Posted by Tina
** Whatever challenges await him, President-elect Barack Obama will not have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to keeping a lid on the use of illegal drugs. Our policy has been a success — although that success is one of Washington’s best kept secrets. **
** Reported drug use among eighth, 10th and 12th graders has declined for six straight years. Teen use of cocaine, marijuana and inhalants is down significantly, while consumption of methamphetamine and hallucinogens like LSD and Ecstasy has all but collapsed. *** The number of workplace tests that are positive for cocaine is down sharply, to the lowest levels on record. Even the sudden spike of meth use — remember the headlines from just a few years ago? — has yielded to a combination of state and federal regulations controlling meth ingredients. And abroad, crackdowns in Colombia and Mexico have caused the price of cocaine to roughly double in the past two years. *** These results are testament to the efforts and teamwork of men and women who are virtually unknown to most Americans. They include people like community organizer Rev. Richard McCain in southeast Cleveland, who risked his life to drive crack dealers out of his neighborhood; drug-treatment experts like Dr. Johanna Ferman, who developed new ways to reach female addicts with young children in the nation’s capital; and principals like Lisa Brady, who instituted a drug-testing program and watched drug use fall like a rock at her Flemington, N.J., high school. They include Nashville, Tenn., Judge Seth Norman, who got tired of seeing the same faces over and over again and decided to found a drug court, where he coaches defendants to stay clean and sanctions them when they fail. **
Additional Information sources:
The Presidents National Drug Control Policy 2002
White House Drug Policy Synthetic Drug Control Strategy 2006 (PDF)