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23–687 PDF 2005

DRUG PREVENTION PROGRAMS AND THE FISCAL

YEAR 2006 DRUG CONTROL BUDGET: IS THE

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT NEGLECTING ILLEGAL

DRUG USE PREVENTION?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,

DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

APRIL 26, 2005

Serial No. 109–71

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian/Senior Counsel

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

DIANE E. WATSON, California

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

J. MARC WHEAT, Staff Director

NICK COLEMAN, Counsel

MALIA HOLST, Clerk

TONY HAYWOOD, Minority Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on April 26, 2005 .............................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Curie, Charles, Administrator, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA], Department of Health and Human

Services .......................................................................................................... 40

Dean, General Arthur T., ret., chairman and CEO, Community AntiDrug Coalitions of America; Stephen J. Pasierb, president and CEO,

Partnership for a Drug-Free America; Bonnie Hedrick, Ph.D, executive

director, Ohio Resource Network for Safe and Drug Free Schools and

Communities; Clarence Jones, coordinator, Safe and Drug-Free Youth

Section, Fairfax County, VA Public Schools; Tracy McKoy, parent coordinator, Fairfax County, VA; and Ashley Izadpanah, student, Fairfax

County, VA .................................................................................................... 64

Dean, General Arthur T. .......................................................................... 64

Hedrick, Bonnie ......................................................................................... 131

Izadpanah, Ashley ..................................................................................... 149

Jones, Clarence .......................................................................................... 142

McKoy, Tracy .................................................................................................... 148

Pasierb, Stephen J. ................................................................................... 119

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Maryland, prepared statement of ............................................................ 11

Curie, Charles, Administrator, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA], Department of Health and Human

Services, prepared statement of ................................................................... 43

Dean, General Arthur T., ret., chairman and CEO, Community AntiDrug Coalitions of America, prepared statement of .................................. 67

Hedrick, Bonnie, Ph.D, executive director, Ohio Resource Network for

Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 133

Izadpanah, Ashley, student, Fairfax County, VA, prepared statement of ... 152

Jones, Clarence, coordinator, Safe and Drug-Free Youth Section, Fairfax

County, VA Public Schools, prepared statement of .................................... 145

Pasierb, Stephen J., president and CEO, Partnership for a Drug-Free

America, prepared statement of .................................................................. 122

Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Indiana:

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 4

Prepared statements of Mr. Peterson and Ms. Taft ............................... 26

(1)

DRUG PREVENTION PROGRAMS AND THE FISCAL YEAR 2006 DRUG CONTROL BUDGET: IS

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT NEGLECTING

ILLEGAL DRUG USE PREVENTION?

TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 2005

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY,

AND HUMAN RESOURCES,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:02 p.m., in room

2203, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mark Souder (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Souder, Cummings, Norton, and Watson.

Staff present: Marc Wheat, staff director and chief counsel; Nick

Coleman and Michelle Powers, counsels; Malia Holst, clerk; Tony

Haywood, minority counsel; and Jean Gosa, minority assistant

clerk.

Mr. SOUDER. The subcommittee will now come to order.

Good afternoon and thank you all for coming. This hearing is the

third in a series of hearings providing oversight of the President’s

budget proposal for drug control programs, as well as for legislation

to reauthorize the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the

High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program.

This hearing will focus on the President’s proposal for the Federal Government’s drug use prevention programs. Prevention,

‘‘stopping use before it starts,’’ in the words of President Bush’s recent National Drug Control Strategy Report, is a vital component

of any effective drug control strategy. In many respects it is the

most important component since it is a demand for drugs that attracts the supply. Prevention aimed at reducing drug use by young

people is, in turn, the most important kind of demand reduction.

The Federal Government’s major prevention programs include

the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program at the Department of

Education, which includes formula grants to the States, and national programs; the National Youth Anti Drug Media Campaigns—the so-called Media Campaign at the Office of National

Drug Control Policy, which helps fund a national advertising campaign to educate young people and parents about the danger of

drug abuse; the Drug Free Communities Program at ONDCP,

which provides small grants to local coalitions of organizations and

individuals who come together for drug use prevention efforts in

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their communities, and prevention programs funded through

grants provided by the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention,

part of the Substance and Mental Health Services Administration

[SAMHSA], at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Federal Government also funds significant research and development of drug prevention methods through CSAP and CounterDrug Technology Assessment Center [CTAC], at ONDCP. The Federal Government also funds research into the health risks of drug

abuse at the National Institute of Drug Abuse [NIDA], a division

of the National Institutes of Health [NIH], which are also part of

HHS, the Health and Human Services Department, the results of

which are then publicized by NIDA and other Federal agencies.

The administration’s budget proposals for these programs raise

very serious questions about the future of Federal prevention efforts. The SDFS State Grants, Safe and Drug-Free Schools, which

Congress funded at $437 million in fiscal year 2005, are being targeted for total elimination. The national programs would only increase from $155 million to $232 million, creating a net loss of

nearly $360 million in drug prevention education funds.

The DFC and Media Campaign, which would be flat-funded,

which, when inflation is taken into account, especially inflation in

advertising rates, amounts to a decrease in total resources for the

programs. Even SAMHSA’s prevention funds will be reduced by

$14 million, from $198 million for fiscal year 2005 to $184 million;

while NIDA’s prevention research funds would increase by only $2

million, from $412 to $414.

As a result, prevention now accounts for only 13 percent of the

total drug control budget. This raises significant question about the

administration’s prevention strategy.

Although the administration has valid concerns about how effective our prevention programs have been in reducing drug use, I believe the appropriate response is to reform existing programs by

making them more accountable or to propose new and better programs. The administration’s deep cuts, unaccompanied by any new

proposals, suggests a significant abandonment of even the concept

of prevention. That would be a serious mistake. Unless the Nation

is able to reduce drug use demand, there will always be a market

for illegal drugs.

These budget proposals are particularly regrettable given the

previous improvements the administration made in Federal prevention strategy. For example, ONDCP has revitalized the National

Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. In the late 1990’s, the Media

Campaign had suffered from a lack of direction, as well as contractor difficulties, due to accounting irregularities by Ogilvy and

Mather, the advertising firm responsible for the Media Campaign.

Questions were raised as to whether the Media Campaign should

be continued at all.

ONDCP Director John Walters made the Media Campaign a

major priority for the administration. First, ONDCP took steps to

resolve the accounting irregularities, eventually replacing Ogilvy

and Mather. Second, the Media Campaign sought to maximize its

impact by running a series of advertisements intended to educate

young people and parents about specific problems, including the

dangers of ecstasy and the link between drug trade and terrorism,

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the importance of parental guidance, and the risks of marijuana

use.

The results—increased accountability, increased awareness

among young people of the dangers of drug use, and decreased

youth drug abuse—speak for themselves. Although not all of the

program’s advertisements are equally successful, that is true of any

advertising campaign. Overall, the Media Campaign has been established as a major component of effective drug control policy.

The administration has also taken a leadership role in promoting

drug testing in the schools. Drug testing shows great promise in

preventing young people from using narcotics. It also is a tool for

identifying which students need treatment and other special help

to get them off drugs and achieve their true potential. It also is an

excellent tool for measuring the success of other drug prevention

programs, as it shows whether the true bottom line, reducing drug

use, has been achieved. Instead of cutting Safe and Drug-Free

Schools and other programs, the administration should provide the

same kind of innovative leadership.

Safe and Drug-Free Schools and similar programs have great potential as a vehicle for bringing effective anti-drug education to

millions of young people in our schools. The program has certainly

suffered from a lack of accountability due to statutory limits on

data collection, as well as a lack of focus on drug abuse education.

The administration has never attempted to reform this program

whatever, which ought to be the first step, not eliminating it entirely. And I want to say this as a member of the Education Committee, and as somebody who was on it when we did this and we

got no leadership at the time we authorized the program either,

other than eliminating it.

It is more important than ever for ONDCP to focus attention on

this vital area of drug policy. Regrettably, neither ONDCP nor the

Department of Education was able to send a witness to discuss the

administration’s inadequate budget request. However, I am pleased

to welcome my friend and fellow Hoosier, Charlie Curie, the Administrator of SAMHSA, to discuss the prevention budget and

strategy from the perspective of his agency. We are grateful to him

for joining us today.

As with all of our hearings dealing with these issues, we try to

reach out to private organizations and local communities to learn

about the potential impact of budget changes. Representing two of

the largest and most distinguished prevention organizations, we

are pleased to be joined by General Arthur Dean, chairman and

CEO of Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America; and Mr. Stephen Pasierb, president and CEO of the Partnership for Drug-Free

America.

We also welcome Ms. Bonnie Hedrick, executive director of the

Ohio Resource Network for Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities; Mr. Clarence Jones, coordinator of the Safe and DrugFree Youth Section at Fairfax County, VA Public Schools; Ms.

Tracy McKoy, a parent coordinator in Fairfax County; and Ms.

Ashley Izadpanah, a student volunteer in Fairfax County.

We thank all of our witnesses for joining us today, and we look

forward to hearing your testimony.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. I now yield to our ranking member, Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, first of all, I want to welcome to our hearing some

young people from the Close Up Foundation, and we have students

here from Michigan, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

We are very, very happy to have you all with us. You are seeing

government in action and issues that affect you, so it is nice that

you came on the day that you came, because a lot of the issues that

we deal with go to trying to prevent young people from entering

the world of illegal drugs. So we welcome you.

Mr. Chairman, I want to just start off by quoting an article that

you are quoted in. It is by Paul Singer and it is the National Journal, and it is dated April 23, 2005. Now, I am not going to do your

quotes, but I am going to say this. Let me show you how the article

starts. ‘‘If you can name the current drug czar, you are probably

mad at him. Republican and Democratic Members of Congress, law

enforcement officials around the country, academics who study

drug policy, even former and current staff members are raising

complaints about the performance of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Under the leadership of John Walters,

the Office is accused of retreating from its mission, abandoning key

programs without consulting with Congress, and losing or forcing

out key staff members with years of experience.’’

I will skip a little bit. Then it says, ‘‘Walters has clearly lowered

the profile of the Office, critics say, and in some cases withdrawn

from consultation even with those agencies that are considered allies.’’

The reason why I read that, Mr. Chairman, is because I am, too,

very concerned that we would invite ONDCP here to talk about

what is going on in the Department and they not show up. It is

an insult to me; it is an insult to the Congress of the United States

of America. And I don’t say that very lightly. I don’t know about

you, Mr. Chairman, but when I come to Washington, I come to do

the people’s business. I have a lot of work to do in Baltimore in my

district. So when I rush down here on a Tuesday, when I could get

here at 6:30, and I get here at 2, I expect the people that we want

to come to testify to be present.

And with that introduction and what has been said about Drug

Czar Walters—and understand he is a friend of mine. I have supported him 100 percent even before he got into this position, and

have consistently done it. When you cannot send an under-staffer,

you know, send me somebody to defend your budget and the situation, and then we have all these wonderful people who can show

up, it says a lot. And I think that somebody needs to get that message to Drug Czar Walters, that the Congress will not stand for

that.

Now, as we noted in the past, Mr. Chairman, drug abuse accounts for the loss of some 20,000 lives in the United States each

year. Most of these deaths are attributable to the use of hard drugs

such as heroin, cocaine, meth, and ecstasy, but all illegal drug use

takes a toll on our society, and the more effective we are in preventing people from using any drug in the first place, the better

our chances for achieving a drug-free America.

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The costs inflicted on individuals, families, communities, and the

Nation as a whole—in terms of reduced academic achievement, employment prospects and productivity, increased risk of illness and

substantial healthcare costs, family strife and dissolution, drug-related crime and violence, soaring criminal justice system costs, and

loss of human promise—are simply too immense for us not to do

all that we can to educate and persuade Americans to avoid using

drugs. That is why I believe that it is imperative that we do just

that, that we invest, but invest heavily, in drug prevention.

Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, the President’s budget for fiscal

year 2006 does not take that path. Instead, the administration has

made the choice to reverse ground on prevention at a time when

we clearly need to move forward. Overall, the President’s budget request of $12.4 billion for drug control programs in fiscal year 2006, up from approximately $12.2

billion in fiscal year 2005, according to ONDCP, ‘‘the President’s

fiscal year 2006 budget increases funding levels for drug programs

throughout the Federal Government.’’ But a close examination of

the budget reveals that the administration is proposing significant

increases for international supply reduction efforts at the expense

of both demand reduction and support for State and local drug enforcement.

Whereas the fiscal year 2005 drug budget allocated approximately 45 percent of Federal drug control funding to demand reduction, only 39 percent would go to the demand reduction side in

fiscal year 2006. But the total of $4.8 billion allocated for demand

reduction in fiscal year 2006 is not just a smaller percentage of the

drug budget; it also represents a net reduction of about $270 million compared to the level appropriated by Congress in fiscal year

2005.

A mere 8.3 percent of the total drug control budget would go to

prevention programs, versus 11.3 percent in fiscal year 2005. In my

opinion, the 13.3 was inadequate, and 3 percent less is moving in

the wrong direction.

And let us not overlook the fact that this is a drug control budget

that does not even account for more than $4 billion in Federal

funds devoted to the incarceration of convicted drug offenders.

The most severe program cut in the area of prevention is the

elimination of $441 million in funding for grants to States under

the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program within the Department of

Education. If we enact the President’s request, the consequences

will be felt in classrooms across the country, where States and localities simply cannot afford to fund drug education on their own.

The Drug-Free Communities Support Program, which leverages

the resource of community coalitions organized at the grassroots

level, is funded at $10 million below the level authorized in fiscal

year 2006, and the $2 million annual budget of the National Coalition Institute, run by the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of

America, is slashed by more than half.

And one of the sad things about this, Mr. Chairman, these are

the programs that we have so many people volunteering and giving

their blood, sweat, and tears to make work, and it is probably one

of the best investments that we can make because not only do we

get more bang for our buck, that is, that you have a lot of unpaid

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people who we are helping to rid their own communities of drugs

and deal with prevention, but it also makes them partners with the

Government to do this.

So they become extremely sensitized to all of the problems, and

then the more they become sensitized and the more they learn,

then they can spread that word to other communities and perhaps

help them address the problem. So it is a wonderful deal for our

budget and our efforts.

The budget further proposes to eliminate the Drug Enforcement

Administration’s Demand Reduction Program and to cut funding

for drug prevention efforts by the National Guard.

Under the President’s budget, the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention within SAMHSA would receive $15 million less in fiscal

year 2005. And I will be very interested to hear from Mr. Curie

with regard to how that will affect his efforts.

The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, the Government’s primary means of disseminating messages that discourage

teen drug use, would receive $120 million, an amount equal to the

figure appropriated in fiscal year 2005, but some $60 million below

the amount originally authorized for the program in 1998. Mr.

Chairman, if we want an effective anti-drug media campaign, one

that stands a chance of competing with the countervailing messages that are pervasive in today’s media environment, we have to

fund it at a level that will enable it to have the reach and frequency required for it to have maximum impact.

The President in 2002 announced a goal of reducing both youth

and adult drug use by 10 percent over 5 years and by 25 percent

over 10 years. We all support those objectives. The 2005 National

Drug Control Strategy states that the President’s 5-year goal for

youth drug use has not only been met, but that it has been exceeded, and that is encouraging news.

But I am concerned, Mr. Chairman, that the same Monitoring

the Future survey that shows a reduction in the use of any illicit

drugs among 8th, 10th, and 12th graders also shows worrisome

trends in the use of cocaine and heroin by youth in the same age

groups, as well as among young adults. Thus, while a sharp drop

in reported teen use of marijuana enables the administration to

claim victory in meeting the President’s 5-year goal for reducing

overall drug use among youth, it is clear that we must do more,

not less, to ensure that we are reducing the use of all dangerous

drugs among both youth and adults.

Mr. Chairman, we are all aware of the administration’s budget

priorities at the beginning of the President’s second term of office

are informed by fiscal constraints relating to homeland security,

the war in Iraq, and other economic factors. But the obvious erosion of emphasis on demand reduction, and prevention in particular, cannot be explained by extraneous factors when the overall

drug control budget is being increased. Moreover, the justifications

that the administration offers for cutting or eliminating some programs while boosting funding for others simply do not appear to

hold water.

ONDCP, in the President’s 2005 National Drug Control Strategy,

attempts to make the case that severe cuts to programs like Safe

and Drug-Free Schools are based on the failure of these programs

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to demonstrate effectiveness under the administration’s Program

Assessment Rating Tool [PART]. But a recent analysis by former

ONDCP staffer John Carnevale shows that at least half of the Federal drug budget is exempt from PART review and further concludes that PART was not central to shaping the Federal drug control budget.

I am almost finished, Mr. Chairman.

