The US drug war is failing on multiple fronts, government watchdog says

By Christopher Ingraham

Federal drug control efforts have failed to meet any goals to curb illegal drug use and related deaths set five years ago, new testimony from the Government Accountability Office concludes.

In 2010, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), the White House office that oversees all drug control spending, set a number of ambitious goals to guide drug policy during the Obama administration. The agency planned 10 percent to 15 percent reductions in monthly drug use among teenagers and adults, overall chronic drug use, drug-induced death and disease, and drugged driving rates.

This year is the deadline for achieving these targeted reductions. And while official data for this year won't be available for some time, the latest available data strongly suggest that none of these goals will be achieved this year, according to the GAO and the ONDCP. On a number of them, no progress has been made. On several, the indicators have gotten worse. Overall, the GAO found that the federal government has only made progress on one of the goals-- the overall rate of teen drug use.

Of most concern from a policy perspective is the lack of progress on reducing drug-related deaths. The ONDCP set a goal of reducing drug-related deaths from 39,147 in 2009 to 33,275 this year. But in 2013, the latest year for which numbers are available, 46,471 people died due to drugs -- a nearly 20 percent increase over the baseline.

The ONDCP notes that if you take marijuana use rates out of the equation, the picture on several of the drug measures looks much better. "The apparent lack of progress on several other measures is entirely attributable to the increase in marijuana use in recent years," ONDCP press secretary Mario Moreno Zepeda said in an email. "For example, the 2015 reduction targets for past 30 day use of illicit drugs among youth (12 to 17 years old) and young adults (18 to 25 years old) would have been met by 2014 if marijuana was excluded."

Federal data show that since 2009, past-month marijuana use increased among young adults, and essentially stayed flat among teens.

But drug reform advocates aren't surprised at what the GAO describes as an overall lack of progress. "The government continues to fail in its drug policy goals because it still places too much emphasis on enforcement, rather than treating drug use as a public health issue," Michael Collins of the Drug Policy Alliance said in an email. "The drug control budget still dedicates over $2 billion annually to the DEA -- a failed and flawed agency -- while harm reduction and treatment are woefully underfunded. Unless this changes, the government will continue to fall short in its aims."

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