FUNDS TO FIGHT DRUGS GO UNUSED

The Justice Department spent less than half of the $336 million it
allocated in fiscal 2001 for programs to reduce demand for drugs despite a
long-standing department policy intended to break the cycle of illicit drug
use and its resulting violence through aggressive reduction in demand, a
report said yesterday. Top Stories

A 103-page report by the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector
General also said the Drug Enforcement Administration, the nation's front
line against illicit narcotics, spent $3 million on demand- reduction
programs in fiscal 2001, two-tenths of 1 percent of the agency's $1.4
billion budget.

The report also said the Justice Department's Office of Justice Programs,
the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services and the Bureau of
Prisons, along with the DEA - a Justice Department agency - spent $163
million on demand-reduction programs in fiscal 2001 - not the $336 million
it reported to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP.)

The Justice Department's figure, according to the report, included 19
demand-reduction programs, although the Inspector General's Office
determined that 10 of the asserted programs were not directly related to
demand reduction.

"Over the past 20 years, the federal drug-control budget, which includes
those resources dedicated to both supply reduction and drug- demand
reduction, has increased by over $16 billion," Inspector General Glenn A.
Fine said. "The current drug-control budget is more than 10 times the
drug-control budget in 1981.

"Despite significant increases in the federal drug-control budget ... there
appears to have been little progress toward achieving the National Drug
Control Strategy goals and strategic objectives developed by the ONDCP," he
said.

"It has been widely recognized that enforcement alone was not sufficient
and that federal efforts to reduce the demand for drugs were necessary."

Mr. Fine said drug-demand-reduction programs include drug testing,
prevention and education, treatment, research, rehabilitation and drug-free
workplace programs.

Mr. Fine said the DEA should "consider what potential impact it can have on
the demand for drugs when only 0.2 percent of its funding was dedicated to
drug-demand reduction in fiscal 2001."

He said, "The DEA's stated objective is to run an aggressive demand-
reduction program, but the percentage of its budget devoted to demand
reduction is very small." He noted, though, that the agency planned to
increase its efforts on demand reduction.

Critics of U.S. drug policy have long said too much effort has been focused
on law-enforcement efforts, including supply reduction and interdiction,
and not enough on drug-demand programs. Much of that criticism has come
from foreign countries, particularly those identified as sources of illicit
drugs.

Investigators from the Inspector General's Office reviewed the Justice
Department's activities intended to reduce demand for drugs to identify all
department programs, quantify the obligations for each program and verify
that financial information provided to the ONDCP was prepared appropriately.

They also sought to determine whether the department's performance measures
were adequate to determine the success of its programs, identify whether
department activities to reduce demand for drugs were duplicative and
whether department components were coordinating efforts to reduce demand.

They recommended that the department develop verifiable and measurable
outcome-based performance indicators for programs to reduce demand and that
it establish a formalized mechanism for coordinating and sharing
information related to activities to reduce demand.