Application: What Role Does Research Play in Shaping Substance Abuse Policy?

Abstract

Research plays a role in designing policy, but is one of many factors on the minds of policymakers in their decision-making. This is due to a lack of credibility policymakers perceive when different researchers studying the same policy question produce discordant results and occasional disputes over data and methodologies used to test a hypothesis. While substance abuse research is not alone in informing substance abuse policy, it may complement or compete with a host of other factors policymakers use to shape substance abuse policy. Indeed, absent evidence from research about the best course of action to address a problem, policymakers still will act and do so with the belief that their decisions are rational. As champions of the cause, they shape policy using whatever information is at their disposal. This chapter is evidence-based in that it confers with the literature to establish reasonable academic parameters about the topic and it is seeded with personal experience from policy development with the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). It identifies salient factors that are always at play in formulating substance abuse policy and ends with an example about how research did and then did not matter in a decade-long tug-of-war among researchers and policymakers about U.S. drug interdiction policy.