UTAHN'S ROOTS HELP IN JOB WITH DRUG CZAR

Traveling around the country with a long bureaucratic title and the
proverbial "I'm-from-the-government-and-I'm-here-to-help" introduction,
Scott Burns has come to expect a lukewarm reception from local officials.

"Before I can open my mouth they are saying, 'You don't understand what is
going on in rural America and you have no idea of the issues we are
facing,' " says the deputy director for state and local affairs at the
White House Office of Drug Control Policy. "It's helpful to say, 'Yes,
actually I do.' "

From counseling county commissioners on budgets and garbage contracts to
busting drug runners and meth labs, Burns' previous 16 years as Iron County
attorney in Utah gave him a breadth of rural field experience. He even is
an expert on prosecuting people who drill holes in other peoples' heads.

"That one pegged the weird meter," Burns says of the widely publicized
felony convictions he won in 2001 of two men who performed a "trephination"
head-drilling procedure without medical licenses on a woman to allegedly
relieve her headaches for a TV newsmagazine. "That's the life of a rural
prosecutor. You work 50 to 60 hours a week doing hundreds of cases and then
you do one weird one and that's what you are known for."

There were some longtime associates of Burns who wondered whether he
himself had holes in his head when he left his comfortable life and
practice in southwestern Utah last May for a new job with White House drug
czar John Walters in the nation's capital. Burns directs the $226 million
High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, which administers federal
funds to local law enforcement to help intercept drug shipments in 28 key
transportation corridors, including the Rocky Mountains.

In the past eight months, he has traveled 27 times to as far south as
Bogota, Colombia, and to as far north as Vancouver, British Columbia, as
well as meeting with local law enforcement and prosecutors across the
country to beef up counter-narcotics efforts. In the office, he and his
staff write business plans for the narcotics industry, studying how the
products are produced, marketed and distributed at the wholesale and retail
level.

"We look at ourselves as anti-CEOs," says the former GOP candidate for Utah
attorney general. "It is our intent to wreck those narcotics trafficking
organizations."

Perhaps it was an omen to his future federal calling that one of the last
cases Burns filed as Iron County attorney was against Dennis Peron, the San
Francisco man who authored California's 1996 "Compassionate Use Act," which
legalized medical marijuana useO. office, he and his staff write business
plans for the narcotics industry, studying how the products are produced,
marketed and distributed at the wholesale and retail level.

Peron and two associates were arrested at a Cedar City motel in 2001 with
nearly a pound of marijuana and $7,500 in cash. The three are awaiting
trial on third-degree felony possession with intent to distribute charges.

"He showed me his prescription for alcoholism that allowed him to smoke
dope and I thought he was kidding," says Burns.

Burns praises Walters for "weighing in" and helping to defeat marijuana
legalization initiatives in Arizona, Nevada and Ohio in the past election.

Last month, Walters announced that a survey by the National Institute on
Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health showed use of illicit drugs
by eighth- and 10th-graders is at the lowest level since 1993 and 1995,
respectively, while marijuana use by eighth-graders is the lowest since 1994.

"This survey confirms our drug prevention efforts are working and when we
work together and push back, the drug problem gets smaller," says Walters.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, was responsible for wooing Burns away from his
native Utah to join the White House's special drug policy program.

"Scott has been a good friend and I'm proud of the work he's doing at the
Office of National Drug Control Policy," says Hatch. "I've received
numerous comments from the administration complimenting Scott for his efforts.

"He has really been a shining example for other Utahns who want to make a
significant positive contribution on a national level."

Burns says Hatch framed the new job "in very patriotic terms" while at the
same time making it clear that it would be service and a sacrifice for
Burns and his family.

"To some degree it has been a sacrifice," says Burns. "When you move your
family out of a comfortable environment and start looking at the financial
aspects, well, I don't want to whine, but when I first saw the house prices
here I just started laughing."

His less-than-a-minute commute from home to work in his Jeep in Cedar City
has grown almost as dramatically as the size of his house has shrunk, even
if the mortgage has taken the opposite tack.

While he works late and travels extensively, his wife Alice, who left her
job as city attorney for Cedar City when the family relocated, now must
allocate hours to ferry their 11-year-old daughter Carly to violin and
swimming lessons -- trips that used to be a block or two away in Cedar City.

There have been moments when the Burns family has fleeting second thoughts,
like the day barely a month after they arrived in Washington when they woke
up to find their car had been stolen.

"Every one of our neighbors came by to say how upset and sorry they were
that our car had been stolen, and contrary to what I had been told, I have
found people here to be very friendly, engaging and welcoming," says Burns.
"It's been a challenge but it's exciting and rewarding, even if I have to
have an ID badge, elevator key and code word to do anything."

Above all, Burns now knows what it is like to be one of those federal paper
pushers he periodically maligned during his days as a rural Utah elected
official.

"One of my favorite lines used to be blaming some nameless, faceless
bureaucrat sitting in a windowless office back in Washington," he smiles.

"Other than I have a window, I'm now one of them. And I have a great deal
of respect for how hard they work."