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CAGW Report Calls Drug Policies a Waste
Citizens Against Government Waste | 06/26/06

Washington, D.C. Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today released a report critical of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). Wasted in the War on Drugs: Office of National Drug Control Policy’s Wasted Efforts takes the ONDCP to task for functioning inefficiently and failing to achieve its core objectives.

“Billions of dollars marked for the war on drugs are being wasted on ineffective and counterproductive policies,” CAGW President Tom Schatz said.

The ONDCP was established in 1988 by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. It funds four primary programs: High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA), the Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center (CTAC), the Drug Free Communities Program, and the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. Created to reduce marijuana use, the media campaign has been the target of lawsuit concerning the integrity of the ad agency, a government report detailing the failure of the campaign, and a study showing that the ads have a reverse effect. Despite all this, Congress is planning to spend $120 million on the program in fiscal 2007.

The federal government’s war on drugs includes tracking down and persecuting patients using medicinal marijuana in states where it is legal. Even though numerous studies have challenged the assertion that marijuana is a gateway drug, the federal government’s obsession with marijuana use continues as the problems with methamphetamine and cocaine worsen.

As it happens, Reps. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) could propose an amendment tomorrow to the fiscal 2007 Science-State-Justice-Commerce Appropriations Act. The amendment would prohibit the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) from using resources to pursue medical marijuana patients in states that have deemed it to be legal.

“The federal government must re-prioritize its drug policies,” Schatz concluded.

Wasted in the War on Drugs can be found here. It is part of CAGW’s series of Through the Looking Glass reports.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.

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Hydropnic_Budz

the US's drug laws are a freaking JOKE.




definately right, something must be done.

Hansje

The new role for the ONDCP should be to write policies that are guidelines for how states should regulate and tax marijuana. That way they'd be finding a way to bring in revenue as opposed to throwing it down a bottomless pit. They should play against the DEA's policy of not allowing any other organization except for the University of Mississippi to grow it in the States. These folks are capitalists. They're conservatives, and I always thought that conservatives are for competition, so they should be for competition in government-allowed growing of cannabis in the U.S. They should allow the other intellectuals from other research campuses to use what they cultivate for research, and the ONDCP should accept regulation plans from them, since they, the bureaucrats, are incapable of higher order thinking skills. Then the professors, medical doctors, and interested parties could write the policy for the ONDCP to rubber stamp or synthesize different aspects from the different regulation plans submitted to develop their guidelines.

Maybe some think tank ought to just find out ONDCP format and simply write the regulation policy, and give it to Congress and ONDCP at the same time. That way the ONDCP will look like a bunch of lazy bureaucrats, and the Congress could get on them about getting that marijuana tax revenue to pay down the debt from the Iraq war.