WASHINGTON — For the first time, the federal government has set a goal of reducing diseases and deaths caused by drug addiction, as well as the number of American teens and adults who use illegal substances.
The surgeon general will produce a report to try to focus attention on the escalating abuse of legal but dangerous prescription drugs. And federal officials are urging family doctors and public clinics to help detect addictions early by paying closer attention to whether their patients use illicit drugs.
Such emphases, part of the maiden National Drug Control Strategy to emerge from the Obama administration, set a different tone from its predecessors under the Bush administration, which focused more on slowing the flow of illegal drugs.
But in the two weeks since the White House issued the 117-page strategy, a growing chorus of drug-policy specialists has begun to complain that President Obama and his aides are not putting enough money behind their efforts to reconfigure the nation’s drug-fighting approach.
Overall, the White House seeks to increase spending next year by 3.5 percent on the broad spectrum of drug-control activities — from curbing drugged driving and expanding drug courts to subsidizing opium and coca farmers in other countries to switch to legal crops.
That increase is less than the 4.1 percent increase that President George W. Bush sought to combat drug abuse in 2002.
