Drug control efforts: The federal response

Beyond the severity of the social problems caused by drug use, com-pelling reasons exist to continue the federal role in drug law enforcement. As with the problems of illegal immigration and organized crime, where the paramount federal role is readily acknowledged, the drug crisis knows no borders. Drug sales and trafficking are interstate in nature, and securing the national borders from illegal drug imports is a role that constitutionally only the federal government can fulfill. (Note 22) Much of the narcotics trade is an international enterprise, with cultivation, production, and manufacture typically taking place overseas. It is not an exaggeration to state that the drug trade encompasses one of the greatest internal, as well as external, threats facing our nation today.

Yet perhaps nowhere are the problems facing federal law enforcement demonstrated with more troubling clarity than in the state of the war on illegal drugs. Federal law enforcement is under enormous strain. Increasingly, those charged with enforcing federal laws are being as-signed greater responsibility without a sufficient increase in the resources needed to fulfill that responsibility.

Unfortunately, efforts to stanch the supply of drugs also provide stark examples of the effect of misdeployment of federal funding and the impact of cutbacks to supply reduction enforcement resources.