Congressional review of national problems in drug abuse and its control

Abstract

The addition of a psychologist to its staff provided the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control with an opportunity to add survey technology to its traditional oversight information gathering armamentarium. Surveys of state and local drug abuse program managers, law enforcement and prosecutorial officials, state attorneys general, and members of congress itself provided the Select Committee with information that supplemented that obtained by hearings and congressionally sponsored conferences. Answers to different questions in the different surveys were in general agreement with each other and with information obtained through hearings, providing a rough measure of the reliability and utility of the technique for oversight purposes. Survey results were incorporated in committee reports and are credited with providing information necessary to sustain the Select Committee's recommendations for drug abuse and control to the Congress. Language: en