DOLE ATTACKS POLICY ON DRUGS : CANDIDATE SAYS PRESIDENT SENDS `NO BIG DEAL' MESSAGE TO KIDS.

Byline: Associated Press

Accusing President Clinton of sending kids a ``no big deal'' message on drug use, Republican nominee Bob Dole worked Saturday to complete his plan to use the military and National Guard in an all-out assault on illegal drugs.

While Dole was at his Washington, D.C., headquarters hammering out specifics to be announced Sunday before the National Guard Association, his running mate, Jack Kemp, was out on the stump promoting the GOP economic package and its $548 billion in tax cuts.

Meeting for an hour with some 200 workers at a Phoenix manufacturing plant, Kemp lampooned Clinton's initiatives - including targeted tax cuts for education and homeowners - as ``2,700 new programs to micromanage the economy, to socially engineer our society.''

In a radio broadcast, Dole scoffed at Clinton's mention of drugs to the Democratic convention Thursday when the president lamented that drugs nearly killed his brother and added, ``I hate them.''

``One day of rhetoric in August of 1996 does not make up for . . . actions taken during the past four years,'' Dole said. ``Unfortunately, from its very first days in office, the Clinton administration, through neglect and ineptitude, has sent a very different message - a message that drugs are no big deal.''

After a five-day ``working vacation'' in Southern California, Kemp and his wife, Joanne, embarked Saturday on an ambitious seven-day, 12-state swing that included stops in inner cities - part of Kemp's pledge to reach minority voters. Kemp's schedule carried a fair share of more glamorous stopovers as well, including a private fund-raising event in the resort town of Lake Tahoe and the opening coin toss of the San Francisco 49ers opener today.

In Phoenix, Kemp defended the GOP plan for downsizing government in favor of private-sector solutions. ``This isn't slash and burn, this isn't laissez-faire, 18th century, Darwinian, biological competition where only the fittest are going to survive,'' Kemp told an approving audience.

``We're talking here about making the private sector grow to where people can meet their needs through their job, their education, their family, their wages . . . and not have to rely on government.''

He also called for the eventual expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement to ``stretch from Alaska to the tip of Chile.''

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Photo: Jack Kemp readies his autograph pen Saturday after a speech at a manufacturing plant in Phoenix.

Associated Press