Drug Control

The three agencies responsible for intercepting drugs en route to the United States--the Defense Department, the U.S. Customs Service, and the U.S. Coast Guard--each identify their own requirements and establish their own acquisition plans for drug detection and monitoring equipment. No umbrella organization routinely oversees acquisitions to ensure that they respond to valid needs and that wasteful duplication is avoided. Interagency coordination has been a major focus of interdiction efforts, but the emphasis to date has been on coordinating operations, not acquisitions. Although the Office of National Drug Control Policy oversees budget requests and coordinates operations of the interdiction agencies, a similar process has not been established to routinely oversee and coordinate acquisition of detection and monitoring equipment.

GAO found that: (1) each agency determines its own needs and acquisition plans for drug detection and monitoring equipment; (2) no agency routinely oversees or coordinates acquisitions to ensure that acquisitions are justified and nonduplicative; (3) the National Guard and the Coast Guard both acquired aircraft for which they had no valid requirements; (4) the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) presently reviews and certifies each agency's annual budget request, thus verifying that planned programs meet requirements of the National Drug Control Strategy; and (5) ONDCP already coordinates the agencies' operations through interagency coordinating committees and the National Counter-drug Planning Process.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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