DRUG BATTLE TO RECEIVE $1.6B BOOST, BUSH OFFICIAL SAYS IN NASHVILLE VISIT

The Bush administration intends to embark on a three-pronged approach to
curbing the nation's use of illegal drugs that will include increased
funding for treating addicts, the nation's drug czar told a Nashville
audience yesterday.

John P. Walters, the director of the White House Office of National Drug
Control Strategy, said the administration is committed to boosting
treatment funds by $1.6 billion over the next five years. That, coupled
with prevention programs and drug-market interdiction, is how the
administration proposes to reduce drug use among teens and adults by 10%
over the next two years. The administration also has set a goal of a 25%
reduction in both categories within five years.

"We believe the country can do better," he told a luncheon meeting of the
Nashville Prevention Partnership. "We intend to hold ourselves accountable."

Walters has served in the office before, as former drug czar William
Bennett's deputy director for supply reduction in 1991-1993. He was sworn
in as director in December and is overseeing a detailed review of the
nation's drug-control strategy.

But even with prevention campaigns and more money for drug-treatment
programs, Walters still believes in clamping down on supply - law
enforcement's traditional role in the drug wars.

"If we don't reduce supply, the very forces that we talk about will
undermine our process of reducing demand, if there are cheaper, purer drugs
that are more widely available," Walter said.

He contends that a recent national household survey found that 4.5 million
people in the country are dependent on illegal drugs, and of those, 65%
have a secondary dependence on marijuana.

"But the facts are with illegal drugs, if you want to deal with the
addiction problem in the United States as it exists today ... if you don't
talk about marijuana, 65% of the problem is not being addressed. That is
not known widely."

From the back of the crowded Frist Center auditorium, the executive
director of the Tennessee Association of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Services
watched.

"He seems to be carrying out the wishes of the president, and he gives me
the impression that he gets it," said Rogers Thomson, long an advocate of
prevention and treatment programs over strategies that focus most heavily
on interdiction.

Walters said that his biggest challenge is the widespread cynicism that
there's nothing the country can do to battle its drug problems:

"I believe the cynicism here is because people have been led to believe
through experience that the drug problem has remained larger than they
want. And larger than society should allow. And that they've been told by
the well-financed campaigns in this country that you can't really make any
headway, that what we're doing now is misguided to try to reduce use and
supply and that what we should do is just put all our money into treatment."

Curbing use and disrupting drug economies that move "metric tons" of money
remains key, he said.

"We have to do a better job of explaining what can be done, energizing the
communities as this community is energized and of establishing confidence
of reducing supply and reducing addiction."