops still patrolled Beijing's campuses to regard against any revival of the student movement. Gone are the banners denouncing the government and calling for democracy, now replaced by posters encouraging students to turn in counterrevolutionary classmates. This year's freshmen are being forced to undergo military training before they can begin their studies. Other students are being sent to the fields and to the factories to mend their ways through manual labor. On the surface, Beijing is getting back to normal. That's the way the Chinese Government wants it to look. Martial law is still enforced, the people's army ensuring no one challenges the Communist rule. Spy cameras on every lamp post monitor the masses. Big Brother is watching and Big Sister. These are the grannies who run the neighborhood committees. Nothing escapes their notice. At street level, they're the custodians of communism, busy bodies carrying out party policy, prying into family members, old women like Mrs. Kahn direct the traffic and people's lives. She says she'll report any counterrevolutionary criminal to the police. Tiananmen Square, the scene of what's now officially portrayed as a rebellion, is still closed to the general public. Only tour groups with special permits are allowed in, some keen to have their pictures taken with the troops they've been instructed to love, the scar of tank tracks a reminder of the true horror of June the 4th.

MR. MacNeil: The Soviet Union has sent more troops to a part of the country where there has been ethnic violence. The reinforcements were sent to an Armenian enclave in the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. Violence there between Christian Armenians and Muslim Azerbaijanis began more than a year ago. A Soviet spokesman said more troops had to be sent because the Armenians tried to set up an alternative local government, triggering new violence. Another ethnic conflict was brewing in the Soviet Republic of Moldavia today. The parliament there agreed to debate a bill that would make Moldavian the republic's official language. Ethnic Russians in the area have been on strike since last week in protest. Moldavia was annexed from Romania by Stalin in 1940.

MS. WOODRUFF: That's it for the News Summary. Now it's on to the stalemated struggled for Afghanistan, the greening of the Governor of Louisiana, and a look into the psyche of the drug addict. FOCUS - AFGHANISTAN - REBELS WITHOUT A CAUSE

MR. MacNeil: We start tonight by revisiting the War in Afghanistan it continues relentlessly even after the departure of the Soviet occupying forces at the beginning of the year. Most Western experts thought that the American backed rebel Mujahadin would quickly oust the Soviet supported Government but that has not happened. Instead various gorilla factions have started fighting each other. With reports emerging today of two separate battles among Mujahadin Groups in the North and South leaving several hundred dead, We will discuss the war and the choices facing Washington after this report on the stalemate from Peter Gill of Britain's Thames Television.

MR. GILL: Afghan Air Force helicopters lift off from an Army base near Kabul. They fly at tree top height to avoid sophisticated anti air craft missals but they can now be hit by small arms fire. Helicopter pilots in Afghanistan need to be alert. This according to Western prediction was one journey that journalists should not have been able to make. It was the Kabul Governments way of demonstrating which side controlled Afghanistan's most strategic link. The Helicopters took us North of Kabul towards the Mountains of the Hindu Kus. We followed the Salang Highway originally built by the Russians and now the Kabul Governments supply life line to the Soviet Union. If the road can be kept open the gorillas will fail in their objective of starving Kabul into submission. Once in the Mountains we were put aboard armored personal carriers to see a 20 kilometer sketch of the highway. It well deserves the nickname ambush alley. In their nine year embroilment in Afghanistan the Russians fought to keep the Salang open and the Mujahadine Gorillas fought to close it. The debris of war is everywhere. This stretch of road was blocked by a gorilla force until a month ago. In the past entire supply convoys have been halted, shot up and burned out. Petro tankers are a particularly favorite target without fuel the Government Army stops and not a villager moves. As the Russians prepared to pull out they destroyed every community on the highway. The Russians created a desert in Afghanistan and failed even to establish peace. On the day we went to the Salang this stretch of road was undoubtably open. A gorilla attack could just as certainly close again but in the meantime Kabul's Army is winning its spurs. A few months ago these soldiers were written off. There is now something to celebrate, Entertainment for the troops from Kabul. The song, of course, is about love. One of the West errors was the failure to see how the Soviet Union had revived the Afghan Army. When the Russians took over the war this Army became a demoralized, defection ridden rubble. Fighting on with out the Russians has seemed to have raised their spirits. I asked their Commanding Officer if he was confident they would keep the rebels off the Road.

