Source: The Washington Post 
Copyright: 1999 The Washington Post Company 
Page: A07
Pubdate: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 
Contact: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm 
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ 
Author: Roberto Suro, Washington Post Staff Writer

GORE UNVEILS WHITE HOUSE DRUG EFFORTS

Vice President Cites 'Spiritual Problem'

Releasing the administration's annual drug control strategy yesterday, Vice
President Gore called drug abuse a "spiritual problem" and said that young
people beset with feelings of emptiness and alienation are more likely to
succumb to "messages that are part of a larger entity of evil."

Gore called for greater efforts to improve schools and create greater
economic opportunity for young people, especially in minority and
low-income communities.

The administration seeks nearly $18 billion for drug control programs in
its new budget. As with its previous drug control efforts, the
administration would allocate about two-thirds of anti-drug spending for
law enforcement, interdiction and other efforts to attack the supply of
illicit drugs; the remaining one-third would go to prevention, treatment
and other programs to reduce the demand.

"We are confident that this is a balanced strategy," said Barry R.
McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy. He emphasized that demand-reduction programs have been growing
faster than those aimed at supply. If the administration's requests are
adopted by Congress, spending on demand-reduction programs will have
increased by 36 percent since 1996, compared with a 30 percent spending
increase for programs to curb the supply of drugs.

The drug strategy drew criticism from advocates of greater spending on
programs meant to reduce the appetite for illegal drugs. The Drug Policy
Foundation, for example, found the strategy "hypocritical and
disappointing," and said in a statement that "the White House and the
Congress need to shift from a criminal justice-based drug policy to a
public health-based policy."

Again this year the centerpiece of the administration's prevention strategy
is a multimedia advertising campaign designed to alert adolescents to the
dangers of illegal drug use. With additional funding of $10 million
requested in the next budget, the drug control media campaign would grow to
$195 million.

In remarks unveiling the drug strategy yesterday, Gore emphasized his view
of attending to the broad underlying causes of drug abuse rather than
focusing on more stringent attacks on criminal behavior. "It is an
interconnected problem, and so our solution must also be interconnected,"
Gore said, pointing to spiritual, psychological, social and economic
factors that combine to promote drug abuse, particularly among young people.

"I've always believed that, along with all the other dimensions of this
problem, this is a spiritual problem," he said. "And if young people have
emptiness in their lives, if they have a lack of respect for the larger
community of which they're a part, if they don't find ways to feel
connected to the adults who are in the community, if they feel there's
phoniness and hypocrisy and corruption and immorality, then they are much
more vulnerable to the drug dealers, to the peers who tempt them with
messages that are part of a larger entity of evil."

To counter this, Gore said, "We have to do more to expand opportunity, to
create jobs for our young people, especially in communities that have too
often been passed by in good times." He also called for greater efforts to
improve schools to help students "empower themselves with the trained minds
that make them stronger in their ability to understand what's going on
around them." 
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