One, the safe and drug-free school program, was judged a failure. Although the Bush administration said the assessments were not linked to its budget proposals for 2004, it has proposed cutting the schools program by $50 million.

It's not a bad idea to examine the effectiveness of programs Uncle Sam pays for, said Rep. Mark Souder, R-3rd. But he thinks this approach is too simplistic when it comes to fighting illegal drugs.

Souder heads the subcommittee that oversees anti-drug programs. The ones included in the administration's analysis spend nearly $4 billion a year.

But Bush administration budget chief Mitch Daniels said looking at the results produced by government programs - rather than by how much money they spent - is long overdue.

Besides, he said, President Bush proposed spending more money on anti-drug programs next year - keeping pace with a 4 percent inflation rate - than he did for this year, although not as much as Congress allocated.

Daniels said Bush wants to put more money in some areas, such as new program to give vouchers to treatment-seeking drug addicts so they could enroll in religious-sponsored programs. The voucher system would get $200 million under Bush's budget.

"Only in Washington would it seem radical to identify what works and what doesn't," Daniels said.

For the first time, the White House assessed the management and performance of federal programs. This year, 20 percent of the government - 234 programs and agencies - were critiqued. Each year, the same percentage will be evaluated until the whole federal government has come under scrutiny.

Daniels said the questions were the same for every agency and program, an attempt to be fair and weed out any ideological bias.

The "grade" each agency gets ranges from effective (6 percent of all programs) to ineffective (5 percent). Fifty percent were judged "results not demonstrated," one step above ineffective.

The grim evaluations were cause for celebration among some who oppose the government's anti-drug strategy.

"It is not surprising that the (Drug Enforcement Administration) is facing criticism from the Bush administration, the most stalwart supporters of the war on drugs. Instead of working toward any meaningful goals, for the past few years the DEA has been focused on arresting medical marijuana patients who were not violating state laws and seeking to ban the lawful consumption and sale of hemp food through interpretative rules," said Shawn Heller, director of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy.

Of the anti-drug programs examined this year, the budget agency said:

Drug Enforcement Administration: Results not demonstrated.

The Office of Management and Budget said the $1.5 billion agency "is unable to demonstrate its progress in reducing the availability of illegal drugs in the U.S. . . . DEA managers are not held accountable for achieving results."

Fort Wayne has a small DEA office.

"I'm a big supporter of DEA, but they can use cost pressures, too," Souder said.

Drug courts: Results not demonstrated.

OMB said the program's finances are well-managed, and independent analyses say they provide "an effective intervention to substance abusers who might not otherwise receive treatment." Nevertheless, the budget agency said the drug courts program needs to do a better job of tracking participants after they leave the program.

The local drug court, launched in 1997 by Superior Court Judge Kenneth Scheibenberger, received federal financing for its first three years.

Safe and drug-free schools: Ineffective.

The program provides nearly $5.6 million to Hoosier schools, including $308,000 to the four public school systems in Allen County, to reduce youth crime and drug abuse. OMB said the program is spread too thin to be effective.

This year Fort Wayne Community Schools is using its $244,000 for a program to prevent bullying, encourage responsible thinking classes for elementary students and parents, and promote staff development.

Souder said he opposes Bush's $50 million cut. But he said he agreed that some schools are using their grants for programs that are not related to reducing drug use and that Congress should tighten the rules.

Substance abuse treatment programs of regional and national significance: Adequate.

The program, which Bush wants to boost by $200 million to include vouchers for drug treatment at religious-based programs, awards grants for drug treatment.

Drug interdiction by the Coast Guard: Results not demonstrated.

OMB said the program is well managed but has weak strategic planning.

Weed and Seed: Results not demonstrated.

The program is designed to reduce violent and drug-related crime in high-crime areas and provides grants to local communities that target drug markets and offer after-school activities for at-risk children, for instance.

