DRUG CZAR DEFENDS CAMPAIGN TO STOP MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION

On his first visit to Chicago as the nation's latest drug czar, John
Walters sounded an alarm Tuesday about marijuana use by millions of Americans.

His visit comes as states including Arizona and Nevada consider ballot
initiatives that would loosen laws restricting marijuana use and after
others have passed laws allowing the medicinal use of the psychoactive drug.

"Baby Boomer parents think it's the soft drug. We've been told it is the
drug there is all this hysteria about, that this is all reefer madness," he
said in an interview with the Tribune's editorial board. "There's a kind of
reefer madness-madness going on here."

He brought charts correlating youths' cutting classes, stealing, attacking
others and destroying property with how often they smoke the drug. He
warned that the potency of marijuana has increased markedly in recent years.

Though conceding that drug prevention, treatment and enforcement programs
are best left up to the states, he defended recent trips to Nevada and
other states to stump against ballot questions that would decriminalize
marijuana use.

"I made the decision to go into the states I went into reluctantly," he
said. "I certainly understand the dangers of federal officials, a White
House official, coming to a state and talking about a state ballot issue.
We didn't use to do this. But I was contacted repeatedly by people in these
states who are working in prevention who said they are being drowned out by
misrepresentations by people who have a lot of money and who have millions
of dollars to spend on these campaigns."

Walters also railed against the recent passage by eight states of
initiatives to legalize prescription use of marijuana for medical purposes.
He said that marijuana has no medicinal value and that despite the votes to
legalize medical marijuana use, "science is not based on plebiscite.
Science is based on fact."

Bill Piper, associate director of national affairs for the Drug Policy
Alliance, a Washington, D.C., group that supports many drug-liberalization
initiatives, criticized Walters' stand against the state initiatives.

"They're using the drug czar's office to engage in electoral politics, to
influence voters, when his office is supposed to be coordinating the drug
war," Piper said. "They realize that they have a problem on their hands,
that they're really out of touch with the American public."

Walters, the chief of staff of the Office of National Drug Control Policy
under the first Bush administration, faced a bruising confirmation battle
last year after he was nominated by President Bush. Critics said he relied
too heavily on an enforcement-heavy approach that led to the incarceration
of thousands on drug charges.

But his visit Tuesday to the Haymarket Center, a leading drug-treatment
facility with offices around Cook County, impressed the center's president.

"As far as treatment is concerned, I was very much pleasantly surprised
that he was open to the idea that treatment works, and that funds be made
available to pay for treatment models," said Raymond Soucek, the center's
president.

Walters spent much of his trip talking about how to spend a proposed $1.6
billion in federal funds for drug treatment over the next five years.