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<TITLE>Some say government's new strategy to fight drug addiction needs more funding</TITLE>
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<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000080" FACE="Times New Roman">It would seem that this would be a good time for the federal government to address</FONT> <FONT COLOR="#000080" FACE="Times New Roman">drug take backs, to keep those items from being part of the problem</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT COLOR="#000080" FACE="Times New Roman">...</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000080" FACE="Times New Roman"> y</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000080" FACE="Times New Roman">et no mention so far.</FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN><A HREF="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/23/AR2010052304010.html?wpisrc=nl_fed"><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/23/AR2010052304010.html?wpisrc=nl_fed</FONT></U></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></A><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><B></B></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><B><FONT SIZE=5 FACE="Times New Roman">Some say government's new strategy to fight drug addiction needs more funding</FONT></B></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">By Amy Goldstein<BR>
Washington Post Staff Writer<BR>
Monday, May 24, 2010; A17</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> </SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">For the first time, the federal government has set a goal of reducing</FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">diseases and deaths caused by drug addiction, as well as the number of American teenagers and adults who use illegal substances. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The surgeon general will produce a report to try to focus attention on the escalating abuse of legal but dangerous prescriptio</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">n 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. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Such emphases, part of the maiden National Drug Control Strategy to emerge</FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">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</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">strategy, a growing chorus of drug-policy specialists has begun to complain that</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> </SPAN><A HREF="http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/Barack_Obama"><SPAN LANG="en-us"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman">President Obama</FONT></U></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></A><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"> and his aides are not putting enough money behind</FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">their efforts to reconfigure the nation's drug-fighting approach. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">"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 nation</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">al drug-control strategy for three previous presidents in the 1980s and '90s. "That's our worry." </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">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 dr</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">ugged 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</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> </SPAN><A HREF="http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/George_W._Bush"><SPAN LANG="en-us"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman">George W. Bush</FONT></U></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></A><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"> sought to combat drug abuse in 2002, the year his administration developed its first national drug-control strategy. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Moreover, even drug-policy experts who like the new plan's tone say they are disappointed that about two-thirds -- ab</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">out 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. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">"The rhetoric is different but the money is essentially</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"> the same," said Joseph A. Califano Jr., director of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">In particular, Califano, who led the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (now Health and Human Services), said the Wh</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">ite 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 mil</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">l</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">ion 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. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">"There isn't a really whopping increase in the NIDA budget commensurate with the fact we hav</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">e learned so much about . . . how this stuff affects the brain in ways we never knew," Califano said. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">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</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"> status, so its director no longer is part of the president's Cabinet. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The director, R.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> </SPAN><A HREF="http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/Gil_Kerlikowske"><SPAN LANG="en-us"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman">Gil Kerlikowske</FONT></U></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></A><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">, said the strategy represents a new approach that was informed by his extensiv</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">e 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 enforce</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">m</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">ent or trying to block drugs from entering the country. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">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 wh</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">ich 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 oth</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">e</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">r health-care professionals to screen and treat patients for drug addictions. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">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</FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">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 av</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">a</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">ilable through both kinds of insurance. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">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, an</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">d not a bumper sticker answer about supply versus demand.</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">" </FONT></SPAN></P>
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