Getting Serious About Drugs
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:53 PM

Via Andrew Sullivan, we learn that at least in Dubai, they are getting serious about the nefarious use of mild-altering substances. (Maybe not quite at the Irani level of seriousness, however -- which extends to other vices.) Crack customs officials at Dubai International Airport spotted a potential druggie; the subsequent investigation yielded all the evidence they needed to garner a rewarding four-year prison term for the drug kingpin. The obviously thorough search:

uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003g - so small it would be invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than a grain of sugar - on the tread of one of his shoes.

This latest piece of proficient Dubai airport policing follows close upon the heels of nailing a rogue carrying some melatonin into the desert paradise.

In the US, we do what we can, but I am afraid the Dubai level of drug war vigilance still eludes us.

Labels: recreational drug use, sentencing

 
Alcohol and Nicotine as Warnings Against Drug Legalization
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:19 PM

In the comments section of this post over at Drug WarRant, 'Sam from Ithaca' looks for a brief rejoinder to a common argument against drug legalization....

Sometimes, prohibitionists use the following argument.

"Of course alcohol and tobacco kill zillions more Americans each year than all illegal drugs put together. That's because they're legal. Imagine how much worse things would be if other drugs were legal, too."

I invite everyone to share their "elevator speech" in response to this argument.

A few subsequent commenters volunteered suggestions, and 'Sam' indicated that he or she was excluding cannabis from the discussion, because of its relative lack of dangerousness. Here's my quick response:

Legal availability of drugs to adults for recreational purposes does not require a regime anywhere near as lenient as that surrounding alcohol and tobacco. Advance purchases can be required from state or regulated monopoly providers, advertising can be controlled, public consumption can be outlawed, quantity limitations can be put in place, taxes can be imposed, and buyers can be licensed, for instance. More dangerous forms of the drugs -- heroin as opposed to opium, for example -- can face stricter regimes. Enforcement and regulatory resources can then be targeted at the most socially costly types of drug use, while preventing low risk adults from facing arrest for behavior that is not blameworthy, and while greatly reducing black markets, with all their attendant harms.

Labels: recreational drug use

 
Nadelmann Talk at University of Chicago
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:55 PM

Yesterday Ethan Nadelmann, the Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, gave a talk at the University of Chicago, and Vice Squad was in attendance. The talk was chock-full of interesting tidbits, too many to do justice to in a blog post. I'll mention the overall framework, and maybe a couple of those tidbits. The usual disclaimer of blogging about a talk applies, namely, that though I took notes and tried to be careful, I am in danger of misrepresenting what was said.

Nadelmann believes that changes are necessary to two broad features of our (the US's) current war on drugs. The first feature is the central role played by the criminal justice system in the regulation of some drugs. (Nadelmann was pretty funny when he noted that it is "these" drugs for which we rely on the criminal justice system, and not "those" drugs. "Those" drugs -- caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, the pharmaceuticals -- can be handled by other means. Presumably he was suggesting that the distinction between "these" and "those" was fairly arbitrary.) Second, and a feature of the war on drugs that receives less attention from reformers, is the underlying notion that there is no permissible relationship between 'those' drugs and us except for abstinence. He thinks that this commitment to abstinence is a form of religious conviction: we shouldn't pollute our bodies, which are holy vessels, with "those" drugs, which are fundamentally evil. This mindset and rhetoric could simply be scoffed at, except that policy follows from these convictions, as when in 1988 Congress adopted a resolution that the US would be drug-free by 1995, and the UN in 1998 adopted the goal of a drug-free world. Much of the last part of Nadelmann's talk was given over to a strong endorsement of harm prevention policies, as exemplified by the Drug Policy Alliance-affiliated Safety First program. (Vice Squad has commented on harm reduction for teenagers and Safety First in the past.) Nadelmann gave a riveting performance.

