21 U.S.C. § 1171 — Drug abuse prevention function appropriations

This section sets a rule for how agencies must write budget requests. It applies to any request for money submitted after March 21, 1972. The request must come from a federal department or agency. It must meet two rules. First, the agency must list its drug abuse prevention money as its own line item. It cannot hide that money inside other spending. Second, the agency must name the law that lets it ask for that money. This applies to each separate drug abuse prevention activity. For each one, the agency must show both the dollar amount and the legal basis for it. The section only sets rules for how requests are written. It does not set spending amounts itself. It does not decide which activities get funded.

The source credit indicates that this section was enacted as § 404 of title IV of Public Law 92–255, approved March 21, 1972, and published at 86 Stat. 77. The credit shows no subsequent amendment history beyond the original enactment, meaning the provision has remained in its 1972 form since that date. Public Law 92–255 is commonly known as the Drug Abuse Office and Treatment Act of 1972. The Act is generally understood to have been a major legislative response to the drug abuse crisis of the late 1960s and early 1970s, establishing federal coordinating mechanisms, including the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention, and directing greater federal attention and resources toward prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation efforts. Within that broader framework, Title IV of the Act generally addressed administrative and coordination matters intended to ensure that federal agencies' anti-drug efforts could be tracked and evaluated by Congress. Requiring agencies to itemize drug abuse prevention funding on a line-item basis in appropriations requests is consistent with this general goal of improving congressional oversight of a newly prioritized and cross-agency federal function. The record does not establish the specific legislative reasoning behind this particular line-item requirement, such as any documented concerns about past appropriations practices that prompted its inclusion. Readers seeking that level of detail should consult the legislative history of Public Law 92–255 directly rather than infer intent from the statutory text alone.