OMB said even though the program is 11 years old, only a few Weed and Seed sites have been independently evaluated. It said part of the problem is that the Justice Department "has been adverse to setting goals implying that any level of crime is 'successful.' "

High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area: Results not demonstrated.

The program provides money to establish multiagency drug task forces in areas that have a lot of drug use and sales and drug-related crime.

The program "seems to have lost its focus," OMB's evaluators said. The first five areas designated met the criteria set by Congress, OMB said, but 23 additional areas have been added since 1995 and "are now located in 41 of the 50 states."

"The magnitude of this expansion shows a disregard for the clear intent of the statute to focus on the nation's very worst areas," the evaluation says.

Indiana's only High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, in Lake County, was created in 1997 and has received $18 million in federal grants.

Residential substance abuse treatment: Results not demonstrated.

The grants are used to try to reduce drug abuse among prisoners as a way of reducing reducing repeat offenders. OMB said half the grant recipients didn't report their results.

Anti-drug TV commercials aimed at youth: Results not demonstrated.

"There is no evidence of direct effect on youth behavior," OMB said of the program that remains contentious in Congress.

The White House said if it doesn't see results, it will kill the program in 2005.

Souder noted that the TV commercial campaign is one of only two major drug-prevention programs the federal government pays for. He said the OMB report doesn't take into account how much drug use among teens would increase without the ads they see on television several times a week.

"We've seen three straight years, in most places, of a drop in drug abuse. If that's a measure, all these programs are working," Souder said.

Souder said if the same sort of evaluation were done in a private business, all OMB's questions would be asked, but the final question would be: What are the things that can't be controlled that affect the outcome?

"Let's say I sell mattresses at a furniture store. I didn't reach my quota. But three of our four competitors had sales that were lower prices than ours, and we had two blizzards that month. Everyone can come up with excuses, but you look at that and ask whether the explanations were helpful in further defining the goal," he said.

Souder said there are extenuating circumstances that a cut-and-dried evaluation can't consider.

For instance, he said, if 3,500 Fort Wayne-area people are released from prison in the next few years and crime goes up, "does that mean that all of a sudden the drug court program, the Weed and Seed, the treatment programs and drug-free schools aren't working as well? Or does it mean we released them out of prison?"

Nevertheless, Souder said, many of the questions OMB raised are worth asking.

But, he said, "the whole point of the evaluation is basically, in program after program, to say no increase. OMB's got to be the hit guys. It's their job to control the budget."

It's an assessment others share.

Ellen Taylor, an analyst for OMB Watch, a liberal-leaning think tank, likened the assessment program to "the grade-school sticker method used to reward good work or punish bad work. Its very simplicity, however, makes it a potentially powerful method to justify budget cuts or increases."

Not so, Daniels said.

"The principal purpose is diagnostic," he said. "To find out what's wrong and what's missing."

Note: White House study questions programs' value.

Source: Journal Gazette, The (IN)
Author: Sylvia A. Smith, Washington Editor
Published: February 16, 2003
Copyright: 2003 The Journal Gazette
Contact: letters@jg.net
Website: http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/

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In Chapter3-Guiding Principles it says “The goal of governance is freedom, and not control.”

In recommendation 4 it says Thirty years after the Le Dain Commission report, we are able to categorically state that, used in moderation, cannabis in itself poses very little danger to users and to society as a whole, but specific types of use represent risks for users. and We would add that, even if cannabis were to have serious harmful effects, one would have to question the relevance of using the criminal law to limit these effects. We have demonstrated that criminal law is not an appropriate governance tool for matters relating to personal choice and that prohibition is known to result in harm which often outweighs the desired positive effects.

Everything else is copied from the report and is a dump from a Word file I found significant in the 55 page PDF file that comprises the summary.

Chapter3- Guiding Principles “The goal of governance is freedom, and not control.”

