Pubdate: Wed, 06 Feb 2002
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA)
Copyright: 2002 Cox Interactive Media
Contact:  http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/28
Author: Los Angeles Times

National Voices: Editorial Excerpts From Around The Country

DIRECT FUNDING AT DRUG TREATMENT, PREVENTION

Last week police busted Noelle Bush, the 24-year-old daughter of Florida 
Gov. Jeb Bush, for allegedly forging a prescription for the anti-anxiety 
drug Xanax. The offense is a felony punishable by up to five years in 
prison. Gov. Bush, realizing that punishment alone would be of little help, 
paid $1,000 to bail out his daughter and probably will send her back to one 
of the treatment centers she reportedly has been in before.

That's good. And what's good for a famous parent's daughter should be good 
for America. In fact, the nation's $20-billion-a-year war against drugs 
might stand a chance if the governor's brother, President Bush, would urge 
Congress to correct the imbalance in anti-drug funding, which directs only 
four cents of every dollar to prevention and treatment. The remaining 96 
cents go to what former Health Secretary Joseph A. Califano Jr., now a drug 
abuse expert at Columbia University, calls "shoveling up the wreckage of 
substance abuse and addiction in hospitals, welfare agencies, foster care 
programs and prisons."

President Bush --- whose daughters Jenna and Barbara both have been charged 
with underage drinking and who himself was arrested in 1976 for driving 
while intoxicated --- has impressed Califano and other drug policy experts. 
Bush recognizes that "the most effective way to reduce the supply of drugs 
in America is to reduce the demand for drugs in America."

Oddly, though, the president's newly appointed drug czar, John P. Walters, 
has historically favored punishment over treatment. Last year, he called 
the notion that drug sentences are too long one of "the great urban myths 
of our time." The United States may be winning battles abroad, but it's 
losing the domestic war on drug abuse, and the backward thinking of key 
strategists such as Walters is one reason why.

Bush and Congress need to correct the imbalances that result in so little 
federal money for treatment. Legislators should also reverse an outrageous 
law passed in 1998 that bars federal drug czars from spending even a penny 
on ads that mention the most commonly abused drug of all, alcohol.
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