This week, the Obama administration released its Fiscal Year 2011 Drug Control budget, and it is seeking a 3.5% increase in drug war funding over last year, for a total of $15.5 billion. There is a continuation of a Bush-era accounting gimmick that doesn't cover the $4 billion-plus spent each year on Federal prison lockup.
To some who look at bailouts and (other) wars, the $15.5 billion that the White House is asking for might seem irrelevant, there are huge social costs inflicted on society by this seven-decade-long Drug war. Not to mention the obvious fact that we need to save some of those jail cells for America's excessive number of white-collar criminals.
Reading the proposals in this drug war budget, I initially was puzzled by the seeming backwardness of some of the numbers. A closer look, after the flip.
I'll go ahead and list the dumbest thing in the White House's current 2011 budget proposal:
Funding for the widely challenged National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign is set at $66.5 million, an increase of more than 50% over this year.
We just got done celebrating this newsfor the 2010 budget when the WH goes and proposes an increase in that ineffective Media Campaign? When Congress just did this:
National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign: $45 million, $25 million below 2009 and the budget request, for a national ad campaign providing anti-drug messages directed at youth. Reductions were made in this program because of evaluations questioning its effectiveness. Part of the savings was redirected to other ONDCP drug-abuse-reduction programs.
That makes no sense. Aaron Houston of the MPP said this: "One of the worst examples is $66 million requested for the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign when every independent study has called it a failure. The president is throwing good money after bad when what we really need is a new direction."
There are some highlights, though:
- Funding for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration prevention programs (SAMHSA) is set at $254.2 million, up $29.6 million from this year, while funding for SAMHSA treatment programs is set at $635.4 million, up $101.2 million from this year.
- Funding for ONDCP's Drug Free Communities program is set at $85.5 million, down $9.5 million from this year.
- The Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring II program (ADAM) is funded at $10 million. It got no money this year.
- Funding for the Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment program is set at $1.799 billion, the same as this year.
- Funding for the Second Chance Act for reintegrating people completing prison sentences is set at $50 million, a whopping 66% increase over this year.
Lowlights:
-Funding for the Defense Department's counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan is set at $501.5 million, up about one-third over this year.
-Funding for the DEA is set at $2.131 billion, up 5.5% over this year. That pays for 8,399 employees, 4,146 of whom are DEA agents.
So while it makes for bad headlines to ask for an increase in drug war spending, instead of asking for change to the status quo, there are examples here of more money going to treatment, even though the bulk of the cash is being burned on the same dumb drug war policies that inevitably fail.
drcnet.org says:
This is only the administration's budget request, of course. What it will look like by the time Congress gets through with it is anybody's guess. But it strongly suggests that, so far, there's not that much new under the sun in the Obama White House when it comes to the drug budget.
Other recent events: Obama nominating a Bushie to be head of the DEA. The Youtube interview of the President pointedly ignored the most popular question. I submitted a question in regards to cannabis policy, as did over 2,000 others. Apparently, our questions don't matter.