Conservative Watchdogs Say No to Just Say No

Drug Czar's Office A "Federal Wasteland" That Fails To Show Results:
Study Says ONDCP's Anti-Drug Ads, State Lobbying Efforts Cited As Grossly Inappropriate And Ineffective
Washington, DC:The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has wasted more than $4 billion since fiscal year 1997 on ineffective media advertising, inappropriate efforts to influence state legislation, and deficient anti-drug trafficking programs, according to a report released this week by the non-partisan Washington, DC think-tank Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW).
"The White House [ONDCP] has morphed into a federal wasteland, throwing taxpayer money toward numerous high-priced drug control
programs that have failed to show results," the report concludes.
The report cites the office's $2 billion National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign as one of the agency's most egregious programs, calling it "an utter failure ... [that] violated federal propaganda laws, did not reduce drug use amongst America's youth, and produced no significant results." Other independent reviews of the Campaign, including those conducted by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University
of Pennsylvania, have issued similar criticisms, noting that it failed to achieve "its major objective of affecting youth marijuana use, and [it]
even showed some evidence of an unfavorable delayed effect ... on youth."
The CAGW study also criticizes the Drug Czar's office for spending taxpayers' dollars to campaign against proposed state legislation to
liberalize the medical use of cannabis. The report notes that ONDCP officials lobbied in person against several statewide legislative efforts and spent nearly $100 million to run anti-marijuana advertisements aimed at influencing voters to reject state ballot initiatives.
"[T]he office continues to waste federal resources to influence the outcome of state ballot initiatives, acting like Big Brother and infringing upon states' rights," it states. "The White House's drug office should use its resources to root out major drug operations in the US instead of creating propaganda-filled news videos and flying across the country on the taxpayers' dime."
NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre added, "With the White House Office of Management and Budget recently rating the Drug Enforcement Administration a 'zero' in the category of 'results/accountability,' and a conservative watchdog group now calling the ONDCP a 'federal wasteland' of inefficiency, isn't it about time for Congress to reevaluate the drug war and, specifically, the Administration's costly and ineffective war on cannabis?"

Full text of the Citizens Against Government Waste report, "Up In Smoke: ONDCP's Wasted Efforts In the War on Drugs,"
is available online in pdf at:
http://www.cagw.org/site/DocServer/Up_in_Smoke.pdf?docID=1081

Thing is .... most any stoner could have told them this a long time ago. Kind of like a "Welll, DUH!"