McCaffrey's Approach
The other main criticism of current policy is that federal support of drug-prevention and treatment programs is out of balance. “Obviously, we need law enforcement because a lot of drug users are in the criminal-justice system,” says Gale Saler, deputy executive director of Second Genesis. “But the amounts we're spending on drug efforts seem way out of kilter when you consider the effectiveness of programs where most of the money is spent. It we could snap our fingers and all of a sudden stop all drugs at the border, we'd still have a drug problem in this country. We grow our own marijuana, and we produce methamphetamine and pharmaceutical drugs. People with this disease are going to use something until they get high. We need to focus on addiction.”
McCaffrey defends the administration's budget priorities. “Drug-treatment dollars have gone up by 34 percent over five budget years,” he says. “That's unarguable.”
In addition, McCaffrey says the administration has helped make drug treatment available by providing substance-abuse and mental-health coverage to federal workers, to take effect in October. “If you're an oncology patient and have an associated nutrition problem, the hospital will treat you as a holistic challenge,” he says. “We want the same thing for drug addiction and mental health. By the way, we'll save a lot of money if we do that. If we treat your substance-abuse problem, we won't then subsequently have to treat you for a quarter-of-a-million-dollar problem because you're HIV-infected or treat you as a traffic-accident victim.”