BRIGADIER MOHAMMED SHAFI, 2nd Infantry: We are sure because we have taken one of their strongest posts in this area.

MR. GILL: So what has happened to the Mujahadin Units that used to operate in this area?

BRIGADIER SHAFI: At the moment they have fled behind the Salang Highway about 7 kilometers from here.

MR. GILL: But a new pattern may be starting to emerge to the conflict in Afghanistan. It takes account not just of the military balance but of Afghanistan's intricate tribal politics as well. One of the ways in which the Government has been securing this vital highway has been an extraordinary series of deals with local gorilla commanders. The commanders stop their fighting in exchange first for being allowed to run their own affairs and secondly and here is the sweetener for a share of all the goods, food and petrol that comes down from the Soviet Union by convoy on this highway. The Afghan capacity to talk as well as fight may one day reduce the conflict but the Mujahadin Gorillas still expected a rapid military victory. The fall of a key city would bring the rebels to power. The Eastern City of Gilalabad has been the target of the largest gorilla offensive in a decade of war. Gilalabad is closest the Mujahadin's source of weapons in Pakistan and gorilla leaders promised that it would fall within days and become their provisional capitol but the battle for Gilalabad seems to have been a big miscalculation. Government Air Force Bombing has been deadly and the gorillas have committed major resources to the Battle. But they have failed to become a force capable of capturing a well defended town. They have taken up to 10,000 casualties. Government determination to resists was serious underestimated and now expert observers are crediting the Afghan Army with a very professional defense. The Russians entered Afghanistan in 1979 because they thought the Communist Regime would collapse. The collapse was averted and survival is still under pinned by Soviet Arms. Kabul's refusal to fall means that the war in Afghanistan has now entered a grim new phase. With Russian soldiers back behind their own frontiers the conflict here has reverted to the Civil War that proceeded the Soviet Intervention of a decade ago. The difference and the tragedy for Afghanistan is that the two Super Powers are arming their friends in the field as never before. Both the Soviet Union and the United States are apparently prepared to fight as one cynical expression puts it to the last Afghan. The saddest and commonest refrain in Afghanistan that the continuing war is less a conflict among the Afghans then a war of outsiders. On the Kabul side the pride of one Super Power is fully engaged. A defeat for the Regime would be a serious blow for Soviet standing among its allies so Kabul will be supplied with what it needs. This aircraft began a new food air lift in to the Capitol but for every food shipments there are many more arms shipments. Each flight protected by Anti Missile flares. The Government receives the most sophisticated weaponry it can handel to combat the Mujahadin. Scud beam missile sent to Afghanistan only last November fired from Kabul to hit Gorilla concentrations around distant cities. Forty were fired in one day this week.

PROFESSOR FRED HALLIDAY, London School of Economics: The Russians are supplying arms to the Kabul Regime and they have made very clear that they intend to keep their commitments for Military Aid and Economic Aid to the Kabul Government but the Russians are also looking to broaden the Kabul Regime and they are appealing to the West and Pakistan without any success to set up some sort of coalition Government. But what they are really saying is if you don't set a coalition government now the chances of their being a coalition will be much less.

MR. GILL: American Stinger Anti Aircraft Missiles being loaded on a Mujahadine pack horse. Stinger supplies may now have been halted because of fears that the gorillas were passing the weapons on to Iranian Groups but the provision of other weapons continues uninterrupted. The Afghan connection is the CIAs largest ever operation. So the pride of the other Super Power the United States is also fully engaged in the outcome of the Afghan conflict.

PROFESSOR HALLIDAY: The Americans have not altered their policy. They are still going for a military solution in Afghanistan. They are saying that it is going to take longer. It might take 2 or 3 years but they are going to put more weapons into Afghanistan,they are still encouraging the Pakistanis to go in to Afghanistan and support the Gorillas. So therefore the American's have retreated from their most optimistic strategy but have come up with a new one. They are talking about stamina. the long haul, a war of attrition but they are saying in the end Jilalabad will fall, Kabul will fall. So they are still very much in there and they are not looking for the kind of compromise that the Russians are looking for.