The President and the Office of the National Drug Control Policy

are ultimately responsible for the shape of the Federal drug control

budget. ONDCP has explicit statutory authority to review and certify the drug control budgets of agencies throughout the Government and formulates the President’s National Drug Control Strategy. Congress placed that authority in the Executive Office of the

President to ensure that the Federal budget provides adequate support for all the Nation’s drug control priorities, with the ultimate

aim of reducing drug use.

The clear shift of priorities in the proposed budget for the coming

fiscal year raises serious questions about how ONDCP is utilizing

its statutory authority.

And again, for all of those reasons, Mr. Chairman, I am disappointed that John Walters is not with us. But I do thank all of

our other partners who are here, and I want to say to you, if I don’t

get a chance to say it in the future, I want to thank all of you for

doing what you do everyday to make a difference in our country

with regard to drugs, because you may not realize it now, but you

are affecting generations yet unborn in a very, very positive way,

and we do appreciate you.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Elijah E. Cummings follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

Before proceeding, I would like to take care of a couple procedural matters. First, ask unanimous consent that all Members

have 5 legislative days to submit written statements and questions

for the hearing record; that any answers to written questions provided by the witnesses also be included in the record. Without objection, so ordered.

I also ask unanimous consent that all exhibits, documents, and

other materials referred to by Members and the witnesses may be

included in the hearing record, and that all Members be permitted

to revise and extend their remarks. Without objection, so ordered.

I also ask unanimous consent to insert a statement from Congressman John Peterson on the drug control budget, a member of

the Appropriations Committee, and also from the First Lady of

Ohio, Hope Taft, a statement on the drug prevention programs.

Hearing no objection, so ordered.

[The prepared statements of Mr. Peterson and Ms. Taft follow:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Our first panel is composed of the Honorable

Charles Curie, Administrator, Substance Abuse and Mental Health

Services Administration, Department of Health and Human Services and Oversight Committee.

It is our standard practice to ask all our witnesses to testify

under oath, so if you will stand and raise your right hand.

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that Mr. Curie responded in

the affirmative.

We look forward to your testimony, and you are recognized for

5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF CHARLES CURIE, ADMINISTRATOR, SUBSTANCE ABUSE AND MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES ADMINISTRATION [SAMHSA], DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN

SERVICES

Mr. CURIE. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Congressman Cummings. I especially want to thank you for the opportunity to present SAMHSA’s role in achieving the President’s goals

for preventing substance abuse and reducing addiction.

Over the past 4 years we have worked hard at SAMHSA to align

our resources and our vision of ‘‘a life in the community for everyone,’’ and our mission is to ‘‘build resilience and facilitate recovery.’’

Stopping drug use before it starts is foundational to our success.

In partnership with other Federal agencies, States and local communities, and faith-based organizations, consumers, families, and

providers, we are working to ensure that every American has the

opportunity to live, work, learn, and enjoy a healthy, productive,

and drug-free life.

Under the leadership of President Bush, we have embarked on

a strategy that is working. The most recent data confirms that we

are steadily accomplishing the President’s goal to reduce teen drug

use by 25 percent in 5 years. Now at the 3-year mark, we have

seen a 17 percent reduction and there are now 600,000 fewer teens

using drugs than there were in 2001.

This is an indication that our partnerships and the work of prevention professionals—schools, parents, teachers, law enforcement,

religious leaders, anti-drug coalitions—are paying off. We know

that when we push against the drug problem, it recedes; and, fortunately, today we know more about what works in prevention, education and treatment than ever before.

We also know our work is far from over. To provide a sciencebased structured approach to substance abuse prevention,

SAMHSA has launched the Strategic Prevention Framework. The

Framework allows States to bring together multiple funding

streams from multiple sources to create and sustain a communitybased approach to prevention. People working with our youth and

young adults understand the need to create an approach to prevention that cuts across existing programs. I have seen it firsthand.

I have had the privilege to visit many cutting-edge prevention

programs, programs that I have been tremendously impressed as

I have walked away, but time and time again I have also been extremely frustrated. I see prevention programs scrambling for limited dollars from multiple Federal, State, local, public, and private

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sector funding streams. All have specific and sometimes even competing requirements.

For example, in the Department of Health and Human Services

alone there is the Health Resources and Services Administration,

the Center for Disease Control, Administration for Children and

Families, National Institutes of Health, of course, SAMHSA; and

then there are the Departments of Education, of Justice. And these

don’t even include State, local, and private funding streams. Each

alone provides a trickling of a funding stream, but leveraged together in the right way around a strategy they can produce an

ocean of change.

Whether we speak about abstinence or rejecting drugs, tobacco,

and alcohol, whether we are promoting exercise and a healthy diet,

preventing violence, or promoting mental health, we are really all

working toward the same objectives: reducing risk factors and promoting protective factors.

Under the new Strategic Prevention Framework, this grant program, participating communities will implement a five-step public

health process known to promote youth development, reduce risktaking behaviors, build assets and resilience, and prevent problem

behaviors. The steps include, first, a community assesses its substance abuse related problems, including magnitude, location, associated risks and protective factors. Communities also assess service

gaps in readiness, and they examine all available funding, putting

all the dollars on the table.

Second, communities must engage key stakeholders, build coalitions, organize and train and leverage prevention resources. Third,

communities establish a plan for organizing and implementing prevention resources. The plan must be based on documented needs,

build on identified resources, set baselines, objectives, and performance measures. And, fourth, communities implement evidencebased prevention efforts specifically designed to reduce those identified risk factors and promote identified protective factors. In other

words, have a tailored approach for that community. Finally, communities will monitor and report outcomes to assess program effectiveness and service delivery quality, and to determine if objectives

are being attained or if there is a need for correction.

The success of the Strategic Prevention Framework will then be

measured by specific national outcomes. And I know at a previous

hearing we had a focus on those outcomes, and they include: abstinence from drug use and alcohol abuse, reduction in substance

abuse-related crime, attainment of employment or enrollment in

school, increased stability in family and living conditions, and increase social connectedness. These measures are true measures of

whether our programs are helping young people and adults achieve

our vision of a life in the community.

I firmly believe that by focusing our Nation’s attention, energy,

and resources, we can continue to make progress. We also recognize that the most important work to prevent substance abuse is

done in America’s living rooms and classrooms, in churches and

synagogs, in the workplace and in our neighborhoods. Families,

schools, communities, and faith-based organizations shape the

character of young people; they teach children right from wrong, respect for the law, respect for others, and, most importantly, respect

42

for themselves. They are indispensable, and we stand ready to assist them in every possible way.

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Framework and

taking an interest in this new and innovative approach to preventing substance abuse. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Cummings,

thank you for the opportunity to appear today. I look forward to

continuing to work with you in partnership toward a healthy, drugfree America, and I would be very pleased to answer any questions

or engage in discussion with the committee. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Curie follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much. Let me first thank you for

your work in the areas of treatment. We have had multiple hearings on treatment and, of course, that is one of the major components. In many ways what is difficult about today’s hearing is we

are trying to prevent things that then often the Government has

to deal with if we fail to prevent, whether that be treatment,

whether that be interdicting, eradicating, throwing people in jail,

trying to deal with the drug problems in jail. And the big question

we get a lot of times is how are you focused on treatment and what

are you doing.

So let me ask, because that is not the primary responsibility of

your agency, but the ONDCP budget summary said that they

viewed your program, the Substance Abuse Prevention Treatment,

as about 20 percent prevention and about 80 percent treatment. Is

that a rule or just an estimate, or how do you work through a number like that?

Mr. CURIE. I think what they are referring to is the block grant,

and the intent of the block grant in statute is 80 percent of the

block grant dollars, which is approximately $1.8 billion, is to be

geared toward the treatment system. And I describe that 80 percent as really the foundation of the public substance abuse treatment system in this country, because other public funding streams

such as Medicaid and Medicare are a very, very small portion as

compared to other types of illnesses and disorders.

So with SAMHSA’s block grant, with our discretionary program

of funds, Access to Recovery, as well as with the State match that

is required in terms of the maintenance of effort, that basically

comprises the major part of the treatment system in this country.

Twenty percent of the block grants—we work in partnership with

State drug and alcohol authorities in monitoring this process—are

to go toward prevention activities. Then we have the discretionary

budget within CSAP, where, again, the Strategic Prevention

Framework is funded, so we have the dollars in the CSAP budget

that also go toward prevention, which are approximately $190 million, in that vicinity, $200 million.

Mr. SOUDER. So you are saying that was by statute it is 80/20.

Mr. CURIE. I believe it is required in the block grant. We can

double-check that, but I believe that is where it is coming from,

yes.

Mr. SOUDER. And how do you view yourself in the sense of obviously you have more dollars in treatment, but, in fact, if the administration were successful in wiping out Safe and Drug-free Schools,

other than the small national program, you are the biggest prevention player on the block then.

Mr. CURIE. I think that may be right. I would have to doublecheck all those figures.

Mr. SOUDER. Because if you take your $190 plus one-fifth of $1.8

billion, you are close to double anything else.

Let me ask another question, because one of the frustrations that

I see as a Congressman and I saw as a staffer, we have so many

different programs, for example, we have who knows how many

programs that, say they are reducing low birth weight. Now the

current trend is gangs, so all these programs are going to run to

the gangs question. Recently ONDCP apparently acknowledged

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that they suspended regular meetings of the Demand Reduction

Working Group. Were you or any of your deputies part of the Demand Reduction Working Group that is supposed to be of the different agencies at work?

Mr. CURIE. There have been some meetings over the past 4

years. I participated in some of those meetings or sent representatives over the course, especially during the first term. I can recall

I attended personally at least two or three of those meetings.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you feel they were useful?

Mr. CURIE. I feel they were useful from the perspective of sharing what we were all doing, as well as it gave ONDCP the opportunity to share overall directions. What I found most useful has

been the ongoing dialog we have with ONDCP on a pretty regular

basis. It is more informal, but staff at various levels of SAMHSA,

including myself, having contact with ONDCP has been occurring.

Mr. SOUDER. But nobody has ever come in and said, boy, we are

spending nearly $1 billion here on drug prevention, we ought to

have a coordinated drug prevention strategy? In other words, you

are saying it is useful to kind of swap notes, but when you are

pouring $360 million into the States, roughly a fifth of $1.8 billion,

the Safe and Drug-Free Schools is pouring similar amounts in; you

have another $190 million in, they have some under the CTAC program; we used to have it in Housing, which is now more optional

in the Housing for various types of activities, but can include

drugs. Is anybody looking and saying, boy, we have all this money

going every which direction. Rather than just saying that it is not

working, maybe we ought to figure out how to make it work. Instead, we suspended the meetings, the little meeting that we did

have. I don’t understand.

Mr. CURIE. Well, again, I might be biased, but I clearly think

that is what SAMHSA is doing with HHS and working with partnership with ONDCP and the other Federal agencies through Strategic Prevention Framework. I couldn’t agree with you more in

terms of the dynamic you describe, and ONDCP has been extremely supportive of us pursuing SPF. I think our prevention efforts, while there has been money out there at a lot of levels—and,

again, I know you are talking about some reductions today. My

concern has been we haven’t had a handle from the local community, the State level, or the national level totally in terms of how

many prevention programs are really being funded and looking at

it from a systemic level.

With Strategic Prevention Framework and working with the

States and communities, as I indicated, one of the first steps is

each community being empowered to put all their dollars on the

table, what they are receiving, and then embark on a process of assessing the risks that are in that community that contribute to the

substance abuse problem in that community, as well as the protective factors, and then from that have a baseline of use and then

begin to embark upon a plan to fund, in a leveraged way and an

augmenting way and a coordinated way, in the community the evidence-based programs that address those risk factors and for the

first time have a real science base as well as a framework which

empowers entities at all levels. And as I mentioned in my remarks,

youth development agencies, faith-based organizations, the school

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systems needing to be very much a part of that process, local law

enforcement, all the entities that touch youths lives in a youth development sort of way. And the anti-drug coalitions are, of course,

critical to that process as well, and we want to buildupon what is

already there.

So I couldn’t agree with you more that we need to be pressing

a systemic look at prevention, how we are leveraging it, and, most

importantly, how we are empowering local communities to leverage

the resources they have. I have been pleased with the enthusiasm

and discussions I have had with Justice, Education, as well as my

fellow other operating divisions in HHS around Strategic Prevention Framework, seeing how their programs can fit into that.

The other thing, we are trying to make Strategic Prevention

Framework not another prevention program that is competing for

more dollars, but to be the framework to really help leverage the

dollars from other programs. And we think that is the most important thing we can do in leadership right now.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you again for being here. I just want to

go back to something that you said. You talked about reducing the

risk factors. Talk about that a little bit more.

Mr. CURIE. What we want to do and what you need to do in a

community is take a look at what are the types of potential risk

factors that exist. For example, a community that has a lot of mobility in it, that there is not a real stable neighborhood in that community, taking a look at identifying how do you address that risk

factor through bringing some stability around a sense of neighborhood. How do you address that? Is there a focus on strengthening

family relationships, the parent-child relationship, does the community do anything about looking at that? How active are the children in extracurricular activities and how active is the school system in engaging that community? Again, that can either be a risk

or protective factor depending on what level you find. And there is

a way of identifying, there is a range and a way, and we can show

you risk factors that have been identified scientifically, that can be

identified in a community.

And then protective factors that already do exist in communities,

how do you strengthen those protective factors. A community that

has a real strong sense of community, a real sense of its neighborhood and where the institutions are connected together. That is a

protective factor in and of itself. There are ways you can promote

those protective factors.

Also, with our national registry of effective programs, we have 65

evidence-based programs that have been demonstrated through a

scientific review to reduce substance abuse 25 percent or less. We

want that to be a resource with Strategic Prevention Framework

that communities could select those programs that would best meet

the needs that community has based on the risk factors identified.

So there would be a real tailored approach based on the unique

needs of that community.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Going back to those 65 programs, these, I guess,

would be considered best practices for certain circumstances, is

that accurate?

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Mr. CURIE. Yes. It depends how you use the terms. I think they

would be better than best practices, actually, in terms of being evidence-based. So they actually have an evidence base to them that

they have demonstrated that they have lowered substance abuse

use in communities.

Mr. CUMMINGS. I don’t know whether you were listening to me

when I was going over my opening statement.

Mr. CURIE. I was.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Right answer. Thought I would catch you sleeping.

But you know the thing that I think Congressman Souder and

I, and I think many Members of Congress, will attest to, is that

when we go from neighborhood to neighborhood and we talk to our

constituents, there are so many people that want to do something,

but they don’t know what to do and they don’t know how to do it.

So that is why I am so big on this community stuff, because I cannot imagine—I mean, if you can take some people who are already

committed to do something, I mean, you think about all the competing tasks that we have as a parent, our job and all that, and

these people say, look, I want to help. And a lot of times in some

of our communities these are people who don’t even have children

or their children are gone on and they are professionals or whatever, but they still want to help. So I am just trying to make sure

that as we deal with our budget priorities, that we are not only reducing money to go to those kind of efforts. So, for example, you

say $10 million. When it comes to manpower and all the volunteer

hours and the product—because I really believe that if somebody

is willing to go out there and volunteer, they may very well work

harder, maybe not as many hours, but harder than somebody who

is getting paid, and they have that sense of community.

There is a guy in my neighborhood and he is a very interesting

fellow. Every Saturday and Thursday and Tuesday he goes around

and he picks up all the trash. He does a great job for free. And I

look at him sometimes and I say, you know—then I go to the other

neighborhoods where they have people cleaning up, and he does a

better job. But it is because it is coming from somewhere in here.

I just don’t want us to be in a position where we spend so much

time trying to pinch pennies and then leave communities out, and

then cause their morale—first of all, cause them to say, OK, well,

I guess there is nothing I can do, because that is one of the easiest

things for us to do, say there is nothing I can do, and keep getting

up, because we have all these other things to do. So we lose that

and we lose the product that they would produce, and the prevention and all that kind of stuff. We used to talk a lot about volunteerism and all this, and I have to tell you in some kind of way

we have to make sure we use that here, because if we don’t we

have lost an incredible resource.

Mr. CURIE. I couldn’t agree with you more. In fact, what you

have just described is exactly what I think Strategic Prevention

Framework can help empower community. One of the things we envision is that a community actually brings its full leadership, and

we are talking from the faith community, the school district again,

city government, chamber of commerce, law enforcement, all the

youth development agencies, United way, the anti-drug coalitions

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that are already in these communities set up. Come to the table

and, first of all, get a sense of community; take a look at the resources. And the goal of Strategic Prevention Framework longterm, in my mind, is not only to better use the dollars we have—

and I get real worried that prevention is vulnerable all the time

anyway. Prevention is vulnerable because historically it has been

hard to measure. Prevention is vulnerable because it is hard to understand and you can actually understand treatment a little more.

