Matching Rhetoric to Dollars: Twenty-Five Years of Federal Drug Strategies and Drug Budgets

Abstract

This paper examines the drug policy priorities of the federal government as expressed in the collection of drug strategies produced since 1973. It compares rhetorical emphases with the reported budgeted amounts for Federal programs. The paper finds that, in general, the priorities expressed in the strategies match the relative distribution of supply and demand reduction resources. Recent attempts by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to increase spending on drug treatment in the 1990s stand out as an exception, however. The factors accounting for the difficulty ONDCP encounters in realizing its budget goals include (1) the cross-cutting nature of the drug budget, (2) the fact that earlier legislative decisions “front-loaded” the drug budget with law enforcement programs, and (3) the fragmented nature of the Federal budget process. This paper concludes that if legislators want to hold ONDCP responsible for the outcomes of Federal anti-drug programs, they should provide the Office with discretionary control over marginal resources, an authority the Drug Czar currently does not have.