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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
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Part I
Introduction and Background

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

1
Introduction

Our nation employs a variety of means to reduce the consumption of illegal drugs and mitigate their adverse consequences. Choosing the right mix of instruments presents a complex policy decision; there are many different lines of attack. To manage this complexity, policy makers and the public have often adopted simple dichotomies, contrasting law enforcement approaches with medical approaches and supply-reduction approaches with demand-reduction approaches. Everyone seems to agree that the nation ought to use a portfolio of instruments that appropriately balances these broad categories, yet views on how close the nation now is to the optimal balance differ a great deal.

The sharp disagreements about drug control policy that persist in U.S. society have both normative and empirical components. On the normative side, people in America vary in their moral judgment of drug use and in their concern with the collateral consequences of drug control activities. On the empirical side, people vary in their assessment of the effectiveness of the drug abuse prevention, drug treatment, domestic law enforcement, and foreign interdiction activities that have formed the elements of U.S. drug control policy. The continuing debate about drug control policy manifests itself in many ways, among which is an annual battle within the federal government on the allocation of funding across different instruments.

Data and research cannot resolve disagreements about the morality of drug use, but they may be able to narrow the divergence of views on the effectiveness of drug control policy today and contribute to the forma-

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

tion of more effective policy tomorrow. With this in mind, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) requested the National Research Council (NRC) to convene a committee to study the data and research needed to inform national policy on illegal drugs. The Committee on Data and Research for Policy on Illegal Drugs was formed in early 1998 under the aegis of the NRC’s Committee on Law and Justice and Committee on National Statistics. Its charge was to:

  1. assess existing data sources and recent research studies that support policy analysis;

  2. identify new data and research that may enable the development of more effective means of evaluating the consequences of alternative drug control policies; and

  3. explore ways to integrate theory and findings from diverse disciplines to increase understanding of drug abuse and the operation of drug markets.

This report represents the results of the committee’s work.

As part of its work, the committee earlier assessed in depth two studies that evaluated the cost-effectiveness of alternative drug control instruments in reducing domestic consumption of cocaine—one by analysts at RAND (Rydell and Everingham, 1994) and the other by analysts at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) (Crane, Rivolo, and Comfort, 1997). These two studies, which have drawn considerable attention, used very different methodologies and drew sharply different conclusions. The committee’s evaluation of the two studies was transmitted to the Office of National Drug Control Policy in April 1999 as its Phase I report, Assessment of Two Cost-Effectiveness Studies of Cocaine Control Policy.1 The Executive Summary of the Phase I report, which describes the committee’s main findings, is included in this volume as Appendix C.

CHANGING PERSPECTIVES ON DRUG CONTROL POLICY

As a prelude to discussion of the scope and themes of the report, we think it helpful to review how the prevailing perspectives on drug control

1  

Points of view different from that of the committee regarding its Phase I Report are expressed in comments received from some of the authors of the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) and RAND studies. These comments are available to the public in the NRC public access file for this project. All references in both the Phase I and final reports to the IDA analysis or findings are based solely on the 1997 IDA report by Crane, Rivolo, and Comfort. All references to the RAND analysis or findings are based solely on the 1994 RAND report by Rydell and Everingham.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

policy came to be. A constructive way to do so is to look historically at the evolution of drug policy and the language that has been used to discuss it.

Law Enforcement and Medical Approaches

Current drug policy has its roots in the adoption of the Harrison Narcotics Act in 1914.2 Although framed as a tax measure, the goal of the statute was to suppress the nonmedical use of what are called narcotic drugs (a classification that encompassed morphine, heroin, and other opiates, as well as cocaine). The effect was to criminalize the manufacture, sale, and possession of these drugs outside medical channels. An aggressive campaign of enforcement by federal authorities was deployed in the 1920s to terminate the practice of opiate maintenance by physicians and clinics. Eventually, the prohibitory approach was extended by Congress to marijuana in 1937, and during the 1930s and 1940s all state legislatures enacted a parallel set of laws. Penalties for narcotics offenses were increased in the 1950s, and new psychoactive pharmaceutical products were brought under federal control in the 1960s in an effort to suppress nonmedical use of these drugs. This accumulation of federal and state antidrug statutes was replaced in 1970 by the federal Controlled Substances Act and by parallel acts at the state level.

