Report: U.S. Drug War Fought in Regional Battles

With cocaine use waning, authorities waged the war on drugs this year with strategies tailored to the regional battlegrounds: marijuana in the Appalachian states, methamphetamine in the Rocky Mountains, cocaine in South Florida.

“There is no longer any one drug that consumes America as cocaine did in the 1980s,” said Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

“We need to be ready to defend against emerging threats of a wide variety by region, as well as increasingly sophisticated changes in the operations of drug traffickers,” he said.

McCaffrey’s prepared remarks accompanied his annual report on drug threats and strategies, to be released today.

It outlines the government’s war on drugs in 26 “High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas,” where drug manufacturing and sales flourish and where federal, state and local law enforcement agencies cooperate. More than $191 million was spent on the effort in fiscal 2000, up from nearly $187 million the previous year.

The report said California’s central valleys are a favorite for methamphetamine labs, which are proliferating at an “alarming” rate. The region’s two international airports, hundreds of private airstrips and interstate highways make it a clearinghouse for movement of all types of drugs.