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Recent years have brought a long overdue and richly deserved implosion in the Drug Czar's credibility. It seems the truth is slowly catching up with the entrenched drug warriors at the Office of National Drug Control Policy, as the U.S. Senate, the anti-drug community, and even former staffers have joined the chorus to demand accountability from one of Washington D.C.'s most insulated institutions.

Today John Carnevale, a long-time ONDCP insider who served under four Drug Czars, has publicly slammed ineffective supply reduction efforts and called for a redistribution of federal anti-drug funding. A press release from Carnevale Associates, LLC. entitled "FY02-09 Budget Emphasizes Least Effective Ingredients of Drug Policy" directly questions the Drug Czar's strategy and accuses the nation's top drug office of wasting resources:

A review of the federal drug control budget shows that the current administration continues to favor supply reduction programs over demand reduction programs to reduce the demand for drugs by youth and adults. Since federal fiscal year (FY) 02, the budget has emphasized what research has shown to be the least effective ingredients of a federal drug control policy. This translates into almost a decade of lost opportunity in achieving performance results.

These charges are just remarkable considering their source. While Carnevale remains committed to many of the most destructive aspects of the U.S. war on drugs, these criticisms of his former office reflect a growing consensus that ONDCP has become utterly divorced from reality. The office has simply lost its prestige within the anti-drug community and, with the flood gates fully opened, must now absorb biting criticism from every conceivable constituency. Once disgraced, the schoolyard bully can now expect to be kicked in the shin routinely and can't anticipate where the next challenge will come from.

Of course, our nation's costly and fantastically unsuccessful supply reduction efforts are just the tip of the drug war iceberg. But it is notable to witness drug war insiders beginning to come to terms with our failed international drug war diplomacy. By exposing ONDCP's propensity for ignoring research, Carnevale inadvertently reveals a great deal about how that office approaches basically everything.