NATION'S WAR ON DRUGS SHIFTS TO REGIONAL FOCUS

WASHINGTON ­ With cocaine use waning, authorities have tailored the war on
drugs to regional battlegrounds: marijuana in the Appalachian states,
methamphetamine in the Rocky Mountains, cocaine in South Florida.

"There is no longer any one drug that consumes America as cocaine did in
the 1980s," said Barry McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy.

"We need to be ready to defend against emerging threats of a wide variety
by region, as well as increasingly sophisticated changes in the operations
of drug traffickers," he said, in prepared remarks accompanied by his
annual report.

Mr. McCaffrey reported that the cooperating agencies destroyed $787 million
worth of marijuana in Kentucky last year, a value greater than the state's
tobacco crop. Authorities eradicated another $700 million in Tennessee and
West Virginia.

Heroin is the principal problem in central Florida. The New England states
are seeing "unprecedented" increases in heroin-related deaths and
overdoses. And the central California valleys are favorite locations for
methamphetamine labs, the report warns.