The one minor area of disagreement that I had with the content of the talk concerned whether private employers should be allowed to discriminate against (read: fire) workers who smoke (or, presumably, use other drugs) off of the job. When the Michigan smoking case surfaced, I offered some reluctant support for the right of employers to discriminate in that fashion. Nadelmann believes that such forms of discrimination should not be countenanced, and the Drug Policy Alliance has a flash animation where you can register your own opinion. This same issue came up in my Regulation of Vice class on Thursday, and I was ambivalent then. Let's face it, I am even less sure about this than I am about the appropriateness of most vice policies.

Labels: abstinence, drugs, harm reduction, recreational drug use

 
Platzspitz
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:04 PM

Greetings from Zurich. What does a vice policy researcher do upon arriving in Zurich for the first time? No, not what you are thinking -- such an individual heads to the Platzspitz. That`s a park next to the main railway terminal, and in the early 1990s, it was the site of an amazing experiment: Needle Park. In Needle Park, small-scale sales of drugs, even "hard drugs" such as heroin, were tolerated. Users could shoot up without fear of the police in the Platzspitz, and health facilities were provided to promote safe use and prevent accidental overdose. Though with respect to some health measures and even some overall crime outcomes, Platzspitz could be said to have been a success, it was a political failure, and was shut down. One of the problems was that it was an unique environment, so it attracted users not just from Zurich but from all over Switzerland and beyond. Platzspitz, then, in part serves as a reminder that what constitutes a desirable vice policy very much depends upon the vice policies that other jurisdictions pursue.

Another lesson that I draw from today`s visit is that when setting up an open air safe shooting gallery, you might not want to use some of the best real estate in your city.

Labels: Europe, harm reduction, recreational drug use

 
"The Globalization of Drug Injecting"
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:32 PM

That's the title of the editorial article that kicks off the July, 2004 edition of the journal Addiction. The authors , A. Wodak, S. Sarkar, and F. Mesquita, note the worldwide spread of drugs during the last thirty years of intensified global prohibition:

Supply enhancement describes the reality of global illicit drug cultivation and production growing steadily at 5-10% per annum for the last decade. Between 1971 and 1999, global opium production grew fivefold to reach 6100 tonnes [8-10], while coca cultivation doubled between 1984 and 1999 to reach 600 000 tonnes [10]. Enthusiastic reports of declining production usually reflect temporary and local reverses, explained most often by poor weather in critical growing areas. The orderly division of the planet into developing countries which produce illicit drugs and developed countries which consume these drugs ceased to exist long ago. As demand for illicit drugs in the developed world has become more saturated and the risks of exporting to these markets has also increased, more and more illicit drugs have found their way to expanding markets in the growing regions.

There's much else of interest in this short article, including an estimate that some 200,000 people die each year from drug injecting overdoses -- presumably, under a regulatory (non-prohibitive) regime, the vast majority of these deaths would not occur.

Labels: recreational drug use

 
For the UN, Use = Abuse
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:16 PM

The UN's Office on Drugs and Crime -- gee, I wonder why these two are paired; do they have an Office on Ketchup and Athletics? -- released its World Drug Report 2004 last week. The Press Release begins thusly:

VIENNA, 25 June (UN Information Service) -- Approximately three per cent of the world population (185 million people) have abused drugs during the previous 12 months, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). A small percentage of the world population abuses cocaine (13 million people) or opiates (15 million abusers of heroin, morphine and opium). By far the most widely abused substance is cannabis (used at least once a year by over 150 million people), followed by the amphetamine-type stimulants -– ATS (38 million users, among them eight million users of ecstasy).

Fortunately, this problem of drug abuse can be tackled via a "holistic approach". To ridicule the bureaucratese that pervades the Executive Summary is shooting fish in a thimble. Here's an excerpt from page 13 of the Executive Summary, sans further commentary from moi:

The drug problem has a negative impact on the functioning of societies as a whole. It can hinder development programmes and compromise peacemaking and reconstruction efforts in countries torn by civil war. In turn, poverty, strife, and feeble governance are fertile ground for drug production, trafficking, and abuse. Those various dimensions can become so interlocked that getting out of the vicious circle they create can only be accomplished through a comprehensive approach. Confined for too long to special programmes handled by specialized agencies, drug control priorities are now finding their way into the mainstream of the socio-economic agenda.

