Pubdate: Mon, 24 May 2010 Source: Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA) Copyright: 2010 The Virginian-Pilot Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/zJNzcThR Website: http://hamptonroads.com/pilotonline Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/483 MEASURING SUCCESS IN WAR ON DRUGS If there's a common cause we all can rally around, surely it is this: Government shouldn't pump tax dollars into ineffective programs. It's a theme shared - at least in speeches and writing - among all political parties and their leaders, who constantly make pledges to end wasteful spending and be good stewards of taxpayers' money. Consider these: "Federal programs should receive taxpayer dollars only when they prove they achieve results.... No program, however worthy its goal and high-minded its name, is entitled to continue perpetually unless it can demonstrate it is actually effective in solving problems." That was the introduction of President George W. Bush's plan for rating federal programs in his 2004 budget. "We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don't have consequences; as if waste doesn't matter; as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money; as if we can ignore this challenge for another generation. We can't." That was President Barack Obama, announcing his 2011 budget proposal. And yet there are words and there are deeds. Neither president, for example, did much to curb the spending that has supported this nation's flawed war on illegal drugs. As The Associated Press reported last week, the federal government has funneled $1 trillion into boosting drug-control efforts, including $571 billion to arrest and imprison 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, since this war began 40 years ago. Even so, the number of drug users in the United States during that time nearly doubled, and drug overdoses climbed steadily, exceeding 20,000 last year. Treatment and prevention programs, which studies repeatedly have shown to be more effective than jail time, have been consistently underfunded. If this is success, it's hard to tell by the costs, either in lives or money. And while the social prize of decriminalization is unknown, that's not stopping states from heading that way, in part because the financial and social costs of the war are so clear. Fourteen states have legalized marijuana for medicinal use. In the fall, California voters will decide whether to decriminalize pot, and regulate and tax it, for recreational use. The move could raise revenue even as it reduces costs in the state's criminal justice system. In Virginia, a proposal to legalize marijuana for medical purposes failed this year. But another bill, one that would allow a defendant to be tried on a misdemeanor drug charge without an attorney if no jail time is at stake, did pass. The bill, reasonably enough, was pitched as a way to save tax dollars during tight economic times. Nevertheless, the federal government appears as committed as ever to war on drugs. Obama's budget proposal includes $10 billion for drug enforcement and interdiction, including the continuation of Bush's 2008 Merida Initiative. The $1.4 billion plan is designed to help fight drug trafficking and organized crime in Mexico, the source of the bulk of drugs used by Americans. "President Obama's newly released drug war budget is essentially the same as Bush's, with roughly twice as much money going to the criminal justice system as to treatment and prevention," Bill Piper, of the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance, told the AP. And so it goes: Words followed by deeds. Pumping money into projects and programs with little evidence of success. Unless, of course, success is to be measured through more laws, more police, more prisons, more taxes and - naturally - more spending. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D