CRITICS ATTACK WAR ON DRUGS BEFORE U.N.

VIENNA, Austria -(AP)- Critics of a U.S.-led global crackdown on illicit
drugs declared the policy a failure Tuesday, calling it "the war that
America cannot win" and urging a United Nations commission to consider other
approaches to the problem.

Activists, think tanks and non-governmental organizations asked the U.N.
Commission on Narcotic Drugs to examine what they called a disturbing lack
of progress midway through a global campaign to curb drug cultivation,
trafficking and consumption by 2008.

Their harsh assessment came as delegates from 116 countries met in Vienna to
review the ambitious anti-drug effort, launched by the U.N. General Assembly
in 1998 and loosely modeled after the United States' "war on drugs."

"This strategy has failed," the European Drug Policy Fund said in a
statement. "Far from making progress toward the goal of a 'drug-free world
by 2008,' drug consumption is in effect on the rise in both industrial and
developing countries, as are drug-related crime and other social
ill-effects."