Pubdate: Sat, 04 May 2002 Source: Macon Telegraph (GA) Copyright: 2002 The Macon Telegraph Publishing Company Contact: http://www.macontelegraph.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/667 Author: Ronald Fraser Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/bush.htm (Bush, George) THE PRESIDENT'S 'SAY ONE THING, DO ANOTHER' DRUG WAR 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 drug war budget. On Feb. 12, as President 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=8Aas 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 Mr. 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 request for 2003. Here is how Mr. Bush's drug war rhetoric stacks up against Mr. Bush's drug war budget. Cutting Supply Major spending categories for cutting drug supplies are: overseas actions to stop or destroy drugs where they are grown; interdiction of drugs at the U.S. border; and domestic law enforcement to prevent the distribution of drugs here at home. In the last 10 years these supply-stopping efforts 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 for those with a drug problem and prevention initiatives that convince people not to use drugs in the first place. In the last ten years these demand-reduction efforts have consumed, on average, 32 percent of all federal drug war dollars. After hearing the president's loud and 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. =46ederal Spending In 2003, drug supply cutting efforts get 67 percent and demand reduction efforts 33 percent of the federal funds - a whopping one percent boost for demand reduction above the 10-year average. If the president means what he says, spending on demand reduction initiatives should go up at least 15 or 20 percent over the historical average. And supply-cutting initiatives reduced a like amount. What gives here? To Washington insiders, a puny 1-percent budget shift is the equivalent of a presidential wink and 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 in 2003 is actually cut by three 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 their 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. =46irst, 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 pay-off, demand reduction programs. It may be too late for the president to back up his words with our federal tax dollars. But it's not too late for Congress to reject the president's 'say one thing, do another' drug war budget. Ronald Fraser, Ph.D., writes on public policy issues for the DKT Liberty Project. - --- MAP posted-by: Josh