Until the 1970s, enforcement of this comprehensive array of drug prohibitions was the predominant instrument of the nation’s antidrug policy. What was called the law enforcement approach was generally understood as a relatively complete policy: drugs are dangerous to the social order. Therefore, it is both just and useful to prosecute those who supply drugs and those who use them. By setting out laws against these activities and enforcing them, individuals would be dissuaded and deterred from supplying and using drugs. If some persisted despite the prohibition, it would be both just and effective to incapacitate them as threats to society.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, however, the dominance of this law enforcement model was challenged by some influential lawyers and physicians who wanted to respond to drug addiction with medical methods (including civil commitment) rather than prosecution and punishment. In their view, chronic drug use was not a wholly voluntary choice but rather a disease to which some helplessly succumbed. The disease may have had its roots in biology, in the social conditions in which people lived, or in the dependence-producing power of the drugs themselves. But whatever

2  

For a historical summary of drug policy predating the Harrison Act, see Institute of Medicine (1990: Volume 1, Chapter 2).

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

the sources, once these factors are present, an individual’s ability to act independently is undermined. Given this fact, it seemed both unjust and ineffective to respond to drug use among individuals as a crime. It seemed unjust because addicts were unable to decide to stop using drugs; ineffective because deterrence would fail, and incapacitation would work only as long as the restraint continued.

What they proposed as an alternative was the medical treatment of drug users. The most radical version of the approach called for drugs now banned to be legally available to addicts, their use to be regulated by physicians who could prescribe the drugs to patients under their care. For much of the 1960s, drug policy was locked in a debate between “cops and docs.” Should society continue its commitment to law enforcement, or should it shift to the medical approach?

Steps were taken in the 1970s to combine the law enforcement and medical approaches into a single framework. In 1972, Congress enacted legislation embracing one of the core positions of the proponents of the medical approach—that people with drug problems should be given incentives and assurances of confidentiality to encourage them to enter treatment. In addition, the federal government supported programs to use criminal prosecution as a lever for treatment participation. Congress also appropriated funds to support drug treatment programs. The debate between cops and docs receded in a policy environment in which both approaches were used simultaneously.

Supply-Reduction and Demand-Reduction Policies

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, drug policy analysts began talking in somewhat different terms. Influenced by economic theory, they now referred to supply-reduction and demand-reduction policies. These terms became particularly prominent in the 1980s when the ONDCP was created, with its deputy directors for demand and supply reduction.

Supply-reduction strategies focused on limiting the supply of drugs that might flow to illegal markets, while demand-reduction strategies focused on reducing the demand for drugs. To some, the new idea of supply and demand policies was almost indistinguishable from the old idea of cops and docs. Supply-reduction strategies looked like law enforcement, and demand-reduction strategies looked like drug treatment. However, there were important differences in thinking about drug policy in terms of supply and demand rather than in terms of enforcement and treatment.

First, in the new conception that distinguished supply and demand approaches, law enforcement was divided into two parts. Enforcement efforts directed at drug producers and distributors were considered sup-

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

ply-reduction strategies, and enforcement efforts directed at drug users were considered demand-reduction strategies.

Second, new supply-reduction instruments emerged that were not enforcement activities. The idea took hold that those now engaged in the production of heroin and cocaine in Asia, South America, and elsewhere might be persuaded to stop not by the threat of crop eradication and arrest, but through subsidies supporting efforts to shift production to other, less profitable crops. Similarly, programs to improve the labor market conditions of disadvantaged youth might induce street-level drug dealers to move into legitimate employment. In addition, it was an explicit strategy of major multimodality treatment programs in the early 1970s to reduce local heroin supplies by recruiting user-dealers into treatment. Thus, crop substitution programs, youth employment programs, and programs treating user-dealers became part of the nation’s portfolio of drug control instruments.

Third, a new demand-reduction strategy, drug abuse prevention, assumed a more important place in thinking about drug policy. Of course, law enforcement already aimed to prevent drug use. Drug laws put society on notice that use of certain drugs is deviant, and enforcement of these laws sought to deter potential drug users by threatening arrest and incarceration. The new notion of drug abuse prevention brought into play efforts by schools, neighborhood groups, and parents to persuade youth and other populations at risk that drug use is bad and dangerous. It also brought into play efforts by the military, civilian employers, and schools to deter drug use by initiating drug-testing programs and by levying noncriminal sanctions (e.g., fines, suspensions, dismissal) on soldiers, employees, and students found to use drugs.

Box 1.1 displays these different policy instruments in the form of a matrix that shows how the original ideas of the law enforcement and

BOX 1.1 Matrix of Drug Control Instruments

 

Supply Reduction

Demand Reduction

Law enforcement

Crop eradication

Disruption of transport

Domestic enforcement

Criminal sanctions for possession/use

Coerced treatment

Medical

Regulation of pharmaceuticals

Drug treatment

Socioeconomic

Crop substitution

Youth employment programs

Drug education and persuasion

Noncriminal sanctions

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

medical approaches are related to the newer ideas of supply-reduction and demand-reduction policies. There is also a third dimension to this matrix: it is useful to distinguish federal efforts from state, local, and community efforts to deal with drug use, and think of national drug control policy as being the sum of efforts that are undertaken at these different levels of government.

