White House Readies New Drug Strategy : Health: U.S. officials will give top priority to controlling narcotics usage in schools. More potent varieties of marijuana raise concerns.

WASHINGTON — The White House, fearing that drug use among young people is on the rise again and that it includes more potent varieties of marijuana, is preparing a new strategy that will give greater emphasis to controlling drugs in schools.

New strains of marijuana up to 10 times more potent than previous varieties are sweeping the country, according to Lee P. Brown, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. But despite the marijuana’s potential to cause grave health problems and seriously impair judgment, he said, it still does not offer enough jolt to satisfy many young people, who lace it with cocaine, LSD or some other drug.

The marijuana itself is so powerful, he said, that “it causes problems in terms of judgment, learning, driving. We’re seeing an increasingly large number of accidents that now we can attribute to marijuana smoking as compared to alcohol.”

Brown, a veteran law enforcement officer who has headed the New York and Houston police departments, is preparing President Clinton’s 1995 National Drug Control Strategy for submission to Congress next month.

In assigning top priority to curbing drug usage in schools, he said, the Administration will fight for continuing an overall policy that emphasizes prevention, treatment and education “without neglecting” enforcement, interdiction and international programs to curb drug smuggling.

That approach is sure to encounter strong opposition in Congress, where Republican leaders have signaled that they will demand a focus on enforcement, harsher penalties and more prison time for drug offenders. Brown said he expects Republicans to raise the level of debate on the issue.

Brown was interviewed at a Times Washington Bureau breakfast. He said that with 11.7 million Americans using drugs on a regular basis, an upsurge in heroin use, escalating usage among young people and 77 million Americans having experimented with drugs, the country faces a severe problem that centers around a “hard-core-addicted drug user population.”

Brown also disclosed that a proposed presidential directive is being drafted, aimed at re-establishing some sort of relations with Myanmar in order that the United States might have some leverage with that country. Myanmar, formerly Burma, is the dominant source of heroin smuggled into the United States for this country’s 600,000 users.

U.S.-Myanmar relations have been at an impasse since 1988 when the State Law and Order Restoration Committee assumed power in the Southeast Asian nation amid international criticism that it had snuffed out the country’s democracy movement and engaged in massive human rights violations. State Department officials have pressed the regime to restore democracy, but the United States, concerned about the heroin traffic, has lately softened its stance toward the country.

Brown, who recently returned from a trip to Asia, said the Myanmar problem must be addressed because about 60% of the heroin in this country comes from Southeast Asia and “almost all of that comes from Burma.”

Calling on Mexico to do a better job of curbing drug traffic across its borders, Brown said part of any discussion with that country about the $40-billion package the United States is putting together to ease its financial crisis “should be predicated upon what they’re doing on the narcotics issue.”

Mexico is the source of about 70% of the cocaine that comes into this country, he said. And while that country has worked to curb smuggling, “there’s a lot more that needs to be done in Mexico than is being done right now.”

The new administration in Mexico has “said the right things” about controlling drugs, Brown said, but “what we’re looking for is for them to dismantle their drug trafficking organizations there. We know who the kingpins are in Mexico. We know when the drugs come into Mexico.”

At the federal level in this country, he said, officials are following “the kingpin strategy” of attacking the heads of the drug trafficking organizations. He said U.S. enforcement officials know who the kingpins are in the United States as well as in Mexico but “the challenge is to get enough evidence to arrest them.”

Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Houston and the Southwest border continue to be what Brown’s office labels the country’s “high-intensity drug trafficking areas.” To those areas his office has recently added the Baltimore/Washington metropolitan area and Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

More on Marijuana

* Reprints of “Bad Habits: Marijuana Is Back as the Drug of Choice for Some Kids,” are available from Times on Demand Call 808-8463, press *8630 and order item No. 5611. $2. Details on Times electronic services, B4