DRUG WAR REQUIRES MULTIPLE STRATEGY, REPORT STATES

WASHINGTON -- The use of methamphetamines 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 on 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 from the Oval
Office.

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

"There is no single national drug problem," said Jeremy Travis, director of
the National Institute of Justice, the Justice Department's research
division. "We have lots of different local drug problems."

In the West, and particularly in San Diego, the report found that
methamphetamine use continues to retain "a very solid hold," with nearly 40
percent of adults arrested in California's second-largest city testing
positive.

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, Calif., 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
that focused largely on supply, rather than demand.

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

The first of a planned annual "Report on Adult and Juvenile Arrestees" was
based on urinalysis testing and interviews of more than 30,000 men, women,
boys and girls arrested last year in 23 metropolitan areas.

The report comes at a time of increasing focus on the drug war as
politicians jockey for partisan advantage before the November elections.

On Thursday, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., joined Clinton in Atlanta
to announce an unprecedented $2 billion nationwide media campaign to
discourage children from using drugs.

The study reinforced the "strong nexus" between crime and drug use, with
between 50 percent and 75 percent of arrested persons testing positive for
drugs.

The decline in cocaine use was especially striking because many cities in
the Northeast and the West 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
more likely among males 36 or older than males between ages 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.

In Detroit and Washington, only 5 percent of the younger age group used
cocaine -- while nearly 50 percent of the older group tested positive.

Researchers call this discrepancy "the big brother syndrome," in which
younger children shun a drug after seeing its devastating effects on older
users.

A similar generational difference, although to a lesser degree, also was
found for opiates, including heroin, with older suspects several times more
likely than younger ones to test positive, the report said.

But the reverse seems to apply to marijuana, which was disproportionately
concentrated among youths, the study found.

Methamphetamine use prompted special concern among officials.

Noting that San Diego has been "extraordinarily hard hit," Riley said at a
White House briefing that methamphetamine now surpasses cocaine and
marijuana use among persons arrested in the border city.

The study also found that methamphetamine use is spreading to rural
communities.

"It's easy to manufacture," Travis said, adding that there is "good law
enforcement evidence that much of the production of methamphetamine is
connected to activities south of the border ... "

Of the new funding released by Clinton, $27 million will go to more than
150 jurisdictions to create "drug courts," which combine supervision with
drug treatment and monitoring as an alternative to incarceration.

The president released an additional $5 million to six cities also hard hit
by methamphetamine use: Dallas, Little Rock, Ark., Minneapolis, Oklahoma
City, Phoenix, Ariz., and Salt Lake City.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski