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National Drug Control Strategy
Update 2003
February 2003
Introduction
Last year’s National Drug Control Strategy
opened on an unsettling note. Just-released data
from the 2000–2001 school year had confirmed
the continuation of a trend, begun in the early
1990s, of near-record levels of drug use among
young people. More than half of American
high school seniors had tried illegal drugs at least
once by graduation, while a quarter of seniors
were regular users. An unacceptably high
percentage were regular users of drugs such as
marijuana, Ecstasy, and hallucinogens such as
LSD. As was the case in the 1960s and 1970s,
drug use had once again become all too accepted
by our young people.
In this year’s Strategy, by contrast, we are pleased
to report that after a long upward trajectory,
teen drug use is once again headed in the right
direction—down. In fact, data from the University
of Michigan’s most recent Monitoring the Future
survey show the first significant downturn in
youth drug use in nearly a decade, with reductions
in drug use noted among 8th, 10th, and 12th
graders, and levels of use for some drugs that are
lower than they have been in almost three
decades. Such comprehensive declines are
remarkably rare; they carry the hopeful suggestion
that America has, again, begun to work effectively
to reduce the drug problem.
Among the survey’s findings:
- The percentages of 8th and 10th graders
using “any illicit drug” were at their lowest
levels since 1993 and 1995, respectively.
- Among 10th graders, marijuana use in the past
year and past month decreased, as did daily
use in the past month. Past-year marijuana
use among 8th graders has dropped to 14.6 percent—its lowest level since 1994.
- With a single exception (past-month, or
“current,” use by 12th graders), the use of
illegal drugs other than marijuana fell for all
three grades surveyed and for all three
prevalence periods (lifetime, annual, and past
month), although not all changes reached
statistical significance.
- Ecstasy use was down in all three grades.
Ecstasy use in the past year and past month
decreased significantly among 10th graders
from 2001 to 2002. Past-year and lifetime rates
were below those for 2000 in all three grades.
- Lifetime and past-year LSD use decreased
significantly among 8th, 10th, and 12th
graders, and past-month use declined among
10th and 12th graders. Past-year and past-month LSD use by 12th graders reached
its lowest point in the 28-year history of the survey.
Nor are these hopeful trends confined to a single
survey. The Monitoring the Future data is
reinforced by other studies, including the annual
survey of the Parents’ Resource Institute for Drug
Education (PRIDE), which measures drug use
among junior high and high school students. The
simultaneous decline of teen drinking and smoking
(another finding of the Monitoring the Future
survey) shows that students are not substituting
one substance for another, as some had predicted,
but rather avoiding (and in some cases having
difficulty obtaining) intoxicants of all types.
A Balanced Strategy
We have achieved the important goal of
getting drug use by our young people moving
downward. We now must secure the equally
important objective of sustaining, accelerating,
and broadening that downward movement.
This time we intend to make the problem
much smaller and build the structures that
will keep it from growing larger in the future.
Maintaining our momentum will require a sustained focus on all aspects of drug
control, as well as a balanced strategy for
approaching the problem. With its three
priorities and clarity of purpose, this
document offers both.
With regard to Priority I of the Strategy,
Stopping Drug Use Before It Starts, this
document recognizes that it is critical to teach
young people how to avoid drug use because of
the damage drugs can inflict on their health and
on their future. Our children must learn from an
early age that avoiding drug use is a lifelong
responsibility. Where parents and educators deem
appropriate, we should use programs such as
student drug testing. Testing programs work
because they reflect an understanding of teen
motivations, giving students an easy way to say “no” at an age when peer pressure is at its peak.
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Figure 1: Past-Month Use of Any Illicit Drug by Eighth, Tenth, and Twelfth Graders
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Source: Monitoring the Future (2002)
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Despite our substantial drug prevention efforts,
some 16 million Americans still use drugs on a current basis, and roughly six million meet the
clinical criteria for needing drug treatment. Yet the
overwhelming majority of users in need of drug
treatment fail to recognize it—a fact that would not
come as a surprise to those with a loved one who
has battled drug dependency. Priority II of the
Strategy, Healing America’s Drug Users, emphasizes
the crucial need for family, friends, and people with
shared experiences to intercede with and support
those fighting to overcome substance abuse. Drug
users also need the support of institutions and the
people who run them—employers, law enforcement
agencies, faith communities, and health care
providers, among others—to help identify them as
drug users and direct those who need it into drug
treatment. To expand access to substance abuse
treatment, this Strategy proposes a new voucher
program, funded with $600 million over three years,
that will encourage accountability in the treatment
system while making funds available on a
nondiscriminatory basis to all providers—including
programs run by faith-based organizations.
Priority III of the Strategy, Disrupting the Market,
addresses the drug trade as a business—one that
faces numerous and often overlooked obstacles
that may be used as pressure points. The drug
trade is not an unstoppable force of nature but
rather a profit-making enterprise where costs and
rewards exist in an equilibrium that can be
disrupted. Every action that makes the drug trade
more costly and less profitable is a step toward “breaking” the market. As the Strategy explains,
drug traffickers are in business to make money.
We intend to deny them that revenue.
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Figure 2: Past-Month Use of MDMA (Ecstasy) by Eighth, Tenth, and Twelfth Graders
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Source: Monitoring the Future (2002)
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Progress Toward
Two- and Five-Year Goals
The President’s National Drug Control Strategy,
transmitted to Congress in February 2002, had as its goal reducing past-month, or current,
use of illegal drugs in the 12- to 17-year-old age group by 10 percent over 2 years and 25
percent over 5 years. Similarly, the Strategy set
the goal of reducing current drug use among
adults (age 18 and up) by 10 percent over 2 years
and 25 percent over 5 years.
