[Pharmwaste] Some say government's new strategy to fight drug addiction needs more funding

DeBiasi, Deborah (DEQ) Deborah.DeBiasi at deq.virginia.gov
Mon May 24 11:11:13 EDT 2010


It would seem that this would be a good time for the federal government
to address drug take backs, to keep those items from being part of the
problem... yet no mention so far.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/23/AR201005
2304010.html?wpisrc=nl_fed

Some say government's new strategy to fight drug addiction needs more
funding
By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 24, 2010; A17 
For the first time, the federal government has set a goal of reducing
diseases and deaths caused by drug addiction, as well as the number of
American teenagers and adults who use illegal substances. 
The surgeon general will produce a report to try to focus attention on
the escalating abuse of legal but dangerous prescription drugs. And
federal officials are urging family doctors and public clinics to help
detect addictions early by paying closer attention to whether their
patients use illicit drugs. 
Such emphases, part of the maiden National Drug Control Strategy to
emerge from the Obama administration, set a different tone from its
predecessors under the Bush administration, which focused more heavily
on slowing the flow of illegal drugs into the United States. But in the
two weeks since the White House issued the 117-page strategy, a growing
chorus of drug-policy specialists has begun to complain that President
Obama <http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/Barack_Obama>  and his aides
are not putting enough money behind their efforts to reconfigure the
nation's drug-fighting approach. 
"We have a great strategy and not a lot of means to implement it," said
John Carnavale, a drug-policy consultant who used to work for the
government and wrote earlier versions of the national drug-control
strategy for three previous presidents in the 1980s and '90s. "That's
our worry." 
Overall, the White House has asked Congress to increase spending next
year by 3.5 percent on the broad spectrum of drug-control activities --
from curbing drugged driving and expanding drug courts to subsidizing
opium and coca farmers in other countries to switch to legal crops. That
increase is less than the 4.1 percent increase that President George W.
Bush <http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/George_W._Bush>  sought to
combat drug abuse in 2002, the year his administration developed its
first national drug-control strategy. 
Moreover, even drug-policy experts who like the new plan's tone say they
are disappointed that about two-thirds -- about the same proportion as
under Bush -- of the $15.5 billion proposed for drug control in 2011
would be used to try to cut the supply of illegal drugs rather than to
lessen people's desire for them. 
"The rhetoric is different but the money is essentially the same," said
Joseph A. Califano Jr., director of the National Center on Addiction and
Substance Abuse at Columbia University. 
In particular, Califano, who led the Department of Health, Education and
Welfare (now Health and Human Services), said the White House has not
devoted enough money to the National Institutes of Health's National
Institute on Drug Abuse to finance research into new medicines to treat
addictions. The administration has asked Congress to increase NIDA's
budget next year by $35 million to nearly $1.1 billion, but that would
leave the institute with $100 million less than it had last year,
according to budget figures in the drug-control plan. 
"There isn't a really whopping increase in the NIDA budget commensurate
with the fact we have learned so much about . . . how this stuff affects
the brain in ways we never knew," Califano said. 
The strategy is produced annually by the White House's Office of
National Control Policy, which was created in 1988. Obama last year
lowered the office's status, so its director no longer is part of the
president's Cabinet. 
The director, R. Gil Kerlikowske
<http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/Gil_Kerlikowske> , said the strategy
represents a new approach that was informed by his extensive travels,
collecting advice around the country in the past year. He noted that the
president has requested a 13 percent increase for drug-prevention
efforts, which is greater than the budget proposes for other aspects of
drug control, such as law enforcement or trying to block drugs from
entering the country. 
Beyond the specific federal funding, Kerlikowske said, the new strategy
envisions that federal money will be leveraged in various ways. For
instance, he said, the plan would pay for experiments in which a network
of communities would try to apply the best research evidence to prevent
teenagers from starting to use drugs. And it calls for NIH's drug-abuse
institute to give medical schools information for use in training
primary care physicians and other health-care professionals to screen
and treat patients for drug addictions. 
In addition, Kerlikowske said, the law Congress passed this spring to
overhaul the health-care system has the potential to make drug treatment
more accessible, because millions of Americans with drug addictions are
now uninsured. The law is designed to expand, in a few years, the number
of people covered by either Medicaid or private health plans sponsored
by new state insurance marketplaces. Substance abuse treatment must be
available through both kinds of insurance. 
More fundamentally, Kerlikowske said, "I reject the whole argument" that
drug-fighting money can be thought of as two distinct parts. "The
country is really ready for a complex discussion about a complex
problem, and not a bumper sticker answer about supply versus demand." 


Deborah L. DeBiasi 
Email:   Deborah.DeBiasi at deq.virginia.gov (NEW!)
WEB site address:  www.deq.virginia.gov 
Virginia Department of Environmental Quality 
Office of Water Permit and Compliance Programs 
Industrial Pretreatment/Whole Effluent Toxicity (WET) Program 
PPCPs, EDCs, and Microconstituents
www.deq.virginia.gov/vpdes/microconstituents.html 
Mail:          P.O. Box 1105, Richmond, VA  23218 
Location:  629 E. Main Street, Richmond, VA  23219 
PH:         804-698-4028 
FAX:      804-698-4032 


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.dep.state.fl.us/pipermail/pharmwaste/attachments/20100524/b474b154/attachment.htm


More information about the Pharmwaste mailing list