President Donald Trump's budget team reportedly is considering defunding the White House “drug czar,” surprising former leaders of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, who are participating in opposition advocacy efforts taking shape.

Since the late 1980s, the office has been charged with coordinating national efforts to reduce the supply of and demand for drugs, combining law enforcement and use-prevention grants with influence over other agencies’ efforts.

“Given the fact that that proposal exists, we should take it seriously,” says Michael Botticelli, director of the office at the end of President Barack Obama’s second term.

Botticelli argues that elimination of the office would lead to less efficient anti-drug efforts and says that "because ONDCP sits in the executive office of the president, it ensures various federal agencies are paying attention to substance use."

“There simply won’t be much of a cost saving – you’ll lose a fairly small coordinating group," says Gen. Barry McCaffrey, drug czar for the second half of the Clinton administration, adding that he's been discussing the issue with a network of ex-officials.

“I tell people, find something you don’t like about America and the chances are a major or a contributory cause of it is the consumption of legal or illegal drugs," McCaffrey says. "So do you want someone who brings together federal efforts into one coherent whole?”

“When you have a government that has this many departments and operating agencies, someone has to be having a 50,000-foot view,” says David Mineta, a deputy director for demand reduction in the Obama administration's drug policy office.

The possible elimination of the office was first reported by The New York Times on Friday, and supporters of the office and its grant programs have begun to push back, with the Fraternal Order of Police on Tuesday denouncing the possible cut.

The Times reported that various entities on a short list for elimination are being asked to respond by Friday, with verdicts from the White House Office of Management and Budget expected by March 13.

Other offices and agencies reportedly being considered for elimination include perennial conservative targets such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities.

Though an argument offered in its defense, the office’s size may actually make it an attractive target, along with its special role preparing the National Drug Control Budget independent of the OMB.

“It’s such a relatively small office,” says Jim Nussle, the final OMB director during President George W. Bush’s administration. “It’s an easy office to get on a target list for elimination, that much is true.”

In fiscal 2016, the office spent about $20 million on salaries and expenses. Under its banner, $250 million went to regional law enforcement task forces called High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas and $109.8 million to other programs, including Drug-Free Communities grants and an anti-sports doping program.

The drug policy office accounted for about 1 percent of federal anti-drug spending in recent years, according to a 2016 report from the Government Accountability Office, but played a role in approving about $30 billion in annual funding for other agencies.

Nussle says he never perceived pressure within the OMB to target the drug policy office for its autonomy, but says that may be because administration policy had been established by the time he took office.

“To me, it’s less about fiscal hawks and budget authority jurisdiction, but whether the drug war is the kind of priority where the president wants this in the White House as yet another senior staff member,” he surmises about current considerations.

“It’s more do we really need a separate office here, given the Justice Department, given Homeland Security, given the Department of Education – there are a number of places where we educate and prosecute,” Nussle says.

Trump, who has repeatedly complained about the slow pace of Senate approval of his nominees, has not nominated a drug policy office director. On the campaign trail, drug abuse was a major topic for Trump, but also one item on a very long list.

The office's role sustaining drug prohibition makes its possible elimination welcome news to some policy reformers. Many of them had reacted positively to Botticelli, who used his personal story of addiction recovery to advocate a vision of treating drug abuse as a health issue.

“Given the strong likelihood that President Trump would restore the tradition of hiring former military or police officials, or reactionary political figures, to head the office, his proposal to eliminate the office is a good one,” says Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which argues for liberalizing drug laws.

Indeed, McCaffrey’s talk about some drug issues illustrates the historical suspicion among reformers.

Though he believes cannabis policy is a lost cause for the moment, McCaffrey opposes regulated marijuana markets now functioning in a majority of states. It’s a long-held position for McCaffrey, who as drug czar memorably visited New Mexico in 1999 to scold the state’s then-governor, Gary Johnson, for embracing drug legalization.

“Marijuana is the third rail of the drug issue. … Everyone in public life now says, ‘Better not confront pot, everyone knows it’s harmless, it’s less dangerous than alcohol, that hundreds of thousands are in jail because they had a joint in their pocket' – and all of this is complete nonsense,” McCaffrey says.

“It started with medical marijuana, which I think is actually worse than legalization of recreational pot. Because if it’s medical, then what the hell is the problem with this thing? Why can’t I smoke pot?” he says. “What we’re going to see for sure – in my view, guaranteed – is an enormous increase in adult and adolescent use of marijuana.”

When told preliminary data from federal and state surveys show stable or declining teen use of marijuana amid recreational legalization, McCaffrey said: “absolutely not, I don’t know where that came from.”

One drug policy office-funded High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area active in the marijuana debate has sought to produce evidence of pot legalization pitfalls, charting an increase in pot mail intercepts out of Colorado, attributing the information to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. A spokesperson for the service, which recorded a decline in national drug mail, told U.S. News the HIDTA-cited data does not exist and that task forces “have to show they are being functional and show they are doing work to continue to receive funding.”