Now, I advocate continuing to keep treatment services funded as

well because we want to help the people who are drowning in the

river. But we also can make the most impact by preventing people

from getting in that river in the first place. And with Strategic Prevention Framework, I am convinced if a community knew how

much they had in terms of prevention resources and they were

willing—and this is also to help give incentives to doing away with

the turf that can occur in the communities. And if a community can

have a clear point of contact around a prevention framework, then

those individuals you just described, who have a desire to be of

service, or they are at a point in their life where perhaps their family has grown and they really want to be invested in the community, that they would know where to turn, because that community

would have a plan, a strategy; they would know where to go for the

resources and they would know where to volunteer.

So it gives an opportunity for a community to truly empower people at all those levels, and that is why I feel this is a rather profound approach, trying to do it at a systemic level, and I think it

is an appropriate level for the Federal Government to be really

working with States and communities to empower them to do this,

because I think it is hard to just do that on your own.

Mr. CUMMINGS. You know, last but not least, General Dean and

others had some folks come to Baltimore, and I just found it so

amazing that these people came to Baltimore and they met with

people who were neighborhood people who were struggling. They

came because they had good experiences in their neighborhoods

and they had discovered their power. So they came to Baltimore

and presented their—these are regular, everyday people. I mean,

it was so powerful. I sat there and I was just like amazed that you

could have one group that had figured it out, and they looked just

like the people they were talking to, similar circumstances, and

they flew in and they were like superstars, you know, superstars

of prevention. And my folks looked at them and said, wow, you

know, and they got ideas and they were empowered by seeing people who looked like them, who came from neighborhoods like

theirs, who had effectively addressed a drug problem in their

neighborhood, and they were able to say, hey, you know, we can

do that too. So it became contagious. That is the other piece.

And I am a big person on treatment, but I tell you, Mr. Curie,

as much as I am a big proponent of treatment, I tell you, I hate

for people to have to go through the process to have to have treatment.

Mr. CURIE. Absolutely.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Because I see the destruction. I really do. I live

in a neighborhood—well, it has gotten better now, but I live in a

neighborhood where, if you bought your house in 1982 for

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$100,000, when crack cocaine came around, you could have put

$100,000 into that $100,000 house and you couldn’t sell it for

$35,000 period. And that happens to neighborhoods. So the wealth

goes down, families are destroyed.

So all I am saying to you is when you have your discussions, I

hope that you will take back that message, since you already believe in it, because there are so many people who are out here, and

I don’t want them to be discouraged. I really don’t. I think that is

one of the worst things that we can do. That is our army. It is like

telling your military we are not going to support you, go home, see

you later, and let us give us. And I think that is one of the most

crucial messages that we have to get to the folks that make these

decisions.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

I had a detailed question that is off the budget. I guess this is

more on ONDCP, but let me see if I can communicate this clearly

enough. If not, we can get it a written response.

In your budget, the President’s budget you have a reduction of

$15 million in prevention programs and you have an increase of

about $23 million in treatment. It appears that almost all the $15

million reduction is in ‘‘programs of regional and national significance.’’ That is by looking at the breakout of the budget as to

where that occurred. Yet, later on in the report it says that

SAMHSA will be able to expand the Strategic Prevention Framework, which is what you have been talking about today, with five

new grants, for a total of $121⁄2 million.

If the program is going down 15, but you are increasing that

121⁄2, what is the money coming out of?

Mr. CURIE. I am glad you asked that question. First of all, as you

all know, because you are dealing with it, it is very challenging

budget times all the way around, so overall there is a 11⁄2 percent

reduction in the SAMHSA budget overall. And I will be testifying

tomorrow before the Subcommittee on Appropriations about the

overall budget. So we had some very tough decisions to make in

terms of prioritizing where we needed to put dollars, to mitigate

some of the issues that we are facing, we developed some key rules

of thumb as we made some budget decisions. First of all, we generally looked at grants and contracts that were coming to an end,

and in those $15 million that you have discussed in the Center for

Substance Abuse Prevention, it is primarily either programs that

were coming to their natural conclusion; second, some of them were

earmarks that were coming to their natural conclusion as well;

and, third, we were able to gain efficiencies by combining contracts,

our clearinghouse efforts and some other contracts. And our director of CSAP, Beverly Watts Davis, worked to try to gain some efficiencies through those contracts. So that is all reflected in that $15

million.

Now, the additional dollars for Strategic Prevention Framework

is over the past 2 years we have been making a decision to try to

use some of the dollars that are not continuing in grants that they

were in, using our existing budget as much as we can to shift toward Strategic Prevention Framework, because, again, we felt that

was also an appropriate focus for CSAP, as the lead Federal agency

around substance abuse prevention, to set the stage for a frameVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:21 Dec 06, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00059 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23687.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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work for other prevention programs that are being funded by other

Federal agencies, as well as State, local, and private sector organizations.

So those three dynamics were in play as we evaluated where we

needed to make some reductions. We tried to mitigate it as much

as possible and at the same time make decisions.

One thing I haven’t mentioned today is the SAMHSA matrix,

which is unusual for me, but on the matrix we have those priorities

outlined, Strategic Prevent Framework is one of them, and that

has been guiding us even in the better budget years. It especially

became useful in the tougher budget years, when you had to make

some tougher decisions to keep our eye on the ball, so to speak, to

fulfill our mission based on what we have set in stage over the past

3 to 4 years.

Mr. SOUDER. I thank you. We may have some more written questions. I may come back, but I want to do something else first. Do

you have another question for him?

Mr. CUMMINGS. Let me make sure I understand what you just

said. You are saying that your staff was able to look at—is it mainly duplication?

Mr. CURIE. It can be duplication of management efforts, and

when you can consolidate contracts and grants, you do eliminate

and gain some overhead efficiencies.

Mr. CUMMINGS. And the ones that were coming to an end, are

we missing out on something now? In other words, I assume those

are things, some of which, folks would have wanted to renew, is

that accurate?

Mr. CURIE. Well, I would imagine some of the people that were

receiving the grants may have wanted to have an opportunity to

renew some, but it has not been unusual for a 3-year grant cycle

to end, and the grantee knows it is going to come to an end. So,

again, I think decisions were made trying to keep that in mind, as

well as we did make a clear decision, a conscious decision over the

past 2 to 3 years to try and move our dollars as much as we can

into funding the Framework, because we felt ultimately those dollars will serve communities better by leveraging all the other dollars than just going into individual programs, because this way we

can truly bring some things to scale on more of a national level.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Do you have more control when you put them in

the Framework also?

Mr. CURIE. I believe we do.

Mr. CUMMINGS. More accountability too?

Mr. CURIE. Well, with the outcome measures, I am confident we

are going to have more accountability. And, again, the outcome

measures are going to be consistent outcome measures that we are

utilizing with all of our grants, but most importantly coming from

all communities and States. So for the first time we hopefully will

be able to paint a national portrait, if you will, of really what these

dollars are impacting and affecting. And then my goal is not only

to continue to see substance abuse use go down, but to be in a position where I can come to you or I can talk to, within the executive

branch, OMB and our budget folks and be able to demonstrate that

the dollars were used the best way possible and any new dollars

can go into these evidence-based efforts that you can have conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:21 Dec 06, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00060 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23687.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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fidence they are going to be used wisely. And I think that has been

one of the challenges that the prevention community has been up

against for many years.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Well, as I listened to the President’s State of the

Union, he was talking about programs in general, and he said that

they were duplicating and that he needed to get rid of some programs. And after I began to look at some of the programs—and I

am not talking about your agency, I am talking about in general—

some of them were not things that were duplicated. One could

make the argument as to whether they fit in the priority list of the

President, but duplication was not the right word for all of them,

and I guess what I was trying to get at is what it sounds like you

all did.

Congressman Souder has heard me say it 50 million times. If

there is one thing that Democrats and Republicans agree on, it is

that their tax dollars be spent in an effective and efficient manner,

and that sounds like what you are talking about. I guess what I

want to make sure, though, is that when we move toward effectiveness and efficiency, it is true effectiveness and efficiency, and not

perhaps leaving out something or some things that although they

may have gone under discretionary—would that be the right category?

Mr. CURIE. Programs of regional and national significance.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Right. I just want to make sure—and even some

of them I would guess were probably good things.

Mr. CURIE I think everything we have funded have been good

things.

Mr. CUMMINGS. OK.

Mr. CURIE. Historically. I mean, I think they are always well intended. Again, if we see that there is a program that isn’t achieving the outcomes, we first of all try to provide technical assistance

to help them, but over time if they don’t ‘‘meet muster’’ that is our

responsibility, to do the appropriate review and monitoring of that.

But I think every program that generally gets funded, the intention

is always good and it is addressing a need.

Mr. CUMMINGS. All right, thanks.

Mr. SOUDER. I think to make this a little easier, because I think

for the record what we ought to have—basically it is $27 million,

it is not a small amount, because you have a $15 million reduction

and $12 increase, so it is a $27 million switch. It would be helpful

if you could provide for us a list—I will talk to Mr. Regula, too, because I think the Appropriations Committee should have that too,

because it may be we are in complete agreement, but I suspect,

given your own report, very minimal of that was ineffective programs. I think you only had a small percentage of programs that

were deemed ineffective. He used the magical word, which was another way of saying part of what is happening here is the administration makes its request on what it thinks is important, but he

used the word earmarks in here. So we probably have a pretty good

chunk of this $27 million being earmarks, of which there will always be earmarks.

So the question is then what happens to the drug budget. And

partly what happens here is when the administration comes up

with a budget and it isn’t really a comprehensive budget that calVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:21 Dec 06, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00061 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23687.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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culates in what is going to happen in Congress, we freelance. And

instead of having a drug prevention budget, our guys start to add

things on the Hill because it wasn’t thought that, oh, my lands, you

mean they might add something in Congress? Of course they might

add something in Congress, since they do every year in every single

program. And then we have to go back and say we are short $27

million. So what does it come out of? And, defacto, Congress winds

up setting up a drug policy program that is not necessarily well developed because it hasn’t been reflected in a realistic appropriations question.

Now, this isn’t directed at you. It is a little, but you are asked

to come up with what you think you would do in your agency, and

what I am saying is that, strategically, when OMB clears what

comes up, they also have to think a little bit of what is realistically

going to happen on the Hill. And I think a listing of these projects

will give us some indication of what is happening, because we are

likely to get earmarks back. If half of that $27 million is earmarks,

we are likely to get that same amount again. Therefore, you are

going to be $13 million short. And then we come back to our question that we asked, which you don’t have an answer yet today because you don’t know what the number is going to be. But that

money is going to come from somewhere, or there is going to have

to be a budget increase, and the question is what type of programs

are we giving up even when we do an earmark, because if we don’t

have a realistic budget match-up, it is hard to figure out what

tradeoffs we are making when we do an earmark, when we do different things in Congress; and it is a systemic problem, it is not

new this year.

But in my opinion, with all due respect, this year’s budget, of

which yours are minor changes, but compared to wiping out DrugFree Schools and then moving the money over, when you move figures like $360 million, as opposed to $15, or try to wipe out most

of the HIDTA program or knock out all the Burn grant, the overall

drug budget is so unrealistic and so uncoordinated coming out of

the administration this year it is irrelevant. And what it is forcing

Congress to do between the House and Senate is put together for

the first time—really, working with the Senate you are getting

more cooperation in Congress, because what do we do when the administration chooses not to lead? In drug treatment that has not

been a problem, but in drug prevention we have no coordinated

leadership strategy. We have no leadership strategy whatsoever.

You are the only one who is willing to even talk about it. I wouldn’t

want to talk about it if I were the other agencies either. They don’t

have a strategy. Department of Education is getting zeroed out.

ONDCP didn’t like it last time that we said, how come you are gutting the drug czar’s office? It is basically a repeat of Bill Clinton’s

administration, watching the drug czar’s office get gutted, and it is

embarrassing to come up to the Hill and face that.

Now, I have some questions I am going to put on the record, because it should never be said that skipping a hearing is easier than

being at a hearing. So I have some questions that I am going to

ask publicly that I want written responses to, and I will continue

to work with the Appropriations Committee, that, by the way, is

equally appalled. These are questions I would have asked ONDCP

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and the Department of Education had they been here and been

willing to defend their budgets, as Mr. Curie has been.

No. 1, since Director Walters became head of ONDCP in 2001,

the administration has identified drug use prevention as one of the

critical three pillars of the effective drug control. The percent of

Federal funding proposed in the administration’s budget for prevention, however, has dropped to only 13 percent of the total drug

control budget. Why is this pillar so much shorter than the other

pillars?

Two, if the Safe and Drug-Free Schools State Grants cannot

demonstrate results by OMB’s reckoning, why didn’t the administration, at any time in the last 4 years, propose reforming the

grants to make them more accountable and effective?

Three, if the administration has lost confidence in the Safe and

Drug-Free Schools State Grants, but is prepared to boost the funding for Safe and Drug-Free Schools’ national program grants, then

why didn’t the administration propose moving all of the funding for

the State Grants to the national programs instead of only a portion?

Four, the administration has proposed level funding for the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign and the Drug-Free Communities Support Program. Given inflation, this amounts to a reduction in total resources for both programs. Why didn’t the administration at least propose an increase to keep pace with inflation?

Five, why did ONDCP suspend the regular meetings of the Demand Reduction Working Group, which used to bring together senior political appointees from the Federal agencies involved in drug

control?

Six, does the administration believe that student drug testing

alone, unaccompanied by education or other prevention programs,

will be effective? If not, what kind of programs need to accompany

the testing?

Now, remember, when I was a staffer in the Senate for Senator

Coats, I wrote the first drug testing provision, and it was based off

of a high school in Indiana, McCutchen High School, where they

had a problem on their baseball team, and we allowed testing

through Drug-Free Schools program for the first time. We also

worked with then Senator Danforth in the Transportation drug

testing, which were the first two drug testing programs in 1989

and 1990, and I was a staffer, I was a legislative director and we

had a number of other staffers on it that worked with this. I am

enthusiastic of drug testing, but drug testing alone does not solve

the problems. Drug testing is a monitor of the effectiveness of programs and of treatment programs, it is not a prevention program,

it is a supplemental prevention program.

Seven, what changes to the law authorizing the Media Campaign

would ONDCP like to request from Congress? What should the role

of the Partnership for Drug-Free America and other non-government organizations be?

And since they have chosen not to be here, we are going ahead

and writing a bill without them. And we would like at least some

written input, but it is a very frustrating process.

Now, let me make one other statement for the record. I find it

extraordinary that everybody from the administration comes up

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and says how we are winning the war on drugs. But then they

want to wipe out the prevention part, and the local law enforcement part, as we heard in an earlier hearing. If we are winning,

why would you gut the prevention leg strategy for more or less, or

at least take about 50 percent of it out, and why would you take

out the section on the Burn grants, which are the local drug task

forces, and the HIDTA funding, not to mention most of CTAC, if

your drug program is working? Furthermore, as we learned, which

is why they didn’t want to come forth, there are no studies that

suggest that the HIDTA program is a problem; there may be opinions. There are no studies that suggest that the Burn grants

weren’t part of the reduction. There are no studies that prove that

Safe and Drug-Free Schools—there is one GAO report that was 5

years ago. Give me a break. And, furthermore, no suggestions of

what the alternatives will be.

And when they said they were going to transfer the crime programs over to OCDEF, they had no proposal on the table, they had

no idea of what management plan there would be. Even though

they couldn’t name a single HIDTA that wasn’t working, they

couldn’t name an alternative for what was going to substitute for

the HIDTA, because they had given no thought, no test, no proposal to test, and it was supposed to be, take this, blind Congress.

Now we come to prevention programs and we have the same thing.

They don’t even want to talk about it. They don’t even want to

come up and explain Safe and Drug-Free Schools. There have been

no proposals with it; they are presenting no evidence that Safe and

Drug-Free Schools don’t work, yet it gets a big zero.

Then when we get to the other kind of general prevention strategy, the fact is we aren’t having coordinated meetings. The director

is meeting with Mr. Curie and says that he believes his program

is working. You have some of the biggest programs. But we all

know we have a huge coordination problem at the local level and

that this can’t be done one-on-one, OK, we are going to work on

this group over here and this group over here. We have to have a

national prevention strategy, which can only be done by getting the

principal players together and talking about it, starting with the

President, a national prevention strategy.

I just see a little bit, and this is one of my biggest concerns, and

I believe that your Strategic Prevention Framework is a good idea,

but we, as conservative Republicans, are drifting to a very dangerous philosophy, and this budget is the clearest example I have

seen of it. I have believed from the beginning—I am not a Libertarian. I believe we have a Constitution, not the Articles of Confederation. I believe it is important to have national programs. But I

believe we believe in local and State flexibility, and what we saw

in the local law enforcement hearing was an attempt to nationalize

law enforcement and say, instead of having a 50/50 vote on

HIDTA’s, we are going to give it to OCDETF, where the Federal

Government can force them to do what these stupid people don’t

know how to do themselves. And by taking the Burn grants, they

are saying, look at this local cops’ money. Even though they do 90

percent of the arrests, we think the Federal Government should set

drug arrest strategy.