Complementarities

Perhaps the most important advance in thinking about drug policy has been the idea that instruments drawn from the different categories may complement one another in a constructive manner. Thinking in terms of complementarities leaves behind the simple dichotomies of past conceptualizations of drug policy, opening new possibilities for combining instruments in innovative ways. Complementarities can also appreciably complicate the already difficult problem of assessing the effectiveness of alternative drug-control strategies.

One aspect of thinking about complementarities combines law enforcement directed at drug users with treatment of those users. For many years it was thought that law enforcement approaches conflicted with treatment approaches. At a philosophical, ideological, or political level, this may still be true. That is, the politics of drugs tends to align those who favor law enforcement approaches as the just and effective response to drug abuse, against those who favor treatment and prevention approaches to drug abuse. Operationally, however, it is increasingly recognized that different instruments may complement one another, in the sense that each one allows the other to perform better than it could alone.

For example, law enforcement may help treatment by putting pressure on drug users to seek and remain in treatment, or by providing a direct referral source for drug users who have not yet decided to volunteer for treatment. Drug treatment may help law enforcement succeed by providing a lower cost, more effective response to drug-using offenders than jail or prison, and by softening the harsh consequences of drug law enforcement that would otherwise apply. These positive complementarities between enforcement and treatment, however, must be balanced against the possibility that efforts to coerce drug users into treatment may widen the reach and deepen the intensity of punishment.

Complementarities may also exist among drug control instruments operating at different levels of government. It may be that international and federal enforcement efforts create conditions under which local efforts to control street-level drug markets can plausibly succeed in reducing the local availability of drugs. Conversely, effective local law enforce-

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

ment may provide some of the leads that are necessary to allow federal law enforcement efforts to become effective. In a different vein, federal financing of research on treatment may allow for more effective treatment efforts than localities could mount on their own.

Moreover, as society has learned to see drug use in epidemic as well as endemic terms, people have begun to realize that the value of a particular policy instrument in a broader portfolio of drug control instruments may vary with time. At the early stage of an epidemic, it may be wise to combine drug abuse prevention activities with law enforcement so as to minimize its spread. At later stages, when rates of initiation of drug use have slowed, it may be that the emphasis should shift to treatment. Thus, thinking about complementaries among drug control instruments should recognize the dynamics of drug problems.

SCOPE AND THEMES OF THE REPORT

The charge to the committee requested a study of data and research to inform drug control policy. In one very important sense, this charge set a clear limit on the scope of the committee’s work. Our mandate was the positive task of informing drug policy, not the normative task of recommending policy. Thus the reader of this report will not find policy prescriptions herein. In particular, the report neither endorses nor condemns current drug control policy.

Yet the charge as stated is very broad. It was clear at the outset that achievement of a useful, well-grounded consensus report would require that the committee limit the scope of its work. As does every NRC committee, we had to confront the reality that, however pressing and important the problem of public policy may be, a time-limited committee of volunteers assisted by a small staff needs to choose its themes carefully if it is to contribute at all.

Considering how best to use our time and resources, we were mindful that earlier committees of the National Academies had previously investigated some aspects of the nation’s drug problems, although not the broad question of how data and research might inform policy. Box 1.2 lists these recent reports on drug problems. We have aimed to build on and complement this work, not duplicate it. We also were aware that our own efforts to inform drug control policy would undoubtedly be followed by those of others, who may in turn build on our work.

With these thoughts in mind, the committee reached several strategic decisions on scope and themes that ultimately shaped this report. We call attention to these decisions here, so that readers will better anticipate what to expect and not expect in the chapters that follow.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

BOX 1.2 Recent Reports of the National Academies on Drug Problems

Institute of Medicine

1990

Treating Drug Problems, Volume 1. Committee for the Substance Abuse Coverage Study. Dean Gerstein and Henrick J.Harwood, editors. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

1992

Treating Drug Problems, Volume 2. Committee for the Substance Abuse Coverage Study. Dean R.Gerstein and Henrick J.Harwood, editors. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

1995

The Development of Medications for the Treatment of Opiate and Cocaine Addictions: Issues for the Government and Private Sector. Committee to Study Medication Development and Research at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Carolyn E.Fulco, Catharyn T.Liverman, and Laurence E.Earley, editors. Committee to Study Medication Development and Research at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

