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Current Drug Abuse Reviews

Editor-in-Chief

ISSN (Print): 1874-4737
ISSN (Online): 1874-4745

On Illicit Drug Policies; Methods of Evaluation and Comments on Recent Practices

Author(s): Giovanni Trovato and Antonio Vezzani

Volume 6, Issue 2, 2013

Page: [144 - 151] Pages: 8

DOI: 10.2174/1874473706666131205152404

Price: $65

Abstract

This contribution provides an overview of different approaches used to analyse drug policies within and across countries. Besides the great number of cost of illness studies which have contributed to the assessment of health harms and risks associated to the drug use, most of the recent efforts have focused on the creation of synthetic indices to classify countries around the world or to evaluate particular law enforcement policies in some countries. This is probably due to a general lack of comparable data across countries. The wide variety of budgetary practices in the drugs field in Europe contributes to the problems that exist in estimating drug-related public expenditure. These heterogeneous accounting practices, together with the complexity of the drug phenomenon and the multiplicity of perspectives on the issue, strongly constrains the possibility of economically evaluate and compare drug laws across countries.

Keywords: Drug policy evaluation, illicit drugs, social cost of drug abuse.


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