An analysis of the Belgian public expenditure study ‘Drugs in Figures III’: exploring the potential roles for drug policy

There is growing interest in public expenditure studies with regard to drug policy. These studies have a potential role on multiple levels. Firstly, they provide insight into how the drug budget is composed and what the public authority’s so-called ‘policy mix’ is. Moreover, in view of the growing demands for accountability and evidence-based policy, these studies show whether the government’s stated priorities for drug policy are mirrored in their actual expenditures. Secondly, the potential role of public expenditures studies increases with a comparison over time, and thirdly with a cross-country comparison. These comparisons may provide important insight into the dynamics of drug policy. The present study serves as both an important case study – in this case of Belgian public expenditures – and also as a model to explore the potential role(s) of public expenditure studies more generally. The study Drugs in Figures III (Vander Laenen, De Ruyver, Christiaens & Lievens, 2011) measured how much the Belgian government spent on drug policy in 2008. It advances beyond two previous studies (De Ruyver et al. 2004, 2007) in two distinct ways: by carrying out a new and more refined estimation of public expenditures on illegal drugs and by providing a first estimation of expenditures concerning legal drugs (tobacco, alcohol and psychoactive medication). The study combined two methods of data collection for the inventory of public expenditures: the top-down and the bottom-up approach. The top-down approach starts from the resources made available by the different public authorities involved in drug policy. The bottom-up approach starts from activities taking place in the field and traces the money flow back to the public authorities’ funding. The results of Drugs in Figures III reveal two important contributions. Firstly, the study presents the percentage of government money for drugs that is spent on the traditional four pillars of drug control: prevention, treatment, harm reduction and law enforcement. Secondly, public expenditures on illegal drugs anno 2008, put in comparative perspective with the previous estimations of ‘Drugs in Figures II’, gives insight into the evolution of public expenditure on drugs over time. The potential third level being a cross-country comparison encounters more difficulties because of conceptual and methodological differences in expenditure measurement across countries.