MR. GILL: On Kabul's perimeter units of the Afghan Army are geared up for defense. In three months there has been no major gorilla attack not even one to divert attention from Jilalabad nor has their been an internal insurrection. Despite the air of normality Kabul lives in a knife edge. The unreliability of supplies threatens to take poverty into starvation. These bakeries are making bread from Government flour trying to feed a city population that may be has double because of the war. But the Government can only send to the bakeries what reaches the City in aid from the Soviet Union. The bread here costs a subsidized 8p a loaf and is all that most people can afford. In Kabul there is political fall out from all the years of shortages and disruption brought on by the war. We found a terrible war weariness made worse because the Soviet withdrawal seems to have brought peace no nearer. We had expected a dutiful loyalty towards the regime instead we encountered indifference and some hostility. Even a wish to accommodate the Islamic Conservatism of the Mujahadin. The Mujahadin say they are fighting for Islam a Holy War against Godless Communism but again there are no rigid battle line. Mosques in Kabul are often hit in rocket attacks an elderly man died in this one. Sweeping the streets of Kabul another semblance of normality but everything here is expectation and uncertainty a war with an end in view. The prospect of an outright gorilla victory in Afghanistan is now receding. Sooner or later that may prompt a reassessment by the Mujahadin and their Western Backers.

MR. MacNeil: Now we have three views of the Afghanistan situation. Teresita Shaefer is Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for near East and South Asian Affairs. Robert Neumann is a former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan. Last year he headed the Middle East task force for the Bush Presidential Campaign. He is now Director of the Mid East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Heyayat Amin-Arsala is the Finance Minister of the Afghan interim Government, the resistance government in exile. Previously he was with the World Bank. Secretary Shaefer what went wrong? This is not the scenario the U.S. Government intended is it?

DEPUTY SECRETARY TERESITA SHAEFER, State Department: Well I think that you have to consider that we are not in the business of setting time tables for what happens in Afghanistan. A lot of estimates were publicized at the time that the Soviets withdrew some of them have turned out to unrealistic, some of them perhaps not. There were people saying the regime may not last 5 minutes others were however were saying 6 to 12 months. This is a political process that is going on and I don't think that I can sensibly sit here and predict to you when it is going to end.

MR. MacNeil: The British report characterized American Government Policy as still looking for a Military victory. Is that fair?

MS. SHAEFER: I don't think that is a fair characterization. What U.S. Policy has been is to look for a comprehensive solution, one which will permit an independent Afghanistan to emerge which can live in peace with its neighbors which will provide sufficient stability for the refugees to return in dignity and honor.

MR. MacNeil: Is it not correct that it is still U.S. Policy to remove Najibula or have him removed or resigned either through a Military Victory by the Mujahadin or his own resignation?

MS. SHAEFER: It certainly it is the U.S. view that there can not be a stable solution as long as the Najib Regime remains in power but that is based on an assessment that the Afghan resistance which is after all engaged in this conflict will simply not settle the Najib Regime or with Najib.

MR. MacNeil: And yet some parts of the Resistance have accommodations with the regime as that report indicated?

MS. SHAEFER: That report did indicate some forms of partial accommodation but I don't think that you can go from there and say that you see a political solution in the outline.

MR. MacNeil: In view of the way events have developed is the Administration considering any modification of the Policy?

MS. SHAEFER: The Administration, I think, holds firm to its goals as I outlined them earlier.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Amin-Arsala in the view of the Interim Government what has gone wrong?

MR. AMIN-ARSALA, Afghan Resistance: Well the main thing that has gone wrong are the expectations that were built before. Everyone thought, the media in particular, made the point that the Regime would fall after about two weeks or a week whereas we in the Resistance never thought that. We thought that it will take some time. What we were confident about was the Regime will be either forced to resign or will ultimately be over thrown. We never gave a time frame for that.

MR. MacNeil: Are you still confident of one of those two alternatives?

MR. AMIN-ARSALA: Oh Absolutely I don't have any doubts that either the Regime will have to resign or it will be over thrown. Well if anybody is interested in peace which the Soviet Union is talking about, if they are really interested in peace in Afghanistan or in that region of the World they would have to stop the support that they are providing to the Regime. Massive amounts of support which has effected, of course the conflict to some extent but with that support I am sure that the Regime can not survive.

MR. MacNeil: Many observers are saying that neither of those two things will happen that there can't be a military victory one or the other and the longer that Mr. Nagibula is not forced to resign the less likely it is that he will because he consolidates his power, he has prospects of broadening his base and the scenario or your hopes are less likely to be realized?

