The fastest way to figure out the government’s priorities for spending to curb drug abuse is to look at the federal drug budget, which Congress requires the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to publish annually. This budget compiles estimates from the many agencies involved in combating drugs of how much money they spend on these efforts. Last year, the total federal drug budget exceeded $19 billion: about two-thirds of this money was devoted to law enforcement, interdiction, and international eradication programs while one-third went to treatment and prevention. This two-thirds, one-third allocation between “supply control” and “demand reduction” initiatives (as the debate commonly characterizes these differing strategies) has remained relatively constant for the past two decades. In both Republican and Democratic administrations, America’s war on drugs has emphasized enforcement.

Specifically, the Fiscal Year 2004 budget appears to have slashed anti-drug spending by almost $8 billion. Most of this cut is achieved by excluding money spent on prosecuting and incarcerating drug offenders and related law enforcement efforts, despite the fact that this spending will continue and is likely to increase in the coming years. However, the costs will not show in the federal drug budget prepared by ONDCP — which provides the main focus for national discussion of drug control strategy. Once these figures are out of sight, the issues may well be out of the public’s mind.

What to make of this? ONDCP acknowledges that removing these multi-billion dollar drug-related costs represents a significant departure from past practices in reporting the annual drug budget. However, ONDCP argues that the new reporting format is justified. According to ONDCP, although the costs of incarcerating drug offenders are “real to society, they do not factor into the core of drug law enforcement decisions made by national policymakers.” In short, the federal drug budget has now eliminated estimates from agencies that mainly focus on what ONDCP calls the “consequences associated with the activities of other primary counterdrug agencies.” Rather convoluted bureaucratic prose, but what they mean to say is that from now on, the drug budget will not include prosecution and incarceration costs, which are by far the single largest expenditure category.

ONDCP’s logic is unconvincing. Whether policymakers already take the costs of incarceration into account when they consider drug policy, they should do so. Spending on incarceration of drug offenders has driven many state budgets into deficit, pushing governors and legislators to explore more cost-effective responses to drug abuse. By the late 1990s, California was spending more on prisons than on higher education, which has become an increasingly common experience in other states in recent years as greater numbers of drug offenders serve longer sentences. These budget realities have forced state policymakers to take a hard look at spiraling enforcement and incarceration expenditures and to consider making different choices in allocating limited resources. In states as diverse as Connecticut, Kansas, Michigan, and Texas, lawmakers are looking to relieve pressure on their budgets by easing some of their stiff drug-sentencing laws. They are also looking at alternatives to incarceration, including drug courts, which provide court-supervised treatment to drug offenders.

At the federal level, more than half the federal Bureau of Prisons current 172,000 inmates are serving time for drug offenses (although 99 percent of them are not considered to have been major traffickers). Yet, the “new” ONDCP budget ignores the $6.4 billion spent last year for incarceration and detention of drug offenders. This huge investment has disappeared from the public spotlight. Although the Department of Justice’s annual budget will still include these figures, finding them will require special efforts if we are to piece together the many different parts of the federal funding puzzle. What is really lost from view is the grim reality that treatment and prevention funds combined ($5.5 billion) are dwarfed by domestic drug enforcement dollars ($9.5 billion). Including international eradication and interdiction programs ($3.1 billion), supply control spending this year will once again consume more than two-thirds of the total drug budget.

The bottom line is that only appearances, not realities, have changed: prevention and treatment remain severely underfunded, while law enforcement and incarceration continue to dominate our nation’s drug policy.

Mathea Falco, an attorney, is president of Drug Strategies. She served as Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotic Matters from 1977-1981.

This article is published in Counselor,The Magazine for Addiction Professionals, February 2004, v.5, n.1, pp. 32-33.

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