Starting at community level, this broader understanding of the socio-economic dimensions of the drug problem must notably be reflected in a society-wide approach. Public institutions cannot do everything. Interventions are far more effective when they are joined by various actors in civil society (such as families, non-governmental organizations, and the media) in a common purpose and programme.

Labels: recreational drug use, UN

 
Link Potpourri
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:03 PM

Yes, a lazy blog post....

(1) Randy Cohen, "The Ethicist" at the New York Times Magazine, is asked if it is unethical for a former federal prosecutor who has helped lock up drug offenders to use currently illicit drugs him or herself. Cohen reads the query as being motivated by a re-evaluation of the justice of the drug laws:

A major part of ethics is considering the effects of our actions on others. Yours did real harm to those you prosecuted. If you acted in service of policies you now consider unwarranted, you have an ethical obligation to undo that harm, perhaps by working to free those currently in jail as a consequence of your efforts, perhaps by helping to reform the laws that put them there. When you've done harm in the past -- and your query suggests that you now believe you have -- your duty isn't merely to lament, but to make amends.

The second query to The Ethicist this week might also be considered a vice topic, though I am not sure I would lend that dignity to the semi-public nudity the question concerns. (Incidentally, The Ethicist has met with some severe and, I think, frequently justified criticism in the blogosphere. Even his critics, I think, would have to admit that Randy Cohen is a really funny writer -- his old "News Quiz" columns at Slate were gems.)

(2) An Alabama schoolgirl was sent to an alternative school for 15 days for taking a Motrin to relieve menstrual cramps. It is not an aberration: at least 10 other students met a similar fate for over-the-counter medicines last Fall in Jefferson County, courtesy of the school system's zero-intelligence policy. Thanks to the Media Awareness Project for the pointer.

(3) If you are drinking so much alcohol that you are risking liver damage, you should cut back on your drinking. A complementary policy, it seems, is to increase your consumption of caffeinated beverages. Thanks to Newmark's Door for the pointer.

Labels: alcohol, caffeine, recreational drug use

 
Clarence Darrow Responds to Guest Blogger!
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:41 AM

Guest blogger Michael Alexeev has done his host the honor of quibbling! Mike is
concerned that I too blithely assumed that drug possession is unworthy of jail,
and yes, I agree, I was too blithe about it in my post. For one, I did not
specify that I was talking "personal use quantities", and the immediate "no
punishment" argument only applies to possession for private use, not sale,
so I should have made that clear. But Mike goes further, and suggests that
maybe drug possession is like drunk driving, not immediately and necessarily
harmful to others in itself but posing enough of a risk of harm that we rightly
can proscribe drug possession and punish drug possessors, as we punish drunk
drivers. This criticism is a species of a traditional attack on John Stuart Mill's
harm principle, that we cannot easily draw the line between self-regarding
acts and acts that harm (or pose a non-negligible risk of harming) others.

In general, it is indeed hard to draw the self-regarding/non-self-regarding
line. But for me (and for Mill), it isn't a close call with drug possession (hence
my leaving it out of the post). The criminalization of drug possession is an
unjust restraint upon liberty.

The full argument requires an examination of the external costs of
drug use, and the certainty with which these externalities arise from drug
use. I won't go through all the possibilities here, but I will state the general
conclusion: the external costs that plausibly arise from drug use are way too
uncertain to justify criminalization. Millions of Americans have used illicit
drugs, and the vast majority of them have not caused any problem for anybody.

But my assertion alone is of course unsatisfactory, so let me at least point
the way to a more organized approach. In what ways do drugs cause harm to others?

Mark Kleiman, in his book Against Excess, offers one potential accounting of
"harms to others" associated with drug use: dereliction of duty; crime; nuisance;
health damage; drain on common resources; risk-spreading and cross subsidy
effects; leading others to use drugs (in epidemiological fashion); and "notional"
damage. (Notional damage is the possibility that some people are made
unhappy or disgusted simply by knowledge of others' drug use.)

