BIG NAMES SIGN LETTER CRITICIZING WAR ON DRUGS

UNITED NATIONS---A drug reform institute financed by the billionaire
philanthropist George Soros has amassed signatures of hundreds of prominent
people around the world on a letter asserting that the global war on drugs
is causing more harm than drug abuse itself.

The signers include a former United Nations secretary-general, Javier Perez
de Cuellar, a former U.S. secretary of state, George Shultz, the Nobel
peace laureate Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, the former CBS television
anchorman Walter Cronkite, two former U.S. senators Alan Cranston and
Claiborne Pell, and the South African human rights activist Helen Suzman.

The signers also include Mr. Soros, who has spent millions of dollars
trying to change the way Americans think about illegal drugs. In the past,
he helped finance referendums in California and Arizona in support of
medicinal use of marijuana and programs that distribute clean needles to
those who take illegal drugs by injection.

The move was timed to coincide with the UN General Assembly's special
session on combating drug abuse.

The letter was organized by the Lindesmith Center in New York, which
advocates more liberal drug policies. It is addressed to Secretary-General
Kofi Annan, whose spokesman said Monday that he had yet to receive it. The
letter also ran as a two-page advertisement in The New York Times.

The letter proposes no clear alternatives beyond asking Mr. Annan to take
the lead in "stimulating a frank and honest evaluation of global drug
control efforts."

Mr. Soros said by telephone that he had not contributed directly to the
cost of the Times ad but that the Lindesmith Institute, which he bankrolls,
had.

The Lindesmith Center's president, Ethan Nadlemann, said he initiated the
project, and coordinated the letter, which drew roughly 600 signatures from
around the world.

But the letter did not seem to sway participants at the General Assembly's
special session. General Barry McCaffrey, the Clinton administration's
director of national drug policy, called the letter "a 1950s perception" of
the struggle against drugs.

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)