THE PRESIDENT'S 'SAY ONE THING, DO ANOTHER' DRUG WAR

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 drug war budget. On Feb. 12, as President 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=8Aas 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 Mr. 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 request
for 2003. Here is how Mr. Bush's drug war rhetoric stacks up against
Mr. Bush's drug war budget.

Cutting Supply

Major spending categories for cutting drug supplies are: overseas
actions to stop or destroy drugs where they are grown; interdiction
of drugs at the U.S. border; and domestic law enforcement to prevent
the distribution of drugs here at home.

In the last 10 years these supply-stopping efforts 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 for those with a drug problem and prevention
initiatives that convince people not to use drugs in the first place.

In the last ten years these demand-reduction efforts have consumed,
on average, 32 percent of all federal drug war dollars. After hearing
the president's loud and 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.

=46ederal Spending

In 2003, drug supply cutting efforts get 67 percent and demand
reduction efforts 33 percent of the federal funds - a whopping one
percent boost for demand reduction above the 10-year average. If the
president means what he says, spending on demand reduction
initiatives should go up at least 15 or 20 percent over the
historical average. And supply-cutting initiatives reduced a like
amount. What gives here?

To Washington insiders, a puny 1-percent budget shift is the
equivalent of a presidential wink and 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
in 2003 is actually cut by three 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 their 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.
=46irst, 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 pay-off, demand reduction programs.

It may be too late for the president to back up his words with our
federal tax dollars. But it's not too late for Congress to reject the
president's 'say one thing, do another' drug war budget.

Ronald Fraser, Ph.D., writes on public policy issues for the DKT
Liberty Project.