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Now we come to prevention programs. It appears that the underlying reason why they don’t like Safe and Drug-Free Schools is it

goes to the schools to determine the strategy, which, quite frankly,

if you get $600, it is tough at a given school to come up with a

strategy. So as we work through this program, we need to figure

out how to make it more effective. But the solution then is to zero

it out and only keep the portion that is national, in other words,

the portion that Washington can say this is what we need to do,

and Washington is going to review and say this is how you should

do programs on national significance.

Now, in the Strategic Prevention Framework, the same thing has

to be, it has to be a true partnership. It doesn’t have to be the

thousand pound gorilla telling these dumb yokels at the local level

what they need to know. The science can’t be rigged to throw out

what is important, and that is sometimes, you know, the passion

of the individual at the local community overcomes some of what

is pure science here, because by getting people who are very passionate, like you said, it is one at the dinner table. And in prevention it is going to be a lot of the one at the dinner table in the community, and it is messy and it is hard. It is much easier to sit in

the Washington office and say this is what we think the prevention

strategy ought to be; this is what we think, we ought to go for

these big crime people, we shouldn’t bother with the local police

and State police, and the local task forces and these local school

people and everybody. Just do what we say, we know, we are in

Washington; we have been on the Hill a while now, so we need to

do this.

The fact is that it has to be cooperative. When it is cooperative,

it is tough, because you have all these diverse voices, and particularly in drug prevention, who don’t agree on anything, who, depending on the circumstances of their kids, their neighborhood—my

sociology prof used to call them my Aunt Annie theory of evidence.

It is tough. But if you are going to make this Strategic Prevention

Framework work, and if you are going to in fact wind up knocking

out, after we get the earmarks done and stuff, a number of other

programs that historically went to grants to do Strategic Prevention Framework, make sure that your program gives them a real

voice and not a manipulated voice that OCDETF says. OCDETF

task forces, by the way, are great for their limited function, but

their limited function heretofore has been the Federal Government

paying overtime for police officers to testify in cases. As they want

to get into the policy end, part of the problem here is, as we heard

from local law enforcement, do we get a real voice or do we get to

go to a meeting and be told what to do? And that is the fundamental of cooperative, of true empowerment, is there a vote to decide

the Strategic Prevention Framework; is there real input or is it this

is what we want to do, you are welcome to be on our board.

So if you would like to comment on the Strategic Prevention

Framework, but it is a general concern I have across the board. At

least you are here today to defend your position and explain what

you are doing, so thank you.

Mr. CURIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The essence of Strategic

Prevention Framework is to empower the local community, for

them to really be able to get a handle on their particular needs,

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their particular risk factors. And I see the role of Federal Government is one of facilitation, one of providing an economy of scale, of

resources to State and the community to be able to make decisions;

not tell the community this is what you must do, but open up the

reservoir of information that is available in efficient and effective

ways for the community so they know what type of assessment tool

to use in that community, so that they can begin making informed

decisions. When I mentioned NREPP earlier, and I know there are

efforts going forth right now to look among several Federal agencies to increase the repository of evidence-based programs, that a

community not be told you have to use this program, but a community takes a look and they select, based on their needs, make an

informed choice of what will work for their community.

And also I couldn’t agree with you more. Both you, Mr. Chairman, and Congressman Cummings talked about the passion of the

individual. I think bringing all those leaders to the table in the

first place, with the whole notion that this community is going to

have its own prevention strategy that is coordinated, in which

there is collaboration, begins to clearly set the stage to open up the

door to volunteerism. I have spoken also to many private foundations about this concept, and they are very enthused that if a community has a strategy and they have a handle on what the needs

of their community are and then they have embarked upon a process of funding programs which meet those particular needs, I think

it is going to invite the private sector to have more confidence to

invest in a community because they will see that a community has

a true basis and strategy that is going to be measurable.

And the other issue that I think for the Federal Government

plays a role is helping empower in terms of evaluation. That is always difficult for a local community and State, but we can help facilitate that process to paint that national picture. And, again, I

think we have a responsibility to keep those measures clear, to

keep them consistent and not put undue burden on grantees or

States.

So I would view the Federal role in Strategic Prevention Framework as facilitation, technical assistance, providing an economy of

scale for information, and empowering so informed decisions can be

made.

Mr. SOUDER. I want to pursue just a little bit more. My friend

Bob Woodson always talked about—and by the time I leave this

place, I am going to put this in a certain number of places, and we

are moving toward it—a zip code test, that the bulk of the grants

have to go to people who live in the zip code where the money goes

through, because too often we have tried to address this with overhead percents, that to some degree what I feel is the Federal Government funds 10 different committees to coordinate and very little

money to actually do, and that we need to figure out how to better

streamline those type of systems.

So I agree with you, evaluation is there, so maybe you put a percent in evaluation, things that you can better do by pooling. But

now we come back to the fundamental question: How in the world

do you do this without talking to Safe and Drug-Free Schools, without talking to the other big players at the table? Because here is

what you would theoretically do—and the only place right now we

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have to do this is through ONDCP, but they are not here, so I will

ask you. You would think that all of you would be sitting down together, because what really is going to get people at the table is

if they think dollars are coming.

And if there was a way to reform some of these systems and say,

look, we have a schools-based program, we have a communitiesbased program and the community anti-drug things, we have all

your dollars, which you are kind of trying to put together through

this Strategic Prevention Framework but, as you said, not overlap

with the other dollars that are already out there, which is hard to

do if you aren’t sitting talking together, and that in this Framework that you would have a Strategic Prevention Framework that

in fact would define and the people would participate and want to

participate, and if they felt a sense of ownership, which has to be

there, otherwise we are never going to end the set-aside grants in

the schools. Even though multiple people have tried to do this, it

has never been struck out. Why? Because nobody wants to cut the

money for their local schools when there is no alternative vision on

the table.

And if there was an alternative vision on the table that said this

is going to flow in by region, and that we are going to have a Strategic Prevention Framework, and the community anti-drug people

and whatever else you are doing with your dollars, and the Safe

and Drug-Free Schools dollars are going to be looked at in a comprehensive way by region so that it both flows as somewhat of an

entitlement funding into a region so it isn’t a zero sum game—that

California is going to get all Indiana’s money, for example—that

there is some kind of a fairness and equity in the distribution of

funds, then maybe people will come to the table and talk about

this.

Right now it really and honestly, as somebody who has worked

with this for more than a decade now, looks so incredibly random

that CADCA grants are funded this way in a bid process and this

over here is a set-aside and an earmark over here and this one over

here, and Safe and Drug-Free Schools entitlement down to the

school, which, if you are a big school you can probably do something; if you are a little school, it is not enough dollars. Some of

the programs are great; some of the programs are at least a program and they are saying drugs are bad, which is better than nothing.

And you look at that and say why didn’t the administration come

forth with a more comprehensive way to address this rather than

just proposing, more or less, chopping in half—your program is the

least impacted, $15 million, but it is still a reduction. Everybody

else is nearly wiped out. Why is there not any discussion? Have

you heard any discussion about anything that I just mentioned?

Has anybody ever mentioned that in a meeting?

Mr. CURIE. Well, I couldn’t agree with you more that I think historically—and, again, that has been part of what I think has been

the challenge to prevention, as well as a range of Federal programs, when there seems to be more of a funding stream mentality

where certain funding streams get created and certain providers or

certain grantees tend to find the end of that funding stream and

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they kind of stay in place and they never connect. And I think historically that is what we are up against.

We have had discussions with Justice, with Education, and with

DEA and other agencies around our Strategic Prevention Framework and discussed the very types of dynamics you just described,

how we envision at the local level if we can have alignment at the

Federal level, that other Federal agencies recognize Strategic Prevention Framework and think of ways of incentivizing grantees to

be involved in that process.

And I think your regional approach has merit for consideration,

and as we make these awards to States, a State can definitely consider a regional approach in terms of how they manage this for

local communities. But clearly I know the need you just described

has been identified, has been seen, and we have had discussions,

and I am pleased to say there has been enthusiasm expressed by

those other entities around our SPF notion. I think what you have

described is how can we continue to take SPF and a national strategy to ensure it is institutionalized, if you will.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. And I am going to say for the record,

and I have been a longtime friend of Director Walters too, but this

is part of what a drug czar is supposed to be doing, and we need

to have this proposed.

Thank you very much for coming today.

Mr. CURIE. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Will the second panel please come forward?

Now that everybody is comfortable, I am going to ask you to

stand and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that all the witnesses responded in the affirmative.

We are going to start with General Dean, chairman and CEO of

the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America [CADCA].

Thank you very much for coming today.

STATEMENTS OF GENERAL ARTHUR T. DEAN, RET., CHAIRMAN

AND CEO, COMMUNITY ANTI-DRUG COALITIONS OF AMERICA; STEPHEN J. PASIERB, PRESIDENT AND CEO, PARTNERSHIP FOR A DRUG-FREE AMERICA; BONNIE HEDRICK, PH.D,

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, OHIO RESOURCE NETWORK FOR

SAFE AND DRUG FREE SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITIES; CLARENCE JONES, COORDINATOR, SAFE AND DRUG-FREE YOUTH

SECTION, FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA PUBLIC SCHOOLS; TRACY

MCKOY, PARENT COORDINATOR, FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA; AND

ASHLEY IZADPANAH, STUDENT, FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA

STATEMENT OF GENERAL ARTHUR T. DEAN

General DEAN. Chairman Souder, Ranking Member Cummings

and other distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you

for the opportunity to testify before you today on behalf of Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America and our more than 5,000 community members nationwide. I am very excited to provide you with

CADCA’s perspective on the critical importance of drug prevention.

According to national experts, drug addiction is a development

disorder that begins in adolescence, for which effective prevention

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is critical. The younger a person first uses drugs, the higher their

chance of adult dependency and addiction.

Drug prevention programs ensure that youth have accurate information about the harmfulness of drug use, as well as the skills necessary to refuse drugs.

Historically, drug prevention has been severely underfunded relative to its importance and effectiveness in reducing drug use.

Preventing drug use must be a major priority.

There is a core set of Federal drug prevention programs that

have worked to compliment each other in reducing youth drug use

by 17 percent over the past 3 years.

Each of these programs is unique and serves a specific function

in our Nation’s drug prevention efforts. Together, these programs

constitute only 11.3 percent of the total Federal drug control budget in fiscal year 2005.

The President’s fiscal year 2006 budget proposes the elimination

of the State Grants portion of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and

Communities program and the DEA Demand Reduction Program.

It also proposes to reduce funding for the National Guard Drug Demand Reduction Program and CSAP’s Program for Regional and

National Significance.

The President’s fiscal year 2006 budget would severely underfund drug prevention. My written statement goes into detail about

the importance of all the core Federal drug prevention programs.

My remarks, however, due to time constraints, will focus only on

two of these programs, the State Grants portion of the Safe and

Drug-Free Schools and Communities Program and the Drug-Free

Communities Program.

The State Grants portion of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and

Communities Program is the backbone of the youth drug prevention in the United States. There are a number of misconceptions

about the State Grants program that I would like to address.

The first is that the program has not shown results. The reality

is the Department of Education has not yet implemented the Uniform Management Information and Reporting System required by

the No Child Left Behind Act. Despite this fact, States have exercised due diligence and collected the data to show positive impacts

and documented outcomes. A comprehensive list of outcomes from

selective States around the Nation is attached to my written testimony.

Finally, there is a misconception that these funds are spread too

thin to be effective. In fact, local education agencies who receive

less than $10,000 have leveraged this small amount of money to

provide effective programs and services. Under the President’s proposed fiscal year 2006 budget request, the entire $441 million for

State Grants would be eliminated, while $871⁄2 million would be

added to the National Program for Competitive Grants. The new

program is problematic. It will result in a very limited number of

local education agencies receiving funds while leaving the majority

of our Nation’s schools and students with absolutely no drug prevention programming.

CADCA is fully supportive of the President’s fiscal year 2006 proposal to increase the funding for the President’s Student Drug

Testing Initiative. CADCA is concerned, however, that this proVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:21 Dec 06, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00069 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23687.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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gram cannot be effective without school-based drug prevention and

intervention infrastructure provided by State Grants program.

Eliminating the funding for the State Grants portion of the Safe

and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Program is simply not an

option for our Nation. Congress needs to intervene and restore this

funding.

The Drug-Free Communities Program is an essential bipartisan

component of our Nation’s demand reduction strategy. This program empowers citizens to get directly involved in solving their

local drug issues. Drug-Free Communities Grants have achieved

impressive results in communities throughout the country. My

written testimony highlights significant outcomes achieved by

Drug-Free Communities Grants across America.

Since CADCA received a grant to manage the National Community Anti-Drug Coalition Institute, it has worked directly with hundreds of communities across the country to build and strengthen

their capacity. Last year’s appropriation included $2 million for the

Institute. A funding level of $2 million is also necessary for fiscal

year 2006 to ensure the effectiveness of Drug-Free Communities

grantees.

CADCA and its members are disappointed that the President’s

fiscal year 2006 budget did not include a request to increase funding for the Drug-Free Communities Program. This program not

only has a proven track record in reducing drug use, but funding

for it has historically been insufficient.

In conclusion, all youth must have the benefit of effective prevention efforts. Cutting or eliminating any of the core Federal programs will strain already insufficient levels of activities and services available to prevent drug use. When funding for drug prevention wains, youth drug use surges. With drug use on the decline

over the past 3 years, this is not the time to eliminate or cut funding for critical drug prevention programs. Enhanced drug prevention funding is needed to raise awareness about the dangers, costs,

and consequences of illegal drug use, and provide the skills and

support for youth to stay drug-free.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on this important subject, and I would be happy to answer any questions that you may

have.

[The prepared statement of Gen. Dean follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much.

Next is Mr. Stephen Pasierb, president and CEO of the Partnership for Drug-Free America.

Thank you for coming.

STATEMENT OF STEPHEN J. PASIERB

Mr. PASIERB. Mr. Chairman, thank you for having me testify

today. I want to thank this subcommittee, and particularly you,

Mr. Chairman, for your steadfast attention to this issue and your

tireless efforts. Particularly, Mr. Cummings, if you were in the

room, you have done so much for this effort over the years that we

are deeply, deeply appreciative.

The Partnership, as you know, is a coalition of volunteers from

throughout the communities industry. We are best known for our

research-based education campaigns that have been proven to be

effective not only in changing attitudes about drug use, but in

changing behavior: reducing illicit drug use.

Since 1998, the Partnership has served as the primary creative

partner to the Office of National Drug Control Policy on the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. As you know, Congress

authorized the Media Campaign knowing that the private sector,

working through the nonprofit Partnership for a Drug-Free America, had agreed to contribute its time, its talent, and its expertise

in advertising and marketing to this first-of-a-kind effort in the

truest sense of a public-private partnership.

I am happy and proud to report, Mr. Chairman, that the private

sector volunteerism has delivered on this commitment and has contributed approximately $125 million to the advertising campaigns

and professional services of the Media Campaign. And the good

news is that commitment remains absolutely steadfast.

The President’s budget has requested $120 million for the Media

Campaign for fiscal year 2006, which is the same allotted by Congress for this fiscal year, fiscal year 2005. This is down from $145

million in the previous year and, as was noted earlier, a far cry

from the $195 million originally appropriated in 1998. Congress appropriated $195 million in 1998 so that the Campaign could

achieve very specific objectives in terms of reach and frequency,

and it is important to note that the Campaign is operating with

much less today, in an environment where media costs far exceed

what they were in 1998. In fact, given annual inflation in the costs

of media, just to keep pace with 1998’s investment of $195 million

would require $256 million today. The gap between the current

$120 million, or even the preferred $145 million investment, and

$256 million is very obvious.

Furthermore, Mr. Chairman, every cut to the Campaign translates into a double cut in exposure, if you will, because the media

is required by law to match every dollar invested by the Government with a dollar in equal quality free time. So when $25 million

was cut from the Campaign, the fact is that $50 million was cut

from the impact on reaching at-risk teens and their parents.

To remain effective, the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign requires a sustained investment, not cuts. In the business

world, when marketing campaigns are producing solid results like

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this campaign is, brand managers invest even more, not less, to

sustain and accelerate the results.

The Partnership for a Drug-Free America is advocating that the

Media Campaign’s funding level for fiscal year 2006 be restored to

the previous level of $145 million. We do so, Mr. Chairman, because we believe this program is delivering unprecedented leverage

and excellent results for the investments that have been provided

so far.

