National Narcotics Act

The National Narcotics Act of 1984 (PL 98–473, Section VIII) created the National Drug Enforcement Policy Board (NDEPB), which coordinated national drug enforcement policy for a period of four years until the creation of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) in 1988. The NDEPB concept emerged from Congress as compromise proposal after the pocket veto of HR 3963, an omnibus crime bill that, among other things, called for the establishment of an Office of Director of National and International Drug Operations and Policy. This office would have replaced the Office for Drug Abuse Law Enforcement (ODALE) of the Department of Justice, which then directed illegal drug supply reduction activities, coordinating with the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP), which was charged with demand [Page 556]reduction activities (prevention and treatment). While short-lived itself, the NDEPB concept marked the beginning of a consolidation and centralization of drug policy planning and implementation that continued for a period of more than 10 years.

One of the purported reasons for President Ronald Reagan's pocket veto of the ill-fated bill calling for the creation of an Office of Director of National and International Drug Operations and Policy (ODNIDOP) was that, in the view of his administration, implementation of the provisions would require a restructuring of the cabinet. This objection highlights a theme that has run through U.S. policy debates on the coordination of drug policy from their inception. Under the bill, the ODNIDOP Director would be a cabinet-level official who coordinated drug enforcement operations across cabinet agencies. The Reagan administration posited that, to effectively implement this requirement, the cabinet would need to be reorganized so that the ODNIDOP director would be above the other cabinet officials representing agencies with drug enforcement responsibilities. If this was not done, the administration argued, the ODNIDOP director would be ineffective and would disrupt the functioning of the cabinet. Additionally, it is likely that this requirement was likely perceived as a congressional encroachment on Executive Branch authority.