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NEW YORK, Mar 29 (Reuters Health) - Lacking reliable data on illegal drug consumption and the cost of illicit drugs, the US has no way of knowing whether its $12 billion annual investment in drug enforcement is paying off, the National Research Council (NRC) concludes in a report released Thursday.
The report reveals troubling gaps in the information available to inform the nation's health policy. In some instances, it says, "the data are nonexistent."
"Neither the necessary data systems nor the research infrastructure to gauge the usefulness of drug-control enforcement policies currently exists," said Charles F. Manski, chair of the committee that wrote the report and professor of economics at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
"It is unconscionable for this country to continue to carry out a public policy of this magnitude and cost without any way of knowing whether, and to what extent, it is having the desired result," he said.
The NRC's Committee on Data and Research Policy on Illegal Drugs prepared the report on behalf of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). The NRC is an arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.
Edward H. Jurith, acting director of the ONDCP, acknowledged that many of its performance measures require better supporting data. He said the findings would help the ONDCP to prioritize its research needs. The office also intends to convene an interagency data and evaluation group to review and act on the recommendations.
Federal spending on drug enforcement programs increased more than tenfold between 1981 and 1999, according to the report. In 1998, 1.6 million people had been arrested for drug offenses, tripling the number of arrests made in 1980. And 289,000 new drug offenders were incarcerated in state prisons, 12 times the number in 1980.
Yet federal spending on illegal drug markets and the effects of enforcement was roughly $113 million, or less than $1 for every $100 spent on enforcement, it found.
Furthermore, little is known about the success of many drug prevention programs, the committee found. Many popular programs, including so-called "zero tolerance" projects, have not been evaluated at all, it said. Others, such as DARE, have been found to have little impact on illegal drug use.
The committee made several recommendations for filling in the blanks, emphasizing the need for new data collection systems on illegal drug use and the price of illegal drugs.
Additional research also is needed on the impact of law enforcement activities on the drug smuggling business, it concludes.
"To what extent can producers and traffickers thwart enforcement in one geographic area by moving production or smuggling routes elsewhere?" it asks.
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