I would like to offer some evidence on the effectiveness of the

Media Campaign from data drawn from the 2004 Partnership Attitude Tracking Study. This is the 17th year of our Nations largest

study on attitudes and drug use. The study was conducted on over

7,000 high school and middle school kids in private, parochial, and

public schools. We know some things from this study specific to the

Media Campaign.

First, significantly fewer teenagers are using marijuana today

when compared to 1998, the year the Media Campaign was

launched. Reductions are evident in all measured categories, of

prevalence, be it lifetime, past year, or past month. Marijuana-related risk attitudes among teens have improved significantly over

the same time. And, as you know, the Media Campaign has focused

primarily on marijuana abuse.

Second, significantly few teenagers are using ecstasy. In fact, the

data report a 25 percent decline in the number of teens using this

dangerous drug since it peaked in 2001. Our collective efforts to reduce demands for ecstasy have produced exceptional results.

Third, the PATS data continue to report strong correlations between heavy exposure to Media Campaign advertising and lower

drug use and stronger anti-drug attitudes among our teens. In

2003, RoperASW reported that teens exposed frequently to ads

were far more likely to have stronger anti-drug attitudes and up

to 38 percent less likely to use drugs. Ed Keller, who is the CEO

of RoperASW, is quoted as saying, ‘‘There is a clear correlation between exposure to anti-drug ads and the decisions teens make regarding drugs.’’ He added, ‘‘With a relationship this strong, it’s evident that working to boost the number of teens who see or hear

anti-drug messages on a daily basis can help drive down drug use.’’

Fourth from the study, the number of teenagers reporting learning a lot about the risks of drugs from television commercials has

increased steadily since the launch of the Media Campaign. In

fact—and this is somewhat a mixed story—the data report this

year for the first time in history that teens are more likely to cite

television commercials as a key source of anti-drug information

than any other source. And, unfortunately, parents slipped to the

No. 2 position in that study.

Finally, 2004 was the first year the data reported a decline in the

number of teenagers reporting seeing or hearing anti-drug messages daily or more frequently. Cuts in funding are starting to hurt

the Media Campaign and put our hard-won progress at risk.

As long as we are blessed with each new generation of children,

we are going to need to educate them about the dangers of an everchanging, even more dangerous drug landscape.

Mr. Chairman, committee, we will not find a more efficient, more

effective way to reach and educate teenagers about the dangers of

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illicit drugs than through research-based efforts like the National

Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. We will not find a more efficient way to educate teens about the dangers of drugs than

through the power and influence and reach, most importantly, of

mass media.

Consider, Mr. Chairman, that even at a restored funding level of $145 million, the Media Campaign is exceptionally efficient, requiring just $6 per teenager per year. Consider that every year, to sell

its products, Proctor and Gamble spends well over $1 billion on television advertising alone; Walt Disney Co. $800 million; PepsiCo

$740 million; McDonald’s $560 million for burgers, fries, and soft

drinks.

While $145 million is indeed a great deal of money, we face stiff

competition to reach teenagers in America. We must give the

Media Campaign every chance to continue to produce results. Reducing the demand for illicit drugs by changing consumer attitudes

works. That is what the Media Campaign is all about, and we must

invest more in it, not less, to realize its full potential.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Pasierb follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

Our next witness is Dr. Bonnie Hedrick, executive director of the

Ohio Resource Network for Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities at the University of Cincinnati.

Thank you for joining us today.

STATEMENT OF BONNIE HEDRICK

Ms. HEDRICK. Thank you and good afternoon. Thank you, Chairman Souder, Ranking Member Cummings, and other committee

members, for allowing me to speak today. I will be sharing information about drug prevention efforts in Ohio as it relates to one

of the findings of the Rand Report on the Safe and Drug-Free

Schools State Grant program. I reference this report as it was

quoted frequently in the PART review of Title IV, which has contributed to its proposed elimination.

One criticism emphasized in the Rand Report is the formulabased distribution of funds. The report recommends that a competitive grant process be used and that funds be reserved for schools

in greatest need. They contend this approach would be superior to

the current practice of spreading the money too thinly across all

schools.

I am here to tell you today that Title IV operations in Ohio, the

people who operate those operations, contend that assumption.

They say that even meager amounts help small rural towns with

minimal resources.

Ohio, like many States, is approximately 75 percent rural farmland. We have found that people in these areas approach prevention in non-traditional ways, but in the end they accomplish their

goals, as you will see in the handout that has been prepared for

you. Ohio schools have used their Federal funds to leverage local

dollars, volunteers and donations to get the job done.

For example, in Lucas County, Maumee Junior High School only gets about $8,000 a year in Title IV funds, but the local hospital

contributes another $25,000 to keep the student assistance program running. In Mahoning County, South Range Elementary

School gets even less, $5,200, and the school guidance counselor,

who serves as the Safe and Drug-Free School coordinator, still

manages to run an after-school mentoring program by using volunteers and donations. That is the kind of effort that the Congressmen were speaking about earlier.

Ohio ‘‘scatters’’ our $15.7 million in Title IV funds over 790 Local

Education Agencies in 88 counties. Despite what the Rand Report

would call a ‘‘misdirected program,’’ we reach over a million school

children every year. That figure includes every 5th and 7th grade

student in Cincinnati public schools who receive life skills training.

The Governor’s portion funds another 44 programs in 26 counties

and reach 70,000 children who are frequently out of school, runaway youth, homeless youth, youth in detention centers, pregnant

and parenting teens.

If Safe and Drug-Free Schools funding is eliminated, or if it is

allocated only to a select number of schools, with a good grant writer, I might add, the new cohort of Cincinnati students will not have

the opportunity to build social competencies that will make them

more employable in the future. Newly settled Latino families in

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East Cleveland and Toledo will lose culturally relevant support

during their transition into America. But the children of Mahoning

County will probably still have a mentor, because once a good mentoring relationship is established, they don’t fade away with the absence of funding.

Ohio, like other States, has seen decreases in alcohol and other

drug use over the past few years. Title IV funds have contributed

to that. Drugs that have not received a lot of attention, however,

are creeping back on the scene. Four students near my hometown,

for example, have died of heroin overdose.

I ask you to refer to your handout to look more specifically at

what the accomplishments have been for that program specific to

Ohio.

Last week, news surfaced about the gang rape of a female student in Columbus that occurred behind the curtain in the school

gym. Later that day we learned about a riot on a playground during a fire drill at another school near Cleveland. One of my staff

finished the day by counseling a parent of a child who had been

chronically bullied since the beginning of school in another school

near Cleveland. Our work is real and it is not finished.

Dana is a testament to the impact that Safe and Drug-Free

School coordinators have on the lives of students. Her school receives $56,000 in Safe and Drug-Free School funds, which is

enough to hire a full-time coordinator; not much left of programming. When a Lorain County student, Dana was a constant referral for behavior problems; she was failing, she was dropping out of

school, she had been suspended. And then she got referred to the

Safe and Drug-Free School coordinator. When she started working

with her, it was discovered that Dana was trying to support her

family. Her mom was an alcoholic, she had two younger siblings,

there was no father present. She was working at McDonald’s to

make money to keep the family going. Homework was left until

late at night, if she had energy to do it.

With the support of a caring adult and Children of Alcoholics

support group, Dana has since graduated and gone to college.

Today she is doing very well. Without intervention and support

from a caring adult at school, Dana would have likely dropped out

of school and continued the cycle of addiction that had been modeled for her in her home.

What is scary is that under the Rand proposal, Dana’s school

would never have met the criteria of a school in greatest need.

That didn’t preclude Dana from being a child of great need.

Certainly there are flaws in the present Safe and Drug-Free

School program that require fixing, but not elimination. As a Nation, I don’t see how we can afford to eliminate a program that has

changed the lives of children like Dana. Schools might deny that

this is not their problem, but Safe and Drug-Free School coordinators know better, and they act differently.

Thank you for allowing me to share Ohio efforts with you today.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Hedrick follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much.

Now we are going to focus in on Fairfax County for a little bit

here. Mr. Clarence Jones, coordinator of the Safe and Drug-Free

Schools Youth Section, Fairfax County Public Schools.

Thank you for joining us today.

STATEMENT OF CLARENCE JONES

Mr. JONES. Thank you.

Chairman Souder, Ranking Member Cummings, and other distinguished members of the Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and

Human Resource Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to

testify before you today on behalf of Fairfax County Public Schools.

I am pleased to be here today to share my concerns about the

2006 budgetary decision to eliminate funding from the State

Grants portion of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program. I am

here representing Fairfax County Public Schools Safe and DrugFree Section and the school system at large. Fairfax County Public Schools receives approximately $564,000

each year from the Virginia Department of Education Safe and

Drug-Free School’s office to accomplish anti-drug related programs.

These funds are the foundation on which Fairfax County Public

Schools drug prevention efforts are based. These funds help provide

anti-drug prevention programs to over 230 schools which serve

more than 170,000 students in the 12th largest school system in

the United States.

The No Child Left Behind Act requires all Safe and Drug-Free

Schools programs to adhere to the principles of effectiveness and to

use funding on scientifically based programs. Fairfax County Public

Schools has been using these principles of effectiveness since it was

first introduced by the Virginia Department of Education, long before No Child Left Behind made it mandatory.

Mr. John Walters, head of the Office of ONDCP, invited the Safe

and Drug-Free Youth Section staff to meet with him and his staff

after he entered his position. He wanted to see how an effective

school system blended funding from local, State, and Federal

sources into a working process to get the desired results and to

prove that their programs were making a difference. We provided

Mr. Walters with information on how we use our funding and impressed upon him that the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program

funding was the foundation of all programs in Fairfax County Public Schools. Fairfax County Public Schools was also the school system chosen by President Bush to bring Mr. Walters when he was

announced as the new head of ONDCP. Fairfax County Public

School system was chosen because of its outstanding drug prevention programs.

In 2001, Fairfax County Public Schools completed the Community that Cares Survey. This survey provided Fairfax County with

much needed information on the direction of its drug prevention

programs. In 2003, the followup survey was conducted with the following results. And you have those in front of you, but I do want

to point out some of the stats.

Within a 30-day period prior to the survey, the use of alcohol was

reported as 12.8 percent of 8th graders, compared to 21 percent in

2001, a big drop; 33.2 percent of 10th graders, compared to 36 perVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:21 Dec 06, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00146 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23687.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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cent in 2001, another drop; 27.6 percent of 12th graders reported

binge drinking in the last 2 weeks, compared to 31 percent in 2001.

The use of Safe and Drug-Free funding helped to reduce alcohol

use at all of the survey grade levels.

Same situation with marijuana use: 2.8 percent of 8th graders,

compared to 5.1 percent in 2001; 11.6 percent of 10th graders, compared to 13 percent in 2001; and this also using Safe and DrugFree moneys.

Also, when you talk about cigarettes, the same scenario is happening: 4.1 percent of 8th graders, compared to 9.3 percent in 2001;

and you see the trend going on and on and on.

The use of Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities moneys

made a major difference.

The above information just demonstrated that the use of Safe

and Drug-Free funding is making a difference. The next youth survey will be conducted in October 2005. Because of the increase in

the prevention programs I am about to mention, we believe these

percentages will continue their downward trend as we continue to

use Safe and Drug-Free funding to support our programs.

Mr. Cummings said earlier that he would love to see other parts

of the community come together, and he did this here, he pointed

to his heart, for those volunteers right here: I can say this. Fairfax

County Public Schools has established school community coalitions

in order to bring parents, community members, medical, law enforcement, business, faith, and many other sectors into the prevention family. Educating the community on the dangers of drugs and

how they can support the drug prevention efforts of the schools has

proven to be invaluable. These coalitions have become the bridge

from the schools to the community, and now we all can speak the

same drug-free language.

Fairfax County, VA is one of the most diverse counties in America. These drug prevention coalitions have made it possible to reach

out to the many different cultures in our county. We have the No.

1 diverse high school in America, Stewart High School, that has

over 110 different languages spoken in that particular school.

Using scientifically researched-based programs in schools paid

for by Safe and Drug-Free funding has proven, as I said, to be invaluable. Such programs as Too Good for Drugs, Life Skills, and

Guiding Good Choices are just a few that have provided students

and parents with information to help in the prevention of drugs in

our schools and communities.

There is a perception that the Program Assessment Rating Tool

[PART], score justifies eliminating the State Grant portion of the

Safe and Drug-Free program. If that same rating tool is used in

Fairfax County Public Schools, it would soon become evident that

our system met the requirements as well as collected data to show

a very positive impact with documented outcomes.

The Virginia Department of Education has produced this document right here with all the different programs provided using Safe

and Drug-Free funds in the Commonwealth of Virginia. These programs are making a difference.

As a member of the Executive Board of the National Network for

Safe and Drug-Free Schools Coordinator, I feel it is also my role

to speak for school systems across America. Elimination of this

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funding will have a catastrophic effect on the balance of drug users

among school-aged children in America. Many school systems

across America have found unique ways to combine these funds

with very little local moneys in order to provide the highest level

of drug prevention.

Removing the monetary foundation of these programs could

cause many, if not all, of them to collapse. I know this because in

our system, one of the wealthiest in the Nation, elimination of

these funds would severely impact or cancel many well developed,

well documented and successful drug prevention programs. I can’t

imagine how drug prevention programs in other smaller systems

will survive.

In closing, I want to say this here: As a veteran of the U.S. Air

Force for 24 years, and now retired, I understand the need to fully

fund programs that deter and prevent undesirable and negative behavior that will impact the American way of life. My current role

as the coordinator of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools for Fairfax

County Public Schools is not much different. I am still in the role

of finding ways to prevent undesirable and negative behaviors: in

this case drug use among our youngest citizens. Therefore, I was

shocked when I first heard the news of President Bush’s budget for

2006. The message that this budget is sending to our youth and

communities is simple: we don’t care about the health and wellbeing of our children.

I, as well as other school systems across America, am asking for

your support to continue to prove to all Americans that our children are truly worth the effort. This funding does make a difference.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on this subject.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Jones follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much.

Our next witness is Ms. Tracy McKoy, parent coordinator in

Fairfax County.

STATEMENT OF TRACY MCKOY

Ms. MCKOY. Chairman Souder, Mr. Cummings, and committee

members, thank you for this opportunity to speak to you.

Though I am a middle school educator by profession, I am here

today as the parent of three daughters, each of whom has benefited

from the program set forth by the Safe and Drug-Free School and

Community Act. With the help of these programs, my girls have

successfully navigated through their teenage years. They have successfully navigated through the halls of their high school drug and

alcohol-free. They have made the choice to walk away from substance abuse.

Jaime was a Just Say No Club president in her elementary

school 14 years ago. She learned leadership skills and developed

confidence as she conducted meetings and school-wide assemblies.

She attended rallies at the Patriot Center here in northern Virginia along with thousands of other students. They learned through

music, drama, the Air Force band, speeches from the attorney general that you can have fund and be successful without alcohol and

drugs.

My second daughter just graduated from college last week. She

was also a member of the Just Say No Club in elementary school

and as a senior in high school she was successful as the president

of the Youth to Youth Club, which promotes prevention and alcohol

substance abuse. Members of this club travel to many schools, confidently sharing their views of the importance of keeping their lives

drug-free. Stacey and her friends were excellent role models for

their younger audiences.

Yesterday I asked her to reflect on her experiences. She said,

‘‘Mom, I don’t know how much I impacted the elementary schools

that I visited when I was a senior and through my high school

years, but I know that it affected me a lot to listen to the high

school kids when they came to me in 5th and 6th grade. That’s why

I did what I did.’’

She believes if parents include staying away from drugs and alcohol in the teaching of their moral values, this program gives kids

the confidence to make choices that they want to make anyway. It

shows them how to make good choices and how to stick to them.

Currently, my third daughter, Erin, serves on the same committee that Ashley does, and you will hear from her in a moment. She

too has learned leadership skills and has brain-stormed with other

teenagers on how to keep our communities and school drug, alcohol, and tobacco-free. Recently she participated in a public service

announcement which airs frequently. This particular announcement is focused on educating parents as to what some of their children may be doing and where they may be hiding some of the paraphernalia in their own homes.

As a youngster, Erin was the vice president of her Just Say No

Club in elementary school, and as a 7th grader she wrote this paragraph regarding her experiences there: ‘‘I have had numerous leadership positions throughout the past few years. In the 6th grade I

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was a Just Say No vice president as well as a second counselor in

my church youth group. Serving as Just Say No vice president was

a great experience for me because of the opportunities I had. Walking down Eldon Street in the middle of a cold October homecoming

parade, chanting at the top of my lungs with a couple hundred

group of kids from my elementary school is an experience I will

never forget. The whole town heard what I thought about drugs

that day. Losing my voice and having people yell ’sing it, girl,’ are

some of my favorite memories.’’

And later she writes about citizenship, ‘‘I believe it is being an

individual, but at the same time it is working with others to reach

a common goal’’—which is, I think, what we are doing here today.

