USA: Counter Drugs Strategy Announced

That target was ambitious and never looked likely to be met. However, in some respects, it is seemingly doing well: the goal of reducing current use by 10 percent among 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, as measured by the Monitoring the Future survey, is well on the way to being met (with reductions of 11.1, 8.4, and 1.2 percent respectively).

A cynical view would say that there are likely to be fewer younger abusers therefore a small number of those saying "no" will have a significant impact on the figures. Those with children in secondary school know that the risks are present throughout school but increase with age.

This year, the focus is on disrupting the drugs trade by greater action against money laundering but also making drugs more expensive (as a result of better policing) and the quality uncertain (expected to be the result of disrupting supply).

The first priority is one that is long overdue and obvious: emphasising in the family that drugs are a bad thing and should be avoided by all age groups.

However, since the 1960s, children have countered this argument with the not unreasonable "you give up cigarettes and alcohol and I'll give up my drugs." Simply saying "mine are legal and yours are not" does not cut it, especially as alcohol is legal in much of the USA mainly as a result of a campaign of mass disobedience that made prohibition unworkable.

It is for this reason that comments such as "Americans must set norms that reaffirm the values of responsibility and good citizenship while dismissing the notion that drug use is consistent with individual freedom" (John Walters, Director ONDCP - the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy) sounds so banal to many drug users.

For a Republican President, Bush is becoming surprisingly keen on the buzz words and qangos favoured by the left: this time he is to create "Parents (sic) Drug Corps." And he wants to give them USD5 million.

For a tax cutting President, Bush seems to be wheeling out the spending proposals at an ever increasing rate - and this announcement is no different: in addition to Parents['] Drug Corps' USD5 million, the Andean Counter-Drug Initiative (USD731 million to be applied in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Venezuela); increase in funding for the expanded Drug-Free Communities Support Programme (USD10 million), student drug testing (USD8 million); The total is an USD11,700 million budget for implementation of the National Drug Control Strategy.

The National Drug Control Strategy advocates a multi-agency list to be called the "Consolidated Priority Organization (sic) Targeting."

No doubt someone is having a private chuckle at the acronym: "C" for cocaine and "POT" for Marijuana.

It will probably become semi officially known as the "kingpin" list. However, the USA is awash with lists, many of which are entirely or substantially duplicated. They need to take rationalise the lists and to create manageable data from them.