Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part One The drug problem
- Introduction
- 1 Ideology and policy: A look at the National Drug Control Strategy
- 2 What is a drug? And other basic issues
- 3 Prohibitions and the lessons of history
- 4 The wrong question: Critical notes on the decriminalization debate
- Part Two The drug control policy process
- Appendix: Estimates of illicit drug use - a survey of methods
- References
- Index
1 - Ideology and policy: A look at the National Drug Control Strategy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part One The drug problem
- Introduction
- 1 Ideology and policy: A look at the National Drug Control Strategy
- 2 What is a drug? And other basic issues
- 3 Prohibitions and the lessons of history
- 4 The wrong question: Critical notes on the decriminalization debate
- Part Two The drug control policy process
- Appendix: Estimates of illicit drug use - a survey of methods
- References
- Index
Summary
The National Drug Control Strategy, published in September 1989, is not, in several respects, an ordinary government document. Rather, it is a government report that is meant to be read - it is only ninety pages long, excluding appendices, with a fourteen-page introduction personally written by then-“drug czar” William Bennett that seeks to build a rhetorical and philosophical foundation for a multifaceted campaign against drug abuse. The goal is a comprehensive program involving not only national, state and local government but also employers, community groups, and the private sector. Budgetary figures and projections by fiscal year - usually the mother's milk of government planning documents - are relegated to the appendices of the white-on-red-covered document with the presidential seal on the cover. Indeed, the report is intended to serve as a manifesto for a long-term drug control strategy in the United States. By grounding its proposals in strategic rather than merely tactical considerations, this document helps illuminate the basic premises on which public policy is to be based.
Analysis of the National Drug Control Strategy is a window into the three competing schools of thought that divide those in our midst who support some version of a war on drug abuse. We aim in this chapter to illustrate the powerful role of ideology in drug policy choice in the United States, with a special emphasis on the ideological stance that dominates the current government program.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Search for Rational Drug Control , pp. 4 - 21Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992