Early each morning, they are standing on the corner near my home. Their lost lives once belonged to children I knew - children who laughed, played and dreamed on my street.

They are our relatives and our friends. Women and children, as well as men, who live in every city, every village, every farming area. They are white, black, red, yellow and brown. Drug markets are the most integrated places in America.

Whatever else I may accomplish in the Congress, I am determined that these lost children shall be reclaimed - for themselves, for their families and for humanity.

I serve on the House Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources Subcommittee with Chairman John L. Mica, a Republican from Florida. Rep. Mica and I often disagree, but there is one conviction we share. As Bobby Charles, the chief counsel for our Subcommittee stated in the NY Times last Sunday: "None of the subcommittee members want to legalize drugs."

Being ideologically opposed to drug addiction is good politics, but ideologies will not reclaim one American child from the drug corners. Achieving that objective will require sound, scientifically-established strategies backed by determination and adequate funding.

Currently, our national drug policy focuses on key objectives which include preventing young people from using drugs through education; treatment of those suffering from drug addiction; research into better ways to limit drug abuse; interdiction of foreign drugs before they enter the country and more effective law enforcement efforts to reduce drug-related crime.

Of the $17.7 billion in federal funding requested by the White House for FY2000 anti-drug efforts, for example, only $3.2 billion would be allocated for drug treatment initiatives. The President knows that a larger amount would not be approved.

Drug treatment, however, can be quite effective, especially when offered as part of our criminal justice response to drugs. That is the direction toward which Maryland is moving - a sound idea which Governor Parris Glendening, Lt. Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and I support.

We are working to "break the cycle" of drug use by offering more treatment options to non-violent drug offenders while requiring regular drug testing. Swift, certain and graduated criminal justice sanctions are imposed when those in the program fail to maintain drug abstinence.

Science has shown that programs like these are smart, humane responses to drug abuse. They effectively respond to everything we know about human motivations.

Despite this clear scientific support, however, ideological positions currently stand in the way of federal funding. We can reduce drug use in America by 50% before the year 2004, but we must demand a national drug policy guided by science, not politics.