ILLEGAL DRUG USE DROPS, BUT PRESCRIPTION ABUSE STILL A PROBLEM

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- Illegal drug use in the United States has
dropped sharply since 2001 but abuse of prescription drugs remains a
problem, the director of the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy said Friday.

John Walters said that President Bush's anti-drug plan for 2007-08 is
to reduce prescription drug abuse by 15 percent over three years. The
administration ranks the problem second to marijuana.

The plan singled out the pain reliever OxyContin as one of the
prescription drugs most abused. It calls for more states to adopt
prescription drug monitoring programs to prevent "doctor-shopping" to
get more drugs.

Walters said overall use of illegal drugs among young people is down
23 percent from 2001, with 840,000 fewer teenagers using drugs now. He
credited drug testing for much of the decline and urged its expansion
in schools. He also said abuse among older people declined.

About 1,000 school districts carry out drug tests, which can trigger
an intervention that keeps a young abuser from carrying the habit into
adulthood, Walters said. Despite some concerns for invasion of
privacy, he said, the United States will "look stupid in five or ten
years if we don't do this."

Walters said the data came from a survey done at the University of
Michigan for the National Institute For Substance Abuse. The report
says about 19.7 million Americans reported using at least one illegal
substance in the previous month.

In Washington, D.C, Bill Piper, director of affairs for the Drug
Policy Alliance, called the strategy a "spin on the failure of the war
on drugs."