III. Goals, Objectives, Targets, andPerformance Measures of Effectiveness
Introduction
his chapter explains the logic behind the goals that orient the national effort to reduce drug abuse and its consequences in the United States over the next five years. These five goals are succinct statements of the strategic aims of our national drug control policy: to prevent drug abuse (goal 1); to reduce the social harms associated with drug abuse (goals 2 and 3); to stop illegal drugs from entering the United States (goal 4); and to diminish illegal drug production (goal 5). Together, these goals define the end states of the Strategy. The five goals are comprehensive in that they cover the three broad aspects of drug control: demand reduction, supply reduction, and adverse consequences of drug abuse and trafficking. In addition, these goals are national in that they state what we must collectively achieve; they are not markers for solely a federal effort. Finally, these goals are research-based, quantifiable, and long-range.
This chapter presents objectives that support each of the Strategy's five overarching goals. The thirty-one objectives are more narrowly focused than the broader goals and stipulate the specific ways in which the five strategic goals will be attained. Under the prevention goal (goal 1), for example, nine supporting objectives articulate the specific ways that illegal drug use and underage consumption of alcohol and tobacco products will be discouraged. Programmatic initiatives will be tied directly to one or more of these objectives. The national youth anti-drug media campaign, for example, supports objective 2 ("pursue a vigorous advertising and public communications program") and objective 7 ("create partnerships with the media, entertainment industry, and professional sports organizations") of goal 1.
This chapter also presents targets that will be used to measure progress toward the envisioned end-state of the Strategy: the reduction of illegal drug use and availability by 50 percent and the reduction of their health and social consequences by at least twenty-five percent. ONDCP -- in broad consultation with Congress, national drug control program agencies, state and local officials, and private citizens and organizations with experience in demand and supply reduction -- developed in 1998 a performance measures of effectiveness (PME) system that links outcomes, programs, and resources.1 The nucleus of the PME system consists of twelve "impact targets" that define results to be achieved by the Strategy's five goals. Eighty-five supporting measures further delineate mid- and long-term targets for the Strategy's thirty-one objectives.
