DRUG WAR SHIFTING ONCE MORE

WASHINGTON -- The use of methamphetamine is rising dramatically in the
Western United States, the Justice Department reported Saturday in an
extensive new study that also shows America's crack-cocaine epidemic
appears to have peaked.

In what amounts to a new phase in the ongoing war on drugs, President
Clinton released $32 million in federal grants Saturday to help local
officials devise strategies tailored for their communities.

``To stop the revolving door of crime and narcotics, we must make offenders
stop abusing drugs,'' Clinton said in his weekly radio address.

The new funds address the drug report's most sobering conclusion: that no
single national strategy will work because drugs of choice vary greatly by
region and age, with older users preferring cocaine and younger ones
favoring marijuana.

Methamphetamine use soared in the early 1990s, with rates among adults who
were arrested reaching as high as 44 percent in San Diego, 25 percent in
Phoenix and 20 percent in San Jose, the study said.

By the mid-1990s, however, methamphetamine use fell significantly, with San
Diego's rate dropping to 30 percent, Phoenix's to 12 percent and San Jose's
to 15 percent. Law enforcement officials attributed the drop to crackdowns
focusing largely on supply, rather than demand.

But methamphetamine use began climbing again, and the new study's
urinalysis data indicates that such drug use ``has returned close to'' the
record levels of the early 1990s.

The decline is striking because many cities had reached epidemic levels in
the late 1980s, with 80 percent or more of those arrested believed to have
been users.

The study further found that cocaine use nationally was two to 10 times as
likely among males 36 or older as among males between the ages of 15 and 20
- -- a trend that could bring lower crime rates because ``older cocaine users
are aging out or dying out,'' said Jack Riley, director of the institute's
Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program.