DRUG CZAR TOURS BOMBED HOUSE, LAUDS CRUSADER

U.S. drug czar John Walters visited a one-story ranch house in a
drug-ridden Atlanta neighborhood Tuesday.

Walters stopped in Atlanta to promote a new campaign by the White
House Office of National Drug Control Policy --- and to praise the
grass-roots anti-drug activism of the homeowner, the Rev. John Kimbrough.

Police say a drug dealer firebombed the house in the Capital View
neighborhood last month after Kimbrough hosted an anti-drug meeting
there. The event drew the attention of the White House office, which
has just launched a campaign to reduce drug use in Atlanta and the
country's 24 other largest cities.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy describes its 25 Cities
Initiative as "a local approach to a national program" that will work
on reducing both the supply and demand for drugs.

Kimbrough's efforts, which include placing addicts and dealers in
treatment programs run by his church, Victory Outreach Ministries, are
exactly the kind of community-level work Atlanta and other cities need
to foster, Walters said.

"There's individual courage we should be inspired by and we should
emulate," he said.

Walters highlighted cocaine as one of the city's most pervasive and
dangerous drugs, but also warned of a rise in methamphetamine use and
dealing. Cocaine is expected to become scarcer and less potent within
a year, he said, as a result of a federal project that eradicated
130,000 hectares of coca plants in Colombia in 2003.

Walters cautioned that more affluent communities should be as vigilant
about reducing drug use as poor neighborhoods.

"If you have a community of teenagers or young teenagers in almost any
place, you have a drug problem," he said. "Probably you just don't
know it."