MR. AMIN-ARSALA: Well first of all let me say that we are not interested in any sort of clear cut Military victory, I mean, I would prefer to see Najibula resign and his Regime to resign so that peace can return to Afghanistan and that peace can be given a chance but as long as he insists on keeping power by force then we have no choice but to fight.

MR. MacNeil: What would you not do what Moscow says it wants to do and that is negotiate a settlement that would lead to some kind of coalition and save a lot of lives?

MR. AMIN-ARSALA: Well I mean that regime was imposed on our people they have become a cause of killing of over a million and a half people. They have become the cause of people going in to exile and the total destruction of the Afghan economy. So I think the people of Afghanistan will tolerate us to sit with that kind of Regime and negotiate with them. As I said earlier if they are prepared to resign and they do resign then of course there is a possibility of a future negotiations.

MR. MacNeil: Ambassador Neumann how do you view this and U.S. Policy and should it be changed?

AMB. NEUMANN, Former Ambassador to Afghanistan: Well I am not a member of our Government nor the Afghan Government so I have a little more freedom to express myself. Let me say first of all those of us who viewed the situation and shortly after the Soviet withdrawal never thought there would be a military victory but that a great part of the Afghan Army would surrender to the resistance. And it began to happen but then the dissention with in the Resistance Government, the killing of some prisoners of war who surrender to one group and were killed by the other and so forth stopped that and now we are in for the long haul. Secondly Najibula who is an I agree with Mr. Arsala entirely the Najibula would be quite unacceptable to the resistance or to anybody but there are elements in the PDPA and the quasi Communist Party of Afghanistan that has not drenched their hands in blood and who might be acceptable in a broader Government but I have to say also that the exile Government is not representative of a large part of Afghanistan I don't mean of Nagibula and his group, of course not, and I wouldn't expect them to but other shortages there and especially the close connection with the Pakistan hand in directing has not been an advantage.

MR. MacNeil: Is that emphasis in the interim Government only a few of the many factions, as critics and observers in addition to yourself have pointed out, is that rendering the force of the Mujahadin ineffective now. Is that what is behind the failure to defeat Najibula?

AMB. NEUMANN: I think their conduct with each other not opening the door to others is what is responsible for them. The original organization of the seven group in Afghanistan was really enforced more or less by the Pakistanis to serve as a conduit for supplies through the various commanders. It was not an attempt really at a national representative group. Now that took place under entirely different circumstance and now it would be useful if they were more representative but the struggle for power takes place not just on this side of the Potomac it is part of the political picture in any area and we know for instance in France and other countries when the enemy disappeared there was considerable dissention.

MR. MacNeil: Secretary Shaefer does the U.S. feel as many observers in addition to Ambassador Neumann has pointed out that the Interim Government that Washington backs is not representative enough to be effective, representative enough of all the factions in the Mujahadin?

MS. SHAEFER: The U.S. Government certainly believes that the AIG, the Afghan Interim Government is not a perfect instrument. There are groups that are not represented within it. There has been a good deal of criticism of its ability to exercise internal discipline and of its ability to forge a really close relationship with the people inside Afghanistan who are carrying on the struggle but it is the one entity which exists as an effort to achieve resistance unity over all and it is the one body which has tempted to provide an alternative focus for Afghanistan and on that basis we would like to see it strengthen itself and we would like to see it develop into a more effective body.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Amin-Arsala is your Interim Government making any effort to broaden its support by trying to bring in some of the other groups?

MR. AMIN-ARSALA: Yes of course. First off all we are reaching some of the Commanders inside Afghanistan and at the same time we are trying to reach some of the elements that are in Iran. It is of course not an easy and quick process that we are working on it and I hope we will be able to sole our problems.

MR. MacNeil: Ambassador Neumann how optimistic are you? You hear what Mr. Amin-Arsala said that eventually Najibula will be defeated or will resign. How optimistic are you that this U.S. Policy is going to work ultimately?

AMB. NEUMANN: Well for anybody working in Middle Eastern and South Asian Affairs the word optimism is sort of strange but the fact is that I am not very optimistic unless the Government were to change very considerably and gave some confidence to the Afghan people and especially the refugees in Pakistan that they could safely return. A former King for instance, one of the National personalities who might play a temporary role but there are some others. Not very many.

