MCCAFFREY BLASTS ANY COMMERCIAL USE OF HEMP

As a four-star general, Barry R. McCaffrey helped wage war on drugs as head
of the nation's military operations in Latin America.

As the nation's drug czar, McCaffrey now coordinates the fight to keep
drugs from invading the nation and to get treatment for the people addicted
to them.

Yesterday the nation's top drug fighter ridiculed contentions of "noted
agronomists like (actor) Woody Harrelson" that what Kentucky farmers need
to replace tobacco is the right to grow hemp, which more than a century ago
was one of the commonwealth's leading crops when it was used to make rope
cloth and other products.

"The cultivation of hemp is economically not feasible in the United State,"
McCaffrey said in an interview after appearing at a drug summit at
Louisville's Commonwealth Convention Center.

"What it would do is completely disarm all law enforcement. . . from
enforcing ant-marijuana production laws," he said. "The bottom line is a
thinly disguised attempt. . to legalize the production of pot."

McCaffrey is the director of the White House's Office of National Drug
Control Policy but is better known as the nation's drug czar.

He gave the keynote speech during the summit sponsored by Mayor Jerry
Abramson and the University of Louisville to discuss better ways to treat
alcohol and drug abusers. Abramson proposed the summit last year as part
of this strategies for a Safe City, which was a response to a sharp rise in
Louisville's homicide rate.

In his speech, McCaffrey said there is a clear link between substance abuse
and crime. He said there are about 1.7 million people in jails and prisons
in the United States - an "internal gulag" larger than the number of people
in the armed forces.

The majority suffer from alcohol and drug addictions but can't get
treatment, he said. McCaffrey contended that the most effective way to
fight such abuse is to combine "stiff, unreneging law enforcement" with
effective treatment programs.

He said there are many studies showing substance abuse leads to crime, and
that the desire to commit crimes goes away when the addiction is broken.
But he said the vast majority of addicts in prison don't have access to
treatment, and state and local lawmakers must be persuaded to provide more
by sound arguments laying out evidence that treatment works.

McCaffrey said that while the percentage of Americans who say they are
regular drug users has dropped to about 6 percent from 14 percent in 1979,
there has been an alarming increase in teen-age drug use. He said one
survey found there is more heroin use among eighth-graders than 12th-graders.

The best way to head off the addiction is to educate the nation’s children
to reject drugs, he said. His office is now testing a $195 million
anti-drug campaign in 12 cities that will eventually be expanded nation-wide.

He said the most dangerous drug for the young is marijuana, because it
serves as a gateway to other drugs.

When interviewed, McCaffrey said efforts to legalize hemp undercut efforts
to fight marijuana use.

He said hemp and pot are indistinguishable, differing only in how they are
grown and in the level of a drug "high" they produce.

He said the argument that hemp could be an alternative to raisin tobacco
sounds "silly," but he said he's open to new evidence that proves otherwise.

During his two years as the drug czar, he said he has reviewed studies from
the University of Iowa, the University of Kentucky and the U.S. Department
of Agriculture showing that hemp is not a viable cash crop.

The use of hemp in the United States disappeared before World War II
because there was no market for it, and in the last decade, worldwide
production ahas declined 25 percent, he said.

McCaffrey contended hemp production is uneconomical unless workers are paid
very low wages, and there are better sources of fiber - such as flax and
cotton - that are more easily turned into textiles.

He said hemp doesn't even make good a cloth. "It doesn't even hold a
crease," he said.

He compared hemp advocates to those who advocate legalizing marijuana as a
pain-relieving medicine, as was done in California.

McCaffrey, who earned three Purple Hearts in combat in places such as the
Dominican Republic, Vietnam and Iraq, and spent years in the hospital
recovering from his wounds, said there are many other drugs that are more
effective pain relievers that marijuana.

He said if he was hospitalized with prostate cancer it would be "unlikely
my pain-management device will be a giant 'blunt' stuck in my lips."