ImpacTeen State Illicit Drug Database

ImpacTeen State Illicit Drug Database

PI: Rosalie Liccardo Pacula

Funded by: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Project Dates: September 2000 – February 2004

ImpacTeen: A Policy Research Partnership to Reduce Youth Substance Use, is a Robert Wood Johnson-funded project to evaluate the relative effectiveness of specific prevention programs and policy initiatives in reduce youth substance use and abuse. Directed by Economist Frank Chaloupka, Ph.D. of the University of Illinois at Chicago Health Research and Policy Centers (UIC), ImpacTeen is an interdisciplinary partnership of nationally recognized substance abuse experts involving researchers from community health, economics, etiology, epidemiology, law, marketing, political science, public health, public policy, psychology, sociology, survey research, and other fields. Funded initially for five years beginning in November, 1997, the initiative was recently renewed for three more years of funding.

A team of researchers from Andrews University, The MayaTech Corporation and RAND was awarded a subcontract from the ImpacTeen project at the University of Illinois, Chicago to build a state-level illicit drug surveillance system. The Andrews-MayaTech-RAND team was charged with the task of developing, building and maintaining a state-level surveillance system with two distinct components. The first component tracked legislation in all fifty states and the District of Columbia pertaining to illicit drugs. The second component drew upon existing data sources that provide information on the implementation and enforcement of these laws as well as the social, political and economic environment in which they take place. The goal was to create a comprehensive state level database that can be used by policymakers and analysts to evaluate the impact of particular state and local policies and/or proposals on youth illicit drug use and its harmful consequences.