WHITE HOUSE SEEKS $18 BILLION TO COUNTER SPREAD OF ILLICIT DRUGS

WASHINGTON -- Releasing the administration's annual drug control strategy
Monday, Vice President Al Gore called drug abuse a "spiritual problem" and
said that young people beset with feelings of emptiness and alienation are
more likely to succumb to "messages that are part of a larger entity of
evil."

In response, Gore called for greater efforts to improve schools and create
greater economic opportunity for young people especially in minority and
low-income communities.

The administration seeks nearly $18 billion for drug control programs in its
new budget.

The announcement was made as federal officials disclosed Monday that they
have seen an alarming new "explosion" of cocaine production in Colombia.

Retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, the White House drug czar, said cultivation
of cocaine has jumped 26 percent in the past year in Colombia, with signs of
an increase in opium production there as well.

As with its previous drug control strategies, the administration allocates
about two-thirds of anti-drug spending for law enforcement, interdiction and
other efforts to attack the supply of illicit drugs; the remaining one-third
goes to prevention, treatment and other programs to reduce the demand.

McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy, said, "We are confident that this is a balanced strategy."

McCaffrey said that demand-reduction programs have been growing faster than
those aimed at supply.

If the administration's requests are adopted by Congress, spending on demand
programs will have increased by 36 percent since 1996 compared with a 30
percent spending increase for supply programs.

The drug strategy drew criticism from advocates of greater spending on
programs meant to reduce the appetite for illegal drugs.

The Drug Policy Foundation found the strategy "hypocritical and
disappointing," and said that "the White House and the Congress need to
shift from a criminal justice-based drug policy to a public health-based
policy."

Other critics charged that the drug plan is a repackaging of failed policies
of the past.

"This is a betrayal of what the White House says it's doing, promising a
balanced strategy when it is lopsided," said Eric Sterling, former counsel
to the House Judiciary Committee and president of the Criminal Justice
Policy Foundation, a Washington research group.

Sterling said the government was ignoring its own research, citing a Rand
Corp. study that showed prevention and treatment were, dollar for dollar,
the best way to cut down drug abuse.

Again this year the centerpiece of the administration's prevention strategy
is a multimedia advertising campaign designed to alert adolescents to the
dangers of illegal drug use.

With additional funding of $10 million requested in the next budget, the
drug control media campaign would grow to $195 million.

In unveiling the drug strategy, Gore emphasized his view of attending to the
broad underlying causes of drug abuse rather than focusing only on more
stringent attacks on criminal behavior.

"It is an interconnected problem, and so our solution must also be
interconnected," Gore said, pointing to spiritual, psychological, social and
economic factors that combine to promote drug abuse, particularly among
young people.

"I've always believed that, along with all the other dimensions of this
problem, this is a spiritual problem," he said.

"And if young people have emptiness in their lives, if they have a lack of
respect for the larger community of which they're a part, if they don't find
ways to feel connected to the adults who are in the community, if they feel
there's phoniness and hypocrisy and corruption and immorality, then they are
much more vulnerable to the drug dealers, to the peers who tempt them with
messages that are part of a larger entity of evil," Gore said.

To counter this, Gore said, "We have to do more to expand opportunity, to
create jobs for our young people, especially in communities that have too
often been passed by in good times."

Gore called for greater efforts to improve schools to help students "empower
themselves with the trained minds that make them stronger."