BUSH'S GOAL: CUT DRUG USE BY 25% IN FIVE YEARS

The President Lays Out A $19.2 Billion Plan That Focuses On Squelching Demand

WASHINGTON -- Declaring that illegal drug use provides financial support
for terrorists, President Bush set a national goal Tuesday of reducing drug
use by 25 percent over the next five years.

The president declared that drug usage had grown to "unacceptably high"
levels during the 1990s, and laid out a $19.2 billion plan that he said
moves the battle against drugs to "the center of our national agenda."

His 2 percent budget increase, while funding stepped-up border controls,
puts a particular emphasis on squelching demand at home.

"We can work as hard as we possibly want on interdiction," he said, "but so
long as there's the demand for drugs in this country, some crook is going
to figure out how to get them here. ... As demand goes down, so will supply."

Bush said he would rely on parents, schools and community organizations,
especially faith-based groups, to deliver a don't-do-drugs message.

He also said abstaining from drugs may be one of the most important
contributions Americans can make in reducing the strength of terrorist groups.

"Make no mistake about it," said Bush. "If you're buying illegal drugs in
America, it is likely that money is going to end up in the hands of
terrorist organizations."

Of an estimated $66 billion spent annually by Americans on drugs, said John
Waters, Bush's drug policy director, "we know that hundreds of millions of
those dollars go to organizations that have been identified as terrorist."

The administration bought commercial time to deliver that message during
the recent Super Bowl game and plans additional media purchases this year,
including time during the Olympics. Overall, the White House plans to spend
$180 million on anti-drug advertising this year.

"The response has been quite overwhelming," said Waters.

The U.S. drug picture in recent years has not been entirely bleak. Chronic
use of cocaine and heroin, for example, is down significantly from 1990. As
a result, drug expenditures have fallen by nearly half since then.

But marijuana use has gone in the other direction. Domestic consumption
shot up by one-third during the last decade. Methamphetamines also quickly
grew into a serious drug problem.

And much of the growth occurred among teens. Beginning in the early 1990s,
drug use rose rapidly among junior and senior high school students.
Marijuana use tripled among eighth-graders and more than doubled among
10th-graders.

The trend alarmed experts because experimentation with drugs at an early
age is seen as a reliable indicator of later hard-drug use. Indeed, cocaine
use also climbed among teens in the mid-1990s.

Bush, who chastised his predecessor in the White House, Bill Clinton, for
not acting more aggressively to attack the 1990s rise, said the teen
numbers today are far too high, noting that more than half of high school
seniors report experimenting with drugs before graduation.

"We've got to do something about it here in America," Bush said. "Drug use
wreaks havoc on our families. Drug use destroys people's ambitions and hopes."

As expected, the Bush plan increases spending on border guards and other
interdiction programs. Somewhat surprisingly, the budget goes up even more
for treatment programs.

At his confirmation hearing, Waters was grilled by several Democratic
senators who feared he would put all his emphasis on law-enforcement
programs rather than drug treatment.

But the new budget boosts treatment funding by 6 percent, to $3.8 billion.
Over the next five years, the administration says, the rate of increase
will accelerate, with spending eventually topping $5 billion.

In his report, Waters estimated that only about 800,000 people receive drug
treatment in a typical year, fewer than 20 percent of those who need it. To
make up some of the difference, the administration plans to target the
extra treatment money to high-priority groups -- teenagers, pregnant women
and ethnic minorities.

It also plans to expand treatment in prisons, from which an estimated
150,000 inmates are released each year without needed drug counseling.

While Bush acknowledged he has set ambitious goals, there are signs that
drug use may have already begun to subside among adolescents. Since 1997,
marijuana use has declined slightly among eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders
as measured in an annual University of Michigan survey.

Alcohol use is also down, particularly among junior-high students. Between
1997 and 2001, the percentage of eighth-graders reporting any use of
alcohol fell from 24.5 percent to 21.5 percent.