1996

Pathways of Addiction: Opportunities in Drug Abuse Research. Committee on Opportunities in Drug Abuse Research. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

1997

Dispelling the Myths About Addiction: Strategies to Increase Understanding and Strengthen Research. Committee to Identify Strategies to Raise the Profile of Substance Abuse and Alcoholism Research. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

1999

Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base. Janet E.Joy, Stanley J.Watson, Jr., and John A.Benson, Jr., editors. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

National Research Council

1993

Preventing Drug Abuse: What Do We Know? Committee on Substance Abuse Prevention Research. Dean R.Gerstein and Lawrence W.Green, editors. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

1993

Under The Influence? Drugs and the American Work Force. Jacques Normand, Richard O.Lempert, and Charles P.O’Brien, editors. Committee on Drug Use in the Workplace. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×
Illegal Drugs

The first major decision that the committee made was to focus on substances whose sale or use is illegal in America today, taking the legal status of drugs as given. A more expansive scope for our work could easily have been justified. From a public health perspective, addiction to such legal substances as tobacco and alcohol may constitute problems more severe in their adverse consequences than addiction to such illegal drugs as cocaine, heroin, or marijuana. From a behavioral perspective, complementaries in the use of legal and illegal drugs have been conjectured in the “gateway hypothesis,” which posits that the early use of tobacco and marijuana is usually a precursor to the use of hard drugs, while the substitutability of legal and illegal psychoactive drugs has been emphasized by economic models that focus on the role of prices in determining drug use. From a legal perspective, it is useful to keep in mind that the legal status of addictive substances is not immutable; drug laws are made by and can be changed by society.

All of these considerations notwithstanding, the committee made a pragmatic decision to focus its attention on the illegal drugs that are the targets of present-day drug control policy. We decided that any attempt to confront the public health problems posed by alcohol and tobacco would make the task entirely unmanageable. We do, however, cite data and research on alcohol and tobacco when they may offer lessons for analysis of illegal drugs, for example, when studying the drug use of minors. We decided that changes in the legal status of addictive substances, such as the prohibition of alcohol and the legalization of marijuana, are not sufficiently under active consideration by policy makers for this committee to contemplate what data and research may have to say about these policy options.

Indeed, the committee has for the most part focused on a subset of illegal drugs. This report dwells on cocaine, with lesser attention to heroin, and still less to other drugs. Giving primacy to cocaine may be natural in light of the “crack” cocaine crisis that gripped American society in the 1980s and the continuing position of cocaine as a focus of research and a flash point in the public debate about drugs. Yet the committee is aware that patterns of drug use may change with time. Twenty years ago it would have been natural to give primacy to heroin, and this may again be the case in the near future. Or one of numerous synthetic addictive substances may pose the overriding drug threat of tomorrow. Be this as it may, the broad substantive concerns and methodological issues addressed in this report will remain germane to drug policy.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

Chapter 2 of this report summarizes the state of knowledge about the determinants of use of illegal drugs, and the consequences for users and society. This chapter is not concerned with drug control policy per se. Rather, it provides basic background for consideration of policy.

Data for Monitoring Drug Problems

A second major decision was to choose the types of data to consider in depth. The committee decided to focus substantial attention on data regularly collected by the federal government, which are widely used to monitor the nation’s drug problems. Two annual population surveys, the National Household Survey of Drug Abuse (NHSDA) and Monitoring the Future (MTF), form the country’s main sources of information on trends and cross-sectional patterns in drug use. The government also supports regular data collection on the drug use of persons who experience certain events—including arrest, incarceration, and hospital emergency room treatment. The Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program collects drug use data on arrestees; various Bureau of Justice Statistics surveys collect such information on prisoners; and the Drug Abuse Warning Network collects information on hospital emergency room visits related to drug use.

The Drug Enforcement Administration’s System to Retrieve Information from Drug Evidence (STRIDE) is the main existing source of information on drug prices. These and other data collection activities of the federal government provide the primary descriptive information that policy makers and the public presently use to gauge the overall dimensions of the nation’s drug problems. These data collection systems are described and evaluated in detail in Chapter 3.

The committee views accurate description of trends and cross-sectional patterns in drug use, prices, and other relevant variables as essential to informed development of drug control policy. Hence the committee decided not only to scrutinize the various data collection systems now in place but also to consider principles for regular collection of drug-related data in the federal statistical system. We examine the various data collection systems in Chapter 3 and make recommendations for the federal statistical system in Chapter 4.

