THE IMPACT OF AMPHETAMINE ABUSE ON HEALTH AND CRIME

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Despite the significant resources dedicated to prevention, the health and social costs associated with drug use have recently been estimated at $160 billion. The focus of this research project is to investigate the health and social costs attributable to amphetamine abuse and to determine if policy interventions that increase amphetamine prices are effective at reducing these costs. This proposal targets amphetamines because they are a rapidly growing problem in the U.S. that has received less attention from researchers than other major drugs. As recently as the early 1990s, amphetamine abuse was concentrated among white males and confined to California and nearby Western states. In the last ten years, however, amphetamine abuse has spread both demographically and geographically. Demographically, use has increased among women, minorities, and youth. Geographically, nearly one-third of the 412 state and local agencies in the National Drug Threat Survey now rate amphetamines as one of the greatest drug threats in their areas. The first goal of this project is to document the geographic and demographic spread of methamphetamine-related health problems. The second goal is to characterize the types of health problems that result in this increase in hospitalizations. We will then turn to examining interventions intended to reduce the availability of methamphetamine precursors. We will examine how a particular intervention in the market for methamphetamine precursors resulted in a significant increase in price and decrease in purity for methamphetamines. We will then examine how this intervention affected methamphetamine-related hospital and treatment admissions, violence and crime. The implementation of these goals will inform the literature on the negative health and social effects of methamphetamines and will generate indirect evidence on the efficacy of prevention mechanisms targeting price.