ONDCP: I'm not listening!

For the second time in as many years, a report has been issued by the Washington D.C.-based think tank Citizens Against Government Waste that casts another light on the statistics the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)keeps feeding us. Their report suggests that ONDCP has wasted billions of taxpayers' dollars since its formation in 1988 on ineffective and counter-productive policies that fail to meet the agency's core objectives. According to the report, "The federal government and the ONDCP have chosen to ignore evidence suggesting that the methods being used in the war on drugs are not effective...the federal government has become so obsessed with marijuana use that it is spending money unwisely."

In particular, this year's report spotlights the huge spending and counterproductiveness of both the ONDCP's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign and the Justice Department's decision to prosecute medicinal cannabis patients and their caregivers. The report states that "The government has thrown more than $1 billion at a campaign that has only succeeded in increasing the number of teenage marijuana users," since reviews of the media campaign have found that it often has the opposite effect, and encourages, rather than discourages, cannabis use among young viewers. The Justice Department's campaign was talked about in similarly useless terms, saying "It is useless to throw millions of dollars into attacking patients that are simply trying to find the most effectual medicine possible. ... [S]tates must be given the right to create and enforce these [medical marijuana] laws within their jurisdiction." This report comes in the wake of yet another Congressional decision (259-163) to continue punishing medicinal marijuana patients even when they are authorized to cultivate and use the drug within their own state laws.

The CAGW report also rebukes the "Gateway Theory" yet again, saying policies aimed specifically at reducing marijuana availability are unlikely to make a dent in the use and availability of harder drugs. If all kids ever hear about is marijuana, will they know how to react when they are offered something else? If the ONDCP keeps creating ads that make kids more likely to use marijuana, aren't they just keeping themselves in work?

Aha, maybe that's it. They know, deep down, that the whole taxation-regulation of drugs issue makes sense. We've had whole committees of economists, long-term studies, and years and years of paperwork going back to the Nixon administration to support taxation and regulation, particularly of marijuana. But they're not going to hear it, because if there's no one to prosecute and fight, they've got nothing to do. It keeps them working to be obsessed with eradicating a drug that they probably admit between closed doors that they can't. If their ads create more drug users, cool. More people to bust.

Maybe they should be thinking about a realistic policy to address drug use among kids, instead of sending more people to jail...it's not working. Still, they keep standing there firmly like a kid with his hands over his ears, shouting, "La la la la....I'm not hearing this!"