Consider Kleiman's first three external costs, dereliction of duty, crime, and
public nuisance. Dereliction of duty (such as failure to provide for children)
can rightly be punished, whatever the cause. But the potential for drug taking
to lead to this outcome is not sufficiently direct and certain to justify
making drugs illegal. Likewise, the crime that is engendered by some types of
drug consumption -- violence by drunks, for instance -- is not sufficiently
direct and certain to stand as a basis for outlawing drugs. The external harm
that arises from creating a public nuisance, like the harms from dereliction
of duty or drug-induced crime, could provide a reason to punish those who
create public nuisances. Again, however, the public nuisance associated with
most types of drug use is insufficiently direct and certain to justify drug
prohibitions.

If a person had once been violent under the influence of alcohol or drugs,
however, then a prohibition specific to that person would be OK by Mill
and by me.

Some drug use might have a direct influence on the health of others, and such
use could justly be controlled on that basis. Second-hand smoke is the premier
example here, though the extent to which it causes health risks to others is
quite controversial.

Kleiman's remaining types of external costs (drains on common resources,
risk-spreading and cross subsidy effects, leading others to use drugs, or
"notional" damage) do not appear to me to "rise to the Millian level" to
justify prohibition. Such costs, to quote Mill, generally do not constitute
"perceptible hurt to any assignable individual...."

Let me give the last word (for now--Mike?) to new Vice Squad hero Clarence
Darrow: "Criminal statutes are very different from civil legislation. Punishment
is inflicted on the theory that a right-thinking person could not commit the
act without a feeling of guilt. No such feeling has ever been experienced
with the taking of a drink of intoxicating liquor." (...or from the taking
of a hit of an intoxicating drug...OK, couldn't leave the very last word to
Darrow.)

Labels: Darrow, Mill, recreational drug use

 
Rush Limbaugh Plea Negotiations Made Public
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:02 PM

The on-line Chicago Tribune includes this story (registration required) from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel about the prosecutors in the Rush Limbaugh drug and doctor-shopping case holding out for a guilty plea to a felony count. Limbaugh's lawyer, Roy Black, apparently was suggesting a plea bargain in which criminal charges would be put aside in exchange for further drug rehabilitation for Rush. Prosecutors would not go along, though they appear to be willing to pursue probation and not jail time in exchange for a guilty plea to a felony count of doctor shopping.

According to the linked article, Black's December letter to the Palm Beach County State Attorney proposing the rehab deal included this line: "The public is better served by treating addicts as patients rather than criminals." Hear hear. And it is better served by treating non-addicted users as law-abiding citizens than as either patients or criminals.

Labels: addiction, prescription drugs, recreational drug use, treatment

 
College Kids These Days
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:49 PM

If you think that today's collegiate youth are more drug obsessed than they
were a few years ago, well, you're right. Or at least that is one moral that
can be taken from "Trends in Marijuana and Other Illicit Drug Use Among
College Students: Results from 4 Harvard School of Public Health College
Alcohol Study Surveys: 1993-2001," by M. Kuo, JE Lee, and H. Wechsler.
The abstract is available at the very useful College Alcohol Study
website maintained by the Harvard School of Public Health. Here's a
snippet from the abstract: "The results indicate that the percent of past
30-day, past-year, and lifetime marijuana users increased significantly
between 1993 and 2001 (from 13% to 17%, 23% to 30%, and 41% to 47%,
respectively), with most of the increase occurring between 1993 and 1997.
The past 30-day and past-year use of other illicit drugs also increased from
4% to 7% and from 11% to 14%, respectively."

Labels: marijuana, recreational drug use, teens

 
Correction on Venezuela
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:25 PM

Looks as if my sarcasm-drenched post yesterday on Venezuela's drug decriminalization was premature. The Drug War Chronicle explains that it is not yet time to add Venezuela's name to the list of countries that have destroyed themselves via decriminalization.

