FEDERAL DRUG CONTROL PROGRAMS

     The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), which is part of the Executive Office of the President, is responsible for developing the government-wide National Drug Control Strategy and the budget that supports it. This strategy involves most of the major Cabinet Departments and encompasses programs that attempt to prevent the use of drugs, treat those who are addicted to illegal substances, enforce the nation’s drug laws, interdict drugs before they reach the American border, and help other nations eliminate the production of illegal drugs. ONDCP also is directly responsible for four drug control programs, with funding totaling close to $500 million.

Overview

     Although some progress in reducing drug use has been made, the record is clearly mixed. Use of illegal drugs by youths fell substantially between 1979 and 1992, but has increased since then. Among persons 18 and older, and among adolescents and young adults, reported use dropped over a 20-year period, but has not dropped significantly since the early 1990s.

     Yet costs associated with drug use, such as incarceration, illness, and premature death, continue to rise and are estimated to exceed $160 billion annually. Despite substantial spending by all levels of government, and concerted efforts of parents, friends, schools, and faith-based organizations, drug use in the United States remains unacceptably high and imposes considerable costs on society. One part of the problem is reflected in the way the federal government confronts the drug problem. Much of the $19 billion spent in 2002 in the name of drug control actually reflects the failure of our drug efforts by funding the consequences of drug use.

A Greater Emphasis on Education and Community Action

     The President believes the most effective way to reduce the supply of drugs in America is to reduce the demand for drugs in America by stopping drug use before it starts. The President's Budget recognizes the central role of prevention in reducing drug use and the budget this year provides funding for several major efforts.

     More than anything else, prevention means sending a consistent message. Two examples are the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign and the Drug-Free Communities Program. The President’s Budget includes $180 million for the media campaign, which attempts to educate young people about drug use and its consequences through targeted, paid messages in both the traditional mass media and on other media like the Internet. The Drug-Free Communities program, funded at $60 million in 2003, furnishes matching grants to local anti-drug coalitions trying to prevent the illegal use of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco by youth.

Disrupting the Market: Attacking the Economic Basis of the Drug Trade

     Local efforts by themselves are not enough. Disrupting the drug trade remains an essential part of the federal government’s approach to drug control. It is a two-front campaign. Internationally, disrupting the drug trade includes tracking and stopping aircraft and ships attempting to smuggle illegal drugs into the United States, cooperative efforts with other nations to dismantle drug production facilities, taking apart drug trafficking and money laundering organizations, and building the political and legal institutions to deter future drug trafficking.

     A key component of this effort is the Andean Counterdrug Initiative. The President’s Budget includes $731 million for this initiative, $106 million more than enacted in 2002. This funding request continues programs to aid law enforcement in the Andean region, including the operations and maintenance of the Colombian National Police and Army Counternarcotics Brigade. More details on the Andean Counterdrug Initiative can be found in the Department of State and International Assistance Programs chapter.

Increasing Support for Drug Treatment

     When prevention and enforcement efforts fail, we must treat those who abuse drugs. There are approximately five million heavy users of illegal drugs in America today—one-third of whom ingest two-thirds of all drugs. In order to help those seeking treatment, the President has made increasing drug treatment a priority. The President’s Budget proposes an increase of nearly $110 million for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Targeted Capacity Expansion program, which is designed to support a rapid response to emerging trends in substance abuse. It also includes a $60 million increase for the Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant, which will provide additional funding to states for treatment and prevention services.

     However, the majority of those who need treatment do not seek it voluntarily, and for that reason, $77 million is proposed for the Residential Substance Abuse Treatment (RSAT) program. RSAT distributes funds to states that support drug and alcohol treatment in state correctional systems. The budget also proposes $52 million for the Drug Courts program, which uses the courts’ authority to force abstinence from drugs and to alter behavior with escalating sanctions, mandatory drug testing, treatment, and strong aftercare programs.

Emphasizing Performance

     The President has committed the federal government to manage by results, and nowhere is the need for improved management greater than in federal drug control efforts. For example, the effectiveness of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program has been questioned. While laudable in its goals, a recent Rand report on the program found that the locally-designed initiatives “are rarely based on proven models,” and concluded that the program has not been credibly evaluated. To improve evaluation and better direct program activities in 2003, the Department of Education will develop an evaluation plan for these grants, one that will impose program accountability, while alerting schools to problem areas.

     The High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) program was set up so that law enforcement agencies could zero in on areas designated by ONDCP as “centers” of major drug production, manufacturing, importation, or distribution. The program has grown from the five original HIDTAs of a decade ago to 28 HIDTAs currently. Much of the increase in the HIDTA program is the result of congressional direction of funds to specific HIDTAs. However, there are questions about whether some of these areas deserve to be designated as HIDTAs. No systematic evaluation of the HIDTA program has been conducted and no credible performance measures have been developed. The budget proposes $206 million for HIDTAs, a reduction of $20 million from the 2002 enacted level, and provides funding to measure performance.

     ONDCP will continue the work to bring accountability to drug control programs through better performance measurements. Right now, the national program has a Performance Measures of Effectiveness (PME) system with five goals, 31 objectives, and nearly 100 performance targets. The Administration will carefully examine this system and its complex relationships to determine what fundamental changes and adjustments should be made. In arraying so much detail, this system obscures the fundamental aim of the Drug Strategy—to reduce drug use in America. Therefore, as an additional management reform, ONDCP will judge the overall success of the National Drug Control Program by focusing on two specific two-year and five-year goals, using as a baseline the 2000 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse.

Restructuring the Drug Control Budget

     To bring greater accountability to drug control efforts, the Administration will propose a significant restructuring of the drug control budget. The national drug control budget includes close to 50 budget accounts totaling $19 billion for 2003. Recent independent analyses commissioned by ONDCP, as well as ongoing, required reviews by Inspectors General, have identified weaknesses in the methodologies agencies use to measure drug control spending. These budgets are imprecise and often have only a weak association with core drug control missions. Reform of the national drug control budget is needed.

     In the coming months, the Administration will develop a new way to report the drug control budget, based on the following guidelines:

• all funding items displayed in the drug control budget should be readily identifiable line items in the President's Budget or agency budget justifications; and

• the budget presentation should be simplified by eliminating several supporting agencies from the drug control budget tabulation. Only agencies with a primary supply reduction or demand reduction mission would be displayed in the drug control budget. Agencies with no or little direct involvement in drug control would be excluded from the revised drug control budget presentation.

     The aim is to distinguish between funding for drug control efforts and funding for the consequences of drug use. It is the first category, drug control, that should be strengthened and emphasized. The second category, consequences of drug abuse, simply catalogues our policy failures. We should not confuse large expenditures on this second category with effective action against drug abuse.

     This stricter definition of drug control is likely to reduce dramatically the federal funding deemed to represent drug control funding, but in fact represents a renewed federal commitment to actually reducing drug use. For example, the traditional methodology used in the accompanying table shows 2003 drug spending of $19.2 billion. The new methodology, when applied to this estimate, might show annual drug control spending to be several billion dollars less. This presentational change, while dramatically lowering the amount of funding attributed to the drug control budget, will not have a negative effect on federal drug control efforts. In fact, it will improve those efforts by focusing on managing programs genuinely directed at reducing drug use. The proposed methodological changes will be discussed more fully in the 2002 National Drug Control Strategy, and will be shared with the Congress and key stakeholders in the coming months. The 2004 Budget will show the changes in full.

Federal Drug Control Funding by Agency
(Budget authority, dollar amount in millions)