DRUG RESEARCH INADEQUATE, WHITE HOUSE PANEL FINDS

The quality of data and research on what works to reduce the supply and
demand for drugs is so poor that no accurate assessments can be made, a
report commissioned by the Clinton White House and released yesterday has
concluded.

The report, by 15 economists, criminologists and psychiatrists assembled by
the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences,
took no position in the heated debate on whether to give more attention to
drug enforcement or drug treatment.

But the experts recommended a series of steps to increase government
financing for research into drug control policies and for better ways to
gather accurate data.

Otherwise, Charles F. Manski, the chairman of the committee and a professor
of economics at Northwestern University, said in an interview, "We are
concerned that 10 to 20 years from now we will still be in the same
position, still having these same fruitless debates forever."

Professor Manski added, "The bottom line message is, we simply don't know
enough to know the effects of current enforcement policy."

The study was financed by the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy and commissioned in 1998.

In a statement yesterday, the acting director of the Bush White House drug
control office, Edward H. Jurith, said, "We will pay close attention to the
report's findings, particularly the need for improved data and research in
the area of law enforcement."

But Mr. Jurith added that drug control "is not a perfect science." In fact,
he said, "significant progress has been made in drug research in recent
years," citing with approval several studies that the committee criticized
as flawed.

The experts found that even what might seem the simplest measures of
success in the battle against illegal drugs are unreliable.

For example, it has long been widely accepted that successful programs to
reduce the supply of heroin or cocaine from abroad, along with tougher law
enforcement on the streets, tend to drive up the price of the drugs.

But the committee found that the data used to measure drug prices, obtained
from the Drug Enforcement Administration when it makes arrests, vary
enormously from place to place and year to year.

Similarly, the report said, studies of whether drug treatment works and
whether it is more cost-effective than enforcement are flawed because they
do not use the scientific method of comparing randomized groups -- for
example, comparing one group of prison inmates who have participated in a
treatment program with another group of inmates who have not.

The report noted that the $30 billion spent in 1999 by federal, state and
local governments to combat illegal drugs was twice the American cost of
the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

The report also said that the number of people arrested in drug offenses in
1998, 1.6 million, was three times greater than in 1980, and the number of
people incarcerated in state prisons on drug charges in 1998, 289,000, was
12 times the number in 1980.