Drug policies and harms: A conceptual framework

Existing indicators of drug-related policies and harms - official statistic s, treatment data, and so on - are difficult to interpret and to compare ac ross jurisdictions. We propose a conceptual framework including key dimensi ons of policy and harm. The framework is designed to guide creation of a ne w dataset in which existing empirical data can be used to assign city-speci fic scores on policy and harm dimensions, By an interpretive process involv ing local experts and a coordinating body, we believe that existing data ca n be evaluated and synthesized to derive these scores. We also propose a cu mulative case-study method of querying the dataset to test hypotheses regar ding relationships between policies and harms.