RESTORE THE COMPASS IN THE FIGHT AGAINST DRUGS

Federal officials should fight for renewed funding to screen inmates under
a program that has a proven record of effectiveness.

The U.S. Justice Department, with its often misguided tough-on-crime
measures, this time has gone soft on drugs.

In a shortsighted move that dismantles part of law enforcement's
drug-fighting mechanism, the agency has ended a valuable jailhouse testing
program credited with gauging accused criminals' drug use and predicting
new drug epidemics.

To fight the scourge of drugs - and the crime that often accompanies it -
law enforcement officers need to know where the fight is. The demise of the
Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring, or ADAM, program has taken away one such
compass.

In pulling the plug on the inmate-testing program, the Justice Department
cited congressional budget cuts. Agency officials, along with the White
House Office of National Drug Control Policy, should lobby Congress to
reverse itself.

Under the ADAM program, people arrested for drug violations in 35 cities of
varying sizes underwent a drug test and a confidential interview. The
results were used to spot patterns of drug use and to establish treatments.

According to law enforcement officials and criminal justice experts, the
program, established in 1986 during the Reagan administration, was useful
in tracking the rise and fall of the crack epidemic and spotting the
emerging trend of methamphetamine use on the West Coast.

Another intrinsic value of ADAM that distinguished it from other government
drug-tracking measures was its focus on the heavy users, who have more
crime- and addiction-related problems.

"All the people who are dropped by the rest of our social services network
get picked up by the jails," said Mark Kleiman, a drug policy expert and a
vocal supporter of the ADAM program. "If you're going to go duck hunting,
you go where the ducks are."

That makes sense, but instead of restoring the $8.4 million annual funding
for ADAM, Kleiman said the government is shelling out $50 million a year
for a household survey that asks people to report drug abuse voluntarily.
Predictably, the survey fails woefully in capturing the true extent of the
country's drug problem.

Restoring a comparatively small amount of money to a program that has
proved its usefulness will pay off in long-term savings in the economic and
social costs associated with drug abuse.