Bush
Drug
Budget
Places
Drug
Czar
in
Hot
Seat
Before
Congress
2/18/05
With a deficit-riddled budget geared to national defense and homeland security, even the war on drugs is no longer sacrosanct. While the Bush administration's fiscal year 2006 drug budget of $12.4 billion represents a 2.2% overall increase over this year, several sacred cows have been led to slaughter this year. The budget is causing grumbling on both sides of the aisle in Congress, and Office of National Drug Control Policy head John Walters got an earful when he showed up at Capitol Hill February 10 to explain and defend the Bush drug budget proposal. Hard core drug warriors such as Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN), chair of the House Government Affairs Committee Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources of the Government Reform Committee voiced concerns about cutbacks in state and local law enforcement assistance, while Democrats such as Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) bemoaned the elimination of prevention spending. But Walters, citing reductions in self-reported teen drug use, claimed the Bush drug policy was a success and gamely defended it from the critics. Eliminated in the proposed budget is the Byrne law enforcement grants program, which had funded the creation of local anti-drug task forces across the country. Along with the dramatic cuts in the COPS program, the cut in the Byrne grants means less money and fewer police to prosecute the drug war at the local level. Also facing the ax is the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program, which began as a targeted effort in limited districts little more than a decade ago, but has expanded into a pork-barrel program covering most of the US population. On the prevention side, the new budget eliminates funding for the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program and fails to increase funding for the widely-criticized ONDCP media campaign. Even the drug czar's office itself takes a big hit, with the ONDCP budget being cut by $239 million. Some drug budget winners:
[Before wading into the budget discussions, it is worth pausing a moment to ponder the basis of Walters' claims of drug policy "success." According to University of California-Santa Cruz youth sociologist Mike Males, who has just published the results of his research into 30 years worth of teen drug surveys (see newsbrief this issue), making teen drug use prevalence the sole measure of success in drug policy -- as Walters and the national drug control study do—obscures more than it reveals. "Since Bush took office in January 2001, drug abuse has skyrocketed as never before," Males told DRCNet. "Hospital emergency cases resulting from illicit drug use rose by 70,000 (led by increases of 30,000 for cocaine and methamphetamine), and drug abuse deaths rose by 2,500 to record peaks from 2000 through 2002, with another big increase presaged by California figures for 2003," he pointed out. "Bush officials and drug-war advocates have obscured their catastrophic policy failures by trumpeting distractors such as self-reporting drug-use surveys, which are of dubious accuracy and bear no relationship to the well-being of teens or adults in any case," Males argued. "If drug-war supporters want to grab credit for meaningless decreases in drug 'use' they should likewise be forced to assume blame for giant, far more worrisome increases in drug abuse, hospitalizations, and deaths that occurred on their watch."] On Capitol Hill, the critiques were not nearly so radical, but Walters was soon getting hit from both sides. Rep. Souder, the chair of the committee, was quick to complain about cuts in the Byrne grants program. "These cuts would certainly have a very dramatic impact on drug enforcement at the state and local level, at least in the short term," he told Walters. "I am also concerned that the damage to federal, state, and local law enforcement cooperation would be even more long-lasting. Most drug enforcement takes place at the state and local level. We need to be very sure that we continue to treat state and local agencies as partners in this effort." Rep. Cummings, the ranking minority member on the committee, came out swinging on the cuts in prevention and education funding. "The proposed federal drug budget demonstrates that President Bush has misplaced priorities and is out of touch with the real needs of Americans," he said. "It is fiscally irresponsible to drastically slash funding for key drug prevention and public safety initiatives that help save lives. The proposed 2.2% increase in the federal drug budget fails to even keep up with inflation and threatens to wipe out any positive gains we have made in battling illegal drugs through prevention and treatment. Souder joined Cummings in criticizing the cuts in prevention, especially the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities program. "I have serious concerns about this," he said, even as he conceded the program was not shown to be effective. "It is true that many prevention programs (particularly the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program) have had difficulty maintaining an anti-drug focus, and demonstrating results in terms of reduced drug use. However, terminating them outright, or refusing to fully fund them, sends the message that the federal government is backing away from prevention. Reducing demand is a crucial element of drug control policy. Rather than terminate prevention programs, we should look for ways to improve them by forcing them to measure their real impact on drug use." But Walters was blunt in defending the cuts in the program. "It was not working," he said, adding that funding community groups, treatment, and drug testing was a more efficient use of resources. Souder also questioned the stagnation in funding for the National Youth Anti-Drug Media campaign, which stayed at $120 million, saying that given inflation in advertising rates, the line item represented a cut in real terms for the program. But Walters responded that the ad campaign would continue to reach 90% of its intended audience. He had had to fight White House budget cutters to keep the funding at the current level, he added. But while congressional overseers waxed wroth over cuts in any component of the drug budget, drug reformers saw some positive signs amidst the dross. "We definitely like where the administration is going in terms of reprioritizing high level traffickers and terrorism," said Bill Piper, national legislative affairs director for the Drug Policy Alliance. "In the hearing, Walters basically said that we cannot just keep on arresting low-level drug offenders generation after generation," Piper told DRCNet. Piper also hailed the cuts in the Byrne grants and Safe Schools programs. "To the extent that money is going for bad things, like drug task forces, we would be happy to see it go away," he said. "But that money doesn't have to go to task forces; it could go to drug treatment." The Bush administration is doing something unusual with drug war funding, said Piper. "They are admitting that a large number of drug war programs are ineffective, they have said they will eliminate ineffective programs, and that's what they are starting to do with this budget," he said. "Unfortunately, they are not completely eliminating the National Youth Media program, which has been proven to be ineffective. Likewise, the funding for Columbia and Afghanistan won't be effective, but at least they are paring back what the federal government is actually doing in the US."
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