Drug War Issues
Politics & Advocacy
As part of the half-trillion dollar omnibus appropriations bill approved by Congress this week and expected to be signed shortly by President Bush, drug treatment and prevention funding was approved with small changes from last year. Most treatment and prevention programs saw level funding or small increases, with the exception of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities grants program, which took a significant hit.
Under the spending measure, drug and alcohol education, prevention, treatment and research programming will receive the following amounts:
- The Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment (SAPT) Block Grant will receive $1.7587 billion, funding roughly level to FY 2007 and the President's budget request.
- The Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) will receive $399.8 million, $895,000 over FY 2007 and $52 million over the President's budget request.
- The Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) will receive $194.12 million, a $1.2 million increase over 2007 and $37.6 million over the President's request.
- The Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities (SDFSC) State Grants program will receive $294.76 million, a cut of $51.7 million from last year's funding but $194.7 million over the President's FY 2008 budget request.
- The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) will receive $1.001 billion, $2 million over FY 2007 and $1 million more than the President's budget request.
- The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) will receive $436.26 million, a $674,000 million increase over last year's funding and approximately $700,000 less than the President's budget request.
While the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities grant program was slashed to just under $300 million, that is still almost $200 million more than the Bush administration requested. Other areas of the federal drug budget changed too -- see feature story this issue for further information.
Permission to Reprint: This content is licensed under a modified Creative Commons Attribution license. Content of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.
Comments
That's A Lot of Money
[email protected] Vancouver,B.C. Canada When I went to school way back in the stone(actually it was before the stone age),age,we never had a single lecture on drugs.I lived in the better part of town and there was no drug activity in the area,to speak of.My roommate was shown films on the horrors of addiction and all the junkies used to sit in the back and laugh.Many of the girls threw up.In the sixties it was reefer madness and screaming herion addicts.Nobody knew what was true and what was just stupid scare mongering.It turned out the heroin stuff was real.Who knew?We all drank to excess and it took the hippies to bring out the acid,pot,speed and mda(now mdma)and there were no serious side effects.I did have a friend jump into a ditch once,I still don't know what that was about and I did some stp that scared the living sh*t outta me cause I was still high 3 days later but it turned out ok.I do not recommend hallucinogens to young people and I certainly don't condone their use under any but the best conditions.Having said that,I haven't heard of any real good acid since Owsley.Purple Owsley and you would see god.I digress,what I wanted to say was that unless educational programs are leaps and bounds ahead of where they were,some thing should be done.The most effective speakers I've seen,as far as having some influence on an audience,are the former and current addicts that volunteer their time to speak to young people.All the money that's being thrown down the drug war pit is going for naught because the kids just don't listen when they know they're being fed crap.What's needed is more treatment,more mentoring,more truth and a whole lot less male bovine excrement.
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