Reliable drug war data: The Consolidated Counterdrug Database and cocaine interdiction in the “Transit Zone”
Reliable drug war data: The Consolidated Counterdrug Database and cocaine interdiction in the “Transit Zone”
复制标题
可靠的禁毒战数据：综合禁毒数据库和“过境区”的可卡因拦截情况
DOI：
10.1016/j.drugpo.2020.102719
复制
发表时间：
2020
影响因子：
4.4
通讯作者：
McSweeney, Kendra
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
McSweeney, Kendra
背景近三十年来，美国政府的一个数据集审查和记录了西半球大规模过境地区(包括中美洲、加勒比海地区、东太平洋和墨西哥)所有已知的可卡因贩运事件，并跟踪了那里的缉毒部队报告的所有可卡因缉获情况。这是联合反毒品数据库(CCDB)的“可卡因模块”，根据美国法律，它是毒品拦截任务关键方面绩效数据的独家来源，这是美国供应方毒品政策的基础之一。然而，该数据集仍然鲜为人知，或者在药物政策研究人员中使用，尽管是非机密的。为了更好地了解这个数据集的存在和优势，本文描述了它的来源、正在进行的生产和分析用途。方法分析使用了政府问责局(GAO)编制的报告档案，GAO是一个独立的、无党派的实体，近50年来一直在跟踪美国政府机构的毒品战争。分析还依赖于第三方对封锁的评估，以及与国家毒品管制政策办公室工作人员的通信。结果在中转区经历了20年的毒品战争失败后，CCDB于20世纪90年代出现。这是一个“全来源”的产品，它整理了26个美国机构和20个参与过境区拦截的外国合作伙伴产生的各种来源的数据。将可卡因贩运事件纳入CCDB有很高的门槛；因此，它为可卡因贩运和禁毒对策提供了一个高度可靠但保守的代表。CCDB在公共记录中的数据实例产生了几个见解：a)过去十年中，每年通过过境区的可卡因数量远远超过1,000公吨/年；b)过境区的可卡因缉获量比其他任何地方都大，而且远远高于禁毒办的世界毒品报告所示；c)拦截似乎对美国的可卡因价格几乎没有影响；d)拦截是高度“无效的”；例如，在2018财年，美国及其合作伙伴拦截的可卡因贩运事件仅占该年已知的在过境区发生的可卡因贩运事件的6%；结论作为一个高质量的数据集，CCDB值得研究人员更多地关注：a)挑战非法活动的“不可知性”，并强调有必要更好地分享非机密的政府数据；b)开辟探索过境地区禁毒政策和行动的新途径；c)明确表明堵截行动长期和持续失败，因此需要采取根本不同的方法，这与对堵截效果的乐观评估相矛盾。
BackgroundFor almost three decades, a U.S. government dataset has vetted and recorded all known cocaine trafficking events in the massive Western Hemisphere ‘transit zone’ (including Central America, the Caribbean, eastern Pacific, and Mexico) and tracked all cocaine seizures reported by counternarcotic forces there. This is the “cocaine module” of the Consolidated Counterdrug Database (CCDB), and by U.S. law it is the exclusive source for performance data on key aspects of the drug interdiction mission, one of the foundations of U.S. supply-side drug policy. Nevertheless, the dataset remains poorly known or used among drug policy researchers despite being unclassified. To make the existence and strengths of this dataset better known, this paper describes its provenance, ongoing production, and analytical utility.MethodsThe analysis draws on the archive of reports produced by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent, non-partisan entity that has been tracking U.S. government agencies’ drug war accounting for almost 50 years. The analysis also relies on third-party assessments of interdiction, and on correspondence with staff in the Office of National Drug Control Policy.ResultsThe CCDB emerged in the 1990s following two decades of drug war failures in the transit zone. It is an “all source” product, which curates data from a variety of sources produced by the 26 U.S. agencies and 20 foreign partners involved in transit zone interdiction. There is a high threshold for inclusion of cocaine trafficking events into the CCDB; it therefore offers a highly reliable yet conservative representation of cocaine trafficking and counternarcotic response. Instances of CCDB data in the public record yield several insights: a) the volume of cocaine moving annually through the transit zone has for the past decade well exceeded 1,000 MT/year; b) cocaine seizures in the transit zone are greater than anywhere else, and significantly higher than indicated by the UNODC's World Drug Reports; c) interdiction appears to have little to no effect on cocaine prices in the U.S.; d) interdiction is highly “outcome-ineffective”; in FY2018, for example, the U.S. and partners intercepted only 6% of the cocaine trafficking events known to have occurred in the transit zone that year; e) traffickers respond quickly and constantly to interdiction by shifting their routes and transport strategies.ConclusionThe CCDB deserves greater attention from researchers as a high-quality dataset that: a) challenges the “unknowability” of illicit activities and underscores the need for better sharing of unclassified government data; b) opens up new ways of exploring drug enforcement policies and actions in transit areas; c) contradicts rosy assessments of drug interdiction effectiveness by unequivocally demonstrating interdiction's longstanding and persistent failure and thus the need for fundamentally different approaches.