DRUG CHIEF HITS A GOVERNOR'S CALL FOR LEGALIZATION

LOS ANGELES - Barry McCaffrey, coordinator of US antidrug policy, yesterday
accused the governor of New Mexico of ignorance and irresponsibility for
advocating the legalization of drugs.

Responding to Republican Governor Gary Johnson's alternative to what
Johnson has called the ''expensive failure'' of the war on drugs, McCaffrey
said he was ''astonished. ... This is the same governor last year who
vetoed a $2.6 million drug treatment program.

''Obviously the governor hasn't seen the nature of drug addiction in the
same manner that drug treatment professionals in that state and law
enforcement have encountered,'' said McCaffrey.

Johnson is the country's highest-ranking elected official to advocate
legalizing cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. The 46-year-old governor, a
triathlon athlete who admits having used drugs in college, said last week
that legalizing drugs could be the best way to fight abuse.

Saying his goal is to reduce drug use in the United States, Johnson
suggested that legalization would allow the government to regulate drugs as
it does alcohol and tobacco.

McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy, said the number of heroin-related deaths in New Mexico is twice the
national average.

''The problem isn't that they (drugs) are illegal. The problem is that they
are ferociously addictive and they make people act in a compulsive manner.

They make them unemployable and they get them involved in permanently
altered and impaired brain function. That's the problem with these drugs,''
McCaffrey said.

''In a democracy everyone is welcome to debate these notions. But if you
are going to be a public official it seems to me you have to have informed
and rational perspectives.''

McCaffrey was in Los Angeles to speak at an antidrug concert for
schoolchildren and to meet with Olympic champion Carl Lewis for talks on
doping in sports.