Labels: drugs, policing, recreational drug use

 
Venezuela Decriminalizes Drugs [Well, Not Exactly -- See Correction]
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:23 PM

According to this story in Big, Left, Outside, possession of smallish quantities of drugs will no longer serve to get users arrested in Venezuela. (Thanks to Drug WarRant for the pointer.) So Venezuela joins the ranks of those benighted lands that have chosen to destroy themselves by refusing to lock up their citizens who walk around with a little bit of some illicit substance in their pocket. Remember how those other countries that previously decriminalized drugs were almost immediately destroyed? One-time countries such as, hmmm, I can almost remember their names, um, Peru, Uruguay, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Portugal...

Major correction, January 16, 2003: Uh, not yet!

Labels: drugs, policing, recreational drug use

 
Not For the Squeamish
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:44 AM

A little while ago Juan Non-Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy pointed to an Ad Age.com web site containing 10 advertisements that appear abroad but that are not suitable in one way or another for American audiences. Many of the ads, numbered one to ten, touch on vice. The first one has been deemed to be blasphemous; the second is arguably pornographic; the fourth, an ad for beer, is sexually explicit (in a manner of speaking); and, #8 is an ad for a men's (lads'?) magazine. But it is #3, an anti-drug ad, that is truly shocking and, for me at least, unwatchable. So "not for the squeamish" is meant to be taken literally -- even the still photo on the website is disturbing.

In the US, a private, non-profit group, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, has provided hundreds of anti-drug ads (including the "This is your brain on drugs" frying pan ad) since its founding in 1986. Recent Partnership ad campaigns can be viewed here. The Partnership frequently has been criticized for: (1) using scare tactics that do not reflect the reality of drug use; (2) taking money from alcohol, tobacco, and legal drug companies (apparently the Partnership has stopped accepting alcohol and tobacco company money); and (3) ignoring alcohol and tobacco in its anti-drug messages. Here's a critique from more than one decade ago.

Though it isn't vice-related, ad #9 is well worth the two-minute investment.

Labels: drugs, marketing, recreational drug use

 
Drugs in Europe
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:05 PM

Yesterday I received my copy of the 2003 Annual Report from
the European Union's drug information arm, the Lisbon-based
European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. An
expanded, on-line version of the report is available here --
this is the English verison, though it is available in eleven
other languages, including Norwegian.

The report is chock-full of information on all aspects of drugs,
including usage rates, availability, crime, treatment, and so
on. I can't do justice to the report here, but I will offer a
sample that includes a comparison with the US:

"Drug use (in terms of both lifetime experience and recent use) is higher among young adults than among the population as a whole. Recent cannabis use is reported by 5-20 % of young adults (Sweden 1-2 %), with a substantial number of countries (seven) reporting rates between 10 % and 20 % (Figure 1). Recent amphetamine use is generally reported by 0.6 %, cocaine use by 0.5-4.5 % and ecstasy use by 0.5-5 % (Figure 2).

For comparison, in the 2001 United States national household survey on drug abuse, 36.9 % of adults (12 years and older) reported lifetime experience of cannabis, 12.3 % lifetime experience of cocaine and 3.6 % lifetime experience of ecstasy. Recent (last 12 months) cannabis use was reported by 9.3 %, cocaine use by 1.9 % and ecstasy use by 1.4 % (6). Cannabis lifetime experience and recent use are higher in the United States than in any EU country. Cocaine lifetime experience is also higher in the United States than in any EU country, and recent use is higher than in most countries, except Spain (2.6 %) and the United Kingdom (2.0 %). Ecstasy use is higher than in all EU countries except Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom."

Four EU countries (Italy, Spain, Netherlands, and Portugal) have
decriminalized drugs for adult users, i.e., they do not threaten
users with jail. (Note: Do Not Rely Upon This Information! Like
everything in this blog, it might be wrong, wrong, wrong!) This
decriminalization applies to all drugs, not just cannabis. Surely
these countries are doomed! They have adopted crazy drug
policies! Except that somehow, these countries seem to be
managing quite well, without locking up hundreds of thousands
of drug users. Hmmmm. Well, I'll just leave it at that, an
inexplicable conundrum.

