FORMER WHITE HOUSE DRUG SPOKESMAN BLASTS ABC 20-20 REPORT

Former White House Drug Spokesman Bob Weiner Blasts John Stossel

ABC 20-20 Report as 'Distorted, Inaccurate Excuse for Legalization'

WASHINGTON, July 31 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Former White House drug policy
spokesman Bob Weiner is blasting last night's ABC 20-20 drug piece by John
Stossel: "It was a distorted and inaccurate excuse for drug legalization.
It blows off the successes and real reductions in use generated both by
government drug policy and efforts by parents, teachers, coaches,
businesses, community coalitions, religious leaders, and law enforcement."

Weiner, who was Director of Public Affairs for the White House Office of
National Drug Policy May 1995-August 2001 under Drug Czars Lee Brown, Barry
McCaffrey, and the Bush transition, pointed to what he calls "radical
inconsistencies in Stossel's reporting. He repeatedly ignores or downplays
each positive finding about drug policy."

"Stossel throws in the important data point that drug use is down by 50
percent but then says throughout the piece that use is the same and we are
losing the war. He never says that crack cocaine -- the primary
crime-causing drug in recent years -- is down by two-thirds. He finds one
police chief who says it's all fruitless -- understandable in a particular
high usage area -- but ignores and does not report the myriad of police who
tell experts that crime and drugs are down because criminals and dealers
are taken off the streets. He ignores the fact that the governments
anti-drug media campaign the last four years has coincided with a 40
percent reduction of youth drug users and 25 percent improvement in parent
anti-drug communication with youth -- huge success rates in precisely the
intended target audiences.

"Stossel pushes his inaccurate points that the drug war 'creates crime'
when it is precisely the opposite: drug use generates murders, domestic
violence, and date rapes. He soft pedals marijuana use, with assertions by
an archetypical long haired user that 'marijuana hasn't killed anyone,' but
has no one pointing out that marijuana is the second leading cause of car
crashes as well as the primary drug in teen drug treatment

"He has no understanding of foreign efforts, either," Weiner asserted. He
quotes disputed CIA Colombia cocaine increase numbers based on their
flawed, cloud-covered data despite Colombia's surveys showing significant
drops in cultivation and the success of the spraying of 30 percent of its
cocaine acreage. He never mentions that Peru and Bolivia obtained over 60
percent reductions and Colombias five year plan envisions an equally
obtainable 50 percent reduction," says Weiner, who has been on two recent
Colombia missions with McCaffrey.

"He asserts that Europe is succeeding with a liberalized policy but does
not mention that drug seizures in Europe have doubled the last three years
and use has gone up, indicating that Europe may face our drug and crime
problems of past decades that we have escaped from by the comprehensive
education and law enforcement efforts we are now making. Stossel dismisses
former Drug Czar McCaffrey's assertions of the 'disaster' of European
legalization trends by saying 'not what we heard', hardly a scientific
methodology.

"Finally, Stossel barely mentions the concession of his own legalization
advocates that 'maybe more would use drugs'. He insists that 'The war on
drugs is a war on ourselves.' To dismiss the point that under legalization
more would use drugs -- and that hospital emergency rooms would be flooded,
crime and dropouts would rise, families would be disrupted, and the toll
would be immeasurable -- is like asking Mrs. Lincoln on that fateful day,
'Aside from that Mrs. Lincoln how was the play?'"

Weiner concluded by asserting, "I have never seen a worse piece of major
journalism on drug policy other than perhaps a similar one done by Geraldo
Rivera years ago when he refused to use interview points by the Drug Czar
which disagreed with Geraldo's thesis."