NORMALIZED DEMAND FOR DRUGS AND OTHER REINFORCERS

The concepts of behavioral economics have proven to be useful for unde rstanding the environmental control of overall levels of responding fo r a variety of commodities, including reinforcement by drug self-admin istration. These general concepts have implications for the assessment of abuse liability and drug abuse intervention and the formulation of public policy on drug abuse. An essential requirement is the ability to compare the demand for different drugs directly in order to assess relative abuse liability, and to compare demand for the same drug unde r different environmental and biological interventions to assess their ability to reduce demand. Until now, such comparisons were hampered b y the confounding effect of varying drug doses and potencies that prev ent quantitative comparisons of demand elasticity-sensitivity of consu mption and responding to the constraint of price (effort). In this pap er we describe a procedure to normalize demand-curve analysis that per mits dose- and potency-independent comparisons of demand across drugs. The procedure is shown to be effective for comparing drug demand with in and across the drug classes. The technique permits a quantitative o rdering of demand that is consistent with the peak levels of respondin g maintained by the drugs. The same technique is generalized for the c omparison of other types of reinforcers under different biological con ditions.