Chapter 6 – Users and uses: form, practice, context –

The epidemiological data available indicates that close to 30% of the population (12 to 64 years old) has used cannabis at least once;

*-Approximately 2 million Canadians over age 18 have used cannabis during the previous 12 months, approximately 600,000 have used it during the past month, and approximately 100,000 use it daily. Approximately 10% used cannabis during the previous year; and Use is highest between the ages of 16 and 24.

For youth in the 12-17 age group, we observed that: Canada would appear to have one of the highest rates of cannabis use among youths; Approximately 1 million would appear to have used cannabis in the previous 12 months, 750,000 in the last month and 225,000 would appear make daily use; and The average age of introduction to cannabis is 15.

Chapter 9 - Use of marijuana for therapeutic Purposes However, the scientific community, the medical community in particular, is divided on the real therapeutic effectiveness of marijuana. Some are quick to say that opening the door to medical marijuana would be a step toward outright legalization of the substance.

But none of that should matter to physicians or scientists. It is not a question of defending general public policy on marijuana or even all illegal drugs. It is not a question of sending a symbolic message about “drugs”. It is not a question of being afraid that young people will use marijuana if it is approved as a medicine. The question, and the only question, for physicians as professionals is whether, to what extent and in what circumstances, marijuana serves a therapeutic purpose. Physicians should have to determine whether people with certain diseases would benefit from marijuana use and weigh the side effects against the benefits. If they do decide the patient should use marijuana, they then have to consider how he or she might get it. The absence of certain cannabinoids in synthetic compounds can lead to harmful side effects, such as panic attacks and cannabinoids psychoses;

Chapter 11 - A National Drug Strategy? These pieces of legislation have historically focused on the supply of psychoactive substances, adopting a prohibitionist approach to use. It is widely acknowledged now, however, that a more balanced approach is required if one is to deal effectively with those who abuse psychoactive substances.

Canada urgently needs a comprehensive and coordinated national drug strategy for which the federal government provides sound leadership; Any future national drug strategy should incorporate all psychoactive substances, including alcohol and tobacco; Canada’s Drug Strategy’s should adopt a balanced approach – 90% of federal expenditures are currently allocated to the supply reduction.

Chapter 12 - The National Legislative Context Drugs have been prohibited for fewer than a hundred years; cannabis for slightly more than 75 years. It is tempting to think that the decisions made over the years to use criminal law to fight the production and use of certain drugs are in keeping with social progress and the advancement of scientific knowledge about drugs. But is this really the case? The history of legislation governing illegal drugs in Canada, like the analysis in Chapter 19 of the structure of international conventions, suggests that it is highly doubtful. To what extent is such reasoning really rational? Is the rationale of the system of controls acceptable in the eyes of civil society, users as well as abstainers? What criteria motivated legislator decisions? Indeed, were there criteria? What motivated parliamentarians from Canada and elsewhere to prohibit certain substances, to control access to certain others, and to permit still others to be sold over the counter? Knowing where we have been helps in understanding where we are going. That is the goal of this chapter, retracing the evolution of Canadian drug laws from 1908 to the present day. We have identified three legislative periods. The first, and longest, spans 1908 to 1960, the period of hysteria. We were told that drugs were made criminal because they are dangerous. Analysis of debates in Parliament and in media accounts clearly shows how far this is from truth. When cannabis was introduced in the legislation on narcotics in 1923, there was no debate, no justification, in fact many members did not even know what cannabis was.

