WHITE HOUSE OUTLINES ANTI-DRUG PLAN

WASHINGTON (AP) Releasing the administration's five-part strategy to fight
drugs, Vice President Al Gore called on Monday 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. 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. 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. In
1979, the rate was near 15 percent.

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

"Unfortunately, it's just another example of throwing billions of dollars
down the bottomless pits of interdiction and failed prevention programs,"
said Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Center, a drug policy
think-tank funded by billionaire George Soros.

McCaffrey defended the administration's commitment to prevention,
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. "If you look at drug treatment
dollars it's up 17 percent, and the FY 2000 budget continues that."

McCaffrey also trumpeted reduced coca cultivation in the Andean region,
especially in Peru and Bolivia. However, cultivation in Colombia, where the
product of the coca plant is used to produce cocaine, has risen 26 percent
in just one year.

Gore said the fight against drugs was linked to a "spiritual" struggle for
the hearts of the nation's youth, and that education and adult role models
were just as important as law enforcement.

"We must start by recognizing that our nation's drug problem was not born
in isolation and does not exist in a vacuum," Gore said. "It is an
interconnected problem and so our solutions must also be interconnected. We
must mount an all out effort to banish crime, drugs and disorder and
hopelessness from our streets once and for all."