Enforcement or Treatment?

Modeling the Relative Efficacy of Alternatives for Controlling Cocaine

C. Peter Rydell, Jonathan P. Caulkins, Susan M. Sohler Everingham

ResearchPublished 1997

This paper presents a model that estimates the relative cost-effectiveness of four cocaine-control programs: three "supply control" programs (source-country control, interdiction, and domestic enforcement) and a "demand control" program (treating heavy users). Treatment emerges as by far the most cost-effective, and sensitivity analyses show that this result is very robust.

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Originally published in: Operations Research, v. 44, no. 5, September-October 1996, pp. 687-695.

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