Anti-drug media campaign: program and contract accountability and administration: hearing before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice

OCLC Number: (OCoLC)48584021 Subject: Communication in drug abuse prevention -- United States -- Costs. Excerpt: ... our Nation now experiences more drug-induced deaths than murders. We released at a hearing just a few weeks ago the fact that 16,926 Americans died in our last recorded year, which I believe was 1998, of drug-induced deaths as opposed to murders, which was a lower figure for the first time since we have been collecting those statistics. Accordingly, I have worked with our leadership in Congress and with ONDCP and with other officials to support efforts to reduce the demand for drugs. That is very important that we address demand. With that cooperative spirit, we withheld formal review of the ONDCP media campaign by our subcommittee until October 14, 1999, more than a year into the program's operation. At our October 14, 1999 hearing and after a preliminary review of the administration of the anti-drug media campaign, some concerns were raised relating to contract mismanagement, financial oversight of the billion dollar program, the adequacy of the match donation as required by law, and effectiveness of the media message that had been produced to date. One area of particular concern was oversight of a growing number of contracts, ONDCP had issued somewhere in the neighborhood I believe of 19 contracts, but the growing number of contracts and subcontracts for handling various tasks of the program and the management and administration of those contracts and oversight of those contracts. In my opening statement last October, a year ago, I advised, and I will quote from my opening statement at that hearing 1 year ago, ``I see a very tangled web of contracts that appears overly complicated, expensive, bureaucratic and untested.' The subcommittee expressed concern about the program management effectiveness and instances of contract flipping, where we found in the information that ONDCP had provided us, in fact...