Washington, DC: Claims made by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) that America is making “progress” in the so-called ‘war on drugs’ are not based on evidence or measurable performance, according to an essay published this week by former ONDCP budget director John Carnevale.
Writing for the HuffingtonPost.com, Carnevale – who spent eleven years working in the Drug Czar’s office – states: “[T]he Office of National Drug Control Policy … claims that America has reached a turning point in the war on drugs. In reality, we have little reason to believe a significant change has occurred.”
He continues: “Though Congress created ONDCP to formulate research-driven and performance-based policy, assess and modify policy through performance measures, and give a precise accounting of the federal drug control budget, ONDCP fails at all of those tasks. … As a consequence, policy is now flying blind resulting in lost opportunities for more success.”
Full text of Carnevale’s essay, “The Failure of the Office of National Drug Control Policy,”
For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at (202) 483-5500.