ANTI-DRUG STRATEGY RELEASED

Policies: The effort includes $18 billion for spending this year,but critics
say it doesn't emphasize prevention and treatment.

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

But despite the Clinton administration's 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 half what it was in 1979.

"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. White House drug policy director Barry
McCaffrey wants children to be the focal point for the drive against
drugs.

The White House "seeks to involve parents, coaches, mentors, teachers,
clergy and other role models in a broad prevention campaign,"
McCaffrey said in the four-volume strategy sent to Capitol Hill on
Monday.

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.

The blend of strategies is aimed at reducing the use and availability
of drugs by 25 percent by 2002 and 50 percent by 2007.

But some advocates were unconvinced that the administration's proposal
did enough to boost treatment and prevention.

Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who has had a hand in writing anti-drug
legislation in Congress, said the Clinton administration's budget
numbers didn't match its promise to stress education and treatment.

"My concern is that the president's budget priorities don't match the
rhetoric from the White House," Portman said.

McCaffrey defended the administration's highlighting an advertising
campaign that generates more than $195 million in matching
contributions from media companies.

"If you take a three-year-snapshot, we've increased prevention dollars
by more than 40 percent," McCaffrey said.

McCaffrey also trumpeted reduced coca cultivation in the Andean
region.