Labels: drugs, EU, Europe, recreational drug use

 
Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE)
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:04 PM

Continued funding for DARE programs in the state of Illinois is in jeopardy,
according to this article in today's Chicago Tribune. Last year
the state provided $600,000 for DARE, a marked falloff from $1.9 million
the previous year. Funding ended October 1, though DARE programs
soldier on in many of the state's classrooms.

The most remarkable feature of DARE is that the anti-drug, pro-responsibility
curriculum is taught in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms by
uniformed police officers. Isn't it amazing how the legal status of a drug
influences the qualifications of those who are perceived to be experts?
Obesity has very serious health consequences, and children should be
encouraged to eat in a healthy way and to exercise. I know, let's have
police officers teach kids about proper nutrition! Skiing is a physically
dangerous form of recreation -- so of course, we must have police officers
educate our children about skiing! Somehow, we recognize the obesity
and skiing examples as absurd, but we (almost) take for granted that
police officers are the appropriate educators concerning drug choices.

A second interesting feature of DARE is that it is a very popular program,
even though there isn't much evidence that it works in terms of
keeping kids off drugs. Actually, most of the evidence is that DARE doesn't
work. But at least there are plenty of evaluations of DARE out there, and
some school districts and state and local governments have shied away
from DARE because of the lukewarm results. Where is the demand for
evaluations of programs that jail our friends and neighbors because they
have a little bit of some illicit drug on them? At least among some of its
customers, DARE is asked to justify itself. Drug prohibition backed by
criminal penalties just, well, is.

Labels: drugs, prevention, Prohibition, recreational drug use

 
(Almost) Free Money
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:53 PM

The online version of the Chicago Tribune informs us that another
local law enforcement official has been arrested following a sting. Seems the
Chicago policeman and three accomplices allegedly tried to burglarize the
apartment of someone they thought was a drug dealer. "Police said they
suspect [the officer] and his accomplices had targeted drug dealers in the
past, and were investigating if the four suspects had committed other crimes."

Somehow I don't think that the following revelation in the Trib is
going to spur much future whistleblowing: "The alleged corruption came to light
after another officer notified the Chicago Police Department's Internal Affairs
division of a conversation he had with Freeman on Oct. 14, officials said." Was
this publicity deliberate?

As I have noted before (hmmm, not sure where--well, try here and here), the
undermining of the integrity of the police is one of the significant and generally
underappreciated costs of drug prohibition. Drug prohibition sets up this
immensely attractive prospect, both for officers and inner-city youth --
a prospect I liken to the legal notion of an attractive nuisance. Then when
some of them (foreseeably) succumb to the temptation, we castigate (and imprison)
them as corrupt cops or dangerous drug dealers. I am not saying that corrupt
officers and drug dealers are blameless, of course. And just because a law is
frequently broken doesn't mean it should be repealed. But I am suggesting that
we should economize on our demands upon probity in the face of huge temptations,
by eliminating those temptations when they are unnecessary. It is always helpful to
keep in mind the goal of drug prohibition: to render it somewhat more difficult for
some of our friends and neighbors to pursue their pleasure by consuming a
substance that they desire to consume. And for this noble end, we run non-stop
integrity tests upon police officers and inner-city youths.

Labels: drugs, recreational drug use

 
A Bit More on Drug Pricing
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:29 PM

Professor Michael Alexeev of Indiana University's economics department has written in about
my warning against immediately interpreting lower drug prices as evidence of the failure of the
drug war to reduce supplies. My claim was that quantity or prevalence information is also needed
(sometimes "availability" is assessed via surveys, such as, "is marijuana easily available in your high
school?"), because lower prices could be due to decreased demand, not increased supply. Prof.
Alexeev notes that in any case, we would not expect the price to be below "marginal cost," as in
any market. So, if the market for illicit drugs is more-or-less competitive, and assuming (as seems likely)
that the marginal costs of supplying drugs are not steeply rising, the radical reductions in price noted
by Prof. Kleiman should be a very good indicator of the effectiveness of the interdiction effort.

