The report challenged the credibility of a 1994 RAND Corporation study of cocaine control that has been used to justify increased funding for drug treatment programs. It also found "major flaws" in a 1997 Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) study that has been cited by advocates of interdiction programs.
The NRC Committee on Data and Research for Policy on Illegal Drugs is chaired by Charles Manski (IPR-Economics). It was commissioned by the White House Office of National Drug Policy to do a broad assessment of data and research as a basis for developing a sound national policy on illegal drugs. Controlling this traffic currently costs the nation $17-billion a year, and data collection on illegal drugs is scattered throughout the government.
In rejecting the IDA findings as a basis for assessing interdiction policies, the committee faulted the assumptions, data, and methods of the study. It characterized the work‹based on a fixed demand model for cocaine‹as a descriptive time-series analysis of statistics relevant to analyzing the U.S. market for cocaine. But its concerns about IDA's data and methods "diminish the credibility of the cocaine price series developed in the study," the report concluded.
The RAND study, which used a static model of the market for cocaine, "did not yield usable empirical findings on the relative cost-effectiveness of policies to reduce cocaine consumption," according to the report. Citing the study's many unsubstantiated assumptions about the processes through which the drug is produced, distributed, and consumed, the committee concluded that its findings were equally unpersuasive as a basis for forming cocaine control policy.
The NRC report is the first phase of a 2 l/2 year study slated for completion in the spring of 2001. The committee will assess data on drug production, use, and prices, and evaluate what is known about the effectiveness of drug treatment programs, the economics of drug production, and the effects of domestic law enforcement activities on drug use.