Progress toward youth goals was to have been
measured entirely from the baseline of the
National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, but
recent improvements to that survey have created
a discontinuity between the 2002 survey and
previous years’ data. Although changes to the
survey will permit more reliable estimates of
drug use in future years, they prevent comparisons
with use rates from the baseline year (2000).
Fortunately, there is another survey that measures
drug use among young people while preserving
continuity over time. As a result, the Strategy will measure progress toward the two- and fiveyear goals as follows: drug use by young people
will be measured at the 8th, 10th, and 12th grade
levels using the Monitoring the Future survey, with
the 2000–2001 school year as a baseline.
NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL STRATEGY GOALS
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Two-Year Goals: |
A 10-percent reduction in current use of
illegal drugs by 8th, 10th, and 12th graders.
A 10-percent reduction in current use of
illegal drugs by adults age 18 and older. |
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Five-Year Goals: | A 25-percent reduction in current use of
illegal drugs by 8th, 10th, and 12th graders.
A 25-percent reduction in current use of
illegal drugs by adults age 18 and older.
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Progress toward youth goals will be measured from the baseline established by the Monitoring the Future survey for
the 2000–2001 school year. Progress toward adult goals will be measured from the baseline of the 2002 National
Household Survey on Drug Abuse. All Strategy goals seek to reduce �current� use of �any illicit drug.� Use of alcohol
and tobacco products, although illegal for youths, is not measured in these estimates.
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Although only the first year of the two-year goal
period has elapsed, the goal of reducing current
use by 10 percent among 8th, 10th, and 12th
graders, as measured by Monitoring the Future, is
well on the way to being met (with reductions of 11.1, 8.4, and 1.2 percent, respectively). These
findings are comparable to those of the PRIDE
survey, which, using a different methodology and
measuring slightly different age groups, found
reductions of 14.3 percent for past-month drug
use by junior high school students and an 11.1
percent drop among high school students—over
the same one-year period. Either way, the observed
reductions are on track for meeting the Strategy’s
goal of a 10 percent reduction over two years.
Given the discontinuity problem, and with no
available substitute for measuring adult use ( Monitoring the Future focuses on teen use),
measuring the two- and five-year goals for
adults poses a different challenge. This Strategy
meets the challenge by measuring adult use from
the baseline of the improved and redesigned
2002 Household Survey.
The President’s
Management Agenda:
Integrating Budget
and Performance
Over the past year, the Administration has
continued to apply the principles of the
President’s management agenda to the National
Drug Control Program. Working with the Office
of Management and Budget (OMB), the Office
of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)
has implemented the budget restructuring
proposal outlined last year in the National Drug
Control Strategy. Additionally, all national drug control agencies have worked to enhance
information on program performance and
integrate this information into budget decisions.
The Administration is committed to continuing
this effort and integrating performance data
more closely with the new drug budget.
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Figure 3: The Federal Drug Control Budget 1988–2004—Constant Dollars
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* President�s Request
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As a result, the drug budget presented for fiscal
year 2004 reflects for the first time actual
resources committed to anti-drug efforts.
(See Figure 3 for a brief history of the drug
budget.) Rather than being based on estimates
derived after decisions were made, as was the
case in previous years, with few exceptions this
budget reflects actual dollars identified in the
congressional presentations of drug control
agencies that accompany the annual submission
of the President’s budget. Additionally, the
budget reflects only those expenditures aimed at
reducing drug use rather than, as in the past,
those associated with the consequences of drug
use. (The latter are reported periodically in The
Economic Costs of Drug Abuse in the United States.)
Now that the drug control budget has been
narrowed in scope and presented in terms of
actual expenditures, it will serve as a more
useful tool for policymakers. Resource allocation
will become part of the decision-making
process rather than information reported after
decisions are made.
Making wise allocation decisions requires that
policymakers have better performance data about
the programs supported by the budget. To that
end, in preparation for the development of the
President’s budget, ONDCP worked closely with
OMB to assess the results of selected drug control
programs that collectively comprise 32 percent of
the drug budget. The results of those assessments
are presented in the President’s budget.
As we work together to expand the coverage of
these assessments across the drug control budget,
we will develop a new framework for integrating
program results with the Strategy’s principal
goal—reducing drug use.
Progress toward reducing overall U.S. drug use
will be measured by monitoring key indicators
and targets that are tied to the Strategy’s three
priorities—Stopping Use Before it Starts,
Healing America’s Drug Users, and Disrupting
the Market. Each of these priority indicators
in turn will be supported by the goals of the
individual drug control programs.
Under the Government Performance and Results
Act, each drug control agency already presents a
strategic plan and annual performance plans and
reports. Over the coming year, ONDCP will work
with the agencies responsible for drug control
programs to ensure that measures of effectiveness
are in place and appropriate targets are set.
From the central goal of reducing drug use, all
planning will proceed to the priorities, and from
there to individual program plans. Program results
will be tracked in reverse order: as each program
accomplishes its objective, progress will be
reflected in the priorities and, ultimately, in the
central goal of reducing drug use. Where progress
is lacking, we will adjust the array of programs to
get back on track. Allocation decisions will be
made to support programs that work and those
that effectively support the Strategy.
The new drug budget and the results framework
that supports it will enhance accountability in government by integrating budget and
performance across the Federal Government.
Last Updated: May 7, 2003
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