DIRECTOR OF WAR ON DRUGS TO RESIGN

WASHINGTON - Barry McCaffrey, the former military commander who has
directed the nation's war on drugs for nearly five years, plans to leave in
early January. He says he's considering teaching offers, including a return
to West Point.

"I'm enormously proud of what we've done," McCaffrey said yesterday in an
interview. "We had exploding rates of adolescent drug use and we've reduced
it."

His resignation as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy
is effective Jan. 6, two weeks before President Clinton leaves office. By
law, McCaffrey's term is indefinite. He said his announcement gives the
presidential candidates a clean slate to draft their policies on drug
abuse.

"It's important for me to put up the notion that my name's off the table,"
he said.

McCaffrey, a retired Army general, has been Clinton's chief drug adviser
since 1996 and previously was head of the US Southern Command. In the
mid-1970s, he was an associate professor at West Point, teaching courses in
American government and national security.

"In the nearly five years McCaffrey has led our war on drugs, we have made
significant progress both at home and abroad," Clinton said in a statement
yesterday during emergency peace talks in Egypt.

Critics, who include Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush, have
said the Clinton administration consistently undermined McCaffrey's efforts
to control drug abuse.

McCaffrey dismissed that notion and any suggestion that he's leaving out of
frustration.

He said that federal funds to fight drugs have increased and that
adolescent drug abuse has fallen since he was appointed. "We've taken
important strides in addressing a problem that costs our society 52,000
deaths and more than $100 billion a year," he said.

The White House job was created in 1988 by Congress in an effort to cut use
of illegal drugs, especially among youth. The office coordinates the
efforts of federal agencies and state and local law enforcement officers
and health officials.

When McCaffrey assumed the helm, his military background raised hopes the
office would gain purpose and focus, and be less political.

Some of his critics said yesterday that his policies have been harsh and
costly.

"His fight against medical marijuana has caused untold pain and suffering
among the seriously ill," said Chuck Thomas, spokesman for the
Washington-based Marijuana Policy Project, which seeks to decriminalize the
drug.

McCaffrey has also backed rigorous drug-testing programs in sports and a
plan in which the office reviewed television scripts for antidrug messages
before the shows aired.

Recently McCaffrey had been overseeing a controversial $1.3 billion US aid
package to Colombia that includes combat helicopters, weapons, and training
by the elite US Special Forces to stanch the flow of drugs out of the
country.