‘‘I showed my fellow students that I had excellent citizenship when

they elected me as their Just Say No vice president. They knew I

would do a good job, and that is why I ran. I believe that is why

they voted for me.’’

It is my testimony that drug prevention programs in the schools

and communities do make a difference. I believe I speak today for

many parents. There is one thing that parents are passionate

about, and that is their children. We cannot put a price tag on the

youth of our Nation who choose to stay drug and alcohol-free.

Do I give sole credit to these programs for the successes of my

children? No. Do I take credit for their successes as a parent teaching them within the laws of my own home? No. But I think all of

those things coupled together with their good decisionmaking

makes a great difference in the lives of our youth. I can’t even

imagine that this funding was considered being cut, and when I

heard that it was, I am happy to be a voice today.

I am grateful for these programs, and my children’s voices have

been heard and continue to be heard in their arenas. I hear their

voice; their teachers hear their voices; their friends and peers hear

their voices; their coaches; their associates in the workplace. I believe what these programs give our children is the ability to step

inside an arena, whether it be a puppet show, presentation, or an

assembly in the Patriot Center. It gives them an arena to step into

knowing that standing next to them are other students and friends

who have the same values that they do and that they know that

it is not just about mom and dad wanting them to be making these

choices, but they can make the choices that they want to knowing

it is the right thing.

Thank you for your time.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

Our closing witness today, our cleanup hitter is Ms. Ashley

Izadpanah, student at Fairfax County Robinson High School.

Thank you for coming today.

STATEMENT OF ASHLEY IZADPANAH

Ms. IZADPANAH. Good afternoon. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak before you today. My name is Ashley Izadpanah,

and I am a junior at Robinson Secondary School.

When I was in the 7th grade, I joined the Safe and Drug-Free

Youth Council as a representative for the Robinson Community Coalition. I wanted the chance to make a difference in the way my

community responded to issue surrounding teens: drugs, alcohol,

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and tobacco. Along with the Robinson Community Coalition, Robinson also offers a program called Power Team, a group of students

who aim to lead drug-free lives and spread anti-drug messages.

During my involvement with the Safe and Drug-Free Youth

Council, I have done just that. I have joined together with other

concerned students locally, across the Commonwealth of Virginia,

and across the Nation to gain knowledge, offering opinions and

speaking out in an effort to spread the message of health and safety to youth and their families.

When young people talk, young people listen. Oftentimes, when

young people talk, parents listen. One of the projects I am very

proud to have participated in was the development of a series of

Public Service Announcements on drug abuse that air on Cox Communications television stations. The clips are geared toward informing parents about issues their children might be having in

their schools and communities. People who don’t know me have

stopped to ask me if that was me they saw on the PSA. Hopefully,

their parents were watching too. The fact that I have had random

people from school and even the grocery store talk to me about the

PSA makes me feel that the anti-drug message is spreading effectively in my community.

Another project I have participated in as a member of the Safe

and Drug-Free Youth Council is the production of anti-drug posters. These will be all over the walls in northern Virginia schools

and will serve as a constant reminder of the importance of drug

awareness.

Youth Against Drug Abuse and Prevention Project [YADAPP], is

a week-long, student-run leadership conference that includes students from all over Virginia who talk about problems they see in

their school and community regarding drug and alcohol abuse. During the camp, a primary focus is enforcing leadership qualities

within each participant, so we return home with the confidence and

knowledge to be leaders within our communities.

I am so excited to have the opportunity to attend YADAPP because it has impacted my life in so many ways. As a student, I

have seen when other students are placed in a positive drug-free

environment, it strengthens our desire to remain drug-free and enforces our decision to spread that message. Last summer I attended

YADAPP as a participant and have been chosen to attend YADAPP

again this summer as a Youth Leader. This would not have been

possible if programs like the Safe and Drug-Free Youth Council did

not exist.

The Safe and Drug-Free Youth Council adult sponsors provide us

with the opportunity to be heard on issues that matter to the youth

today. They guide us and help us to make a difference in the way

our community makes decisions on not only today’s, but also tomorrow’s uncertain world.

I have two younger brothers, ages 5 and 12, who will benefit

from my involvement in the Safe and Drug-Free Youth Council. I

take the experiences, leadership skills, and the confidence I find at

council meetings and practice them on my family, neighbors, and

peers at school. This program has not only helped me stay safe and

drug-free, but has also impacted the lives of countless youth across

the United States.

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However, as we are all aware, the budget for the anti-drug efforts has been dramatically reduced. When I first heard of this cut,

I could not get over the fact that the Government is willing to take

money away from an effort that aims toward the well-being of today’s youth, my generation. Today’s youth make up tomorrow’s

America, and without anti-drug programs to help teens to choose

correct paths, I fear for the future’s outcome. To take money away

from those whose actions are easily influenced by the media and

peers is to me just asking for further drug abuse by today’s youth.

The self-respect, self-esteem, confidence, and knowledge gained

through the experiences provided by programs like the Safe and

Drug-Free Youth Council help young people and their families

make wise decisions that can impact them for a lifetime.

In closing, I would like to say that even though the Government

is willing to reduce its investment in its anti-drug efforts, it is safe

to assume that drug dealers will not cut back on their efforts and

will continue to invest in their corrupting activities.

I urge you to rethink reducing the budget for the well-being of

today’s youth and to continue to support programs like the Safe

and Drug-Free Youth Council.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Izadpanah follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. I thank you all for your testimony.

There are so many different ways to go in the questioning. Let

me start with General Dean and Mr. Jones. I want to zero in on,

in particular, the Safe and Drug-Free Schools for a minute. This

isn’t the first time we have been through this.

My assumption is if we make some strong statements here, we

will not have to go through it on an annual basis. It makes it very

difficult to plan, very difficult to—so many resources get spent trying to maintain something that has never been eliminated. The

closest we came that I recall I think was in 2001, when—excuse

me, in 1995, when the Republicans first took over Congress, and

the speaker and Chairman Porter and the subcommittee and the

full Appropriations chairman were all committed to eliminating it,

along with the Clinton administration, and it was a big fight to try

to preserve the program.

But, bottom line, the same thing was true then as is true now,

which is that everybody talks about prevention, but they don’t really have an alternative if we don’t do this program. And we had a

GAO study then, a Rand study, where people take shots at the program, but nobody really has come up with something else as to how

to exactly do this. This is not easy.

Yet it is clear that given the budget tightness, unless we make

some changes in the program it is going to be very difficult, longterm, to sustain the funding. In other words, if they come at this

with a 10 to 20 percent reduction, this would be a different battle

than going after the whole thing. So as a practical matter we need

to look at this.

And one of my questions is—let me mention one other thing. I

mentioned I was on Education the last time this bill went through.

I believe I counted it up at the end. I believe I had 32, but it was

over 30 personal changes in the bill as we worked through to try

to do this and keep the funds separated under President Bush. It

must have been 2001, I think, when we did reauthorization, because we have to be coming up close to it again.

I went directly to President Bush and the White House, because

they were going to block grant this as part of a broader block grant

without any Safe and Drug-Free Schools targeted money, and said,

point blank, that they didn’t have an alternative. And I know John

Boehner was chairman of the committee, so it had to be somewhere

in that timeframe. In the question, and one of my frustrations was

this started as an anti-drug program in the schools. Then we made

it Safe and Drug-Free Schools.

Then at one point in the Education Committee I got so exasperated because there were three different, I believe, or 25 different allowable uses, because everybody would propose something—mental health, health, after-school programs, basketball,

whatever—as an allowable use for Safe and Drug-Free Schools, the

argument being all these activities reduce drug abuse. At one point

in my frustration I offered education, because, in fact, education

dollars theoretically reduce drug abuse if you do well in school, so

why not have an after-school reading program? Then what is the

point of a drug program? At some point why don’t we just put it

in the education budget? We negated our own argument by having

this long list of other types of things.

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So if we are realistically going to address this long-term, do you

think it is time to separate the anti-violence from the anti-drug, or

what other suggestions would you have to try to get this. If we are

going to argue it as a drug prevention program, it needs to be a

drug prevention program, and that is part of our problem here. I

would be interested, General Dean, in your comments and Mr.

Jones.

General DEAN. As I have traveled the country and talked to people like Dr. Hedrick and others, and Clarence, it is clear that, one,

the program needs, in my opinion and their opinion, national leadership, which means that the Uniform Management Information

Reporting System needs to be implemented so that guidance is

clearly given and States are not working based on their own guidance, No. 1.

No. 2, there is concern that there has been too much emphasis—

and it goes back to Columbine and other incidents that happened

in schools that have been violence incidents—that there has been

a shift in the emphasis in the program and a great deal of the dollars have been spent on the violence side, to the point that it may

be out of balance, and it has become a little bit more violence prevention than it is drug prevention.

So I would agree with your comment that we need to look carefully at the program and ensure that it is in fact doing what it was

originally intended to do, and that we have not made it a program

that has taken on new responsibilities for which it was not designed to do. So I sum up by saying we are concerned lack of leadership; two, yes, we believe what you said is correct, that it has become too broad of a program.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Jones, maybe—and I meant to have Dr.

Hedrick, too, kind of go through what is happening Ohio, but could

you describe at Fairfax, at the school level, do you make sure these

are all anti-drug, or do you have a proliferation of different things?

How does it tie together thematically?

Mr. JONES. Actually, we combine them both. We do programs for

parents that will talk about drugs and violence. We do programs

in the schools that do the same. To give you an example, at the

middle school level, the school system provides funding for an

after-school program at all our middle schools. Using Safe and

Drug-Free moneys and working with our coalitions, we provide

those same middle schools, which are 25 of them, a science-based

program for after-school programs such as Get Real About Violence

or on the Drug Side of the House over here we look at life skills

and for parents Guiding Good Choices.

So we have found a way to bring those programs together to

work. And by doing that right there, we are getting a lot of positive

results both from the violence side of the House and also on the

drug side of the House.

But I do agree with General Dean. We need to take a real good

look at that because there is a push to use more of that funding

to take a look on the violence side, because of the gang situation.

And I think I am the only one right now standing in the way of

not letting it being pushed that way because I believe that we need

to take a very hard look even more at the drug side because drug

use leads to everything that is going to be on the right side. So we

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have found a way to mesh those programs, and right now they are

working pretty successful.

Mr. SOUDER. Let me have Dr. Hedrick, then I will come back.

Ms. HEDRICK. In Ohio we have used the research of Dr. David

Hawkins and Joseph Catalano that was published in the Psychological Bulletin of 1993, first published, that outlined a series of

risks and protective factors. Mr. Curie spoke of that earlier as part

of the National Prevention Framework. So we use risk and protective factors helping a community or a school look at specific risk

factors for either violence or drugs, and then placing more emphasis on programs or solutions that build the protective factors.

There are certain risk factors that are very specific to alcohol and

drugs, for example accessibility of alcohol in the neighborhood, that

have to be focused on, and this is where the marriage between

Drug-Free Communities and Safe and Drug-Free Schools becomes

real clear, because when a community is working on those environmental risk factors, and the school is working at the drug education and building a connection and the relationships and having

the leadership programs that Ashley talked about, that is the best

case scenario.

The other thing that we have used is the National Longitudinal

Study that was produced by the National Institutes of Health, and

that is one of the best bodies of research that is out there to tell

us really what makes a difference in the lives of kids, and that is

connections. And when kids feel connected, they feel less alienated

from home, from school, from community, they are less likely, and

it is proven in the research, to be violent, to be a bully, or to use

alcohol and other drugs; and there are some other antisocial behaviors that they are less likely to do too.

A lot of our programming in Ohio is focused on those strengthbased approaches. Taking young people like the Danas I mentioned

earlier, or Ashley, and saying look at these valuable resources we

have before us. Now, what can we do to embrace them, to build

that potential to the very best that it can possibly be? And we try

to build the capacity of schools and school leadership to facilitate

those mentoring relationships, those positive relationships for kids.

Mr. SOUDER. Ms. Watson.

Ms. WATSON. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.

I represent Los Angeles, CA, certain area of Los Angeles, and

what I have observed over the years being a member of the school

board and so on, we have a subculture going, and in that subculture that emanates from the lack of a functional home environment, therefore, a dysfunctional neighborhood and community, that

there is a culture that requires you to use drugs, alcohol, and leading to the violence that we see every single day. We see the drivebys killing youngsters coming to and from school. If we had the intact family like Ms. McKoy describes and like the young student

over there, that kind of setting, then I can understand. But we are

dealing with hardcore deviants that are dealing with the way of life

that causes them to survive. The Just Say No program was a

laugh, it did not work.

Anyone on the panel, can you tell me the kinds of programs that

have been funded in the past that you feel are effective in this kind

of environment? Because we are losing the battle, and we possibly

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can lose the war. We send our youngsters to California Youth Authority and they come out as hardened criminals. And there is

more drugs supplied inside than outside on the streets. There is no

rehabilitation going on, and they leave there and they become really hardened criminals.

And I am a big supporter of mental health services because I

think we have to deal on an even keel with mental health if we

are going to talk about the physical and biological health of these

youngsters.

So can somebody help me understand how we are going to get

to that hardcore culturally involved young person on the streets of

some of the areas that I represent?

General DEAN. I will start first. We believe that the Community

Anti-Drug Coalition addresses your concern, and I say that in all

due respect because the Coalition is designed to be owned by the

community, to be empowered so that the community will make its

own recommended solutions, and it does that with guidance and

help from organizations like mine and others. But what is most important is that all of the sectors in the community come together

to work the problem holistically.

When you can bring all of the sectors together, the school officials, parents, youth groups, law enforcement, civic leaders, business leaders, all of the important sectors of the community, we believe that them working holistically will get at the issues associated with the kinds of youth that you are talking about, as well as

the other issues.

We believe that it takes time, it takes effort, it takes commitment and ownership, but it is the best strategy with help from the

other national programs that we talked about, the Media Campaign, Safe and Drug-Free Schools program and others that we can

get at it and begin to have some impact. And we have seen outcomes in other places and we are working diligently in your city

and your State as well.

Ms. WATSON. A couple of things. Do we have the resources, I

mean the dollars, that are flowing into California, flowing into L.A.

Unified, which is our largest school district in the State? Their

funding has been cut through the State budget, but are these programmatic funds coming into California to match the need? That

is No. 1. And can you give me the program and the contacts you

have made in L.A. Unified?

Because we have a serious, serious problem and I would like to

know, because I can join with them and we can help, and I hope

we can make policy here. And if we can increase the funding, I believe that is why the Chair has called this hearing, to look at and

see if we have adequate resources, because we have a real serious

problem, and I don’t see us making a dent in it. So if you can provide me with the names and the contacts within the district or

within the police department or mental health, or whatever administration you are working with, I would be happy to contact them,

because I have initiated a program that deals with youth and violence.

Then our Black Caucus has had now 14 different forums around

the country dealing with the status of the Black male, zeroing in

on violence, and we had a very successful turnout. But we did that

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on our own and we don’t see the funds that are coming from the

administration into California into programs like this. So if you can

provide me with that information, I would be very, very happy to

followup.

Mr. JONES. I just want to add to what General Dean said about

those coalitions right there. I also want to add this here too: I understand where you are coming from in California, but here in

Fairfax, VA, we are one of the wealthiest in the United States. People think all that money and all this, there are no drug problems.

Every school system in America has a drug problem. Every school

system in America and every community has an underground culture just like what you are talking about.

Using the coalitions like what General Dean was talking about,

we have been able to go into the community, the heart and soul,

and find out what is going on, and work with the people there who

can make a difference and empower those people. We educate

them, we train them, and then they can start working in their communities, and we help provide funds for them. And having as many

different languages as we have in northern Virginia, it is amazing

how many things we have to get translated for the people there.

But I can say what we are finding out is going into those communities, using our coalition connections, we are seeing a difference,

and we are seeing people come out and say, hey, you know. And

one of the things, just a few weeks ago I was talking with a group

of Hispanic youth, and they said, you know, all we knew before was

chop-chop or shoot or something like that. He said, hey, I like this,

it gives us something else to do. So that is where we are going.

Ms. WATSON. Well, let me just respond by saying that we can be

a conduit for you, and if you tell us how this network gets put together, we would be happy to supply you the venue and do the

communication and so on. I just don’t see the results of all that

wonderful—you know, it sounds like a dream, something we are

reaching for. I would like to see it in reality, be able to touch it,

feel it, and see the results of it, and have the appropriate resources

to put it together.

Mr. JONES. Actually, you know, we all dream and, believe me, we

are trying to make those dreams come true. I will give you a name,

Bruner Summers, in L.A. Unified school system. By the way, we

are coming out to your school system in September to talk with

them about the gang situation out there because it has moved over

into our area. So there we are once again making that network to

make it happen.

