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San Diego UnionTribune

EDITORIAL

HELEN K. COPLEY, Chairman and Publisher
KARIN E. WINNER, Editor
ROBERT A. KITTLE, Editor of the Editorial Page

Bad news on drugs
More youngsters are using cocaine, LSD, heroin

"The scourge is beginning to pass." Drug Czar William Bennett (February
1990).

"Victory is within our grasp." Drug Czar Bob Martinez, December 1991.

"It would be incorrect to conclude we have had no success." Drug Czar
Lee Brown, September 1995.

"If it were a war, we are winning." Drug Czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey, May
1996.

The American people are to be forgiven if they perceive the primary job
requirement for the nation's drug czar is the ability to obfuscate. From
Bennett to Martinez to Brown to McCaffrey, the public has been
consistently misled about just how poorly the country is faring in the
war on drugs.

Just last month Gen. McCaffrey was in San Diego crowing about the
achievements of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Among other
things, he suggested that drug demand in the United States was on the
wane.

But a recent survey, conducted by the National Center on Addiction and
Substance Abuse at Columbia University, contradicts the drug czar. It
found that 56 percent of youths, ages 12 to 17, say they know peers who
use such hard drugs as cocaine, heroin or LSD. That figure is up a
disturbing 39 percent from 1996.

A week earlier, the Department of Health and Human Services released its
National Household Survey on Drug Use. It found that more young people
are trying heroin ("historic levels," the report said) and using
hallucinogens and that fewer young people see a great risk in using
cocaine once a month.

When confronted with these reports, McCaffrey mustered only the tepid
response that there is a need to change the attitudes of young Americans
about drugs. But that's precisely what the drug czar should have been
doing or at least trying to do for the past two years.

Indeed, neither McCaffrey, nor his boss, President Clinton, nor other
members of the Clinton administration have had much to say about drug
use by young Americans. The administration has been far more vocal and
active on teenage smoking and underage drinking.

Well, the problem of teenage drug use ought to be no less a government
priority than teen smoking and drinking. McCaffrey's office should put
in place a national program for education and prevention to dissuade
kids from trying drugs. And it ought to initiate a nationwide drug
treatment program to rescue kids who are already using narcotics.

Of course, the government cannot confront this problem alone. It needs
the help of parents, schools, churches and community groups to help
persuade the nation's youth from using drugs. It also needs the
entertainment industry to behave more responsibly, to stop bombarding
impressionable youth with music and films that glamorize drug use.

This is the message the nation's drug czar should be sounding from his
bully pulpit, instead of claiming that the United States is gaining
ground in the war on drugs. For only when Americans fully appreciate the
clear and present danger of illegal drug use will they offer the support
the drug czar needs to make some genuine progress in combatting this
problem.