GORE SAYS DRUG ISSUE IS IN PART 'SPIRITUAL'

STRATEGY STILL DEVOTES MORE TO ENFORCEMENT THAN TO PREVENTION

Releasing the administration's annual drug control strategy yesterday, Vice
President Al Gore called drug abuse a "spiritual problem" and said 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. 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.

"We are confident that this is a balanced strategy," said ret. Gen. Barry R.
McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy. He emphasized that demand reduction programs had 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 to 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 in
a statement that "the White House and the Congress need to shift from a
criminal justice-based drug policy to a public health-based policy."

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."

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."