U.S. DRUG CZAR WARNS AGAINST LIBERAL DUTCH POLICIES

LOS ANGELES, Aug 5 (Reuters) - America's anti-drug czar blasted liberal
drug policies in the Netherlands on Wednesday, saying that they would
increase crime and addiction if adopted in the United States as
legalization advocates want.

"I'm not trying to persuade the Dutch, but I'm darn sure I don't want to
apply their model intellectually to the United States," Barry McCaffrey
said in an interview with Reuters.

"They've tried to be consistent with a harm-reduction policy which hasn't
worked and is leading them now to beginning heroin maintenance trials," the
retired general and Vietnam War hero added.

McCaffrey upset the Dutch last month during a seven-country European tour
when he singled out tolerant drug laws in the Netherlands as being
responsible for much higher rates of murder and other crime there than in
the United States.

The Dutch government rebuked McCaffrey, the director of the White House
Office of National Drug Control Policy, for calling Dutch drug policy a
"disaster."

"There was a huge uproar (in Holland) over murder rates and crime stats,
and was I right or wrong?... For an American to suggest that their crime
rates were higher than the U.S. absolutely blew their mind," he said.

On Wednesday, in an address to business and community leaders in Los
Angeles, McCaffrey outlined his office's 10-year strategy to combat illegal
drugs in which the emphasis is on education, treatment and prevention. He
also spoke of the need to appoint regional "czars" at all crossing points
on the U.S.-Mexico border to coordinate drug interdiction operations.

Later in an interview, he expanded on his criticism of the Dutch, who
recently started giving free heroin to hard-core addicts through a health
ministry project in a pilot program. Marijuana is freely available in bars
in Amsterdam and it is not illegal to smoke it in Dutch homes.

"I'm not trying to persuade the Dutch about anything. But I do want to
watch what they're doing because their experience is being used by
'harm-reduction' drug legalization advocates as an argument on what we
ought to be doing," he said.

"I think the drug legalization argument in the United States sets up a
false stereotype of what we're doing. What we're actually doing is a
prevention-treatment approach," he said.

"Our model has resulted in lowering the rates of drug abuse in America by
50 percent. Cocaine use is down by 70 percent; drug-related murders are
down by a third; the armed forces are drug-free," he added.

McCaffrey said he had looked at two countries in Europe with different
approaches to the problem.

"The Swedes liberalized their policies in the 1960s; it turned into a
disaster. They reversed course and they now have among the lowest rates of
drug-abuse in Europe.

"The Dutch have consistently followed a harm-reduction policy ....In their
country, drug-abuse rates among their youngsters have gone way up under
this policy and their prison population has gone way up.

"So we look at legal hypocrisy in the Netherlands," McCaffrey said, citing
an example of a recent visit when he accompanied Dutch customs officials
searching the hold of a Chinese ship for marijuana.

"Meanwhile, they're growing it. The Netherlands has turned into a major
drug-producing country," he said.

"Half the MDMA (a hallucinogen known as 'Ecstasy' or 'X') in Europe is
probably made in the Netherlands; a good bit of the amphetamines used in
Europe is manufactured in the Netherlands; a good bit of the hash
(marijuana) that's sold in violation of their own law is grown in the
Netherlands.

"It's exported all over Europe; so the Netherlands' international partners
aren't thrilled with their policy. We don't think it's working at all,"
said McCaffrey.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski