OFFICIAL: FIGHTING DRUGS IS BIG JOB

The best way to fight drug use is to do so every way possible.

Mary Ann Solberg, the national deputy drug czar said communities must work
to send messages from every sector of their populations: Pulpits to
pharmacies to paychecks.

Solberg spoke Thursday to a group of about 30 at a meeting of the Billings
Healthy Communities Coalition at Montana State University-Billings. She is
in Billings to attend today's conference sponsored by a Native American
recovery group. She is visiting in place of John P. Walters, the nation's
drug czar who is director of the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy.

A former executive director of the Coalition of Healthy Communities and the
Troy (Mich.), Solberg said she has traveled the nation teaching people how
to build coalitions.

"The coalition that implements multiple strategies over every sector of the
community is successful," Solberg said.

To change norms, youth must see a consistent message from every one of
those sectors. In Solberg's business that means meeting the president's
goal of cutting illegal drug use 10 percent in two years and 25 percent in
five years. The key to the change is prevention, said Solberg along with
local and state leaders.

Whether it is the dry cleaner who has parenting messages on the flaps over
the hangers or the doctor who gives parents a brochures on the warning
signs of drug use, the "no tolerance for using drugs" message must come
from all sides in all forms, Solberg said. Although it takes organization
to get that message out - which Billings has through a coalition - getting
messages to parents is nearly free and very effective, she said.

"When every place they go, they get a piece of parenting information,
eventu ally it wears off," Solberg said.

The hardest thing for a coalition to do when fighting drugs and encouraging
drug use prevention is not necessarily converting kids, Solberg said.

"You cannot change youth attitudes until you first address adult behavior,"
she said. "We are their role models. We are the ones - whether we have kids
or not - who show them how to be adults. It's a pretty heavy
responsibility, but that's the way it is."

One of the Office of National Drug Control Policy newest initiatives is
against marijuana. More adolescents than ever are registering for addiction
treatment and make up 23 percent of all people to receive that care,
Solberg said. That's the highest number of adolescents ever to seek help,
and 76.9 percent of them want help to fight a pot habit, she said.

"That's more than for alcohol," Solberg said. "That's a major, major change
in what's going on in this country."

Solberg said one of her favorite lines is "it's not your mother's
marijuana." In the 1970s marijuana had a potency of about 2 percent or 3
percent THC, the chemical that, in part, induces the high. Today's
marijuana is up to 30 percent potency and increasing.

"That's a major drug and it's going to do major (damage) in this country,"
Solberg said.

Among the agency's other goals is to disrupt the drug market and attack its
economics. Solberg said anyone who doesn't think drugs and terror are
linked only have to spend a few days in her office.

"We have drawn direct lines," Solberg said. "The drug trade supports
terror. Period. No question about it."