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.