Ms. WATSON. OK. And I would like to give you another name,

Marguerite Lamott, who represents a certain area, you know we

used to call it South Central area. She is the school board member

representing that area. We work together. We would be happy to

assist you. Get in touch with us when you come.

Mr. JONES. I will see you in September.

Ms. WATSON. OK.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I have to leave now.

Ms. HEDRICK. Could I, just before you leave? There is a teacher

in Long Beach, CA, who was in Long Beach, CA, Erin Gruell, who

made such a difference in the lives of 30 or 40 kids that she had

in her classroom. They have since written a book called the FreeVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:21 Dec 06, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00162 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23687.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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dom Writers’ Diary. Every student in her class went on to college

and are doing well, and all the donations from the proceeds of their

book goes to fund their college.

She used some very nontraditional instructional techniques, but

the one thing that she did more than anything else was she approached them where they were. She knew the struggle they were

in, she heard their story, she helped them relate it to things that

had happened in history like the Holocaust and other horrible

events, and she turned those kids around. And I think that you are

talking about the same kind of culture. Erin Gruell, she is a teacher in Long Beach, CA.

Ms. WATSON. That is a long way from the area that I am talking

about.

Ms. HEDRICK. I don’t know.

Ms. WATSON. Yes, it is. I am talking about L.A. Unified, and here

is Long Beach way down here. OK, thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Ms. McKoy, how did you get hooked in with the

Safe and Drug-Free School programs? I know you talked about

your kids, but I was curious what the initial links were.

Ms. MCKOY. I have spent most of my adult life as a volunteer

in the schools.

Mr. SOUDER. But how did that start? So you were volunteering

with the schools before?

Ms. MCKOY. I was just a volunteer mom in an elementary school,

and that was many years ago, probably 15, when Mr. Jones was

a counselor at that school. He was the faculty sponsor for the club

that my oldest daughter was the president of. And together with

faculty members and other students, we started there and it just

grew.

Mr. SOUDER. Is that pretty typical in your system how it starts?

You were at her school.

Mr. JONES. That started back then. I was a counselor back then.

Since that time, things have really changed and our Safe and

Drug-Free Office really initiates a lot. We put it into the hands of

the community members and they are the ones that look right in

their communities to make the difference.

I can say this. I think it was 51⁄2, 6 years ago when I became

the coordinator. The second thing I did, I picked up the phone and

I called somebody by the name of General Arthur Dean, at someplace called CADCA. When I called there, we went and met with

him, and from that point on, building those coalitions, getting those

parents involved—because me sitting at a place with our superintendent and trying to make those decisions would not work; we

had to go to the grassroots level. And that has made all the difference in the world.

Mr. SOUDER. Ashley, you said in 7th grade you joined the Safe

and Drug-Free School Youth Council. Did you read about it or did

somebody talk to you about it, or how did that happen?

Ms. IZADPANAH. Since I was already a member of the Robinson

Community Coalition, they offered us the opportunity to attend a

big meeting, and at the end of the meeting they said if you want

to be part of the Safe and Drug-Free Youth Council, let us know.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you know who put the meeting together that

you went to?

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Ms. IZADPANAH. Mr. Jones, probably.

Mr. JONES. Everything will come back sooner or later. Because

I am the coordinator, it is my responsibility to oversee those programs. So we got the committee started up, and those young men

and women in that Council have done an outstanding job. If you

live in northern Virginia, you may have seen them on Cox TV,

three PSAs that will be running for the next 3 years. Ashley is in

them and so are a lot of our community people. But the Youth

Council she is talking about represents the whole school system.

Each one of the coalitions has their own little youth group, but we

represent the whole school system because we need to get the message out, and we needed people like Ashley.

Mr. SOUDER. I want to come back to this in just a second, but

I want to digress because it reminded me of a question I had earlier.

Ashley, at Robinson do you have an in-house TV and radio studio

that does announcements or occasional programming?

Ms. IZADPANAH. Yes. In the mornings we watch the morning announcements and we have anchors, TV anchors.

Mr. SOUDER. Is that pretty typical for most of the schools in Fairfax?

Mr. JONES. All of our schools have them.

Mr. SOUDER. Is there any kind of Drug-Free Schools program

that you work there with the kids in each school, in addition to like

Cox?

Mr. JONES. Yes. Different schools do their coalitions. Coalitions

work very closely with the schools. We have to have that connection. I don’t believe in one—so different schools will put announcements on in the morning, especially during Red Ribbon Week or

during the prom, graduation, the holiday period. Those announcements and programs increase big time.

Mr. SOUDER. I have never understood why the National Department of Education doesn’t collect like best ideas and share them

with the different schools. We have a whole network of TV and

radio stations right inside the schools, and even down in rural Indiana, and I have never understood why we are out there trying to

figure out how to get on national TV, but we aren’t utilizing inhouse. Has Partnership ever looked at the in-house?

Mr. PASIERB. Yes. We supply our messages to a lot of school systems around the country through our local affiliates, because those

schools want to do exactly what you are describing.

Mr. SOUDER. Have you ever looked at how to tap into the homegrown kind of a sub-theme? In other words, it is one thing if it is

coming in and it is something that reinforces the outside, but something that is bottom-up?

Mr. PASIERB. There is a lot of passion and talent in those schools,

and if we could rally them all together to be doing the same things

in Indiana and Virginia and everywhere else, we could have a significant force.

Mr. SOUDER. I want to come back to what I was trying to piece

together here. Bottom line is if you hadn’t had the program that

drew the parent volunteers in, that set up the meeting that Ashley

went to, how would it get started?

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Mr. JONES. Actually, we didn’t. Actually, the coalition now is 11

years old. They were just using Safe and Drug-Free moneys, putting them in what we call school teams. I came on board 11 years

ago in the Safe and Drug-Free Office, and one of the questions I

asked along with the coordinator at that time was is this making

a difference, and the bottom line was no. So let us turn this. How

can we make a difference? Let us get a bang for our buck, we

would say. Let us see that we get results out of this. And I think

I brought that—and they kid me a lot—from the military.

Mr. SOUDER. Again, I missed the start of what you said. If I understand what you said, it is that there was no system-wide thing

like what you describe.

Mr. JONES. Not like we have now.

Mr. SOUDER. But you were using your local schools’ money to do

that. Is that what you said?

Mr. JONES. Oh, no, no. They used Safe and Drug-Free moneys

way back then, 10, 11, 12 years ago.

Mr. SOUDER. At the school where you were a counselor?

Mr. JONES. When I first came to Fairfax County, I was a counselor at Dogwood Elementary School.

Mr. SOUDER. And did you get Mrs. McKoy involved?

Mr. JONES. As soon as I got there and they wanted to do a drug

program, I said I am going to get me some parents, because I can’t

do this. So I started grabbing parents and bringing them in. At my

first meeting I had 30-some parents and said, this is great. And

one of the things that we did, and probably the biggest project, and

Mrs. McKoy will probably never forgive me for this, but we even

called Just Say No International and they sent a person out.

We have the largest Just Say No quilt in the world because we

got a group of parents together one evening, gave over 280 kids an

8 x 8 piece of cloth they could put a design on that cloth. We

brought all these parents in and they sewed all night long to put

this quilt together. So that was just one of the many things we did.

And we started getting a lot of attention about this program and

Just Say No, and how to do anti-drug programs there.

And then from there, once I moved over to the Safe and DrugFree Office, that is when we started getting in touch with General

Dean and said, hey, let us expand this even more. Then he started

talking about coalitions, you know, we have something small here,

let us find out what it is all about. And they educated us. They

trained us. We hold trainings several days, actually 3 weeks with

2 days at Ft. Belvoir, where he brought in through CADCA trainers to train our people, not just school people, we are talking about

community people and some school people mixed in with them, on

how to build unity, how to do the grass roots work that the young

lady was talking about. We brought those people in.

And from that right now, I can give you probably the best example. Three months after one of our coalitions, because a coalition,

they had a house bill on the floor in the general assembly in Richmond to increase the age at which students can sell alcoholic beverages. Now, that is how fast some of those coalitions are going.

And right now we are pushing those same coalitions into becoming

501(c)(3) just in case something like this happens and we have

none. Right now we have four of our coalitions—and we have 19

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of them—501(c)(3)’s, but we want to keep growing, because that is

what it is all about, getting people involved and community members. And by doing that you do make a difference. When you walk

up and down the streets, you see on TV and go into our schools,

you see anti-drug posters and stuff. That is what it is all about.

Mr. SOUDER. Dr. Hedrick, during Mr. Curie’s testimony he talked

about these prevention networks, the Strategic Prevention Framework. Are you familiar with that?

Ms. HEDRICK. Yes, I am.

Mr. SOUDER. Do they work with your State trying to coordinate,

or how does it interact with this program?

Ms. HEDRICK. Well, it specifically applies to the Governor’s portion. They require their grantees to use an outcome framework, but

also to use the national prevention framework for going through

the process of identifying needs, building capacity and building in

the evaluation. There is a lot of emphasis in that structure on

building the capacity from within, whether that is a school or a

community. It still is the same thing; it enables people to carry on

and sustain beyond a funding period.

Mr. SOUDER. Has that been helpful?

Ms. HEDRICK. And it has been very helpful, yes.

Mr. SOUDER. General Dean, do the CADCA programs interact

with the Strategic Prevention Framework?

General DEAN. Yes, they do. We have created a National Coalition Academy, where we are training community groups, and we

are working with the National Guard to do that and we are using

the Strategic Prevention Framework, which is really just that, it is

a framework, a five-step framework as the basis for providing the

training to these communities. So you are teaching them how to do

an assessment, how to strategically write a plan, how to implement

that plan, and how to evaluate it. I forget the fifth step. So the bottom line is we are teaching this prevention framework to community groups across America so that all of us are working from the

same basis.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you know is anybody looking, and I presume

each State drug coordinator is, but who looks at a zone and says

there is a CADCA program here and here is where the Safe and

Drug-Free Schools programs are? I am still kind of confused as to

where the $600 million from Mr. Curie’s administration goes into

prevention programs. But are all those prevention programs coming in an area rhymed or coordinated?

General DEAN. Mr. Curie’s dollars go to States, to include his

Strategic Prevention Framework money goes to States. So those

are grants that go to States.

Mr. SOUDER. They bid for those grants?

General DEAN. And then States that have a plan take those dollars and improve the communities within the State. So the State

is sorting out how to distribute and utilize the dollars that come

in through the treatment block grant, as well as the prevention

block grant, as well as the Strategic Prevention Framework dollars,

and how they have access to recovery dollars coming in as well. So

the State prevention effort is determining how best to use those

dollars in the State.

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Now, at the community level, the coalition is doing what you just

said, because the Safe and Drug-Free Community people are a part

of the coalition. Therefore, they are working holistically and strategically and complimentary to each other, and not getting in the

way of each other. And that is why in my testimony I was so concerned that if you pull away the Safe and Drug-Free Schools dollars that provides the infrastructure in the schools, how then do

you implement student testing? And then who the coalition people

have to work with in the schools to have a holistic approach in the

community?

Mr. SOUDER. Is Ohio divided into regions? I know Indiana is.

Ms. HEDRICK. Well, every system has different regions.

Mr. SOUDER. Does the Governor have a subset in his program

that he is doing?

Ms. HEDRICK. No. In Ohio, those two programs, however, have

really set an example of working collaboratively together. In fact,

the education coordinator goes to many of the SAMHSA, and there

is a part of SAMHSA called Central Cap. They attend those functions together so that they present a more unified picture of Safe

and Drug-Free Schools programming.

What we don’t have as much within our State, and I think a lot

of States are like us, is a sort of clearinghouse of all of those different programs where there is coordination and synergy created.

I think that is probably an ideal world, and certainly the Drug-Free

Communities Coalitions would be a vehicle for doing that.

Mr. SOUDER. General Dean, do you know if in most States there

are subregions? In other words, partly what I was trying to get at

is I believe that every State has political dynamics that are impossible to deal with if we move off of the school funding formula. Our

State versus Detroit versus Chicago and Indianapolis thinks they

are the only thing there, and the rest of us have to fight for every

little crumb we get. There is this constant big city/small city/midsize city battle. Even in a county like Noble County, IN, the west

side and the central side and the east side fight with each other

as to who is going to be dominant even in a rural county.

But what often this means is the units of dollars that go down

to the schools are often not necessarily functionable. In other

words, they can’t hire a full-time staffer. If we pulled it back larger

so you kind of clustered, whether it is similar counties together, I

don’t know how big that is, do you know how many people pool

their resources? Is it banned from pooling resources now? How

many do that? Is there a way to try to encourage that more, give

incentives that you get some bonus out of State money if you pool

resources?

A system like Fairfax is the 12th largest. You pool resources because you already do that. A lot of my high school districts only

have one high school in them, and one middle school and two elementary schools. Yet, they will get a certain amount of funding in,

and that is how we get these horror stories that come through on

pencils or a school that didn’t get the supplement, particularly if

they don’t have outside resources. If it is a reasonably wealthy or

activist community, they pool the outside resources to leverage it.

But what do you do in a community where you maybe have Back

to School Nights? When I was a staffer, I lived in Little Rocky Run.

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The first time I went to a Back to School Night at Little Rocky Run

out in West Fairfax, there were, I believe—they had to split it into

two nights—there were 900 students and 1,600 parents at Back to

School Night. When you go into an urban center, often there will

be 900 students, and if you have 20 students at Back to School

Night in some areas in rural, it is a different ball game with resources and how you can leverage.

So what can we do and what would be some creative ways to look

at this to push some of that kind of cooperation or standards? Because the truth is that we are at the edges of a problem, but the

administration didn’t propose a solution to the problem, they just

proposed wiping out the dollars.

General DEAN. I guess obviously we believe, and we have had

some professional discussions with Department of Education and

others, that the community, the local education agency is the place

where the money needs to be. Fairfax County is an example of the

end of the pipe chain, whereas States are important, but I would

agree that they have a difficult time ensuring that every entity in

the State is afforded the appropriate treatment and appropriate

dollars.

So we are of the opinion that when you can send dollars directly

to LEAs or directly to communities, that is the best way to do that,

and that is why we are concerned if too many of the dollar start

having to go through States to get down to communities.

Mr. SOUDER. How much do you get per student in an LEA?

General DEAN. It varies I guess depending on the LEA.

And you probably can answer that question better than I can.

Mr. SOUDER. Is there a minimum?

Ms. HEDRICK. No, I can’t answer that question.

Mr. JONES. In Virginia, if I am correct, something like $4.75 prevention per student, something like that.

Mr. SOUDER. Four?

Mr. JONES. It is $4.75 per student.

Mr. SOUDER. So around $5 per student.

Mr. JONES. Yes. I can say this: one of the things that we have

done, actually because of our collaboration with a lot of different

programs, when we have trainings for violence prevention, definitely drug prevention, we open it up to other counties around us

to make sure this is what you are getting at, make sure they can

come in and take part in that also.

Each year we have our peer mediation conference, which over

2,000 people attend. We actually invite counties as far away as the

other side of Virginia, way out in the southwest corner, to come up

to be a part of that, and they love it. So I think the more individual

school systems can do that, it really brings a bond between those

systems right there.

But you are right, that money getting down to LEAs, there is a

lot that is cutoff before it gets there.

Ms. HEDRICK. In the handout I prepared for you, on page 8, it

is called the Spotlight of Safe and Drug-Free School Consortia in

Toledo Diocese and Franklin Counties. In Ohio we have 10 collaborative or consortia that operate. What they do in a particular county is they will pool their Safe and Drug-Free School funds, because

many of them are $2,000 or $600 or whatever, so they get more out

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of the money by pooling it together. And they have been quite effective, and some of the examples are there for you on page 8.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

I want to finish with a few questions on the National Ad Campaign. There are a lot of different ways I can go. One thing, by the

way, in your testimony, I believe you showed in your one chart that

meth use declined. Have ads been run on meth?

Mr. PASIERB. We have been doing those on our own as a public

service through the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. But the

overall national teen trend on methamphetamine is continuing

downward. The damage that methamphetamine is doing to communities in perhaps older teens and young twenties folks is very significant. So what you are seeing in Indiana in terms of methamphetamine impact may not always surface in the high school in

the other studies, so we, through the Partnership for a Drug-Free

America, have been doing meth campaigns and actually doing more

year in and year out.

Mr. SOUDER. Why do you believe methamphetamine is declining

at a faster rate than all the others?

Mr. PASIERB. Well, I don’t think it is declining at a faster rate,

but what we are seeing is that——

Mr. SOUDER. Thirty-eight percent less likely have tried methamphetamine, 31 percent less likely tried crack, 29 ecstasy, 14 percent marijuana, 8 percent others.

