Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 15, 1990 TAG: 9005150136
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ARLINGTON LENGTH: Medium
"We are making significant headway in our efforts to establish a drug-free America," Sullivan told state and local officials at a conference called by the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Sullivan's announcement came in the wake of a congressional report that said the number of hard-core cocaine addicts in the country was more than twice what had been estimated earlier.
The report released last Thursday by the Senate Judiciary Committee set the figure at 2.2 million, compared with an estimate of 862,000 made earlier by the National Institute of Drug Abuse.
Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., committee chairman, said the report was "as alarming as it is tragic" and showed that the administration's strategy for dealing with the drug crisis was faulty.
William Bennett, the national drug control policy director, asked about Biden's remarks at Monday's conference, said, "If the strategy is flawed, he needs to tell us how. He needs to make his case."
"We may now be seeing a leveling off of addiction. My sense is that we are now beginning to see a peaking of the addiction problem," Bennett said.
The Republican governor of Delaware, Michael Castle, said the Judiciary Committee report shows that neither the supply of cocaine nor the demand for it have been diminished sufficiently.
"Just last week we heard that one person out of every 100 in this country is a hard-core cocaine user - one of every 40 in New York City!" Castle said. "If we couple this with a 1989 survey of high school seniors in which many of them said that crack and cocaine were more available now than in the past, we know that we have neither stemmed the flow nor sufficiently stifled demand."
by CNB