ANTI-DRUG CAMPAIGN TO SHIFT TO CITIES

WASHINGTON - The White House announced a campaign yesterday to shift
federal drug-fighting efforts to the nation's 25 largest cities.

The plan follows a report earlier this month showing that federal resources
once committed to the nation's war on drugs have been diverted to the war
on terrorism. In that report to a congressional committee, the General
Accounting Office said that nearly half the FBI agents who once handled
drug cases are now assigned to terrorism cases, and that the government is
on a pace to open only one-third of the number of drug investigations this
year compared with 2000.

In announcing the move toward greater local control of drug-fighting
efforts, John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy, did not mention a strain on resources. He emphasized the
need for improved cooperation among enforcement and drug treatment agencies.

"People are not as effective as they could be because they operate in
isolation," Walters said at a news conference yesterday.

Walters said a major stimulus for the new campaign is that "a big focus of
the problem is in some way related to big cities." His office's statistics
show that the top 25 cities are the sites of 40 percent of all drug-induced
deaths and drug-related arrests.

Assuming a role that he described as "a convener," Walters said he would
visit each of the 25 cities and attempt to better coordinate various
drug-related programs. "We're going to tie our staff directly with people
in these 25 cities working on supply-and-demand issues, and we're going to
sustain that," Walters said.

Walters' responsibilities involve coordination of international and
domestic anti-drug efforts of federal agencies, including the Drug
Enforcement Administration and the FBI, and the relations between federal
agencies and their state and local counterparts.

He said in a telephone interview that the DEA is seeking additional funding
over the next fiscal year to increase staff by 400 positions. And, "we're
trying to make sure there is movement of federal personnel to the more
important and far-reaching cases."

The new campaign "is one way of making up the hole of shifting law
enforcement away from drugs," said Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., a senior member
of the House Appropriations subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and State,
which heard the GAO testimony.

Walters said yesterday that the localization of the effort to curb drug use
would require money from already budget-strapped cities and counties.