NCJ Number
156670
Date Published
1993
Length
34 pages
Annotation
An effective drug control strategy should emphasize public health rather than law enforcement strategies, specifically shifting the Federal budget emphasis toward health-based treatment programs, integrating law enforcement and health strategies, providing funds for prison-based drug treatment and rehabilitation programs, supporting intensive supervised probation for drug offenders, and making AIDS prevention a top drug control priority.
Abstract
The strategy should also eliminate duplication in drug enforcement agencies, recognize the ineffectiveness of interdiction and eradication programs conducted by the military, and develop a drug control plan for the 21st Century. Drug policies are viewed as being in a state of transition, where there is an opportunity to choose compassion and effectiveness. The report contends that the law enforcement solution to the drug problem has been an expensive failure, that public health policies offer the best hope for the future, that the tone of drug policies should be changed from intolerance to assistance, and that public health officials should be in charge of drug control. The report recommends that criminal justice funding be used for public health drug control strategies and that abuses in the drug enforcement bureaucracy be curtailed. Endnotes and figures