Catching the Government in Lies

ASU Professors Expose Manipulation in Drug War Statistics

Story by Kathleen McFadden

What do you do when you suspect the federal government is intentionally misrepresenting data and, in some cases, lying outright about the success of a nationwide program?

That’s not a rhetorical question for Matt Robinson and Renee Scherlen. When the two professors in the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice at Appalachian State University had some questions about White House data they were using to teach a class on the war on drugs, they decided to take a closer look.

The result is a book, Lies, Damned Lies and Drug War Statistics, published by the State University of New York Press. The book makes a compelling case that the drug war in the United States is a massive failure and that the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has deliberately obfuscated the facts to sell a failed policy to both legislators and the American public.

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 established the ONDCP in November 1988 to respond to the perceived epidemic of urban crack cocaine use in the 1980s. According to Robinson, the ONDCP was intended to exist for just five years, but Congress has reauthorized it several times since then.

In fact, the Office of National Drug Control Policy Reauthorization Act reauthorized the ONDCP in December 2006 on a voice vote in both the Senate and House. A voice vote means that no roll call record exists to show how each legislator voted.

In their research, Robinson and Scherlen examined seven years—2000 to 2006—of the National Drug Control Strategy, the document the ONDCP publishes each year. The National Drug Control Strategy not only sets forth the office’s goals and objectives, but is also a progress report on how the office is doing in its fight against illicit drug use.

“The National Drug Control Strategy is supposed to be used for policy and for strategy,” Robinson explained. “Congress relies on the document, and we found that the document is not useful for policy making.”

Scherlen said, “The document makes it look like the war on drugs is succeeding, but also that drugs are still a threat. It’s almost schizophrenic.”

For example, Robinson pointed out, the National Drug Control Strategy shows youth drug use trends have gone down over the past six years, but ignores adult drug use that has gone up during that time period. “They only show data that’s good for their goals,” he said.

The National Drug Control Strategy also no longer reports information on drug prices and purity. If the war on drugs is succeeding, Robinson explained, you want prices to go up and purity to go down. Exactly the opposite is true, according to the data sources Robinson and Scherlen consulted and that reportedly form the basis of the National Drug Control Strategy.

Because of the increase in purity, “drugs are four times more deadly now than in 1979,” Robinson said. “More people are dying even though fewer are using.”

Price, purity and availability are the justification for the overseas war on drugs, Scherlen explained. The goal is to disrupt supply so drugs cost more, are less pure and are less available. The reality, Scherlen said, “is the exact reverse of what they argue. If these are outcomes,” Scherlen continued, “then we’ve done the equivalent of flushing money down the toilet.”

The book contains a number of similar examples of misrepresentation and manipulation, and The Cato Institute invited Robinson and Scherlen to present their findings in Washington, D.C. and participate in a panel discussion with Dr. David Murray, senior policy analyst at the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The two traveled to Washingon for the presentation on May 31.

“[Murray] is the guy right under the drug czar,” Robinson said. “He’s the chief scientist and responsible for the data.”

During the panel discussion, Murray was less than interested in their data. He told Robinson and Scherlen that they were “ignorant and uninformed,” but failed to answer their direct questions about their findings.

Despite Murray’s chilly reception, Robinson and Scherlen point out that more attention is being focused on the war on drugs. NPR, Atlantic Monthly and the American Enterprise Institute have all taken hard looks at the data and reached similar conclusions.

“We found consistently that the ONDCP was hiding the facts,” Robinson said. “The empirical evidence shows that the drug war really has been a massive failure, at least since the founding of ONDCP.”

Robinson and Scherlen hope their book begins a discussion—“This policy isn’t working, so what’s next?”—and also alerts Congress to a failed policy that costs approximately $20 billion per year. In fact, the book calls for the termination of ONDCP on the grounds that it is dishonest to the American people and members of Congress.