War on drugs costs nearly $24 billion
Washington (AP 12/2/93)

Government agencies nationwide spent nearly $24 billion to fight the war on drugs in 1991, with most of the money going to criminal justice efforts, the federal anti-drug office says.

Nearly four-fifths of the $15.9 billion spent by state and local governments was devoted to criminal justice activities such as incarcerating prisoners and paying for police, says the report sponsored by the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

That same year, the federal government spent $11 billion to combat illicit drugs, with $3.2 billion of it given to state and local governments, the report said Wednesday.

The $15.9 billion spent by state and local governments included the federal grant money, so the total federal, state and local government spending to fight drugs was $23.7 billion in 1991, the most recent year for which figures were available.

"The report demonstrates, in no uncertain terms, that state and local governments continue to play a leading role in our national drug control strategy," federal drug policy director Lee Brown said on releasing the report at a conference of state and local drug directors.

The biggest single cost to state & local governments was $6.8 billion for corrections - jails & prisons. Next was police at $4.2 billion, health & hospitals at $2.8 billion and judicial & legal services at $1.5 billion.

Criminal justice costs totaled $12.6 billion, or 79% of the money spent on anti-drug activities. The other 21% was for rehabilitation and education.

The figures understated drug prevention and rehabilitation costs because the U.S. Census Bureau, which gathered and tabulated the data, did not include information from independent school districts or special district governments, including those that cover many hospitals, the report said.

The federal anti-drug budget has hovered near a 70-30 breakdown for the past 4 years - 70% for criminal justice efforts and 30% for rehabilitation & education. Critics have said it should be closer to 50, with a far greater emphasis on prevention and treatment.

Brown has refused to say what breakdown he would seek for fiscal 1995, but he wrote in the introduction to the report that the administration's drug control program will focus on reducing the demand for drugs.

Peter Reuter of the Rand Corp. cautioned that anti-drug budgets depend largely on guesswork, with agencies managing only a rough estimate of how much of their workload concerns drug-related matters.

"The federal drug budget is a very questionable document on its face" because of such problems, he said. State and local governments, meanwhile, "are really driven by local politics where the demand is that the police do something about drugs." Such pressures can also skew the figures, he said.

The report found that state and local spending rose almost 13% from fiscal year 1990 to 1991, but still amounted to only 1.5% of their total expenditures.