U.S. SLAMS 'SOFT' DRUGS AHEAD OF UK TALKS

The U.S. drugs policy coordinator, in London to discuss drug trafficking
with his British counterpart, said Monday that soft drugs posed the
greatest danger to youngsters.

General Barry McCaffrey, director of the U.S. Office of National Drugs
Control Policy, said the way to prevent the young getting hooked on
so-called hard drugs was to remove marijuana and alcohol out of their
reach. "The most dangerous drug in America is a 12-year-old smoking pot and
abusing alcohol," said McCaffrey, who is due to hold talks with Britain's
anti-drugs coordinator Keith Hellawell later Monday.

McCaffrey said Britain and the United States would be "poorly advised" to
copy the permissive attitude to soft drugs taken by countries such as the
Netherlands, and lauded Sweden's stringent anti-drugs laws.

"If you get a young person between about the ages of nine and 18, and you
minimize the exposure to drug-taking behavior, we find statistically
they'll never have a compulsive drug-use problem their entire life," he
told BBC radio.

McCaffrey said that drug use in the United States had fallen sharply over
the past 20 years, with just six percent of the U.S. population currently
taking drugs compared with 14 percent in the late 1970s.

Cocaine use, meanwhile, had fallen 70 percent during the past two decades.
But he added that the United States still had some 810,000 heroin users.

Britain's Hellawell said the international community needed to take a
common stand to tackle drug trafficking.

"It is an international problem that needs an international response," he
said in a statement.

The pair are also expected to discuss drug abuse in sports and prisons as
well as drug treatment programs.