Mr. PASIERB. Well, among teenagers, certainly, the risk profile of

methamphetamine is very high. We did a program in Arizona and

in Missouri, which really helped the parents understand how much

further their kids were out in front of them. Kids know that methamphetamine is a very dangerous, very addictive drug, so it has a

very high risk profile, versus things like ecstasy did originally, like

right now prescription and over-the-counter drugs don’t have

among teens. So it is that driving the perception of risk which is

one of the keys. And it is happening not only through the Media

Campaign, but also through the news media. Teens are seeing the

damage meth is doing to their communities.

Mr. SOUDER. Driving up the risk and communicating it is probably what you are saying. The more clear-cut it is, the easier it is

to have a major reduction.

Mr. PASIERB. Absolutely.

Mr. SOUDER. And that marijuana is the hardest sell?

Mr. PASIERB. Yes, because kids know that use won’t addict them,

first use won’t kill them; whereas, with methamphetamine, you can

talk about the incredible damage it does and it is very obvious. And

they also see. Again, teenagers see what the clandestine labs, what

the things are doing to the community they live in; it is a noisy

drug, which, for those of us in prevention, does tend to help a little

bit.

Mr. SOUDER. I am having an extremely difficult time. We are

starting to see some flat-lining in Indiana on meth, but every time

we have a drug task force meeting, every time any group of members get together, I mean, clearly 75 percent of the discussion is on

meth. And out of our opinion, leaders in the administration and

others, there is minimal discussion on meth, and what we hear is

that it is flat at 8 percent. Now, I think part of it is that people

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make the risk assessment, that area starts to go flat, and it hits

another area.

Have you thought about an Ad Campaign? When you look at this

geographically, it is not too hard to see where it is headed. How

come we don’t do the risk attention on the meth the second it appears in a community, before it devastates a community? In other

words, can’t we look at any kind of regional strategies here? It is

moving through Kentucky, it is heading to Tennessee, it is starting

to show its head in North Carolina. There are a few edges of some

suburbs. If this hits the cities like crack——

Mr. PASIERB. Exactly.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. We may fix it, but we are going to

spend so many millions and billions fixing it. If it is an easier sell,

why can’t we get ahead of this curve?

Mr. PASIERB. That is one of the things I think people are fooled

by. They look at the small number and they say it is not that big

of a problem. But it could go from being a fringe behavior to being

a mainstream teen behavior, like crack did, like ecstasy did. You

can all of a sudden go from this much to a huge amount.

We did a piece of research in Phoenix and St. Louis, where we

launched a program called the Meth and Ecstasy Health Education

Campaign, where we went into the community, mobilized the community much in the way that we are talking about here, but very

importantly got law enforcement together with the medical community, media trained pediatricians who the American Academy of Pediatrics, so that when this hit, just as you said, when you saw this

coming, we could go in, get the media together, help them understand the health risks, the reason why mom and dad might engage,

might say we live in a good neighborhood, that is not going to happen here; understand the risk to their own kids and very quickly

implement that with the health message, the health messenger

being the doctor, with the support of law enforcement kind of

standing behind them saying we can’t arrest our way out of this.

We have taken the Phoenix and St. Louis program now this year

to four State-wide initiatives and eight major city initiatives. So we

are trying, through the budgets and the efforts of the Partnership

for a Drug-Free America on our own to do exactly what you said,

because you are seeing that in Indiana and we need to be in Indiana doing that as well.

That is the way to do it. When this hits a community, help the

community understand what is going on. And even absent of the

usage numbers, the damage this does to families, to communities,

to the kids that are in where these clandestine labs are, to spousal

abuse, to violence in the communities. Methamphetamine does

damage well beyond the absolute numbers in the usage study.

Mr. SOUDER. I would like you to address—and we will finish with

this—for the record two big things as we are working on the authorizing legislation for ONDCP. If we actually named you in the

authorizing legislation, one of the historic things—and this is kind

of a two-part—is how we evolved into having Ogilvy and Mather

privately contracted. Part of the thought was to have competition.

Could you address that question? If in fact, because partnerships

have been there before we had the Ad Campaign. I am not saying

we are going to quit the Ad Campaign, but it will probably be there

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after we don’t have an ad campaign someday. Could you, as we are

wrestling with this fundamental question, what assurances would

we have if we, in effect, sole-source this? That indeed there would

be competition, that we get the best rates, that there is a doublecheck. If you could address that.

And the second part of it is I have some empathy, and we have

had lots of discussions about this in public and private and all

types of things over the last few years as we tried to get over some

bumps that existed a number of years ago. How can, when the

drug czar or the office of ONDCP, the Director, wants to set a direction, how can he be assured if he, in effect, sole-sourced, that

the ad content would reflect what he has been charged with by the

President and by Congress to reduce that, when you wouldn’t necessarily? You have goals, but everybody has differences of opinion,

but aren’t necessarily now in a position where the contract could

be moved around or don’t feel the same pressures?

Mr. PASIERB. Well, I think, if I understand the first one right,

our involvement in the Media Campaign, the original idea behind

the Media Campaign was to invest the public dollars to give maximum exposure to our Campaign. And we work on the Campaign

for free. We receive none of the dollars from the Campaign.

We really exist to get advertising agencies, production firms, the

talent union, SAG and AFTA, to volunteer their time. So from a

competitive standpoint, you can’t get better than free. And we exist

to do this. This is our only purpose in life as an organization. We

were created to bring the talent and the energies of the communications industry to bear on this issue. So we exist to do exactly

what needs to be done on this.

And if we are named in it, I think what it may do from the most

standpoint is create some clarity around this of what our roles are,

what the expectations are, quite frankly, of the Federal Government for the things that we provide. I think codifying that and a

lot of the things that have been discussed with ONDCP, talking

about codifying our role, makes great sense, and it helps a lot of

the folks who we have to go out and ask for free to do that.

The contractor issues, the people that ONDCP has hired to work

for them, I think John Walters has done a masterful job of cleaning

their house and getting that to a point where his contractors, the

people who meet his needs for media planning and some of the

public relations and things that he wants to have around the campaign be on the advertising that we provide, he has done a good

job of sorting that out with Foote, Cone, and Belding and the people he has now. He has good folks.

But our role, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, is to work

for free and to harness volunteerism in support of the campaign.

That is why in my testimony I mentioned that by our accounts we

have actually contributed $125 million to the campaign. So we see

ourselves as a stakeholder.

To your second question, we are all, for the most part—obviously

people want to focus on different things—guided by the research.

We can’t do what we would like to do, we have to do what the data

tells us—the National Household Survey, the Partnership Attitude

Tracking Study. While we, over the past few years, have felt

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amphetamine and ecstasy, John Walters had pursued the President’s strategy of the 10 percent and 25 percent reduction. The

only way to achieve those numbers is to go after marijuana.

So we view ourselves as actually right now being in very good

synch with ONDCP, because they are tackling the major, most difficult issue, driving down the marijuana numbers, while we are

working at the community level on ecstasy, methamphetamine,

more and more on prescription and over-the-counter drug abuse

things like cough medicine. So we are always going to be in sync

with ONDCP.

I think where we fell out of synch, particularly in the gap between Director McCaffrey leaving and Director Walters coming in

is when ONDCP hired a group of theorists to come up with something that made no sense, and a program which was more testing

theory for the purpose of writing journal articles than doing what

the campaign was created to do, serve the public. So as long as

there is a leader at ONDCP with focus on reducing drug abuse, by

the very nature of that, ONDCP and the Partnership are going to

be in perfect synch.

Mr. SOUDER. But isn’t part of that because, in fact, on the marijuana campaign, to take that example, that he had the ability to

go to another ad agency and say I want marijuana ads that do this;

whereas, if we said——

Mr. PASIERB. We did them all. We did all the marijuana ads,

Partnership for a Drug-Free America did. No other advertising

agency did them. I mean, we came together on strategy under the

gap between Director McCaffrey and Director Walters——

Mr. SOUDER. I thought you just said that you did the meth.

Mr. PASIERB. No, we run our media. We get over $150 million a

year of contributions.

Mr. SOUDER. Because Ogilvy was doing placement.

Mr. PASIERB. Exactly. We did all of the creative, all of the marijuana creative. When Director Walters came in and he said he

wanted to hit hard on negative consequences, and he really wanted

to go after marijuana, that was exactly what we had put in our letter to General McCaffrey.

Mr. SOUDER. If you did all the placement——

Mr. PASIERB. If we did.

Mr. SOUDER. If you did under a new bill, would that affect the

director’s ability to use leverage to get his campaign done the way

he wanted it?

Mr. PASIERB. Absolutely not. We have to look at this as whoever

is in that office as being a client, and he works for the President

and he works for you, and he has to do what you all want and we

have to do what he wants. And, again, that is where I come back

to we support fully what he is doing on marijuana because we

know that is the overall suppressant, and we deal very tactically

in Kentucky and Indiana and places on things like methamphetamine, which are really kind of inefficient for the Media Campaign

to do, go in and buy the same television program in a bunch of different cities.

So I think you can structure something that would definitely lead

to a degree of sync and support and understanding of what people’s

roles and responsibilities are.

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Mr. SOUDER. This is a question we are trying to work through,

and it is a very difficult question because depending on what your

creative department was thinking, which is what we tried to work

it through, because guys aren’t going to devote their time if they

don’t think their ads are going to be run. Bottom line, they are not

going to donate their time. Second, the question is if you can get

the placement for free, why would you pay for it, which has been

another question.

But also this feared question of management. I think it is fairly

safe to say, as somebody who has followed politics just kind of as

an observer and a staffer, and now as a Member, is that it isn’t

always true that the person who is in the director’s position can

dominate groups that are there before and after them. And we had

some of that tussling, and we had a very frank discussion with

your board, who believed that there had built up some resistance,

because there can be ideological differences about whether you go

hard line or soft line in drug abuse, and what do you do when you

have a sudden administration change and an ideological change?

And we need to make sure that we have a system here that is flexible enough to reflect that.

On the other hand, as you know, I have been a strong advocate

of the Partnership, and I believe that if you are going to get the

most skilled people who donate it, it doesn’t necessarily make sense

to pay for what you can get people to do for free, particularly if we

are fighting for every dollar to try to get air time, because the bottom line here is we want to make sure we have research, we want

to make sure we have creativity. But bottom line, if nobody sees

it, so what if you have great ads? Or a more correct marketing way

to say it is if you don’t meet the threshold where it is remembered,

it is not that we are not putting it up there, if it doesn’t meet the

threshold that it is remembered, then you have wasted all the

other money.

And at some point here we are going to reach, if we don’t keep

this at a threshold with the leverage, the return declines, and then

the whole program tanks. In other words, at $100 million you

might be wasting money. I don’t know what the number is. Obviously you can cluster it in regions and do it in waves and that kind

of stuff, but your returns become such a decline that you have

wasted the whole batch; whereas, another $10 million makes it so

that you get the reach with which to accomplish the goals.

And that is what we are teetering on the edge of, and you need

to continue to push and speak out if you think we are getting to

that, because I think we are nearly there, because with rates in advertising going up, with consolidation in the industry, not to mention the changes with the Internet and satellite and everything

else, I don’t know how you get reach and frequency anymore.

Mr. PASIERB. You covered a lot of territory, and let me say I

agree with everything you just said. And you are right, I mentioned

in my testimony that $195 million, the original number that you

and a lot of others put together a number of years ago, was the

right number, and over the last 8 years there has been between 8

and 12 percent per year media inflation. So the threshold of this campaign at $120 million is right about

there. We couldn’t suffer another cut and continue the level of efVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:21 Dec 06, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00173 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23687.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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fectiveness, the level of good reads we are getting out of the research, seeing Monitoring the Future mention the Media Campaign

specifically as driving the marijuana trends at any lower than we

are now, and we have been fighting and advocating very hard over

the last several months to try to restore that last $25 million cut,

because, to your point, the beautiful model of this campaign is that

$25 million leverages another $25 million. We are able to get the

best and brightest advertising agencies around the country to volunteer hundreds and millions of dollars worth of talent to make

sure the very best message gets in that time. And we agree with

Director Walters to make sure that every one of those messages,

before it runs, is tested so that we actually make sure we put the

best possible message in that time.

And doing all these things, as you identified, is absolutely essential to making sure the campaign works this year, next year, and

years in the future, regardless of who is the ONDCP director, doing

what is right for the issue, doing what is right for the consumer.

Mr. SOUDER. You made a great point earlier too when you said

that basically if McDonald’s has a great—you didn’t say it exactly

this way, but that is what you said—if McDonald’s has a great ad

campaign, they don’t say, well, we don’t need as much advertising

for the next 3 to 6 months. Obviously, if you are pushing it, tomorrow is another day, and you maybe get a little bit of residual brand

name, but the second you back off it is gone, and in advertising

there is no principle ‘‘we had a great ad, now we can tank it.’’ That

is not what you see anywhere.

Mr. PASIERB. In advertising you invest in success and you don’t

invest in failure, and right now we have success at a time when

we are decreasing our investment, and it doesn’t make any sense.

And particularly in my written testimony I mentioned I came from

the community coalition field. I worked for Governor Schaeffer in

Maryland and did a lot of different things like that. One of the benefits of ONDCP’s Media Campaign in particular is it gives all of us

working in this field the national umbrella, the air cover when we

are either working in a community on methamphetamine. The fact

that ONDCP ran a parenting message on TV that night helps us

with the efforts we are trying to do on methamphetamine specifically in a community. So it really becomes a 1 + 1 = 5 in this case,

and it is important to keep it going.

Mr. SOUDER. And we want to make sure that the record shows

that the Partnership said that it was mixed, it was good news for

the Ad Campaign, but not necessarily good news for America, so

it doesn’t come across as Partnership praises TV now more important influence than parents. That is absolutely not. In fact, it was

a very troubling statistic, but it shows how the country is changing.

And the fact that No. 1, as I understood your testimony, the No.

1 way that kids said they were getting their information now was

through, in effect, this National Ad Campaign, the Partnership,

and television.

Mr. PASIERB. And even Ashley’s message running on Cox in Virginia. Media, television is the way. And, unfortunately, what we

have learned through our own parents’ research is in the last 3

years the number of parents who have never talked to their kids

about drugs has doubled from 6 percent to 12 percent. So at a time

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when we have the most drug experienced generation in the history

of parents, they are talking less. The ones who are very overconfident in the discussion that they are having, because we know that

about 85 percent of parents say they are talking, but only about

30 percent of kids say the message is coming through.

And parents don’t understand the evolution of the drug issue. If

you were a high school student in 1979, the drug issue looked like

marijuana and cocaine. To a high school student today, depending

on where you live, it looks like methamphetamine, it looks like ecstasy, it looks like prescription drugs, it looks like over-the-counter

drugs, it looks like alcohol, it looks like inhalants, and it looks like,

looks like, looks like. It is much more complicated, and we need

now parents engaged. I want to see parents beat the pants off television commercials.

Mr. SOUDER. I am sure there are studies that compare the informal movie TV shows, the Jay Leno and joking about marijuana

and somebody on crack and the movies, that type of thing with the

official messages and how the kids are viewing the two messages

separate from each other and how they reconcile it in the cognitive

dissidence?

Mr. PASIERB. Right now we are at a point where the negative social impact of a lot of the joking around about marijuana and

things like that is a low point. So it is not having a negative impact

against us. But what we need and what we know really helps is

when a show like ER does a story line that talks about teens and

drugs and the impact it can have. That has such a power even beyond our messages for all of us that popular culture, popular media

could be our biggest ally, but it can also be our biggest problem.

Right now they are essentially neutral.

Mr. SOUDER. I saw some pro-drug group whining away about the

Law and Order type shows, that they always show the drug people

as kind of whacked out and violent, as opposed to having normal

lives. A lot of this is just kind of fortunate and cultural, because

we have all this CSI and Law and Order and all this kind of stuff,

and they need criminals, and since 85 percent of all crime is somehow related to drug and alcohol abuse, they are going to find their

examples from that.

Mr. PASIERB. I don’t know many regular meth users who look

normal. Or many regular a lot of different drugs. I mean, there are

a lot of folks out there, particularly on the marijuana front, who

want to make it sound like that is as socially acceptable as having

a bottle of Evian, but clearly we need the CSIs, and actually it is

a good point in time when reality TV and a lot of the crime shows

to show the potential downside of drug use.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, I thank you all very much for your testimony,

for coming today. If there is anything else you want to put into the

record, any other documents, articles, different things, we get a

hearing book when we are done that will be one of the resources

on prevention that we can then use in debates and different groups

can use as well.

Mr. PASIERB. Mr. Chairman, if you have any written questions

for us regarding our role, the questions you asked me, we would

be happy to answer those in writing as well.

Mr. SOUDER. OK. We may do some followup on that.

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Mr. PASIERB. Anything you want from us you have.

General DEAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PASIERB. Thank you, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much.

The subcommittee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 4:59 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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