Wish Upon a Czar  The mayor's efforts to crown a drug czar
aren't exactly smokin'.  Bruce Mendelson, a researcher in the
alcohol- and drug-abuse division of the Colorado Department of
Human Services, supports the idea of a drug czar but says
statistics can be deceiving.  On the positive side, he says,
state statistics tell him that drug use among the general
population has declined significantly in the last twenty years.
For instance, marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine use all
dropped between 1979 and 1995, according to state surveys. On
the negative side, however, "you still have a substantial drug
problem and hardcore drug users are getting into trouble with
increasing frequency."  So even though fewer people are abusing
drugs, the people who are abusing them put a heavy burden on the
legal and health-care systems -- for example, the Denver County
Jail, where 43 percent of arrestees sampled in 1998 tested
positive for cocaine (up from 27 percent in 1990), or area
hospital emergency rooms, where 66 peopl