DRUG CZAR'S FINAL REPORT SHOWS U.S. STILL STRUGGLING

WASHINGTON - Youth drug use in America increased sharply during the eight
years of the Clinton administration and the number of drug-related episodes
in emergency rooms are now at historic highs, according to figures in a
national report on drug policy to be released today. The sobering news
comes during a time when the federal government committed huge amounts of
new money recently to fight the problem, increasing funding to $19.2
billion this year from $13.4 billion in 1996, an average increase of more
than $1 billion a year.

But Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of the National Drug Control
Policy, will argue in a White House news conference that the drug problem
among youths in particular is getting better.

To support his position, he will cite a 21 percent decrease in use from
1997 to 1999, perhaps the first signs from a widely praised anti-drug media
campaign.

Still, drug use among those ages 12-17 was exactly the same in 1999 as it
was in 1996, when McCaffrey became drug czar: In both years, 9 percent of
those youths surveyed acknowledged using illegal drugs sometime during the
previous month, according to the national survey. And in 1993, when Clinton
first took office, only 5.7 percent of teens said they used illegal drugs.

"We've got a long ways to go,'' said Joseph Califano Jr., chairman and
president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at
Columbia University and a former secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.

The report, a copy of which was obtained by the Globe, for the first time
during McCaffrey's nearly five years in office includes closing the gap in
treatment as one of five national drug stategy goals. In 1998 - the last
year for which figures are available - 57 percent of America's addicts who
needed treatment did not get it.

The numbers in the 2001 national drug strategy report suggest that even
with a 34 percent increase in treatment funding during the past five years,
the programs fall far short of helping those who are toughest to
rehabilitate and most costly to society.

The report estimated 3.3 million hard-core cocaine users and 694,000 heroin
addicts in 1993. The 1998 figures: 3.3 million cocaine addicts, 980,000
heroin addicts.

In Clinton's first year, the drug abuse warning network recorded 460,910
drug-related conditions in emergency rooms. In 1999, the number had
increased to 554,932, the highest ever recorded.

"To me, there is still a huge amount of unmet demand out there for
treatment,'' said Michael Massing, author of "The Fix,'' a history of
America's drug war. "The percentage of those untreated remains to me one of
the most telling figures in the wealth of statistics the drug control
office puts out. It's a continuing indictment of the policy that Clinton
and McCaffrey have pursued.''

McCaffrey, the strong-willed former Army four-star general, leaves as drug
czar later this month.

Even critics acknowlege McCaffrey's foresight in starting a $2 billion
anti-drug media campaign and note that it may take several years for
statistics to fully reflect the effects on youth attitudes toward drugs.
McCaffrey himself will depart office unsatisfied on several fronts,
including the frustrating lack of change in the numbers of hard-core
addicts. "We have 5 million people chronically addicted to drugs,'' he said
last month. "They are a total mess. They are in misery. ... Their personal
behavior is disgusting, so it's hard to organize rational drug policy
around them. This group is difficult to love.''

Califano, a well-known Democrat, suggested sharply increasing funding for
treatment programs in prisons. He cited studies that showed 1.6 million of
the country's 2 million inmates in local and state jails had committed
alcohol-or drug-related crimes. Of that 1.6 million, about 200,000 were
drug dealers, not users.

But in his final report as drug czar, McCaffrey kept his focus on the
positive. He said in a letter to Congress that a wide range of Americans in
recent years have "made great progress in reducing drug abuse and its
consequences.''