STATE OFFICIALS SET FOR CARIBBEAN ANTIDRUG TOUR

State officials and legislators will leave Monday on a five-day tour of
drug interdiction efforts in the Caribbean region that also includes a
goodwill visit to a school in Panama with Minnesota ties.

The delegation will review U.S. antidrug military operations in Florida
and Puerto Rico, then get a U.S. Embassy briefing in Panama City on the
drug war in Panama, which is considered a hotbed for money laundering by
cocaine and heroin traffickers from Colombia and Peru.

Also in Panama, the Minnesotans will visit the State of Minnesota
Elementary School in the village of Loma Cova, which was established
with help from Adams School in St. Paul and the Minnesota Air National
Guard. Corrections Commissioner Sheryl Ramstad Hvass will take two
computers refurbished by Minnesota prison inmates to the school.

She said state officials want to coordinate their work with efforts to
keep the supply of drugs out of the United States. Drug offenders make
up more than a third of admissions to Minnesota prisons, and 85 percent
of inmates are chemically dependent, she said.

Other state officials on the tour will be Adjutant General Eugene
Andreotti; Pollution Control Commissioner Karen Studders; Sens. Dave
Kleis, James Metzen and Steve Murphy, and Reps. Harry Mares, Mary Murphy
and Jim Rhodes.