New York drug law evaluation project, 1973

The Association of the Bar of the City of New York and the Drug Abuse Council jointly organized a committee and research project to collect data, in a systematic fashion, about the 1973 drug law revision and to evaluate the law's effectiveness. The objectives of the Project were (1) to ascertain the repercussions of the drug law revision, (2) to analyze, to the degree possible, why the law was revised, (3) to identify any general principles or specific lessons that can be derived from the New York experience and that can be helpful to other states as they wrestle with the problem of illegal drug use and related crime. The files are described as follows: Ex-Drug User file: the purpose of this survey was to determine the extent of knowledge of the 1973 drug law among ex-drug users in drug treatment programs, and to discover any changes in their behavior in response to the new law. Interviews were given to 289 non-randomly selected volunteers from three modalities: residential drug-free, ambulatory methadone maintenance, and the detoxification unit of the New York City House of Detention for Men.