CONGRESS DOES SOMETHING RIGHT - SPECIAL INTERESTS SCREAM PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE DrugSense FOCUS Alert #363 - Sunday, 30 March 2008 President Bush, whose administration has long expressed the opinion that federal dollars should not be the primary means of funding state and local law enforcement, has dramatically cut funding in the 2009 budget for the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants, the primary program used to finance drug enforcement in nearly every state for more than 20 years. In FY 2007, the Byrne program was funded at $520 million. For FY 2008 -- which starts on October 1st, 2008 -- the Senate had originally funded the Byrne program at $660 million and the House at $600 million in their respective appropriations bills. However, in the omnibus FY 2008 appropriations bill signed into law in December 2007, the Byrne program funding was cut to $170 million for the coming year -- a 67 percent decrease from 2007 funding levels. The cuts will devastate state law enforcement efforts by shutting down multi-jurisdictional drug task forces, requiring layoffs of police and prosecutors. Since there is no way to measure where the underground drug industry is most active, the grants have always been a prime pork-barrel way for members of Congress to help their districts. As Congress returns to session this week efforts to restore the full grant funding will continue. As news clippings from this year in the MAP archives show, with new clippings being added frequently, law enforcement and elected officials at all levels are in a panic about the possible loss of funds. See: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Byrne Some of the articles indicate that the grant funds have caught some bad folks who, perhaps, deserve to be caught. Of course the articles are not likely to tell you about the busts of marijuana users, including medicinal users, which have been funded at least in part by the grants. None of the news about police corruption or drug raids gone bad are likely to be tied to Byrne grant funds, as they often are. Remember Tulia, Texas? That was Byrne grant money at work. Please contact your members of Congress to let them know what you think about fully funding the Byrne grant program. The 'Find and contact your federal, state, and local officials.' box in the upper left corner of this webpage makes it easy. http://www.congress.org/ OMB Watch has produced a report for the last available year, FY 2006, which has amazing data. See which of your representatives in Congress were able to secure the most Byrne funds for their district, and much more at http://drugsense.org/url/SezrJZJY Letters to the Editor about Byrne grant funding are, of course, always appropriate. Style guides for writing effective letters to the editor are available at MAP's Media Activism Center: http://www.mapinc.org/resource/#guides Prepared by: The MAP Media Activism Team www.mapinc.org/resource =.

Focus Alert Archive