Who’s involved in drug control in the federal government

for the office are a relative pittance. In fiscal 2016, the office spent $20 million on salaries and expenses. It also administered the $250 million High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program, which helps law enforcement in heavy drug-trafficking neighborhoods, and the Portman-authored Drug-Free Communities grants, a program that costs taxpayers about $95 million.

But it also oversaw anti-drug budgets in a variety of Cabinet departments — from agriculture to defense to veterans.

The office, said Marcia Lee Taylor, president and CEO of the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, is a “convener.”

“It’s really critical, especially at a time when we are losing 144 people a day to overdoses, that we have one federal agency that’s looking over this problem with the big picture and not just seeing a lot of slices of it,” she said.

Retired U.S. Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who served as drug czar from 1996 to 2001 during the Clinton administration, also questioned the wisdom of the proposed cuts.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “I think it will have an immediate and detrimental impact on public-health policy dealing with drug abuse.”

But White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” this month, said that “nothing is final,” and he emphasized that the president’s budget document was a draft.

Still, Priebus said, “we have duplicative services in this regard all over the place. You’ve got it in the Department of Justice.

You’ve got it in” the Department of Health and Human Services.

“I would always tell people, judge President Trump by his actions, not leaked documents and hypotheticals,” Priebus said. “And the actual actions of this president is a total commitment to this epidemic across this country.”

Of equal concern to libertarian-leaning conservatives and liberals alike is Sessions’ push for tougher sentences for drug dealers. Critics of that decision have run the ideological gamut, from tea party affiliated Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan to libertarian Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky to liberal former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder.

Grant Smith, deputy director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which is fighting for drug-law reform, said the new policy would return the justice system to an era when drugs were treated with mandatory minimum sentences that “don’t work.”

“They don’t deter crime, they’re counterproductive, they waste a lot of taxpayer money, and they don’t achieve the result that they were intended to achieve,” Smith said. “We warned that this was coming. “

Portman’s reaction was more guarded. He said any effort to fight drug addiction must include a combined approach: attacking both the demand and limiting the supply.

But he argues that the focus should be shifting

resources toward the “demand” side — preventing people from becoming addicted. “We can’t arrest our way out of this problem,” he said, adding that he thinks Sessions will focus more on stopping drug kingpins than arresting low-level addicts.

Sen. Sherrod Brown said that the proposed cut to the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the shift to mandatory minimum sentences are just two of many troubling signs for the Trump administration on the opioid issue.

“Instead of throwing mothers, fathers, sons and daughters in prison, we need to get local communities the support they need to treat people and focus more resources toward stopping the flow of illegal opioids into our communities,” the Ohio Democrat said.

Brown is also concerned about the selection of Scott Gottlieb as head of the Food and Drug Administration because, he says, Gottlieb has a cozy relationship with pharmaceutical companies. And, like others, Brown is concerned that cuts to Medicaid in the House GOP’s plan to repeal Obamacare would hinder the treatment of recovering addicts.

Portman said he’s hopeful that the final Trump budget — scheduled to be released this week — will restore money for the drug control office.