Research Catalog

Title

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.

Author

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

Publication

Santa Monica, CA : RAND, 2000.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Chiesa, James, 1949-
• Everingham, Susan S.
• RAND Drug Policy Research Center.

Description

ix, 27 p.; 23 cm.

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.

Subject

• Cocaine industry > United States
• Drug traffic > United States > Mathematical models
• Drug control > United States > Mathematical models

Note

• "MR-1265-DPRC"--P. [4] of cover.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 25-27).

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Estimates of Effects of Drug Treatment Programs on Cocaine Use -- Modeling the Supply of Cocaine -- Shape of the Average Cost Curve -- Supply Control Policies and Average Production Costs -- Seizures as a Measure of Supply-Control Activity -- Nonprice Effects of Supply-Control Activities -- Modeling the Demand for Cocaine -- The Price Elasticity of Demand -- The Complex Response of Cocaine Consumption to Prices -- Evaluating the Reliability of the Model.

ISBN

0833029118

LCCN

^^^00045727^

OCLC

45002144

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library