MR. MacNeil: And Secretary Shaefer the British reporter characterized both Soviet and American Policy at the moment as willing to fight to the last Afghan. What is your comment on that?

MS. SHAEFER: I think that it is a rather cynical view.

MR. AMIN-ARSALA: It is also wrong.

MR. MacNeil: It is wrong?

MS. SHAEFER: I think that is an incorrect view absolutely. Our policy is based on the judgement that you can't have a stable solution as long as the Najib Regime is in power. That reflects what we take to be the view of the Afghans involved and I think that is a very important consideration to keep in mind. The Afghan resistance is not urging us to stop supporting their effort and as far as we can determine the Afghan Regime in Kabul is not urging the Soviet Union to cut off Military supplies.

MR. MacNeil: So the prospect is for an indefinite continuation of the present situation?

MS. SHAEFER: I don't like to put prospects for continuation of the present situation. I think that it is a dynamic situation but I don't think I can responsibly give you an deadline by which everything will tied in a nice red ribbon.

MR. MacNeil: Well thank you very much for joining us Secretary Shaefer, Mr. Amin-Arsala, and Ambassador Neumann. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Still to come on the Newshour a new style Governor learns old style politics and why people use drugs. FOCUS - THE ROEMER REVOLUTION

MS. WOODRUFF: Next tonight Southern politics. A number of young Southern educated politicians are winning elections in Southern states, bringing with them new ideas for old problems, but old ways do not change overnight as the young Democratic Governor of Louisiana is finding out. Betty Ann Bowser of public station KUHT in Houston recently paid the Governor a visit to see how he was doing.

MS. BOWSER: New Orleans is jazz, historic architecture, Mississippi Riverboats and Creole food, just one continuous party, and New Orleans is about the only sector of Louisiana's economy that has not been decimated by the oil bust. Drive only a few minutes from the French Quarter and it's clear the party is over. Like the other Gulf Coast states, Louisiana's economy is in shambles. It has the highest unemployment rate in the nation. One in four adults cannot read or write. More students drop out of school in Louisiana than in any other state. [Roemer Campaign Ad]

MS. BOWSER: Forty-five year old Charles Buddy Roemer ran for governor in 1987 promising to change all of that. He was a new breed of Southern politician, born and raised in Louisiana, but educated back East at Harvard. After four terms in Congress, Roemer went back home pledging to reform just about everything. He was the antithesis of old style politicians like his father, Charles Roemer Sr., a gubernatorial aide in previous administrations. The senior Roemer was convicted of racketeering, and although the conviction was later overturned, he spent 15 months in a federal prison. Buddy Junior promised reform, a Roemer revolution that would bring jobs and prosperity, and like George Bush, he said there would be no new taxes. But almost from the day he was sworn in Roemer realized he could not keep his promise on taxes and bring the state's economy around. So this spring, he went to the people with a tax reform plan that gave huge breaks to big business and raised income taxes. It was tax reform Roemer said the state needed.

GOV. BUDDY ROEMER, Louisiana: There are no guarantees on the creation of jobs, but common sense tells me that until you rebuild schools, and we're trying, until you rebuild roads, and we're trying, until you rebuild the image of the state, and it takes a while, that you ought to be competitive in terms of your tax structure. All we were trying to do was be competitive in the South. Other states, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, have made these changes. We ought to make 'em too.

MS. BOWSER: Roemer tried to sell the tax initiative on his style and personality, stumping the state with personal appearances and saturating television with commercials. [Roemer Commercial]

MS. BOWSER: But on April 29th, the people said no to Roemer's plan 55 to 45 percent. Many of those same people who voted for the governor voted for his tax reform plan. Louisiana voters were unwilling to join three other Southern states that have overhauled their tax structures to bolster their economy. New Orleans Mayor Sidney Barthelemy.

MAYOR SIDNEY BARTHELEMY, New Orleans: It had nothing to do with the personality of the governor. I think it had to do with taxes. It's hard for people who are fighting on a day by day existence to see the future to see that by sharing some resources for the government it's going to mean that it will improve their economy in the long run.

MS. BOWSER: Political Scientist Bruce Oppenheimer thinks Roemer should have spent more time with the state's political leaders and less time on television.