(Economistas will recall that in a perfectly competitive, constant-cost industry, marginal costs of
supply are constant and equal to the equilibrium market price.)

Labels: drugs, Kleiman, recreational drug use

 
Spending on Illegal Drugs
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:39 PM

My primo research assistant, Ryan Monarch, has uncovered a good deal of vice policy material for me in the last few months. The unacknowledged fruits of some of his efforts have appeared in Vice Squad in the past, including some data on drug prices from a December, 2001 report (PDF version here) prepared for the US Office of National Drug Control Policy. The report comes out every two years, so we can expect an update within a few months.

Ryan has kindly provided Vice Squad with his summary of that publication, which I have edited, excerpted, and supplemented below:

What America’s Users Spend on Illegal Drugs 1988-2000 estimates consumption and spending on cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, marijuana, and various other drugs. The report is careful to make a distinction between chronic and casual drug users. Chronic users account for only about three-fourths of all illicit cocaine and heroin consumed in the US. The estimates for 2000 place the number of chronic cocaine users at 2,707,000, occasional cocaine users at 3,035,000, chronic heroin users at 898,000 and occasional heroin users at 253,000.

The researchers estimate that about $212 was spent weekly by individual chronic cocaine users and $201 by chronic heroin users in the year 2000. The total amount spent on cocaine has decreased from 1997 while heroin totals have decreased slowly over the past decade. Using the estimated retail price per gram of heroin and cocaine, the researchers put the consumption level of cocaine for the year 2000 at 259 metric tons and heroin at 13.3 metric tons. These are significant falls from some earlier years. Total cocaine consumption, according to these estimates, has fallen by some 60% between 1988 and 2000, though most of the decline was recorded by 1991. Heroin consumption has been much more steady, though the 2000 figure is some 20% below the anomalously high year of 1989.

There was about $63.7 billion spent on illicit drugs in the year 2000; in 1988, about 2.5 times as much was spent (in real terms).

The following bullet points are taken directly from pages 1 and 2 of the report:

• In 1999, about 2.8 million Americans were chronic cocaine users, and about 900,000 were chronic heroin users. The number of chronic cocaine users has declined over the last decade (the figure was 3.6 million in 1990). The number of chronic heroin users had decreased, perhaps due to the AIDS epidemic and increased incarceration, but that decrease had largely abated by the latter part of the decade, perhaps because new users were attracted by the availability of high-quality low-cost heroin.

• About 3.2 million Americans were occasional cocaine users, and about 250,000 were occasional heroin users. The number of occasional cocaine users dropped from 6.0 million in 1988, and the number of occasional heroin users increased from 170,000 in 1988.

• More Americans use marijuana than either cocaine or heroin. In 1999, about 12 million Americans had used marijuana at least once in the month prior to being surveyed. The number of marijuana users has remained fairly constant over time, with some dip in use during the middle 1990s when prices were relatively high.

• Methamphetamine abuse is now recognized as a major problem, but estimates of the size of the problem are imprecise. Perhaps 600,000 Americans are chronic methamphetamine users. Consistent with other sources, we find increases in the number of methamphetamine users over the last decade.

• Many Americans use illicit drugs other than cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana, or they may use licit drugs illegally. About 12 million Americans admitted using these other drugs in 1999. These numbers include some overlap of polydrug users.

• In 2000, Americans spent about $36 billion on cocaine, $10 billion on heroin, $5.4 billion on methamphetamine, $11 billion on marijuana, and $2.4 billion on other substances […]

Labels: drugs, recreational drug use

 
Medical Marijuana in Canada
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:29 PM

Pete Guither at Drug WarRant has a summary of today's appeals court decision in Ontario concerning medical marijuana. Looks like the court has ruled that users of marijuana for medical purposes should have fairly easy access to a legal supply; simultaneously, by making such provision for medicinal users, the prohibition of marijuana use for recreational purposes can be continued.

Labels: Canada, Drug WarRant, marijuana, recreational drug use