Response to the National Research Council's assessment of RAND's controlling cocaine study / Drug Policy Research Center ; Jonathan P. Caulkins, with James Chiesa, Susan S. Everingham.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Caulkins, Jonathan P. (Jonathan Paul), 1965-

Contributor:

RAND Drug Policy Research Center.

Chiesa, James, 1949-

Everingham, Susan S.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cocaine industry--United States.

Cocaine industry.

Drug traffic--United States--Mathematical models.

Drug traffic.

Drug control--United States--Mathematical models.

Drug control.

Physical Description:

ix, 27 pages : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Santa Monica, CA : RAND Corporation, 2000.

Summary:

In 1999, a scientific committee assembled under the auspices of the National Research Council issued a critique of RAND's 1994 "Controlling Cocaine" report. The committee concluded, "The findings of the RAND study do not constitute a persuasive basis for the formation of cocaine control policy." In the current document, RAND's Drug Policy Research Center rebuts the committee's claim. The Center shows that most of the committee's criticisms rest on an incomplete understanding of the model used in the RAND report or, when taken into account, do not result in important changes in the findings based on the model. The two remaining criticisms are that the data on cocaine treatment effectiveness are not adequate to support modeling and that the mode of price transmission down the cocaine production "pipeline" may be different from that assumed. The Center acknowledges these points as potentially valid but holds that models need not have negligible probability of error to be useful as decision aids.