BRUCE OPPENHEIMER, University of Houston: You'd better build up some support among sort of a political infrastructure for your proposal especially when it's very controversial, and if you don't do that, if you don't build up enough support among the actives, among the elected officials, then it's going to haunt you with the general electorate because people, especially if it's something where one side is saying, gee, this is going to raise taxes.

MS. BOWSER: One of those elected officials Roemer failed to court was Republican Rep. David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and the first white supremacist elected to the legislature in modern times.

DAVID DUKE, Louisiana State Representative: I and the people of this state were not willing to eat garbage and get to the dessert, and that's what they were asking us to do in this package. The thing is that there's never been a state or a country or a municipality in the history of the world that's taxed its way to prosperity. My belief is and the conservative economic belief is that taxes, increased taxes, will stifle the economy.

MS. BOWSER: The opposition was so sweeping that Duke and a black state senator who says he despises Duke wound up on the same side.

WILLIAM JEFFERSON, Louisiana State Senator: There are a lot of people in the state who just don't want to pay more taxes. The Governor won on a platform of scrubbing the budget. Pres. Bush just won Louisiana running and saying that we wouldn't have to pay new taxes and I don't think people have that in their mind to do right now.

MS. BOWSER: Folks here in Franklin Parish certainly did not have more taxes in mind when they voted overwhelmingly for Roemer in 1987. This is Louisiana delta country where people brag as much about their prized alligator farms as they do about being Baptists. Pres. Bush is popular here and until recently, Buddy Roemer was viewed as a savior come to lead the state to an economic promised land. Baptist Preacher Woodson McGuffy is also mayor of a hamlet in Franklin Parish called Gilbert, population 771, and McGuffy is one elected official who went along with the tax initiative, but his town that voted for Roemer voted against the tax reform plan. Rick Hewitt didn't like the tax plan at all. He's just starting to dig his way out of debt incurred when the family's Gilbert Department Store went broke during the oil bust. He's trying to come back now with a tee-shirt business featuring brightly colored Louisiana alligators. And while Hewitt says he doesn't have any easy fixes for the economy, he doesn't think higher taxes is the answer either. He is a Roemer gone sour.

RICK HEWITT, Businessman: He had a lot of great ideas and what he was saying sounded good, cutting a lot of big jobs, a lot of bureaucrats he called it, a lot of the jobs in some of these big office buildings in Baton Rouge, he hasn't done that. Our government is kind of out of control, and it's too big, and what he's now wanting to do instead of making cuts where you need them, he wants to compose more taxes to try to turn it around and bail us out and that's not the answer.

MS. BOWSER: Having failed with people like Hewitt, Roemer is now trying to get the legislature to sign off on tax reform that he says will lure business to Louisiana, but he's having a hard time getting the old courthouse crowd to go along. One legislator questioned if Roemer learned anything in his four years at Harvard. Another called him a political klutz.

GOV. ROEMER: It's true, I don't like Louisiana politics and I don't put any Louisiana politician down when I say that. Politics is always difficult. I was a member of the House of Representatives for years in Washington. I know how difficult it is. But Louisiana politics has for years lived on the edge, ethics, no fair play for our children, no long-term planning, just one political crisis after another, and the man is right, whoever my critic was, when he says I'm not good at that; I'm not.

MS. BOWSER: And that, says political scientist Oppenheimer, is the at root of Roemer's problem.

MR. OPPENHEIMER: It's one thing to get elected governor, to have good policy ideas or policy ideas, to really make changes in a state, whether one thinks they're good or bad. It's another thing to be able to lead a legislature and work with a legislature, and that's not easy. Those sorts of skills aren't skills which are learned at Harvard Business School. So while you have politics changing and you're not dealing with a stump speaker like Huey Long or Al Long or somebody along that line anymore, you're dealing with someone who gets on the media and does commercials, you're still dealing with a state where a lot of politics is old time politics.

MS. BOWSER: One of the old time politicians watching Roemer's problems is the man he defeated, former four-term former Gov. Edwin Edwards, who says he may run again. Edwards loves to remind people of a 1987 election night prediction he made.

EDWIN EDWARDS, Former Louisiana Governor: I said that it would be impossible for him to fulfill his campaign commitments, that he could not solve our problems by scrubbing the budget, that it would not create jobs, and that he would have to pass taxes, and he has in fact, fulfilled every prediction that I made that night.

