ILLEGAL DRUG USE DOWN IN U.S., UP IN EUROPE

Illegal drug use is falling in the United States but rising sharply in
Europe, U.S. officials say. The amount of drugs seized in Europe more than
doubled this year as South American traffickers targeted the continent.

Barry McCaffrey, President Clinton's chief drug policy adviser, is holding
a series of drug summits across Europe next week to address the problem. He
is also pushing for a drug-free Olympics. Anti-drug authorities classify 13
million Americans as current illegal drug users, compared with 25 million
in 1980. Cocaine use has dropped the most dramatically, from 5.7 million in
1985 to 1.8 million, according to McCaffrey's Office of National Drug
Control Policy. A current drug user is anyone who used drugs at least once
in the past month.

Comparable statistics are not available for most of Europe, although
surveys taken in recent years show cocaine use ranging from 0.5 percent of
the population in Belgium to 3.3 percent in Spain. Ross Deck of McCaffrey's
office, who has been meeting with European officials tracking drug use,
said there is ample evidence that drug use is increasing across Europe
although countries are only beginning to compile statistics.

``Cocaine is looking for new markets,'' McCaffrey said at a news conference
Thursday, and it's finding them in Europe, where attitudes toward some
narcotics differ from those in the United States.

The International Narcotics Control Board, in its latest report, cited
increased demand for illegal synthetic drugs in Europe and said heroin use
is up in some countries. It said preventing illegal drug use is difficult
on a continent ``where it is increasingly being viewed as an almost normal
cultural phenomenon.'' It said cocaine use is not seen as a major public
health problem.

The board, based in Vienna, Austria, said Europe is not only a major
destination for drugs, including heroin, but an emerging producer of
marijuana and illegal synthetic drugs such as ``ecstasy.''

McCaffrey said Americans need European help in stopping the flow of 700
metric tons of cocaine a year from Colombia, Bolivia and Peru, about half
of which still ends up on U.S. streets.

McCaffrey leaves Sunday for meetings with officials in Britain, Belgium,
Portugal and France.

He said his message will be that cocaine is not a soft drug and that
Europeans should contribute more in the battle against narcotics from Latin
America. He credited good police work by the Spanish and Dutch for much of
a sharp increase in cocaine seizures this year, but he said the increase in
busts every year for six years ``is indicative of a changing problem.''

McCaffrey said Europeans should contribute more to alternative economic
development in the Andean region and step up efforts to stop drug
production and money laundering.

``I want to make sure they get the point that they are now the target of a
drug threat that is searching for new customers,'' McCaffrey said.

Another focus of his trip will be on the use of performance enhancing drugs
in sports, McCaffrey said, leading up to a Nov. 14-17 Australian sports
summit aimed at eliminating drug use by athletes in the 2000 summer
Olympics in Sydney and the winter games in Salt Lake City, Utah.

``We've got to come up with some notion on how to create a level playing
field, where competitors don't think you have to chemically engineer the
human body, or you can't win,'' McCaffrey said.

McCaffrey, in an interview, said his foreign travel and his participation
in a planned Western Hemisphere 34-nation drug summit Nov. 9-10 is
justified by the need for international cooperation to stop the flow of
drugs into the United States. His top goal, he said, is to educate and
enable American youth to reject illegal drugs as well as alcohol and tobacco.

``It's an interdependent world,'' he said. ``Clearly, you've got to have a
cooperative relationship'' with other countries on money laundering,
trafficking, doping in sports and other issues.

McCaffrey's office estimates that 80 to 130 metric tons of cocaine is
available for consumption in Europe, with expected seizures this year of 40
to 50 metric tons. In the first six months of the year, seizures were
already double those of last year, it said.

The report estimates that 57 percent of the South American cocaine flowing
into Europe lands in Spain or Portugal, 15 percent in the Netherlands, 6
percent in Belgium and 7 percent at unknown entry points.