Government Spending for Drug Control Not Enough
The federal government has finally decided it needs to take action in reducing disease and death in association with drug addiction. According to a Washington Post report, this is the first time the government has launched such an initiative that includes a focus on reducing the number of American teenagers and adults who use illegal substances.
The plan includes an anticipated report by the surgeon general that will focus attention on the increasing abuse on legal – albeit dangerous – prescription drugs. Federal officials are urging doctors and public clinics to help detect addictions early by paying closer attention to the habits of patients.
Part of the National Drug Control Strategy, states such emphases comes from the Obama administration. While it is said to more heavily focus on the flow of illegal drugs into the country, drug-policy specialists complain that the administration is not putting enough money behind their efforts to reconfigure the fight in the war on drugs.
The White House is requesting that Congress increase spending next year by 3.5 percent on the broad spectrum of drug-control activities, including drugged driving, expanding drug courts and subsidizing opium and coca farmers in other countries.
While a number of drug-policy experts like the tone of the new plan, they are still disappointed that roughly two-thirds of the $15.5 billion proposed for drug control in 2011 would be used to try to cut the supply of illegal drugs rather than to lesson the desire for them in users.
Joseph A. Califano Jr., director of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University said the White House has not devoted enough money to the National Institute of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse to finance research into new medicines to treat addictions.
"There isn't a really whopping increase in the NIDA budget commensurate with the fact we have learned so much about . . . how this stuff affects the brain in ways we never knew," Califano said in the Washington Post.