This report focuses on the structure of the various data collection systems, not their findings. The annual report on the National Drug Control Strategy of the Office of National Drug Control Policy draws on these data sources in an effort to provide a comprehensive portrait of drug problems in the United States.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×
Modes of Research

A third decision, reflecting the committee’s charge, was to consider research that bears directly on drug policy, not basic research on drug addiction. Chapters 5 through 8 report the committee’s assessment of the research currently available to support analysis of drug control policy and make recommendations for improvements. Chapter 5 examines supply-reduction policy in totality, ranging from foreign interdiction to local policing strategies. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 examine the three main elements of demand-reduction policy: sanctions against use of illegal drugs (Chapter 6), drug education, persuasion, and other prevention activities (Chapter 7), and treatment of drug users (Chapter 8).

As the committee went about its work, it found very different modes of research in use to evaluate different instruments of drug control policy. At one extreme, establishment of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the 1970s has fostered the development of a considerable body of research on drug treatment that has sought to adhere to the model of medical research. Here the units of analysis are individuals, and randomized clinical trials are considered to be the “gold standard.” Observational studies of samples of individuals receiving different treatments are viewed as expedients that may have to serve until randomized trials can be performed.

At another extreme, the few studies of foreign interdiction performed to date have employed either the observational approach of impulse-response analysis or the theory-oriented approach of systems research. These modes of research reflect the difficulty of the problem. The units of analysis for study of interdiction policy are large geographic regions within which the interactions of many distinct actors determine drug production and distribution. Moreover, interdiction studies have had to make do with hardly any data at all on the behavior of these agents. After all, it is very difficult to obtain evidence about illegal enterprises, especially those operating in foreign countries.

The committee does not see much prospect for convergence to a common mode of research on different aspects of drug control policy. Hence Chapters 5 through 8 vary considerably in the tenor of their discussions and in the foci of their recommendations. The committee acknowledges that the effectiveness of drug treatment, prevention, and law enforcement activities cannot be evaluated with equal ease or rigor. However, a common standard of proof can and should be applied to assess the credibility of all research aiming to inform policy. The strength of the policy conclusions drawn in a study should always be commensurate with the quality of the evidence. For a complete list of the committee’s recommendations, see Table 1.1 at the end of this chapter.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×
The Nation’s Investments in Data and Research: Focus on Enforcement

As the committee went about its work, it discovered that the research available to evaluate different instruments of drug control policy varies as dramatically in magnitude as in mode. We found the central problem to be a serious lack of investment in programs of data collection and empirical research that would enable evaluation of the nation’s investment in drug law enforcement.

Existing programs of data and research on drug treatment and prevention receive more resources and are therefore further developed. The committee does make recommendations whose implementation should further strengthen the nation’s understanding of treatment and prevention, but these recommendations are mainly meant to improve programs of data and research that are already in place. It is the committee’s view that to inform enforcement policy will require initiation of entirely new programs, as well as development of appropriate organizational infrastructure to support them.

Between 1981 and 1999 the nation’s expenditures on enforcement increased more than tenfold. The escalation in domestic enforcement is manifest in an inventory of criminal justice processing facts: in 1998, 1.6 million people were arrested for drug offenses, 3 times as many as in 1980, and 289,000 drug offenders were incarcerated in state prisons, 12 times as many as in 1980 (23,900). The benefits and costs of current law enforcement policy and the possibility of alternative strategies continue to be the subject of heated public debate. Yet, because of a lack of investment in data and research, the committee has reluctantly concluded that the nation is in no better position to evaluate the effectiveness of enforcement now than it was 20 years ago, when the recent intensification of enforcement began.

Collection of the data and performance of the research needed to inform enforcement policy will require new resources. The committee has not attempted to determine the specific costs of the initiatives recommended in this report. To explain the absence of cost estimates, it may suffice to observe that the task of producing them lay beyond the charge to the committee. However, the more basic reason why the committee does not provide cost estimates is that any such estimates would be too speculative to be useful. Our recommendations for new data and research to inform enforcement policy call for the nation to begin the process of developing a coherent body of knowledge. The proper time to produce specific cost estimates will be when that process is under way.

