The President’s National Drug Control Strategy

The National Drug Control Strategy was announced by the Bush administration during the first quarter of 2002. It is believed that the strategy was devised because of the perceived loss of “the national will to fight against substance abuse. ” This perception resulted from a dismal situation recently occurring in the country. For instance, the findings of the “Monitoring the Future Survey” which was conducted by the University of Michigan showed that 26 out of 100 eight grade pupils admitted to trying illegal drugs at one time or another.

In addition to this sad reality, it was observed that many drug dependents in the United States do not get the treatment required to help them get rid of their addiction. Faced with such a grim state of affairs, President Bush declared his belief that “the time has come to re-energize the national movement against illegal drugs …[by making up] lost ground in the fight against drugs by applying the lessons of our recent history – emphasizing a balance between supply and demand reduction effort” (U. S. Office of the Press Secretary, 2002). It is clear, therefore, that the President’s intention is not only to reduce the use of illegal drugs in the country by reducing the number of drug dependents, but also to trim down the supply of drugs entering the country. To achieve this twofold objective, the strategy was based on the following principles, namely: “stopping drug use before it starts; healing America’s drug users; and disrupting the market” (U. S. Office of the Press Secretary, 2002).

The strategy maintains that in the struggle against illegal substances, every citizen has a vital role to play in “stopping drug use before it starts. ” This could be undertaken through education as well as community-wide efforts. Specifically, the strategy emphasizes that everybody should be an advocate for responsible citizenship. In other words, wherever he or she is, e. g. in the home, in schools, in his or her church, or in the place where he or she works, a standard should be set to reaffirm this value.

In this connection, every individual should do everything to convince everybody to reject the idea that the decision to use illegal drugs is an individual freedom. In the home, the parents are expected to instill in the minds of their children that illegal drugs is evil and would destroy them and their future. The educators should also teach the same value in schools while church authorities are counted on to preach the devastating effects of drugs (U.

S. Office of the Press Secretary, 2002). To backstop the efforts of schools and the community, the Office of the President granted an additional $10 million to expand the operations of the “Drug-Free Communities Support Program” of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), aside from creating a “Parents Drug Corps” with a budget of $5 million (U. S. Office of the Press Secretary, 2002).

In addition, increased funding were also provided to other ONDCP projects, namely: $25 million to the drug testing of students for the year 2003 (a whopping increase of $23 million); $145 million to the anti-drug information efforts of the “National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign” for its 2005 expansion which would “include information for teens and parents to promote early intervention against drug use. ” The media campaigns are aimed at changing the beliefs prevailing among American teenagers concerning drugs.

Meanwhile, the ONDCP said that the additional $10 million budget for the “Drug-Free Communities Program” would be able to finance an additional 100 community coalitions who would work for the prevention of drug abuse among young Americans, especially in depressed areas of the country (U. S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2004). The strategy also aims to “heal America’s drug users. ” To accomplish this goal, the budget for the “Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)” for the year 2003 was set at $2. 35 billion, increasing it to $2. 49 billion for 2004, and $2. 4 billion for the year 2005. Of particular interest is the increase of more than $100 million in the 2005 budget of the SAMHSA—Access to Recovery (ATR) program. According to the ONDCP, this will provide financial assistance to drug dependents who wish to avail of “clinical treatment or recovery services” on a case-to-case basis (U. S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2004). Extending additional assistance to drug dependents would be complemented with the creation of “a new climate of ‘compassionate coercion’” to get drug abusers to enter the government’s treatment programs.

Compassionate coercion would be carried out with the help of the criminal justice system and the circle of family and friends of the drug abusers. According to the President’s strategy, it is now time to “confront drug use – and therefore drug users – honestly and directly” and every effort should be exerted to urge abusers to “enter and remain in drug treatment” (U. S. Office of the Press Secretary, 2002). The drug courts program of the Office of Justice Programs was likewise granted an increase of $32 million from its 2004 budget, raising its 2005 funding to $70. million. According to the strategy, this funding increase would improve the chances of success of the drug court programs by widening the scope as well as increasing the quality of the services provided by drug courts. The strategy explained that the drug court programs are serving as alternative solutions to imprisonment which utilizes the “coercive power of the court to force abstinence and alter [the] behavior” of drug dependents (U. S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2004).

In other words, under the strategy, the criminal justice system is interested more in treating and rehabilitating drug abusers rather than putting them behind bars. To further enhance the capability of the criminal justice system in the task of treating and rehabilitating drug abusers, the President’s National Drug Control Strategy also increased the budget of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) from $960. 9 million in 2003 to $990. 8 million for 2004 and more than $1 billion for the year 2005.

NIDA is the agency which is tasked with conducting research activities concerning the problem, specifically “on the nature of addiction, development of science-based behavior interventions, medications development, and the rapid translation of research findings into practice. ” This initiative clearly spells out one of the most important roles of law enforcement in the drug policy of the president: that of treating and rehabilitating drug dependents (U. S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2004).

Another, equally important role being played by law enforcement in the drug strategy of the president is that of “disrupting the market and attacking the economic basis of the drug trade,” thereby reducing, if not entirely eliminating, the supply of illegal substance available in or entering the country. For this purpose, at least six government agencies were enlisted, namely: the “Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF); the Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and the Department of State” (U. S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2004). “Disrupting the market” means that law enforcement agencies have both domestic and international missions.

In the domestic scene, they are tasked not only with arresting drug suppliers and rounding up drug abusers, but also with intensifying the security of our borders to make the entry of drugs more difficult. In the international level, law enforcers are directed to seek out and destroy the supply of drugs in the countries of origin like Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, and other countries (U. S. Office of the Press Secretary, 2002). The strategy considers reducing or eliminating the supply to be of paramount importance because less supply would mean that the substance would become more expensive and thus less available to Americans. For this reason, law enforcement agencies has been focusing not only on the “agricultural sources” of these illegal substances but also on their organizational set-ups, the transportation systems of suppliers and distributors, their “financing mechanisms” and their processing methods.

Adequate knowledge of these things would enable American law enforcement agencies to destroy the drugs at source and easily intercept those that producers are able to ship out of their bases of operations (U. S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2004). The President’s National Drug Control Strategy should be regarded with respect not only because of its awareness of the importance of treating and rehabilitating drug abusers but also because it has correctly pointed out that the complete elimination of the sources of illegal substances is one of the keys to the elimination of the drug problem in the country.

The effectiveness of the strategy could be measured in terms of the reduction in the number of drug users and dependents in the country and the reduction or elimination of the supply of illegal substances in the market. Reducing the number of users without eliminating the supply of illegal substances would never be effective since new users and abusers would always crop up.