TOP ANTI-DRUG OFFICIAL ATTACKS CRITICS

WASHINGTON -- The White House's top drug-policy official accused critics of
the United States' zero-tolerance drug laws Wednesday of pursuing an agenda
to legalize drugs, from marijuana to heroin and cocaine. In written
testimony before the Senate foreign relations committee, the official, Gen.
Barry McCaffrey, charged, "There is a carefully camouflaged, exorbitantly
funded, well-heeled elitist group whose ultimate goal is to legalize drug
use in the United States."

While McCaffrey named no names, he was clearly referring to a coalition of
advocacy groups little known to the public that argues the global war on
drugs has cost society more than drug abuse itself. Some of those advocates
attracted attention last week with an open letter to the U.N.
secretary-general as the General Assembly opened a three-day special session
on drugs. The letter, whose 500 signers included the former U.N.
secretary-general, Javier Perez de Cuellar, former Secretary of State George
Shultz and two former senators, Alan Cranston and Claiborne Pell, argued
that by focusing on punishing drug users, the United States and other
countries had helped create a worldwide criminal black market that had
wrecked national economies and democratic governments.

The letter's signers also included George Soros, the billionaire investor
and philanthropist, who has spent as much as $20 million supporting research
and advocacy groups working to change Americans' views on how to deal with
drug use. Soros, who signed the open letter, said in an interview last week
that he hoped that it would foster an open discussion of the issue. But
McCaffrey, the administration's director of national drug policy, said the
critics were disguising their true purpose because Americans overwhelmingly
oppose legalizing drugs. "Through a slick misinformation campaign," he said,
"these individuals perpetuate a fraud on the American people, a fraud so
devious that even some of the nation's most respectable newspapers and
sophisticated media are capable of echoing their falsehoods." His assertion
prompted the judiciary committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden of
Delaware, to propose hearings into the issue of legalizing drugs. "Let's
expose it for the fraud that it is," Biden said. Soros could not be reached
Wednesday because he is traveling in Sweden. But one of the most prominent
advocates of less punitive approaches to drug use, Ethan Nadelmann, director
of the Lindesmith Center, a drug-policy institute in New York supported by
Soros, called the general's criticism "an attempt to smear what's a very
responsible approach to dealing with drug abuse in our society."

At the core of the disagreement is the concept of harm reduction, which to
advocates like Nadelmann, means finding ways short of abstinence to reduce
the harm that drug abusers cause themselves and society. Needle exchange, in
which addicts are given clean needles to try to stem the spread of AIDS, is
a prominent example.

Kevin Zeese, president of Common Sense for Drug Policy, a group in Falls
Church, Va., that also wants drug laws changed, said, "The reason why there
is an upsurge of people advocating reform is because the current policy is
not making for a safer or healthier society,"

But McCaffrey called harm reduction "a hijacked concept that has become a
euphemism for drug legalization."

"It's become a cover story for people who would lower the barriers to drug
use," he said.

Nadelmann responded, "The majority of harm-reduction advocates oppose drug
legalization, and that includes George Soros."

Until Wednesday, the retired four-star general had ignored the drug-reform
lobby, so his sharp attack marked a change in strategy. After his testimony,
McCaffrey said he was suggesting a debate about legalization, not a witch
hunt. "It's a legitimate subject of debate in our society if you do it
openly," he said. He predicted that the notion would be "rejected
resoundingly" once Americans discovered what was involved. Nadelmann said:
"I would welcome the opportunity to debate him anytime or anyplace. His
trying to equate all forms of harm reduction with a free-market approach to
drug legalization is both false and duplicitous." But Mark Kleiman, a
professor of public policy at the University of California at Los Angeles
who follows drug issues, expressed concern that such a debate would detract
from the more crucial task of finding ways to make the current anti-drug
strategies work more effectively.

Checked-by: "Rolf Ernst"