DRUG CZAR CALLS POT A DANGER TO KIDS

WALNUT HILLS - President Bush's drug czar wants parents and kids to know:
Marijuana is as serious a drug as any other.

John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy, visited Cincinnati on Thursday as part of his push to convince
Americans that marijuana isn't a "soft" drug. Too many young people start
smoking marijuana because they think it's harmless, he said.

"The single biggest enemy is cynicism," he said in a speech at First Step
Home, a substance-abuse treatment shelter for women in Walnut Hills. "We
have to pay attention. We have to correct misinformation. This is not a joke."

Though marijuana is not as toxic as cocaine or heroin, and doesn't cause
overdose or death, the drug is increasingly the primary cause nationwide of
admissions to substance-abuse treatment facilities, he said. In 2002, about
130 people of every 100,000 who were 12 or older sought help for marijuana
abuse. That was up by 162 percent from a decade earlier.

The White House thinks it's crucial to get its message to pre-teens because
studies show people are much less likely to become dependent on drugs after
19, Walter said. He called marijuana abuse a "pediatric-onset disease."

Walters said he supports confidential, non-punitive drug testing for
teenagers as a way to get them help. About 140 schools across the country
are doing that now, he said.

To parents, he advised: "You have to be concerned about this before you
think you have to be concerned about this. Tell (your children) what you
care about."

The First Step Home started in 1993. Executive Director Margo Spence said
the facility is the only licensed treatment option in Hamilton County that
allows children to live there with their mothers.