White House drug czar Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey advocated drug prevention and rehabilitative treatment for illegal drug users at a forum at the Miller Center of Public Affairs yesterday.
McCaffrey, the White House drug policy director and retired four-star general, said the two main goals of the nation's $19.2 billion drug control strategy are preventing youths from beginning gateway drug taking behavior and effectively treating the five million American drug addicts.
He addressed about 35 people, mostly Miller Center fellows and older Charlottesville residents and answered questions about the effectiveness and philosophy of the U.S. drug policy in a tough, no-nonsense manner.
He said the best way to keep people off drugs was to "hit" them in the most impressionable age bracket, 6th to 12th grade.
He said statistically, people who do not use drugs in their teenage years probably will not use drugs in adulthood.
He added that the government places too much emphasis on educating children about drugs in schools.
Kids need to be curbed from using drugs during the "3 to 7" time after school when many kids are unsupervised, McCaffrey said.
The government has launched an extensive media campaign to educate youths outside a school atmosphere, he said.
He added that adolescent drug use has gone down 21 percent in the last two years.
Another goal of the National Drug Policy is to treat the five million drug addicts in the country, who McCaffrey called "loathsome."
In order to minimize damages and make the community safer, the government needs to make treatment more available to addicts, he said.
McCaffrey also made predictions about the future of drugs in America such as the disappearance of cocaine in favor of methamphetamines and the designer drug ecstasy.
"Americans will not buy the legalization of drugs," he said, adding that being tolerant of beer and marijuana, like some countries in Europe, would make the drug problem worse.
One man in the forum asked why the United States is the only country that does not allow farmers to freely harvest industrial hemp.
McCaffrey replied that there is zero interest from the textile industry in using hemp, and that a profitable market for hemp is "not bloody likely"
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