President Obama's budget request sent to Congress this week would re-establish the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program, which the Bush administration suspended in 2004 as a Justice Department activity. Obama is seeking $10 million for ADAM, a survey to collect data on drug use by arrestees, helping to inform policy decisions on evolving trends in the types of drugs used and their relationship to crime. The budget request said the survey "provides a wealth of information on the characteristics of arrestees not vailable from administrative record systems, including their demographic, educational, employment and economic characteristics, as well as their prior involvement with the criminal justice system."
The Bush administration cited a reduced appropriation for the National Institute of Justice, which had overseen ADAM, and had the Office of National Drug Control Policy (the White House “drug czar”) do a more limited version of the survey. In 2004, NIJ said ADAM was costing more than $8 million a year, and Congress cut the agency’s total research budget to $6 million.
