Pubdate: Thu, 10 May 2001
Source: Agence France-Presses
Copyright: 2001 AFP
Website: http://www.thesunnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1128

BUSH NAMES TOP GENERAL IN US "WAR ON DRUGS"

WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush Thursday anointed "war on drugs" 
veteran John Walters his top general in the fight against narcotics, vowing 
an "all-out effort" to curb the voracious US appetite for illegal substances.

"The most effective way to reduce the supply of drugs in America is to 
reduce the demand for drugs in America. Therefore, this administration will 
focus unprecedented attention on the demand side of this problem," Bush 
pledged.

In the sun-bathed White House Rose Garden, the US leader also committed to 
narrow the spending gap between law enforcement and treatment programs by 
boosting federal funds for the latter by 1.6 billion dollars over five years.

If confirmed by the Senate, Walters, 49, will head the White House's Office 
of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), which oversees the roughly 19 
billion dollars per year the US federal government spends waging its "war 
on drugs."

The position, which Bush has decided will be part of his Cabinet, is 
popularly known as "drug czar."

Walters, an outspoken conservative who favors criminal penalties for drug 
offenders as well as controversial US "certification" of nations as 
cooperating with Washington's anti-narcotics efforts, ran the ONDCP's 
Office of Supply Reduction under Bush's father, ex-president George Bush.

The president said his administration would sustain cooperation with Latin 
American nations "to eradicate drugs at their source, and enforce our 
borders to stop the flow of drugs into America."

Washington is contributing some 1.3 billion dollars to Bogota's sweeping 
"Plan Colombia," aimed to eliminate cocaine production and combat leftist 
insurgencies in the South American nation, the world's top cocaine producer.

Regional efforts "will make working in close cooperation with Mexico a 
priority. It'll make having strong relations in the hemisphere a priority," 
he added.

The president also ordered an extensive 30-day review of federal 
partnerships with local faith-based and community groups, a 120-day 
assessment of state treatment shortfalls, and said he wanted a plan to make 
federal prisons drug-free on his desk in four months.

Bush categorically rejected the idea of legalizing drugs, which he said 
already cost the United States 100 billion dollars per year, saying such 
action would create "a social catastrophe."

Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters the president and Vice 
President Dick Cheney had been the first of 650 White House employees drug 
tested as a condition of employment. He declined to specify the results.

Fleischer also said that, in public speeches on the issue, Bush may draw on 
his personal experience of deciding to quit drinking cold turkey.

"He will tell you that one of the ways he was able to stop drinking 
overnight was because of the power of faith ... That's the reason he 
believes faith-based programs can be effective: He's seen their power," he said.
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