Abstract

Beltway Bandits

The article presents information about various political developments taking place in the U.S. According to a snippet, the efforts of the supply-side drug warriors run counter to economic imperatives. Recently Peter Reuter, an economist at the Rand Corporation, briefed a Washington gathering of think-tank policy analysts and Capitol Hill aides. According to another snippet, U.S. President George Bush, took time off from his management of the Persian Gulf crisis to hail as wonderful a government survey indicating progress in the other war-the war on drugs. A poll of 9,259 households led the National Institute on Drug Abuse to conclude that the number of Americans who tried an illicit drug in the past year was 25 percent lower than the number in 1985 and-more significant-that the population of hard-core crack and cocaine abusers fell from 862,000 in 1988 to 662,000 in 1990.