From: [C reuters] at [clari.net] (Reuters)
Newsgroups: clari.usa.top,clari.usa.gov,clari.usa
Subject: Clinton Unveils Election-Year Anti-Drugs Plan
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 11:10:23 PDT

                                         
         MIAMI (Reuter) - Taking his cues from a well-worn political  
playbook, President Clinton came to sunny Florida Monday to 
promote a new national strategy to fight drug abuse, which 
drains more than $100 billion a year from the U.S. economy. 
         Like many previous plans to combat a social blight blamed  
for much of the crime and violence in America, Clinton's 
five-pronged strategy places top priority on halting an upward 
trend in drug use by young people -- to get youngsters in his 
words ``to say 'no' ... to an empty fantasyland.'' 
         ``The most perplexing problem we face in this area is this:  
while the (overall drug use) rate has gone down, drug usage 
among people under 18 has gone up,'' Clinton said in a speech at 
George Washington Carver Middle School, a magnet facility with 
an international curriculum which draws students from throughout 
the city of Miami. 
         He said he had selected that school as a forum ``because of  
what you have done: zero guns, zero assaults, zero incidents of 
drug-related violence, zero drugs.'' 
         ``That's where America ought to go, and where America can  
go,'' said Clinton, who admitted during the 1992 presidential 
campaign that he had once experimented with marijuana, but did 
not inhale. 
         Clinton's strategy seeks to:  
         -- motivate America's youth to reject illegal drugs and  
substances; 
         -- enhance public safety by reducing drug-related crime and  
violence; 
         -- reduce health, welfare and crime costs from illegal drug  
use; 
         -- shield America's borders from drug trafficking, and;  
         -- break up foreign and domestic sources of supply.  
         The new strategy, which will be implemented by retired Army  
Gen. Barry McCaffery, a U.S. war hero recently named to lead the 
fight on drug abuse, also calls for ending the spread of 
methamphetamine, or ``meth.'' 
         Before his address, Clinton met at Miami Airport with  
representatives of a group called D-FY IT, an acronym for ``Drug 
Free Youth In Town.'' The program encourages young people to 
live healthy, drug-free lifestyles and speak out against alcohol 
and drug abuse in their communities. 
         Organizers of Clinton's visit to a state on the front lines  
of the war on drugs because of its extensive, 
difficult-to-patrol coastline had a lot of precedent to guide 
them. 
         Since the Vietnam War era of the 1960s and 70s, the United  
States has been plagued by illicit drug use, and successive 
presidents have come to Florida to dramatize their efforts to 
attack the problem. 
         Ronald Reagan, who served in the White House from 1981 to  
1989, posed for pictures with bales of cash confiscated from 
drug runners, and George Bush, Clinton's immediate predecessor, 
made a much-publicized visit to inspect high-tech speedboats, 
helicopters and weapons in the drug war. 
         But the problem frustrated their efforts and remains  
persistent. 
         A White House fact sheet said Americans spent an estimated  
$49 billion on drugs in 1993, the last year for which data is 
available, and that the annual social cost of the problem is $67 
billion, mostly from drug-related crime. 
         ``One of the problems we are facing is pessimism,'' drug  
czar McCaffery said. ``We are dealing with a problem that in the 
decade of the '90s has killed 100,000 Americans and cost our 
society $300 billion. ... This is not going to be solved in the 
next year to three.'' 
         Clinton, whose half-brother Roger was once sent to prison  
for selling drugs, has asked Congress to earmark $15.1 billion 
for drug prevention efforts in fiscal 1997, which begins Oct. 1. 
         About 55 percent of the total would go to law enforcement  
and prisons; 9 percent would go to drug interdiction. The rest 
would go to treatment and prevention programs.