BUSH NAMES TOP GENERAL IN US "WAR ON DRUGS"

WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush Thursday anointed "war on drugs"
veteran John Walters his top general in the fight against narcotics, vowing
an "all-out effort" to curb the voracious US appetite for illegal substances.

"The most effective way to reduce the supply of drugs in America is to
reduce the demand for drugs in America. Therefore, this administration will
focus unprecedented attention on the demand side of this problem," Bush
pledged.

In the sun-bathed White House Rose Garden, the US leader also committed to
narrow the spending gap between law enforcement and treatment programs by
boosting federal funds for the latter by 1.6 billion dollars over five years.

If confirmed by the Senate, Walters, 49, will head the White House's Office
of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), which oversees the roughly 19
billion dollars per year the US federal government spends waging its "war
on drugs."

The position, which Bush has decided will be part of his Cabinet, is
popularly known as "drug czar."

Walters, an outspoken conservative who favors criminal penalties for drug
offenders as well as controversial US "certification" of nations as
cooperating with Washington's anti-narcotics efforts, ran the ONDCP's
Office of Supply Reduction under Bush's father, ex-president George Bush.

The president said his administration would sustain cooperation with Latin
American nations "to eradicate drugs at their source, and enforce our
borders to stop the flow of drugs into America."

Washington is contributing some 1.3 billion dollars to Bogota's sweeping
"Plan Colombia," aimed to eliminate cocaine production and combat leftist
insurgencies in the South American nation, the world's top cocaine producer.

Regional efforts "will make working in close cooperation with Mexico a
priority. It'll make having strong relations in the hemisphere a priority,"
he added.

The president also ordered an extensive 30-day review of federal
partnerships with local faith-based and community groups, a 120-day
assessment of state treatment shortfalls, and said he wanted a plan to make
federal prisons drug-free on his desk in four months.

Bush categorically rejected the idea of legalizing drugs, which he said
already cost the United States 100 billion dollars per year, saying such
action would create "a social catastrophe."

Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters the president and Vice
President Dick Cheney had been the first of 650 White House employees drug
tested as a condition of employment. He declined to specify the results.

Fleischer also said that, in public speeches on the issue, Bush may draw on
his personal experience of deciding to quit drinking cold turkey.

"He will tell you that one of the ways he was able to stop drinking
overnight was because of the power of faith ... That's the reason he
believes faith-based programs can be effective: He's seen their power," he said.