DOWNEY'S ILK RESPONSIBLE FOR COLOMBIAN DRUG PROBLEM: POWELL

WASHINGTON - Wealthy American drug users are a main cause of the cocaine
scourge ravaging Colombia and other Latin American countries, US Secretary
of State Colin Powell said Thursday, pointing the finger directly at
celebrities like Robert Downey Jr.

Powell, testifying before a congressional panel, said the main reason
Andean nations faced difficulties in curtailing the production of
narcotics, particularly cocaine, was the huge demand for drugs in the
United States.

"The real problem in the region is not caused by the region, it is caused
by what happens on the streets of New York, the streets of all our other
major cities," Powell told a House of Representatives budget subcommittee.

"And it is not just a poor kid's problem, a poor kid taking pot on the
street corner, it's corporate lawyers, it's actors who over and over and
over again continue to use drugs in an unlawful way," he said.

Though Powell did not mention the troubled Downey by name, his comment
about performers who repeatedly take drugs was a clear reference to the
actor who was arrested earlier this week in Los Angeles, in the latest of
his ongoing problems with drugs and the law dating back five years.

Downey, 36, was arrested early Tuesday by a police officer who saw him in
an alley dazed and apparently on drugs.

He was issued a citation to appear in court on May 4 before being released
and checking himself into a rehabilitation clinic.

He already faced an April 30 court hearing to determine if there is enough
evidence for him to stand trial on drug charges stemming from a November 25
arrest on felony counts of cocaine and diazepam.

Downey was released last August from Corcoran State Prison in Central
California, where he had been incarcerated for about a year after violating
probation on several drug and weapons arrests dating to 1996.

Powell, speaking to the lawmakers about US plans to fund counter-narcotics
efforts in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, said the multi-billion
dollar program would never be completely effective unless the demand, as
demonstrated by his examples, was eliminated.

"That's what's causing the problem in Colombia and in the other nations of
the Andean region and so we have to not only go after supply and
interdiction, we also have to make sure we're dealing with the demand and
treatment side of this terrible problem," Powell said.