What the committee can say is that we view the recommended enhancements of data and research as neither impossible to accomplish nor

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

prohibitive in cost. It is the committee’s view that Congress should provide new funds for this effort. Consider how little is currently spent on drug data and research relative to the country’s expenditure implementing its drug policy. The federal government, according to the ONDCP, currently invests approximately $780 million each year to monitor illegal drug use and conduct research on drug policy, but less than 15 percent of this amount goes for research on enforcement. Funding for research on enforcement policy is minimal, particularly when compared with the amount spent on carrying out enforcement policy. In 1999, only $1 was spent on enforcement research for every $107 spent on enforcement itself. Moreover, in any given year, the greater part of enforcement research funds go to support criminal justice system operations (i.e., crop eradication research, crime analysis for investigations, analysis of caseloads in the federal courts), technology development, and drug testing, rather than data collection and social science research.3

Implementation of Recommendations

As the committee formulated each of its many recommendations, it deliberated about how they might best be implemented (Table 1.1 lists all of the recommendations at the end of this chapter). In particular, we considered which of the numerous existing federal statistical and research agencies might most appropriately be charged with the task of implementing the recommendations. The committee was informed in these deliberations by the presentations of agency representatives in committee-sponsored workshops as well as by the familiarity of committee members and staff with the operation of the relevant agencies. In some cases, the committee had sufficient institutional understanding to be able to recommend that a particular agency or group of agencies be charged with a particular task. In other cases, the committee has not named implementing agencies because it would be too speculative and perhaps even counterproductive for us to do so.

The committee deliberated especially fully on how the nation might best implement its recommendations on data collection for monitoring

3  

In 1991, the federal investment in enforcement research was $111.6 million, or 2.5 percent of federal domestic enforcement expenditures and 0.5 percent of the total expenditure on drug control. By 1999, federal funds alone for enforcement had increased to $12.3 billion, reflecting a near doubling in spending on domestic enforcement over 1991 levels, yet enforcement research funding remained essentially stable at $113.2 million (Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2000).

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

drug problems. A full chapter of this report (Chapter 4) examines this question.

Present-Oriented and Forward-Looking Analysis of Drug Policy

Early in its deliberations, the committee found it essential to distinguish between two senses, one present-oriented and the other forward-looking, in which data and research can inform drug policy. We recognize that an analysis may be of value to decision makers today if it makes the best use it can of whatever data are currently available in order to furnish advice or reach conclusions about actions that must be taken now, before better data can be gathered and interpreted. The premises of such an analysis should be explicit, and the logic that links its steps should be transparent. Its conclusions should appropriately convey the uncertainty that is inevitable given the limitations of the existing data. But more than this should not be asked of it.

Our report looks mainly to the future. The committee has been asked to explore how new data might enable research that yields much more definitive assessments of drug policy than are possible at present. It may take several years, a decade, or more to gather and interpret crucial data that are now unavailable—during which policy makers must continue to make do as they have in the past. But in the longer run, a sustained and systematic effort to develop firm empirical foundations for drug policy is necessary if the nation is to have any hope of improving the quality of its decision making.

It makes no sense to continue to argue about drug policy for additional decades, as we have so often in the past, in terms of plausible but unverified assumptions about the nature of drug production, distribution, and use. If society is to make wiser decisions in the years ahead, we must now decide on a strategy to identify the critical empirical questions for drug policy and take the steps needed to answer these questions. Initiating this process is the important task addressed in this report.

REFERENCES

Institute of Medicine 1990 Treating Drug Problems, Volume 1. Committee for the Substance Abuse Coverage Study. Dean Gerstein and Henrick J.Harwood, editors. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.


Office of National Drug Control Policy 2000 National Drug Control Strategy: Budget Summary February 2000. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

TABLE 1.1 Committee Recommendations Listed By Chapter

Recommendation

Page Number

Agency or Agencies

Research

Data

Procedure or Infrastructure

Data Needs for Monitoring Drug Problems: Chapter 3

The committee recommends that the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the granting agency (currently the National Institute on Drug Abuse) establish an oversight committee of statisticians and other experts, knowledgeable in procedures for balancing the needs for public access with the goal of confidentiality, to establish guidelines for providing access and for monitoring whether access to the data is quickly and easily provided.

83

ONCDP

NIDA

 

 

X

The committee recommends that the granting agency require that the contractors who gather data for Monitoring the Future move immediately to provide appropriate access to the longitudinal data. The committee recommends that if access is not provided in accordance with the guidelines of the oversight committee, the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the granting agency consider whether the public interest requires relocating the grant in another organization that will provide the level of access necessary for the data to be most useful for purposes of informing public policy on illegal drugs.

84

ONCDP

NIDA

 

X

 

The committee recommends that work be started to develop methods for acquiring consumption data.

86

NIJ

NSF

BJS

 

X

 

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

Recommendation

Page Number

Agency or Agencies

Research

Data

Procedure or Infrastructure

The committee recommends that methods be developed to supplement the data collected in the National Household Survey of Drug Abuse and Monitoring the Future in order to obtain adequate coverage of subpopulations with high rates of drug use.

