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The Drug War's Cooked Books / Artikel mises.org, engl.

verfasst von - ELLI -, 04.03.2003, 19:16

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The Drug War's Cooked Books
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by
Paul Armentano

[Posted March 4, 2003]

 


[img][/img] Numbers
never lie. Or do they? With government, it's simply a matter of who's keeping
the books. Take America's so-called war on drugs, for instance. Last year,
Congress earmarked nearly $19 billion—nearly twice what it spent on military
operations in Afghanistan—to enforce U.S. drug laws.

This year's totals, however, are remarkably different. According to the White
House's 2003"National Drug Control Strategy," released in February,
the Bush Administration will now only spend some $11.2 billion fighting drugs! 

How can this be? Is some part of government actually shrinking? On closer
inspection, it's clear that this year's supposed belt-tightening is only
illusory. Thanks to new Enron-styled accounting procedures initiated by the
White House, America's drug war costs a lot less than it used to—at least on
paper.



In a little publicized announcement last year, officials
from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (a.k.a. the Drug
Czar's office) revealed that they had developed a"new methodology"
for reporting the federal drug budget—which had grown from less than $2
billion annually in 1982 to $18.8 billion last year. Under this scheme, only
funding for agencies involved in so-called"primary" drug war
activities is now tabulated in the national anti-drug budget. As a result,
more than two-thirds of the agencies included in past years' budgets are
conspicuously missing from this year's financial totals!

By far the largest and most startling financial manipulations are within the
Department of Justice (DOJ), which reported a reduction of more than $5.5
billion dollars in drug-war related expenses between 2002 and 2003. Remarkably,
the majority of costs removed are those associated with the incarceration and
care of federal drug prisoners! 

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How so? "Based
on the criterion that they are associated with the secondary consequences of
the government's primary drug law enforcement and investigation activities,"
such expenses will no longer be tabulated in the federal drug budget, the
ONDCP explained.

Other DOJ departments and activities related to drug law enforcement,
investigation and prosecution are also deceptively missing from this year's
tally. For example, annual funding for INTERPOL, the U.S. Marshals Service,
the U.S. Attorney's office, the federal"asset forfeiture fund," and
community policing are noticeably absent.

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Millions
of dollars in annual funding for additional agencies previously tabulated in
the national drug war budget, such as the Department of Education, have been
reduced without explanation, while others—including the Department of
Transportation ($594 million in 2002), Department of Interior ($39 million in
2002), and the Department of Agriculture ($29 million)—have been expunged
from the books all together.

To make matters even more confusing, the 2003"National Drug Control
Strategy" makes virtually no reference to the White House's new
accounting procedures, and manipulates past years' budgets to retroactively
reflect the Feds' latest"fuzzy math". As a result, the White House
is now claiming that America's war on drugs has never cost more than $11
billion per year, even though the office itself previously recorded surpassing
that spending milestone in 1991!  It's the sort of deception that would
make George Orwell cringe.

If you're searching for the motivation behind the Drug Czar's deceptive
accounting, look no further than the polls. In recent years, nationwide
surveys have consistently shown that the majority of Americans believe the
drug war's current"do drugs, do time" approach to be ineffective,
fiscally costly, and doomed to fail.

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When
given the alternative, nearly seven out of ten Americans say they support
treatment for convicted drug users rather than incarceration. Nevertheless,
despite the public's sentiment, the percentage of federal dollars dedicated to
drug treatment and education programs has consistently been minuscule compared
to those earmarked for enforcement and interdiction.

Until now.

At the same time the White House is concealing billions in drug war related
prison and interdiction costs. Investigations of this year's budget by the
think-tanks Common Sense for Drug Policy and the Drug Policy Alliance reveal
that the Drug Czar's office is inflating their expenditures on drug treatment
by including hundreds of millions of dollars in alcohol treatment spending,
which by law is specifically excluded from the ONDCP's scope of activities.

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As a
result, the ONDCP claims that this year's budget allots nearly equal amounts
on drug treatment as it does drug enforcement—up dramatically from past
years' ratios which favored enforcement nearly two to one—despite making no
substantive spending changes.

Ultimately, the goal of all this smoke and mirrors is to create the perception
of a kinder, gentler, and less expensive drug war—qualities favored by the
American public but seldom (if ever) delivered by federal drug policy. Of
course, beneath the clouds it's still business as usual; the only question is:
Who's going to report the Feds to the SEC?




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Paul
Armentano is a senior policy analyst for The NORML Foundation in Washington,
DC, a think-tank which lobbies for the liberalization of marijuana laws.
Send him MAIL.

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