MS. BOWSER: Roemer remains committed to the concept of tax breaks for big business to create jobs and increased income taxes to create revenue, but says of late, he's willing to slow down the wheels of the Roemer revolution a bit to reach his goal of tax reform.

MS. BOWSER: What are you going to do differently this time around to make it fly?

GOV. ROEMER: Less complicated, more of one step at a time rather than rare back and throw deep, although I love to throw deep and win the ball game. We'll have to do it with five yards and a cloud of dust rather than an eighty-five yard touchdown, but we will get it done. This state is moving and we're going to turn it around. My difficult political equation is can I keep the dream alive until the results come in? That's a tough question.

MS. BOWSER: Buddy Roemer loves the drama of winning in a good old fashioned cliff hanger and with nearly three years left to go in his administration, even his detractors refuse to count him out. CONVERSATION - TALKING DRUGS

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight we have a conversation about drugs. The Colombian Government says that U.S. cocaine users are as much a part of a problem as the drug cartels. Why are Americans such heavy drug users? That's the subject of Charlayne Hunter-Gault's recent conversation with Dr. Robert Coles, a child psychologist who's been an active observer of the American scene and psyche for over 25 years. Recently in his Harvard University office, she asked him if there was something about American society that fosters drug abuse.

DR. ROBERT COLES: I think you have a free floating anxiety and apprehensiveness and the kinds of problems that people have always had because no age has been without anxious and frightened, or hurt or vulnerable people, but if you add to that a general availability of drugs which has characterized the last generation or so, the increasing arrival of new forms of medications, new drugs, and an increasingly drug conscious culture, then you add a whole generation of advertising and pumping people up for self- medication, which it takes time for people to get hyped into that and connected to it, and you have this being pounded into them through advertising and through the reach of advertising through television and magazine advertising or whatever, and pretty soon than ever you have people more aware of this and then you get the general social problems and social and economic, cultural and racial problems in this country, and the availability of new sources of mind alteration, and then you have what we I think see now which is an epidemic of spread of this.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Some people we interviewed on this series talked about pain, either individual pain or the pain of impoverished communities as the reason why people turn to drugs. Does that make sense to you?

ROBERT COLES, Harvard University: Well, culturally, here's what I would say about that. I think perhaps in recent years we have developed a notion in this country that pain is something that we can get rid of in life and maybe we've, even without children, as we bring them up, we have the notion there's something the doctor can give me that will get rid of the pain in this child, physical pain, maybe even psychological pain. I know as a child psychiatrist a lot of the parents with whom I talk have a notion, well, gee, my son or daughter is anxious or frightened or hurt for one reason or another. Surely there is something you can do about it. Surely if you talk to the children, and help them out, they won't experience pain or anxiety, plus I think to myself who is without pain or anxiety in one form or another in the course of a lifetime, but I think we have almost a utopian notion that if we know enough about medicine and psychiatry and whatever else we are going to learn about, we'll get rid of all these pains and anxieties. In earlier generations, pain was part of life. People grew up with pain and sure, we didn't relish it, and maybe we tried to get some help in getting rid of it, but I mean, the notion that there is ever going to be a pain free life would have shocked anyone either for biblical reasons, because the Judeo Christian tradition certainly reminds us that sin and pain are part of life, or for just ordinary common sense reasons, whether you believe in God or not, I think most people who settled this country or came to this country to do better assumed that pain was part of living, and I think that it is relatively recently that we've had the notion that in some way if we figure out through some combination of medication and medical help and self-medication, whatever, that we're going to get rid of pain, which is a fantasy.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What are you learning from the young people you see who are on drugs?

DR. COLES: I see young people whom I get to know and pretty soon they'll be telling me memories of the bathroom closets of their parents, the toiletries closet, with all the pills and the medications, pills to go to sleep, pills to wake up, pills for appetite, pills for appetite depressant, pills for this and pills for that, and they remember that. This is part of their experience. What seems like the sudden use of a drug in adolescence can be connected to an earlier history in a family, not always, but a lot of times, and let me remind you again that a lot of these kids who are using these drugs and a lot of the families that are tied up with these drugs are not the people we know about.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So we could have a bigger problem than we know?

