The black hole (better known as the “war on drugs”)
on April 10th, 2006 at 12:01 amCongress Not Seeing Drug War Waste
Friday, March 24, 2006
By: Courtney Mickman
The White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) was established in 1988 to develop and coordinate policies and objectives to decrease illegal drug use, manufacturing, trafficking, drug-related crime and violence, and drug-related health consequences in the United States. In May 2005, CAGW released Up in Smoke: ONDCP’s Wasted Efforts in the War on Drugs.
A core program of the ONDCP is the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign (“Campaignâ€Â), which was created to, “educate and enable youth to reject illegal drugs, especially marijuana and inhalants.†The Campaign has wasted more than $2 billion over five years on unsuccessful propaganda campaigns that have violated federal advertising laws.
In September 1998, a health survey company, Westat Inc., was competitively awarded a grant by the National Institute on Drug Abuse to conduct a “science-based evaluation†of the Campaign. Westat concluded that no significant changes in drug use among America’s youth have occurred that can solely be accredited to ONDCP. Westat reiterated this lack of impact by the Campaign in December 2003, stating, “[t]here is little evidence of direct favorable Campaign effects on youth, either for the Marijuana Initiative period or for the Campaign as whole.†Additionally, the report showed that the number of American youths that did not intend on trying marijuana was reduced by only 0.6 percent, going from 87.5 percent in 2000 to 86.9 percent in 2003. (more…)
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