THE ANTI-DRUG CAMPAIGN'S MISSING LINK

Gen. Barry McCaffrey, President Clinton's director of national drug policy,
has declared flatly that under-age drinking is the single biggest drug
problem among adolescents, and is intimately linked to the use of illegal drugs.

But as things stand now, the $195 million national media campaign that
General McCaffrey is running this year to dissuade youngsters from using
illicit drugs will not spend a penny in Federal funds to warn teen-agers
about the dangers of drinking.

The White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy offers two reasons
for not including alcohol in the anti-drug campaign.

The first is that it would dilute the basic message, which is that kids
should avoid illegal drugs.

That is strange reasoning, given the solid evidence showing that teen-age
drinking is often a gateway to illicit drug use. Indeed, the first goal of
the White House's national drug strategy is to ''educate and enable
America's youth to reject illegal drugs as well as alcohol and tobacco.'' It
also notes that adults who started drinking as children are nearly eight
times more likely to use cocaine than adults who did not do so.

The second reason is that Mr. McCaffrey believes that the statute granting
his office authority to combat controlled substances leaves him no room to
target alcohol.

That rigid interpretation is open to question. In any case, the statutory
problem can be quickly remedied by legislation. Representatives Lucille
Roybal-Allard, Democrat of California, and Frank Wolf, Republican of
Virginia, have introduced a measure that would explicitly give General
McCaffrey the authority to include
under-age drinking among the campaign's targets.

Ms. Allard and Mr. Wolf have lined up powerful support from groups like the
American Medical Association. The National Beer Wholesalers' Association
opposes the measure, as does the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, a
nonprofit coalition of advertising firms that has been working on the campaign.

The Partnership argues that an anti-alcohol message would dilute the
anti-drug message, but some of the Partnership's members earn lucrative fees
for promoting alcohol products.

The measure, an amendment to an appropriations bill, deserves support. If
warning about the dangers of excessive drinking is not statutorily part of
General McCaffrey's job, it ought to be.