Marijuana Policy Project

Washington, D.C. — In an unexpected move yesterday, a House subcommittee added language to the Office of National Drug Control Policy reauthorization bill allowing federal funding for anti-drug advertising to be used for partisan political activities.

Until now, the ONDCP authorization has included language barring the use of National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign funds for "partisan political purposes." New language, added by the House Government Reform Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources Subcommittee yesterday, creates an exemption from this ban when the ONDCP director is acting "to oppose an attempt to legalize the use" of any illegal drug. The measure authorizes spending of $1.02 billion for the ad campaign over the next five years.

"In plain English, the subcommittee has created a political slush fund with a billion dollars of our tax money," said Steve Fox, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C. "If this provision stands, it means that the drug czar can use our tax dollars to fund partisan political campaigns anytime he can justify it as 'opposing drug legalization.' Any administration of any party will have a blank check to run taxpayer-funded attack ads against their opponents, and all they have to do is claim they're opposing drug legalization."

The Media Campaign remains controversial for other reasons as well. An independent evaluation, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and released in January, 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 independent evaluation of ONDCP's ads is available at http://www.nida.nih.gov/DESPR/Westat/Westat2003/ExecSum.PDF.

In 2002, the White House Office of Management and Budget conducted a systematic review of more than 200 federal programs. OMB 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 recommendation and despite the fact that there is no evidence of improved results, the current bill moving through the House reauthorizes the Campaign not only for FY2005, but for fiscal years 2006-2008 as well.

With 12,000 members nationwide, the Marijuana Policy Project is the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the United States. MPP works to minimize the harm associated with marijuana — both the consumption of marijuana and the laws that are intended to prohibit such use. MPP believes that the greatest harm associated with marijuana is imprisonment. To this end, MPP focuses on removing criminal penalties for marijuana use, with a particular emphasis on making marijuana medically available to seriously ill people who have the approval of their doctors.

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