Drug Control

Although the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has reported a drop in casual drug use, no indication exists that progress has been made on the second front of the drug war--the fight against hard-core drug use. ONDCP, if reauthorized, must do a better job of assessing progress being made under the national drug control strategies. Also, ONDCP and the federal drug control agencies need to cooperate more to develop, assess, and coordinate national drug control policy. In particular, ONDCP and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have had major disagreements over the collection of drug data, and ONDCP has threatened to withhold clearance of drug surveys to obtain HHS compliance with ONDCP requests--a move that GAO considers inappropriate. The three-tiered budget review and certification process envisioned by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 has proven impractical. Because of staff constraints and other factors, ONDCP has limited its reviews mainly to agency budgets and has only selectively certified program-level budgets. The Pentagon submits its drug budget to ONDCP but does not provide a breakdown of separate "agency" drug budgets, making budget comparisons among agencies difficult. Because of the continuing need for a central planning agency to lead and coordinate the nation's drug control efforts, GAO concludes that ONDCP should be reauthorized. GAO summarized this report in testimony before Congress; see: Drug Control: Reauthorization of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, by Henry R. Wray, Director of Administration of Justice Issues, before the Subcommittee on Legislation and National Security, House Committee on Government Operations. GAO/T-GGD-94-7, Oct. 5, 1993 (29 pages).

GAO found that: (1) although ONDCP has reported a steady decline in drug use among casual drug users, the number of frequent hard-core drug users has not declined, drugs remain readily available, and drug-related violence and adverse health consequences persist; (2) ONDCP cannot measure the effectiveness of the three major components of the national drug-control strategies because each component lacks performance indicators and specific information; (3) strengthening and centralizing performance indicators would promote more comprehensive decisionmaking over drug policies, budgets, and operations; (4) ONDCP and federal drug control agencies need to improve interagency relationships when developing, assessing, and coordinating the national drug control policy; (5) ONDCP and the Department of Health and Human Services need to resolve disagreements over the authority, collection, and use of drug data; (6) ONDCP limits its reviews to agency and departmental budgets and selectively certifies program-level budgets because staffing constraints have made the three-tiered drug budget certification process impractical; (7) ONDCP is unable to make adequate drug budget comparisons because Department of Defense (DOD) agencies are not required to submit individual drug budgets to ONDCP for preliminary review; and (8) ONDCP should be reauthorized, since there is a continuing need for a central planning agency to coordinate the nation's drug control efforts.

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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