NCJ Number
182745
Date Published
1997
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This report examines the mismeasurement of illegal drug markets and the implications of its irrelevance.
Abstract
The paper examines the official estimates of drug production, both in the United States and the rest of the world, and sales in the United States, showing how implausible the estimates are. It also describes the process that generates the estimates and its bureaucratic imperatives and considers the policy interpretation of the mismeasurement. In recent years, the Federal Government has developed systematic estimates of domestic expenditures that provide a reasonable basis for scaling the size of drug markets. However, these estimates co-exist with a disorderly series of Federal figures on international production and prices that make a mockery of the whole enterprise. These estimates and their components are so inconsistent and erratic that they demonstrate what might reasonably be called a “reckless disregard” for the truth. Moreover, the year-to-year fluctuations in these estimates may be wrong even in direction, let alone scale. The paper argues that the mismeasurement does not matter, as the numbers are just decorations on the policy process, rhetorical conveniences for official statements without any serious consequences. The irrelevance of the numbers is itself a condemnation of drug policy decisionmaking. Tables, notes, references