The war on drugs: Mathematical modeling for policy selection and resource allocation
Abstract
At the national level, drug policy is a resource allocation problem. Resources are allocated to programs to reduce the demand for, and supply of, illegal drugs. Supply-side programs have traditionally garnered the largest share of the federal drug control budget. In recent years, emphasis within supply-side programs has shifted to efforts to control cocaine at the source—the reduction of coca cultivation and cocaine processing in the Andean countries of Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru. Despite the emphasis, no significant reduction in productivity has occurred. This thesis develops a mathematical model of the interactions between government intervention measures and cocaine industry response. The suppression model consists of a static suppression environment and production system sub-model, and a dynamic industry response model that simulates the effects of expansion and fragmentation within the cocaine production system. The suppression environment sub-model relates government resource decisions to production system output. Resources are allocated to alternative development, law enforcement, and eradication programs. The production system sub-model computes realizations of cocaine export quantities. The dynamic model facilitates the long-term resource allocation process by computing industry responses in centers of cultivation and production. The measure of effectiveness is a 10-year sum of cocaine export quantities. The model is used to examine the impact on long run system output of various resource allocation schemes under three different scenarios. The scenarios include a steady state scenario, which is also used to examine sensitivity of model output to variations in input parameters. Results indicate a robust preference for enforcement emphasis in the supplier region (Bolivia and Peru) through continued funding of enforcement related programs at high levels and maintenance of moderate levels of alternative development programs. Given that the U.S. government will continue to invest significant resources to suppress the cultivation of coca and manufacture of cocaine in the source countries, this research addresses the overarching issue of how best to employ those resources, and provides the framework for selection of an optimal portfolio of policy measures.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
Industrial engineering|Public administration
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