88

SAMHSA

ONDCP

NIDA

BJS

 

X

 

The committee recommends a systematic and rigorous research program (1) to understand and monitor nonresponse and (2) to develop methods to reduce nonresponse to the extent possible.

95

NIDA

SAMSHA

X

 

 

The committee strongly recommends a systematic and rigorous research program (1) to understand and monitor inaccurate response in the national use surveys and (2) to develop methods to reduce reporting errors to the extent possible.

100

NIDA

SAMSHA

X

 

 

The committee recommends that the Office for National Drug Control Policy and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention undertake to develop principles and procedures for information and surveillance systems on illegal drug-taking and its associated hazards.

105

ONCDP

CDC

X

 

 

The committee recommends that work be started to develop methods for improving existing data and acquiring more reliable drug price data.

111

NIJ

BJS

NSF

 

X

 

The committee recommends that a major effort be devoted to “importing” standard procedures on constructing price indices into the development of price indices for illegal drugs. This effort should take place in collaboration with federal statistical agencies that specialize in this area, particularly the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

116

NIJ

BJS

NSF

BLS

X

 

 

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

The committee recommends that consideration be given to constructing a set of satellite accounts that track the flows in sectors comprising legal and illegal drugs. This set of accounts would be called the National Drug Accounts. These satellite accounts would not enter into the current core national income and product accounts.

117

BJS

NIJ

NSF

 

X

 

Drug Data Organization: Chapter 4

The committee recommends that public-use files of all major statistical series should be deposited in a data library. On a broader level, every agency sponsoring the collection of population-based data related to illegal drugs should require in their contracts and grants the timely deposit of public-use files in an appropriate data library or its dissemination in other ways.

129

ONDCP

NIDA

BJS

SAMSHA

CDC

 

 

X

The committee recommends the formation of an executive branch board to review proposed data collection protocols that might be used as a part of a research effort to design, collect, report, and validate statistical series on economic data, such as prices, expenditures, and consumption. It may be necessary to have rules or legislation enabling the board to exercise its functions in a manner that clearly separates law enforcement from this research enterprise.

130

ONDCP

 

 

X

The committee recommends that the Office of National Drug Control Policy place organizational improvements for data high on its agenda in the immediate future. If it does not move quickly to implement the changes required to improve statistical data the President and Congress should find other ways to ensure that the substantive and organizational changes are swiftly and effectively achieved.

135

ONCDP

 

 

X

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

Recommendation

Page Number

Agency or Agencies

Research

Data

Procedure or Infrastructure

Supply-Reduction Policy: Chapter 5

The committee recommends that the Office of National Drug Control Policy should encourage research agencies to develop a sustained program of information gathering and empirical research aiming to discover how drug production, transport, and distribution respond to interdiction and domestic enforcement activities. The committee strongly recommends that empirical research address the three critical issues of geographic substitution, deterrence, and adaptation.

157

ONDCP

NSF

BJS

NIJ

X

X

 

The committee recommends research on how illegal drug prices are determined. Much law enforcement activity is aimed, at least in part, at increasing the price of drugs. Without reliable knowledge of how retail prices are determined, one can only speculate about the effectiveness of such programs.

166

BJS

NSF

NIJ

X

 

 

The committee recommends survey research on the labor supply of illegal drug dealers.

169

BJS

NIJ

NSF

X

 

 

The committee recommends that state and local governments be encouraged to explore and assess alternative approaches to law enforcement, including decreases as well as increases in the intensity of enforcement. Organizational arrangements should be made to ensure that the resulting changes in law enforcement measures and policy are well designed and that the data needed to evaluate their consequences are acquired and analyzed.

178

BJS

NIJ

NSF

 

 

X

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

Sanctions Against Users of Illegal Drugs: Chapter 6

The committee recommends that the National Institute of Justice and the National Institute on Drug Abuse collaboratively undertake research on the declarative and deterrent effects, costs, and cost-effectiveness of sanctions against the use of illegal drugs. Particular attention should be paid to the relation between severity of prescribed sanctions and conditions of enforcement and the rates of initiation and termination of illegal drug use among different segments of the population.

195

NIJ

NIDA

X

 

 

The committee recommends that the National Institute of Justice and the National Institute on Drug Abuse collaborate in stimulating research on the effects of supplemental sanctions, including loss of welfare benefits, driver’s licenses, and public housing, on the use of illegal drugs.

197

NIJ

NIDA

X

 

 

The committee recommends that the Bureau of Labor Statistics monitor the measures taken by employers to discourage use of illegal drugs by their employees, including drug testing, and that the National Institute on Drug Abuse support rigorous research on the preventive effects and cost-effectiveness of workplace drug testing.

