Last Friday, I joined White House Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, Rep. Steny Hoyer and Maryland’s Lt. Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend in Annapolis for an historic event. Maryland became the first state to enter into a formal anti-drug partnership with the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

As a result, federal and Maryland programs to reduce drug-use in this state will proceed in far closer coordination toward achieving specific, measurable goals. Anti-drug programs will be subject to regular performance evaluations. Those which are producing the results we need will receive further support. Those which do not will be modified or eliminated.

We are committed to doing everything within our power to reduce drug use among Maryland children by 20% before the year 2003 and by 50% before the end of 2007. Similar targets have been set for lowered drug use by juvenile and adult drug offenders.

Between 1992 and 1996, drug abuse involving this nation’s 8^th and 10^th graders doubled. As much as any other single factor, this grim statistic motivated the Congress to insist upon a national drug-reduction strategy with clear, achievable objectives and measurable performance criteria. These are the very requirements which will drive the new anti-drug partnership in Maryland.

ONDCP Director McCaffrey recently testified before the House Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources Subcommittee on which I serve. He reported that drug use among children 12-17 years of age declined slightly in 1997 and 1998, statistics indicating that we are moving in the right direction.

We cannot afford to relax our efforts. Drug use among our children remains at unacceptably high levels.

Last year, I worked with Rep. Hoyer and a coalition in the Congress who are committed to sustaining a strong and balanced national drug policy. Nearly $18 billion in federal anti-drug funding was allocated for this fiscal year. Motivated by the leadership of Governor Parris Glendening and Lt. Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Maryland is making a substantial commitment toward the same goals.

These federal and state anti-drug programs are important, but all policy-makers realize that parents and families remain the key players in protecting our children from drugs. In Director McCaffrey’s words, "this is a struggle which will be won or lost, family-by-family, around the dinner table."

The truth of that insight was driven home for me as I listened to the deeply motivational words of Ms. Barbara Mason during the Good Friday partnership ceremony in Annapolis. A Harford County mother who recently lost her son to a heroin overdose, Barbara Mason endures the relentless loneliness of a parent who has outlived her child.

Ms. Mason’s loss illustrates that we can no longer assume that the children damaged by drugs will belong to someone else. She is a middle class mother who, until recently, was living the American dream with her family in suburbia. Her son was a "good" teenager with no prior history of drug use.

Now, Barbara Mason has joined the tragic sorority of mothers whose future holidays will include a grave-side prayer. Heroin, crack cocaine, amphetamines and "designer drugs" have become equal opportunity killers. As a community, we all are joined in this struggle for survival.

I commend Lt. Governor Kennedy Townsend and ONDCP Director McCaffrey for their leadership in creating this new Maryland anti-drug partnership. We have learned from people like Barbara Mason that the lost lives and failed dreams of our children will haunt us if our drug prevention efforts do not succeed.