CLINTON, GINGRICH CLASH OVER DRUG POLICY IN RADIO TALKS

White House $17.1 billion spending plan called a `hodgepodge'

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich
sparred over drug policy in separate radio addresses Saturday. The
president laid out plans to reduce illegal drug use by 50 percent in the
next decade, and the speaker ridiculed the proposal as a ``hodgepodge of
half-steps and half-truths.''

Gingrich said he would press a resolution in the House urging Clinton and
White House drug-policy chief Barry McCaffrey to withdraw the plan, which
he described as ``the definition of failure.''

``In the Civil War it took just four years to save the Union and abolish
slavery,'' Gingrich scoffed.

In his weekly radio address, the president said that although the number of
Americans using drugs had fallen 50 percent since 1979, it should be cut in
half again over the next decade.

But before outlining his proposal, Clinton stressed that the fight against
drugs ``must be waged and won at kitchen tables all across America.''

``Even the world's most thorough anti-drug strategy won't ever do the job
unless all of us pass on the same clear and simple message to our children:
Drugs are wrong, drugs are dangerous, and drugs can kill you,'' Clinton
said.

His plan, portions of which already had been disclosed by McCaffrey,
includes expanded prevention education, employment of an additional 1,000
Border Patrol officers and 100 Drug Enforcement Administration agents,
completion of the hiring of 100,000 new community-policing officers and
expanded drug testing and treatment among prisoners and parolees.

In a follow-up news conference, McCaffrey said the government alone cannot
solve the national drug problem. ``We look forward to working with the
Congress, state and local government and the private sector to forge a
bipartisan and truly national response to the drug problem,'' McCaffrey
said.

But Gingrich, R-Ga., speaking in the GOP's weekly radio address, accused
the president of neglecting the narcotics issue for five years, and as a
consequence allowing drug use among teenagers to rise 70 percent over that
period.

``This president would have us believe that with all of the resources,
ingenuity, dedication and passion of the American people, we can't even get
halfway to victory in the war on drugs until the year 2007 -- nine full
years from now,'' the speaker said. He said the administration should
follow get-tough policies used by Republican mayors such as Rudolph
Guiliani of New York City.

The administration's drug-fighting plan is to be funded through a $17.1
billion drug-control budget request for next year, a 6.8 percent increase.

About $195 million of the initiative is earmarked for an anti-drug media
campaign aimed at children. An additional $146 million would go for
programs to curb underage smoking, while $50 million would be set aside to
pay for 1,300 counselors at middle schools.