DRUG CONTROL PLAN HEAVY ON PREVENTION

White House - The Strategy to Reduce Abuse by Teens Includes $7.5
Million for Nonpunitive Testing in Schools

President Bush's chief drug adviser released the White House's latest
drug control strategy Friday in downtown Portland, a plan that calls
for a broad public health approach to prevent teenage drug abuse.

John Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy,
offered high points of the new strategy -- along with some good and
bad news -- at the Union Gospel Mission, which offers recovery
services to adults addicted to methamphetamine and other drugs.

The good news: Meth use among teens declined 41 percent between 2001
and 2006. The bad news: Teen usage of illegal prescription drugs is up.

In an interview with The Oregonian Friday morning, Walters said
public officials must approach today's teen drug abuse in much the
way it approached the epidemic of gun violence that swept America's
big cities in the early 1990s. Like gunfire, he said, teen drug use
is a preventable public health problem that can't be treated solely
by the criminal justice system.

Preventing the onset of drug abuse is key to the National Drug
Control Strategy released Friday, Walters explained. The White House
strategy seeks an extra $7.5 million for nonpunitive drug testing in
school districts across the nation and an additional $30 million to
blitz the airwaves and the Internet with anti-drug messages aimed at teens.

Walters acknowledged that randomly testing teens for drugs is
controversial. But he said the tests are an important public health tool.

"Random testing may not be used to punish," he said, adding that
results cannot be turned over to law enforcement or school officials
for disciplinary reasons. "If you want to find the troubled young
people . . . random drug testing is a powerful tool, along with
screening in the health care system."

Science is changing the easy-going attitudes parents once held about
drugs, Walters said. And their children recognize the trauma that
drugs such as methamphetamine inflict on the human brain.

Charting global distribution of pseudoephedrine, which is used to
manufacture meth, takes up much of Walters' time these days. Last
December, for instance, authorities in Mexico seized nearly 20 tons
of what was reported to be pseudoephedrine shipped from China.
Walters met earlier this week with his counterpart from China and is
following up on the bust in Mexico. U.S. authorities are working with
officials in Mexico to identify how the shipment got there from China.

As the United States finds ways to cut off the supply of meth and its
precursor drugs from other nations, smugglers find new ways to come
in the back door, Walters said. "The question becomes, can our
defense out-do their offense?" he said.

The President's Drug Control Budget calls for $12.9 billion to
support reduction of drug supplies, prevention of drug abuse and
treatment of addicts. But when Walters publicly released the drug
control strategy Friday, he focused his remarks on teens.

Drug abuse spreads like tuberculosis from one child to the next, he
told reporters.

"I recognize there are critics of random drug tests," Walters said.
"But trust me, they're gonna look stupid" in coming years.

Sometimes, he said, you have to take unpopular measures to fight
against drugs -- such as putting cold remedies behind the counter, as
Oregon officials did, to prevent people from turning them into meth.

"Meth was too bad," he said. "This was a reasonable change."