The second period, much shorter, runs from 1961 to 1975, the search for lost reason. Following the explosion in drug use in the early 1960s and demands for reform from various sectors of society, governments appointed a commission of inquiry in Canada, the Le Dain Commission. Last comes the contemporary period at the beginning of the 1980s. Reform is not on the policy agenda any more and anti-drug policies have forged ahead. In summary, we observed that: Early drug legislation was largely based on a moral panic, racist sentiment and a notorious absence of debate; Drug legislation often contained particularly severe provisions, such as reverse onus and cruel and unusual sentences; and The work of the Le Dain Commission laid the foundation for a more rational approach to illegal drug policy by attempting to rely on research data. The Le Dain Commission's work had no legislative outcome until 1996 in certain provisions of the Controlled Drugs and Substa

Chapter 13 - Regulating Therapeutic Use of Cannabis nces Act, particularly with regard to cannabis. The refusal of the medical community to act as gatekeepers and the lack of access to legal sources of cannabis appear to make the current regulatory scheme an “illusory” legislative exemption and raises serious Charter implications;

Chapter 16 – Prevention- There are, as this chapter will show, many prevention programs that are not aimed solely or even particularly at the prevention of use, but rather the prevention of at-risk behaviour. Harm reduction, for example, is not only a general strategy for dealing with psychoactive substances, but is also a preventive approach that seeks to lower the risks associated with drugs and drug control without requiring abstinence. The Committee found that: Prevention is not designed to control but rather to empower individuals to make informed decisions and acquire tools to avoid at-risk behaviour;A national drug strategy should include a strong prevention component; Prevention strategies must be able to take into account contemporary knowledge about drugs; Prevention messages must be credible, verifiable and neutral; Prevention strategies must be comprehensive, cover many different factors and involve the community; Prevention strategies in schools should not be led by police services or delivered by police officers; The RCMP should reconsider its choice of the DARE program that many evaluation studies have shown to be ineffective; Prevention strategies must include comprehensive evaluation of a number of key elements; A national drug strategy should include mechanisms for widely disseminating the results of research and evaluations; Evaluations must avoid reductionism, involve stakeholders in prevention, be part of the program, and include longitudinal impact assessment; Harm reduction strategies related to cannabis should be developed in coordination with educators and the social services sector; and Harm reduction strategies related to cannabis should include information on the risks associated with heavy chronic use, tools for detecting at-risk and heavy users and measures to discourage people from driving under the influence of marijuana.

Chapter 17 - Treatment practices- The expression ‘drug addiction’ should no longer be used and we should talk instead of substance abuse and dependency; Between 5% and 10% of regular cannabis users are at risk of developing a dependency; Physical dependency on cannabis is virtually non-existent; Psychological dependency is moderate and is certainly lower than for nicotine or alcohol; Most regular users of cannabis are able to diverge from a trajectory of dependency without requiring treatment; There are many forms of treatment but nothing is known about the effectiveness of the different forms of treatment for cannabis dependency specifically; As a rule, treatment is more effective and less costly than incarceration; Studies of the treatment programs should be conducted, including treatments programs for people with cannabis dependency; and Studies should be conducted on the interaction of the cannabinoid and the opioid systems.

Chapter 18 - Observations on practices- The lack of any real national platform for discussion and debate on illegal drugs prevents the development of clear objectives and measurement indicators; The absence of a national platform makes exchange of information and best practices impossible; Practices and approaches vary considerably between and within provinces and territories; The conflicting approaches of the various players in the field are a source of confusion; The resources and powers of enforcement are greatly out of balance compared with those of the health and education fields and the civil society; The costs of all illegal drugs had risen to close to $1.4 billion in 1992; Of the total costs of illegal drugs in 1992, externalities (social costs) represented 67% and public policy costs 33%; The social costs of illegal drugs and the public policy costs are underestimated; The cost of enforcing the drug laws is more likely to be closer to $1 billion to $1.5 billion per annum; The principal public policy cost relative to cannabis is that of law enforcement and the justice system; which may be estimated to represent a total of $300 to $500 million per annum; The costs of externalities attributable to cannabis are probably minimal - no deaths, few hospitalizations, and little loss of productivity; The costs of public policy on cannabis are disproportionately high given the drug’s social and health consequences; and The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse is seriously under-funded; its annual budget amounts to barely 0.1% of the social costs of illegal drugs alone (alcohol not included). Its budget should be increased to at least 1%; that is, approximately $15 million per annum.

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-Pete

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