cannabisnews.com: U.S. Puts Hope in Education! 





U.S. Puts Hope in Education! 
Posted by FoM on January 22, 1999 at 06:36:44 PT

Police found crack and pot during a stop in Louisiana. An estimated 10 percent of drugs transported on highways is confiscated. 
'We want to keep the social disapproval of drug abuse high'says McCaffrey! WASHINGTON State and federal law enforcement officials say that cutting off the supply of illegal drugs may be impossible. So, they are trying harder to curb demand.   Over the past five years, the Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington has increased federal money for prevention by 33 percent and boosted the money for drug treatment by 38 percent.   "That's really the heart and soul of what we're doing, combined with continuing stiff law enforcement," says Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. "We want to keep the social disapproval of drug abuse high."   The office just began a five-year, $2 billion anti-drug ad campaign aimed at ages 9-19.   If you can keep a kid in that age group from using marijuana, alcohol or tobacco, McCaffrey says, "he's home free. He'll never have a compulsive drug-using problem."   The drug policy board's strategy director, Jim McDonough, says that today, half of America's students have used drugs by the time they graduate from high school.   "So we're not talking now about a college sophomore smoking a joint, we're talking about middle school children becoming exposed to dangerous drug abuse," McCaffrey says. "And, oh by the way, more eighth-graders are using heroin in today's America than 12th-graders."   The federal government spends $17.1 billion a year to fight drugs. But the drug cartels are making an estimated $52 billion a year on drug sales in this country.   "We don't have the resources to combat what the drug dealers put into their operations," says Sgt. William Davis of the Louisiana State Police, who has spent several years doing drug interdiction along Interstates 10 and 20. "So education is the biggest key right now. I think that's the best way that we in law enforcement can go."   Davis, who now does public affairs for the state police, praises police efforts in the schools, but he says parents are the key instructors. Copyright 1999, The Detroit News
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