Above the Influence of Wasteful Spending
Want to see the White House drug czar's position completely eliminated? Last month, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) introduced an amendment to the ONDCP Reauthorization Act (HR 2829) that would have done exactly that.
Rep. Paul's amendment would have eliminated the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), the home of the drug czar, over the next five years. While the amendment didn't pass, it received 85 "yes" votes (including 47 from Republicans). This is an encouraging development in MPP's ongoing campaign to fight funding for the ONDCP's wasteful, misleading, and ineffective anti-marijuana campaigns.
You've probably seen the ads funded by ONCDP's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, which feature teenagers under the influence of marijuana committing violent crimes. These ads have featured stoned teenagers driving over a little girl on a bicycle, one stoned teenager shooting another in his parents' den, another stoned teenager date-raping another, and a teenager who gets pregnant because she smoked marijuana. Another ad claimed that people who buy marijuana are funding terrorism.
Not only are the ads ineffective at stopping teen marijuana use, but the outrageous messages can even sometimes cause a boomerang effect. A 2003 independent report commissioned by the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported that "there is no evidence yet consistent with a desirable effect of the Campaign on youth," while teens who saw the ads most often "tended to move more markedly in a 'pro-drug' direction" in their attitudes over time. The full report is available at www.nida.nih.gov.
And a 2002 White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) review of more than 200 federal programs concluded that the Media Campaign "has not demonstrated the results sought and does not yet have adequate performance measures and related goals. The OMB recommended actions include ... making fiscal year 2005 funding contingent upon improved results." (Despite this, the ONDCP reauthorization bill, which included funds set aside for the Media Campaign, passed the House by a vote of 399 to 5 on March 9, 2006.)
Fortunately, the growing awareness of how misleading and ineffective ONDCP's anti-marijuana ads are is affecting the drug czar's bottom line. MPP has successfully lobbied to reduce funding for the Media Campaign to a record low of $100 million for fiscal year 2006. Since 2002, MPP's efforts to cut the program have helped achieve a reduction of $80 million (from $180 million in 2002 to $100 million in 2006) -- 44% over five years.
MPP's efforts to eliminate the Media Campaign received an unexpected boost in September of last year, when the U.S. House of Representatives' conservative Republican Study Committee (which includes nearly half of all House Republicans) recommended eliminating the Media Campaign entirely to help offset the costs of Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts. House Republicans were not alone in criticizing the program: The Senate Appropriations Committee noted that it “continues to be concerned about the direction and efficacy of the Media Campaign as it is currently structured.”
Rep. Paul's March amendment to phase out the drug czar's office altogether wasn't the first attempt to do so. In 2003, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) proposed a similar amendment to eradicate the drug czar's office. Although neither of these amendments passed, MPP has gained powerful allies in the fight against the ONDCP's wasteful spending. We'll continue pushing in Congress until the ads, and the ONDCP, are eradicated altogether.
