They feel that the bunch of liberals who want to treat the addict do not worry about the law-abiding citizen who got mugged. Three, failures are obvious, but successes are anonymous. And every congressman, probably everyone in the administration, has some family member, some neighbor, or someone they know who's been in treatment and failed. And so they think treatment doesn't work. Most people don't understand how Congress works.
Various committees fund different agencies.
If you take money out of the defense department or out of the Drug Enforcement Administration, that doesn't give you one penny more for treatment, because the committees that fund treatment use funds from the Health and Human Service. Even if you increase the money in those committees for treatment, you may be taking it away from AIDS research. And AIDS probably has a better lobby than drug addiction. It doesn't go to treatment. Most people aren't aware of that.