FIRST, DETERMINE WHAT WORKS BEST IN SCHOOL DRUG PROGRAMS

President Barack Obama's reversal of support for school drug programs
that he and Vice President Joe Biden supported during their Senate
years is a welcome admission that such a policy is not "the backbone
of youth drug prevention."

The president acknowledges that the programs -- which award state
grants for the work -- are poorly designed. The White House cites a
respected 2001 study that the underlying thinking for the funding is
"profoundly flawed."

But overwhelming anecdotal evidence of student criminal activity tied
to illegal drug use, also linked to embarrassing high-school dropout
rates over the two decades, has been solid ground to rethink the
direction of funding.

Since the 1980s, when the drug war emerged as the nation's No. 1
social ill, there has been much trial and error in structuring school
drug programs. A 30-year history should have netted some fact-based
successes by now.

William Modzeleski, head of the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools
in the Education Department, offered an incomplete explanation for
the poor results: Grants are too small to be effective. More than
half the recipients get less than $10,000.

Instead, good intentions have ruled, rather than a body of best
practices that can be replicated to a degree where the dollars spent
are justified, even when an economic crisis is not at hand.

Congress's funding has been a rollercoaster ride. In 2003, it
allotted $472 million for the grants, but three years later President
George W. Bush proposed whittling the alotment to $346.5 million. He
asked for only $100 million last year. But an election-year Congress
nearly tripled fundnig.

Congress has to go back to the drawing board with a commitment to
invest in what works and to divest its funding from programs that
show no results.