The City of Vilnius last week sponsored a two-day international conference entitled "AIDS and Drug Use: Let's Unify our Response."

The event brought together experts from Lithuania, Latvia, Sweden, the United States as well as hundreds of representatives from many levels of Lithuanian society and government: police and health officials, educators, student leaders and politicians. The main auditorium at the Vilnius Congress Hall was standing room only for the opening addresses on Sept. 19 - a testament to the importance of these issues in Lithuania today. In most cases, the speeches themselves addressed concrete means of attacking the drug problem. Kornelijus Platelis, Lithuania's minister of education, spoke about the effect of drug use on schools in the country. "Drugs are affecting mainly our young people. Drugs are openly sold in schools and underage crime is increasing," he said. Platelis advocated increased policing of drug traffickers and dealers in order to reduce supply as well as working more closely with countries more experienced in fighting drugs such as the United States, Russia and Sweden. While Lithuania was only a hub for the transportation of narcotics just a few short years ago, it is now a nation of drug producers and users, according to Ceslovas Blazys, minister of the interior. Some 21 percent of Lithuania's school-age boys and 9.6 percent of school-age girls experimented with drugs at least once, according to a survey conducted by the Vilnius Pedagogical Institute in 1999.