Pubdate: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 Source: Roanoke Times (VA) Copyright: 2002 Roanoke Times Contact: http://www.roanoke.com/roatimes/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/368 Author: Ronald Fraser Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment) Put Dollars Into Prevention And Treatment BUSH VIOLATES HIS OWN DRUG WAR STRATEGY WHEN POLITICIANS publicly tell us one thing and then quietly do something else, hold onto your wallet. At stake in the latest round of Washington charades is next year's $19.1 billion budget for the war on drugs. On Feb. 12, as President George Bush outlined his strategy to rid America of illegal drugs, he told the White House press corps, "The best way to affect supply is to reduce demand for drugs ... as long as there is the demand for drugs in this country, some crook is going to figure out how to get them here. As demand goes down, so will supply." Clear enough. Trying to cut drug supply lines is a waste of tax money. A wise government strategy, according to Bush, is one that helps Americans say "no" to drugs. Just eight days earlier, however, the president sent Congress his $19.1 billion drug war budget for 2003. Here is how Bush's drug war rhetoric stacks up against Bush's drug war budget. Cutting supply: Major spending for cutting drug supplies goes to overseas actions to destroy drugs where they are grown; interdiction of drugs at the U.S. border; domestic law enforcement to prevent the distribution of drugs here at home. In the last 10 years these efforts to stop the supply have consumed, on average, 68 percent of the federal taxes spent on the drug war. The results? Drugs are more easily available than ever. Street prices for cocaine and heroin have consistently fallen each year - a sure sign that interdiction programs have failed. In 1992, one gram of cocaine sold for about $200 and heroin for $2,539; by 1999, these prices had dropped to $184 and $1,900. The president's rhetoric is borne out: Attacking drug-supply pipelines simply doesn't work. Cutting demand: The two big spending categories for cutting drug demand in America are treatment and prevention. In the last 10 years, these efforts have consumed, on average, 32 percent of federal drug war dollars. After hearing the president's clear assertion that cutting demand is the way to win the drug war, surely we would expect his budget to reflect a major shift in how he plans to spend our tax money in 2003. Right? Wrong. Federal spending: In 2003, efforts to cut the drug supply get 67 percent and demand reduction 33 percent - a whopping 1 percentage point boost for demand reduction above the 10-year average. If the president means what he says, spending on these initiatives should go up at least 15 percent or 20 percent over the historical average and supply-cutting initiatives reduced a like amount. What gives here? To Washington insiders, a puny budget shift of 1 percentage point is the equivalent of a presidential wink. It sends the drug war bureaucracy this signal: "Watch where I put the money, not what I tell the taxpayers. It's business as usual in 2003." Rhetoric and reality clash again when we compare the 2002 and the 2003 budgets. While spending for drug treatment goes up $224 million to $3.8 billion, an increase of 6.2 percent, spending on prevention is cut by 3 percent to $2.4 billion. On the supply-cutting side, where the president's own words put such little trust, spending for border drug interdiction gets a double digit, 10.4 percent increase. Spending for international drug supply suppression, another perennial loser, goes up 4.9 percent, and domestic law enforcement takes an almost invisible drop of 0.6 percent. State savings: The president's rhetoric - that spending on prevention and treatment to reduce the demand for drugs is the key to winning the drug war - - is also backed up with hard numbers at the state level. Oregon, for example, estimates its return on every dollar spent on treatment services to be a $5.62 savings on corrections, health and welfare spending. In California, the return has been estimated to be about $7. If the president followed his own advice, two things would happen. First, he would redirect billions in federal taxes away from Washington's addiction to a doomed drug supply strategy. Second, presidential leadership would also encourage the 50 states to put more of their own taxes into high-payoff, demand-reduction programs. It may be too late for the president to put our federal tax dollars where his mouth is. But it's not too late for Congress to reject the president's "say-one-thing-do-another" budget for the drug war. RONALD FRASER of Burke writes on public policy issues for the DKT Liberty Project, a Washington-based civil liberties organization. - --- MAP posted-by: Jackl