Pubdate: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company Contact: 229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036 Fax: (212) 556-3622 Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Forum: http://www10.nytimes.com/comment/ Author: Alan Feuer MAKING A DENT IN THE DEMAND FOR ILLEGAL DRUGS When Andres Pastrana, the president of Colombia, said last week that the key to winning the war against drugs was taming demand in the United States, he ruffled some American feathers. Part of the problem was timing: President Clinton was about to hand him a check for $1.3 billion in aid to train and outfit a new Colombian anti-drug brigade. But Pastrana's words also rankled some people because they took no account of the myriad demand-reduction programs that are already in place in the United States. Officials in the office of Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, the White House drug czar, have a landslide of little-noted statistics that show domestic demand for drugs has plunged. Use of cocaine, both crack and powder, has decreased by 70 percent in the last 15 years, said Bob Weiner, a spokesman for McCaffrey. Consumption of all drugs by youths aged 12 to 17 went down 21 percent from 1997 to 1999, Weiner said. And while drug use went up among people 18 to 25, it was still far below what it had been 20 years ago, he said. "We obviously have to do a better job of making certain that Latin American nations, for one, understand that we have a strong demand-reduction program in place and that it's working and successful," Weiner said. The programs range from a national campaign to put anti-drug commercials into movie theaters to having federal agents talk in classrooms and office parks about the dangers of drugs. These efforts are mirrored by a network of local programs around the country. Many were modeled after those pioneered by the Brooklyn district attorney's office. That office, which spends a good deal of time making cases against dope dealers and crack addicts, has in the last decade also focused on getting drug felons into treatment programs, as well as educating the young about the perils of illegal drugs. "It was very clear that the problems Brooklyn was having when I took over this office could not be addressed by law enforcement alone and needed something other than a traditional approach," the district attorney, Charles Hynes, said last week from San Francisco, where he was speaking at a conference on drug treatment programs. "And if drugs were the operative reason for the crime increase, then something had to be done about demand." The centerpiece of his efforts is a program called D-TAP, or Drug Treatment Alternative to Prison, which was the first of its kind in the nation when it was introduced in 1990, the first year of Hynes' tenure. Under the program, people convicted of nonviolent, drug-related crimes may choose between going into treatment or going to jail. "The DA said I'm going to take this population that would otherwise end up in prison and divert them into treatment," said Anne Swern, a deputy district attorney who runs D-TAP. "If they fail the program, they go to jail. But what we've found is that D-TAP can deal with these people with risks to the public that are low and benefits that are very high both financially and recidivism-wise." Swern said about 50 percent of the people sent to prison in Brooklyn for drug crimes since the program started were re-arrested after three years, while only 23 percent of those who had entered D-TAP were back before a judge over the same period. The program has saved millions of dollars in taxpayer money, too, Swern estimated. She said it cost $69,500 a year to house an inmate with a drug habit on Riker's Island, the city's largest jail. And it cost $82,000 a year, she said, to hold a criminal in New York City before his trial and then imprison him in an upstate cell. But to treat a convict for drug abuse, even in New York state -- which has the highest such costs, she said -- takes between $18,000 and $21,000 a year. Hynes also requires every prosecutor in his office to spend at least two days each month talking to students in more than 300 schools in Brooklyn about the consequences of using drugs. This initiative, called Legal Lives, teaches children that there is a price to pay for snorting cocaine or smoking pot by having them act out situations they are certain to encounter on the street. In one script, "Pot Luck," three youths are hanging out in the schoolyard after class, and one pulls out a joint. They light up. Then the cops arrive, and everyone is arrested. "We stop the action there and ask the kids questions," said Mary Hughes, who runs the program. "Why was Bob arrested? Why was Ernie arrested? Did the police have a right to arrest them? Why? What choices did everybody make?" So as it turns out, crime-busters, from Hynes' office to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, are, in fact, in agreement with Pastrana. "Everybody knows the DEA as the guys who throw people in jail," said Jack Hook, who runs the agency's demand-reduction section. "But the bottom line is that to solve the drug problem in this country means education, prevention and treating those who are already addicted." - ---