ON THE ROAD TO STAMP OUT DRUGS

DURHAM -- Ted Stone's most powerful weapon in his one-man crusade
against drugs is his own story.

That story of how drug addiction reduced a former Baptist minister to
robbing stores, nearly killing a man and spending four years in
prison, and how God helped him climb back to sanity, pierced the
hearts of many who heard him speak Sunday and Monday in Laredo, Texas.

The small town that lies half in the United States and half in Mexico
was the first stop on Stone's third walk across the country to urge
Americans to wipe out drug addiction. He expects to finish the trek,
his first south-to-north walk after two from coast to coast, in
Detroit on May 18.

The 65-year-old Stone, who was born and lives in Durham, has spent the
24 years since his release from prison spreading his anti-drug message
to any group that will listen. Since 1996 he has twice hiked across
the nation to draw attention to his cause -- a modern pilgrim in New
Balance sneakers and sweat pants. Like an ancient penitent with a
cross, he carries a U.S. flag every step of the way. He sweats under
the hot sun, he slogs through rain, he waves to truckers and the
drivers of cars.

His message: The American people can beat drug abuse. It has to
be done by local groups, not by government, and the best method is
faith-based treatment.

He stays in motels, which give him a discount. He stops and
speaks with school groups, churches and elected officials. He asks
people to sign a card pledging to abstain from drugs or alcohol. A
helper, Philip Barber, a 25-year-old former truck driver and
recovering drug addict, drives behind him and helps line up speaking
engagements.

Nearly every family in the United States has been touched by drug
abuse, Stone says.

"It's a pain that runs deep across this country."

Despite Stone's weird appearance -- his shoulder-length, curly hairdo
looks too young for his wrinkled, craggy face, and his sweat suit
bears loud advertisements for his mission -- he reaches people.

When he spoke Sunday night at a small church in Laredo, "The kids were
on the edge of their seats, listening to every word," said the Rev.
Mike Barrera, the church's pastor.

Nearly all 150 members of Barrera's United Baptist Church of Laredo
showed up to hear Stone tell his story Sunday night, Barrera said.

Students at Texas A&M University, where Stone spoke at noon Monday,
asked him to come back and speak in Monterrey, Mexico, Barrera said.

And a group of 12 Mexican ministers who met Monday morning with Stone
embraced the message that Barrera translated into Spanish from Stone's
Southern drawl.

It is the power of Stone's story and the simple, arduous way he
spreads his message that allows him to make a small but real dent in
the nation's drug problem.

His story is all he has. He doesn't have money. Since he left prison
and started his crusading, his wife, Ann, supported the family with
her job as a librarian at Duke University until she retired a few years ago.

He doesn't have political power -- at least not much. While Stone does
have political allies, he has lost two runs for Congress. And his
friend, Lauch Faircloth, who as the state's junior U.S. senator set up
Stone's most high-level meetings on the first two walks, is out of
office. In 1996 and 1998, Faircloth arranged six visits with
governors, others with members of governors' staffs, and one with
former first lady Betty Ford.

But Stone's labors have paid off. One way is the establishment of two
church-run halfway houses in the state for recovering addicts. He
played a key role in getting Southern Baptist officials to donate
$30,000 for Damascus House in Creedmoor, which opened in 1994, the
brainchild of the Rev. Don Brown, a local pastor.

Damascus House, which holds six residents at a time for an average
stay of about eight months, has treated more than 40 residents, said
Brown, pastor of First Baptist Church of Creedmoor, which runs the
home. Brown's church is now negotiating an option to buy property for
a second halfway house, he said Monday. And a graduate of Damascus
House, who now lives in Red Water, Texas, is working to start a third
home on the same model, Brown said.

A second halfway house in Morganton is expected to open in March,
Stone said. It will have capacity for five residents just out of a
drug treatment center. And a third is in the works in New Bern, Stone
said.

"That's my whole aim, is to get people to start them all over the
country," Stone said Monday on the phone from Laredo.

Then there are the individual souls that Stone has helped rescue. One
of them is the Rev. Stephen Cobb, the 41-year-old pastor of Temple
Baptist Church of New Bern.

In 1981, Cobb was a 23-year-old drug addict on the verge of suicide.
He was living in a mobile home, working at a Shoney's restaurant and
dealing drugs.

One night, his parents persuaded him to hear Stone speak at church.

"The night before I went to the church where he spoke on Dec 13, 1981,
I had been at a party," Cobb said. "We were drinking Everclear and
taking Quaaludes and doing dope. I had concluded it would be better to
be dead than to be like this."

Stone's testimony the next morning about his own turnaround was
so graphic, Cobb said, that it persuaded him to walk up to the altar
and offer his life to God.

"He told the people, 'If God can do it for Ted Stone, he can do it for
me,' " Stone said last week before leaving for Laredo.

Cobb went on to become a Baptist minister. He says that he helped
increase the congregation at his first church, Macedonia Baptist
Church in the western North Carolina town of Alexander, to five times
its original size and that his current church in New Bern is the
fastest-growing in its section of the North Carolina Baptist
organization,with 70 new converts to Christianity last year.

Stone wants to have that kind of effect on every one he meets.

"My will in walking every step of the way," he said, "is a way of
showing people if they exhibit similar will, they can overcome their
drug problems."