201

BLS

NIDA

X

 

 

The committee recommends that the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Office of Educational Research and Improvement support rigorous research on the preventive effects, costs, and cost-effectiveness of drug testing in high schools, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between drug testing and other formal and informal mechanisms of social control.

203

NIDA

OERI

X

 

 

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

Recommendation

Page Number

Agency or Agencies

Research

Data

Procedure or Infrastructure

Preventing Drug Use: Chapter 7

The committee recommends additional research to assess the effectiveness of social competency skill development and normative education approaches, which emphasize conveying correct information about the prevalence of drug use and its harmful effects.

227

 

X

 

 

The committee recommends additional research on prevention practices implemented under conditions of normal practice so that variability in effects from study to study may be better understood. The committee recommends further research on alternative methods and targeting mechanisms for teaching social competency skills.

227

 

X

 

 

The committee recommends a major increase in current efforts to evaluate drug prevention efforts. Further research is needed to better understand (1) effects of the entire spectrum of plausible approaches to prevention proposed or in use, rather than those that are most easily evaluated; (2) effects of drug prevention programs implemented under conditions of normal practice, outside the boundaries of the initial tightly controlled experimental tests of program efficacy under optimal conditions; (3) effects of different combinations of prevention programs, for example, how they complement each other or detract from one another when used in combination, as they most often are; and (4) the extent to which experimentally induced delays in tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use yield reductions in later involvement with cocaine and other illegal drugs specifically, and long-term effects of prevention programming more generally.

234

X

 

 

 

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

Treatment of Drug Users: Chapter 8

The committee recommends that priorities for the funding of treatment evaluation research should be changed; large-scale, national treatment inventory studies should not be conducted at the expense of greater funding for randomized controlled clinical trials.

249

NIDA

X

 

 

The committee recommends greater scientific attention to now-missed opportunities to conduct randomized trials of drug treatments with no-treatment control conditions.

258

NIDA

X

 

 

The committee recommends that treatment researchers take greater advantage of possible opportunities for randomization to no-treatment control groups. For example, we strongly encourage studies of incarcerated and postincarcerated prisoners as outlined in this report. The committee urges federal and state agencies and private institutions to minimize organizational obstacles to such studies, within ethical and legal bounds.

263

NIDA

X

 

 

The committee strongly recommends that treatments intended to benefit people be evaluated in carefully conducted randomized controlled experiments.

263

NIDA

X

 

 

The committee recommends broader use of meta-analytic techniques for cumulating and comparing findings across treatment outcome studies.

265

NIDA

X

 

 

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×

Recommendation

Page Number

Agency or Agencies

Research

Data

Procedure or Infrastructure

Final Thoughts: Chapter 9

The committee recommends that the National Institute of Justice, the National Science Foundation, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics should be assigned joint responsibility and given the necessary funding to build the scientific infrastructure for research on illegal drug markets and the effects of drug control interventions.

277

NIJ

NSF

BJS

 

 

X

NOTE:

BJS=Bureau of Justice Statistics

BLS=Bureau of Labor Statistics

CDC=Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

NIDA=National Institute on Drug Abuse

NIJ=National Institute of Justice

NSF=National Science Foundation

OERI=Office of Educational Research and Improvement

ONDCP=Office of National Drug Control Policy

SAMHSA=Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Research Council. 2001. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10021.
×
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How should the war on drugs be fought? Everyone seems to agree that the United States ought to use a combination of several different approaches to combat the destructive effects of illegal drug use. Yet there is a remarkable paucity of data and research information that policy makers require if they are to create a useful, realistic policy package-details about drug use, drug market economics, and perhaps most importantly the impact of drug enforcement activities.

Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs recommends ways to close these gaps in our understanding-by obtaining the necessary data on drug prices and consumption (quantity in addition to frequency); upgrading federal management of drug statistics; and improving our evaluation of prevention, interdiction, enforcement, and treatment efforts.

The committee reviews what we do and do not know about illegal drugs and how data are assembled and used by federal agencies. The book explores the data and research information needed to support strong drug policy analysis, describes the best methods to use, explains how to avoid misleading conclusions, and outlines strategies for increasing access to data. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs also discusses how researchers can incorporate randomization into studies of drug treatment and how state and local agencies can compare alternative approaches to drug enforcement.

Charting a course toward a better-informed illegal drugs policy, this book will be important to federal and state policy makers, regulators, researchers, program administrators, enforcement officials, journalists, and advocates concerned about illegal drug use.

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