Why don't we have Federal Drug Courts?

Today the New York Times published an OpEd from Donald P. Lay about setting up federal Drug Courts. Donald P. Lay is the senior judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He points out:

Unlike the states, the federal criminal justice system offers no alternatives for nonviolent offenders charged with drug-related crimes. In the federal system, it is almost a certainty that a convicted drug offender will be incarcerated rather than going through a community-based treatment program. It is little wonder then that the federal prison system will continue to be overburdened.

Drug court graduates have substantially lower rates of criminal recidivism than offenders who are imprisoned. In New York, for example, the re-arrest rate among 18,000 drug court graduates was 13 percent, compared with 47 percent for the same type of drug offenders who served prison time without treatment. Drug courts also cost less than incarceration and have high retention and completion rates.

This would seem to be both less expensive than incarcerating every drug offender and at the same time, to be an effective crime reduction strategy.

The only thing that seems to be missing is punishing anyone and everyone found within half a mile of a cache of illegal drugs. We all know how effective that has been up to now, don't we?