
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 10, 1993                   TAG: 9310130312
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: D2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FIGHT DEMAND

FIVE YEARS of John Wayne-style assaults on the drug fields of foreign lands, and where is America in its drug war? The demand continues to grow and supplying it continues to be lucrative, helping to foster a culture of violence fed by illegal drugs and propped up by easily accessible firepower.

Now emerges a proposal within the Clinton administration to shift the strategy. Police and the military still would try to interdict illegal narcotics, but a disproportionate share of the $8.5 billion the nation spends each year to fight illegal drugs would no longer go to extremely expensive transit interdiction involving helicopters, other aircraft, boats and even U.S. troops.

Instead, more money would be made available at home, where drugs are turning communities into combat zones, where the exorbitant costs of fighting the drug war in Colombia and Venezuela have drained away funds needed for prevention, education and treatment.

Interdiction efforts have not been without their successes, but they have not cut the flow into the country. As long as there is a market, there will be a supply route. Close one down, another opens. Any risk is worth taking when so much money can be made.

So it is reasonable to put at least as many resources into trying to reduce the market, and this is what some members of the Clinton administration hope to do.

It is not sure to happen. The demand-side strategy is being pushed by Attorney General Janet Reno, but must be reviewed by the Pentagon and a host of federal agencies, some of which can be expected to balk at seeing their own roles reduced in the anti-drug fight. Clinton himself has long advocated a re- emphasis on drug abuse prevention and treatment. He must get busy now.

In efforts to cut the supply line in the illegal drug trade, the most critical point - the point that pays all the huge profits along the way - is where the supplier puts the drug in the user's hand, and the user puts the money in the supplier's hand.

Arresting the user won't take away his or her need. But reduce the need, and there are that many fewer users. With that, supplying drugs becomes less profitable, and the cultivation of other goods relatively more profitable.

by CNB