On version of the question asks if:
Is it true that pharmaceutical companies contribute to anti-drug campaigns such as the “war on drugs”?
And in the comments it's clarified as:
I would like to know if The Nation’s claim that the Partnership of Drug-Free Kids and CADCA receive large donations from pharmaceutical companies is true, or [...]
The first question is still pretty interpretable, but PDFA, which is an NGO has received donations from pharama (as well as from tobacco and alcolhol companies farther back in time), acording to their tax statements as investigated by journalists. As reported on Wikipedia:
PDFA was the subject of criticism when it was revealed by Cynthia Cotts [...] that their federal tax returns showed that they had received several million dollars worth of funding from major pharmaceutical, tobacco and alcohol corporations including American Brands (Jim Beam whiskey), Philip Morris (Marlboro and Virginia Slims cigarettes, Miller beer), Anheuser Busch (Budweiser, Michelob, Busch beer), R.J. Reynolds (Camel, Salem, Winston cigarettes), as well as pharmaceutical firms Bristol Meyers-Squibb, Merck & Company and Procter & Gamble. In 1997 it discontinued any direct fiscal association with tobacco and alcohol suppliers, although it still receives donations from pharmaceutical companies.
The 1992 article on which that is based cannot be accessed currently in original, but this seems to be samizdat copy confirming what Wikipedia says.
James Burke, who resigned as chairman and
C.E.O. of Johnson & Johnson in 1989 to become chairman of the
Partnership, is no stranger to marketing. [...]
In the Partnership's early days, its primary supporter was the
American Association of Advertising Agencies. That group knew
better than to alienate the legal drug industry. But the mandate
must have been reinforced in 1989, the year Burke came in from
Johnson & Johnson, bringing with him a $3 million grant from the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a prominent health care
philanthropy. The foundation described its unusually handsome
grant to the Partnership as "pivotal in leveraging ... support
from other private foundations."
On cue, the other foundations rolled over. In 1989 and 1990,
the ten largest foundation grants for alcohol and drug abuse
totaled $12.4 million. The Partnership took $4.7 million from that
pool, or 38 percent. Many an individual donor gave its largest
antidrug grant to the Partnership. In other words, the Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation accelerated a trend: the channeling of
foundation money into public awareness, which is considered a less
effective form of drug-abuse prevention than school- and
community-based programs.
The Partnership's funders are usually kept secret, says Grant [the Partnership's spokeswoman],
to protect them from other grant seekers and from the legalization
lobby. But the Partnership's 1991 tax return reveals another
motive for secrecy: conspicuous support from the legal drug
industry. From 1988 to 1991, pharmaceutical companies and their
beneficiaries contributed as follows: the J. Seward Johnson, Sr,
Charitable Trusts ($1,100,000); Du Pont ($150,000); the Procter &
Gamble Fund ($120,000); the Bristol- Myers Squibb Foundation
($110,000); Johnson & Johnson ($110,000); Smith Kline Beecham
($100,000); the Merck Foundation ($75,000); and Hoffman-La Roche
($30,000).
Pharmaceuticals and their beneficiaries alone donated 54 percent
of the $5.8 million the Partnership took from its top twenty-five
contributors from 1988 to 1991. That 54 percent is conservative.
It doesn't include donations under $90,000, and it doesn't include
donations from the tobacco and alcohol kings: The Partnership has
taken $150,000 each from Philip Morris, nheuser-Busch and RJR
Reynolds, plus $100,000 from American Brands (Jim Beam. Lucky
Strike).
So not only did PDFA take in a lot of pharma money, but hey were led by a former pharma CEO, and the money and leadership pretty much came in as a package deal.
And a 2016 account of the matter posted as a blog entry on Oxford University Press' site--account that also contains bits of a recent interview with Tom Hedriks, who was one of the PDFA founders and who still works at PDFA--says:
In a spring 1992 exposé in the Nation, Cynthia Cotts revealed that the PDFA’s supporters included several pharmaceutical companies, the maker of Jim Beam whiskey, Anheuser-Busch, and Philip Morris. Most damningly, R.J. Reynolds had been backing its calls for a “drug-free America” even as public health advocates condemned the company for hooking youngsters on cigarettes with its kid-friendly cartoon mascot, Joe Camel.
Cotts pulled no punches: “The war on drugs is a war on illegal drugs, and the partnership’s benefactors have a large stake in keeping it that way. They know that when schoolchildren learn that marijuana and crack are evil, they’re also learning that alcohol, tobacco, and pills are as American as apple pie.” Others were even harsher, and their criticism stung all the more because the Partnership appeared to be making real progress in shifting popular attitudes about illicit drugs.
At the time, Hedrick was unrepentant, claiming that he would have “taken money from the devil” to combat the scourge of crack. That implied comparison hardly flattered the organization’s heretofore silent partners, and it appeared inevitable that they would go their separate ways. Soon the PDFA pledged not to take alcohol and tobacco money, a position it notes prominently on its website today, though it openly acknowledges continued pharmaceutical support. For other reasons, directors also expanded the Partnership’s mission from persuading young people to abstain from drugs to reaching out to parents of children at risk. Now renamed the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, the group addresses the dangers of licit as well as illicit drugs, with a focus on abuse of prescription medications. Decades of work earned Hedrick recognition from the White House earlier this year.
I finally broached the topic. Had the passage of time changed his perspective on the funding question? “Maybe from a public relations point of view that was a stupid thing to do. I can understand why there was so much criticism.”
Not quite an admission of error, but perhaps understandable in light of how charges by the Partnership’s most vociferous critics—who portrayed it as little more than a front for Big Tobacco out to brainwash unsuspecting young people—distorted the efforts of its professional, generally earnest staff. [..]
[About the author:] Joe Moreau, a history teacher and author of Schoolbook Nation: Conflicts over American History Textbooks from the Civil War to the Present, is researching drug education in the postwar era. He discusses the topic of this blog further in his Journal of Social History article, “‘I Learned it by Watching YOU!’ The Partnership for a Drug-Free America and the Attack on ‘Responsible Use’ Education in the 1980s.”
Whether PDFA is or isn't part of the "war on drugs" is in the eye of the beholder. Wikipedia mentions they had "coordination with federal anti-drug efforts".
The Partnership holds a special position under law within the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.[25][26] It cooperates with government agencies in many initiatives to try to help reduce drug abuse. In 2010, it worked with the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2010 on a public relations event entitled "National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day."[27] The event involved 4,000 so-called "drop spots" for people to discard extra prescription drugs as a way to lessen the temptation for their abuse.[27]
As for CADCA, lobbying and what not: don't' ask multiple questions in one; even if mods give you a pass on that, I won't give you answers in one post that require extensive quotes/investigation on multiple topics.
