Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us (2001) / Chapter Skim
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9 Final Thoughts: Unfinished Business
9 Final Thoughts: Unfinished Business
Pages 271-280
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From page 271... ...
Total federal expenditures in fiscal year 1969 were $66.4 million, allocated primarily to federal law enforcement and to the operation of the two federal hospitals for the treatment of addicted prisoners. During the Nixon administration, however, national drug policy was fundamentally reshaped in response to an epidemic of heroin use in several major cities and an explosion of marijuana and other illegal drug use among college and high school students.
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From page 272... ...
In 1972, Congress also established the interagency Strategy Council on Drug Abuse, cochaired by the chief federal drug law enforcement official and the head of the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention, and directed it to prepare a comprehensive, coordinated strategy for all federal drug abuse and drug trafficking prevention activities. The structure used to coordinate the growing federal effort has changed repeatedly over the past three decades, but national drug control strategy documents have been issued by the White House every year since 1973.
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From page 273... ...
Even a partial listing of the unanswered questions is startling. We do not know: why people choose to use drugs in spite of criminal laws against use and obvious dangers of dependence and disruption; why some individuals who use drugs with high dependence liability become dependent and others do not; why some populations seem much more susceptible to use or to dependence than others; what social forces precipitate the periodic "epidemics" of drug use and what causes the lulls between these increases; how drug law enforcement operates and what effect it has on use and distribution; how, in terms of effectiveness, the various treatment modalities compare and why each seems to work well for some users, and not at all for others; what is the impact of information on the decisions to use or not use drugs.
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From page 274... ...
In recent years, new collaborative research efforts relating to offender populations have been undertaken by the National Institute of Justice and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration. Although, as this report details, the existing data systems need to be strengthened, and knowledge regarding the effectiveness of treatment and prevention activities still has significant gaps, an impressive body of research has emerged in these areas over the past several decades.
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From page 275... ...
in the absence of better data on drug prices and consumption. The need for better data is highlighted in the National Drug Control Strategy for 2000, the latest in the series issued annually by federal drug policy officials since the 1973 federal strategy quoted above.
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From page 276... ...
. The top priorities, in the committee's judgment, are to rectify the two major deficiencies in existing data systems: the absence of adequate consumption data and reliable price data.
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From page 277... ...
In order to nurture and harness the intellectual resources that will be needed to mount a successful research effort, it will be necessary to recruit talented social scientists and to establish the necessary incentives, including reliable and stable sources of funding, access to data, and scientific independence. Funding and Sponsorship 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.
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From page 278... ...
Scientific Independence In its final report in 1973, the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse applauded a 400 percent increase in the federal investment in research from 1969-1973, urged intensification of the investment in research, and emphasized the importance of free scientific inquiry in what had been a highly politicized domain (NCMA, 1973:368-370~: This commitment to research .
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From page 279... ...
Although further improvements are needed in these areas, as explained in this report, the data and research capacity are in place. In stark contrast, neither the data systems nor the research infrastructure needed to assess the effectiveness of drug control enforcement policies now exists.
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From page 280... ...
Washington D.C.: National Academy Press. Office of National Drug Control Policy.
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