GORE ISSUES CALL FOR `ALL-OUT EFFORT' ON DRUGS, CRIME

Advocacy groups criticize stress on law enforcement

WASHINGTON -- Releasing the administration's five-part strategy to fight
drugs, Vice President Al Gore called yesterday for an "all-out effort to
banish crime, drugs and disorder and hopelessness from our streets."

But despite the Clinton administration's promise to take a balanced
approach in cutting the nation's drug problem in half by 2007, advocacy
groups decried what they saw as a continued emphasis on law enforcement
over prevention and treatment.

Administration officials said the plan continued to build on recent success
in the fight against drugs, noting that government estimates show drug use
by adults is at half what it was in 1979 and that drug use by young people
has started to decline.

"But when drug dealers still roam our streets and rob our children of their
dreams, and drug-related crime still ravages so many of our neighborhoods,
we know that we have barely begun," Gore said. "We must do so much more."

The nationwide effort includes nearly $18 billion to be spent this year by
the federal government.

The White House "seeks to involve parents, coaches, mentors, teachers,
clergy and other role models in a broad prevention campaign," White House
drug policy director Barry McCaffrey said in the four-volume strategy sent
to Congress.

The five parts of the administration plan are educating children,
decreasing the addicted population, breaking the cycle of drugs and crime,
securing the nation's borders from drugs and reducing the drug supply.

Achieving the goal would mean just 3 percent of the U.S. population age 12
and older would be using illegal drugs. The current figure is estimated at
6.4 percent.