DR. COLES: I'm sure we must have a bigger problem than we know and maybe a bigger problem than many of us want to know about, and it's a problem connected in this sense to the class structure in this country and maybe the race problem in this country that we tend, a lot of us who view ourselves as outside of this problem, tend to equate drug use with certain neighborhoods and maybe with poorer people or certain racial minorities. What we don't tend to think of is the upper class white population of this country which is also tied up significantly with drugs, both the parents and the kids, and who can purchase their way out of being acknowledged as being part of the problem, they can call private doctors in, they can go away to private sanitaria and they're not on public record, so to speak, and if we want to go after this problem, it seems to me we ought to go after it at all levels, and acknowledge that this is a problem that is shared across-the-board and across neighborhoods. Cocaine is a medication for a lot of depressed successful people who have become successful but are also struggling with a kind of nagging melancholy which they fight and win over, but yet also which is a part of their lives, and they have found, a lot of these people, that if they take cocaine, they can buy some exemption from the depression for a while at the expense of a later depression. And they keep on making these purchases, sort of the way this whole economy runs. You keep on buying and buying and you know, let the future take care of itself, in the form of built up taxes that our children are going to have to pay and all the built up debts that they're going to have to somehow deal with, and this, what goes for a national, almost socio economic view of life also goes for a lot of individuals who will use cocaine to purchase a temporary exhilaration and keep on doing whatever it is that they're doing and then crash.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What questions do we have to ask ourselves, if people with jobs, some as high as six figure incomes, are that depressed?

DR. COLES: Well, you ask what it is their notion of what they want out of life is. If what they want out of life is a kind of success that is purchased at the price of fierce competitiveness, constantly getting ahead of everyone else, and getting ahead of themselves, in a way, psychologically, and keeping going on what amounts to is they will tell you if you talk with them a rat race, then no wonder medications like cocaine and other drugs are used. The cost is high and a lot of these people are not going to stop and ask themselves introspective, moral and spiritual questions. What they're going to do is take something in their mouths because they figure, hey --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Don't have time --

DR. COLES: I don't have time for anything other than to stop whatever it is that's bothering me so that I can go on and climb another mountain fast within the next few hours.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you see that as one of the big problems, that we're so competitive and impatient?

DR. COLES: I do, and I will tell you there isn't a patient who I have seen who is in some way connected with drugs who at some point hasn't said to me that I am caught up with drugs because they have helped me not stop and ask myself certain questions. Usually they don't ask those questions, they don't want to stop and ask themselves what life means, because they want to keep going because they're trying to hit one home run after another, and although I, you know, would say it's fine to keep on hitting home runs, the question is, you know, at a certain point, what are you hitting home runs for, where is home? Where are you trying to go? What's your destination?

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You've said in the past that we've gotten away from moral and spiritual values. What does society have to do to get back to those values?

DR. COLES: That's the great tragedy in a lot of kids' homes. What are the values that they've grown up? What have their parents told them? Is there any basic religious life that they've had or spiritual life, even apart from church or synagogue attendance? A lot of them will tell you know. They'll tell you that what they believe in is, hey, I want to get ahead, and I want to stay up where I am, and the devil with it all as long as I can have a good time of it.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is it too late? Are you optimistic that we can get a handle on it and not just have to write off a whole generation?

DR. COLES: I hope not and I think we ought to look at it. We have to look at it I think as a moral and spiritual problem as well as a psychological problem. When people finally realize that what really matters in life is something beyond and outside of themselves, reaching out to others, getting the support of others, and getting some distance on themselves which I think ultimately has to be a moral distance.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: If you were advising drug control director Bennett, what would you want to tell him?

DR. COLES: It isn't enough, it seems to me, for our high political leaders to get up and say, hey, just say no to drugs, because maybe we've got to teach our children to say no to a lot of other things, say no to a lot of the fast, glib answers that encourage them to think that you can have everything in this world now, give them some thoughts about what they can do for others, not only what they can take for themselves, which often comes down to taking pills and medication for themselves, and this kind of idealism directed outward will give our young people, whether they be rich or poor, some hope in this life, which is what we need if we're going to stay away, again, from this endless cycle of self- involvement unfortunately aided and abetted by all these medications, which is what they're used for to bring you further and further inward and cut you off from the community in which you live.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Dr. Coles, thank you very much. RECAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Again, the main story of this Tuesday, seven bombs went off in two Colombian cities. They were apparently set by members of the drug cartels. Pres. Bush promised Colombia's president full cooperation in the war against drugs. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Judy. That's the Newshour tonight and we'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.