Drugs - Trends In Drug Users

In 2000, an estimated 31.2 million people were using drugs of one kind or another. This total is built up out of household surveys and interviews of people arrested. Individuals who use more than one drug are counted for each drug they use; the total number of individuals is therefore a smaller number. The data used here are derived principally from the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA), conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an element of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But data have been modified and augmented by information from the Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) program of the U.S. Department of Justice to track hardcore users. Hardcore users are not well covered by the household survey.

The total estimated number of drug users was down 19% from 1989, from 38.8 to 31.2 million. Most of the decline came from a decrease in users of "all other drugs" — inhalants, hallucinogens, stimulants, sedatives, tranquilizers, and analgesics.

Among the major drugs, cocaine users decreased from 8.8 million to 5.5 million users. Declines were registered both among hardcore and casual users. Methamphetamine users dropped by 30,000 in this 11-year period. Marijuana users increased by 800,000 people, heroin users by 455,000. Among heroin users, hardcore users declined, but casual users increased, somewhat paralleling the decline in needle use and the increase in heroin snorting. Drug users are under the (false) impression that snorting heroin will not get them addicted to the drug.

How to explain such patterns? Arrest rates declined from 1989 to 1991 from 1.3 million arrests to 1.0 million. Then they climbed again from 1991 to 2000 from 1.0 million to 1.58 million. The arrest rate and the number of users seem more to parallel than to affect each other, as shown in the inset graphic to the left. It charts total drug users and drug arrests. As the drug-using population drops, so do drug arrests. As drug arrest begin to climb (1991) drug user numbers begin to climb a year after (1992). Again, as the arrest rate softens in 1997, drug user numbers take a dive. More striking is a look at details. In the 1989 to 2000 period, marijuana users increased by 7.3%, marijuana arrests increased by 86.0%. Combined cocaine and heroin users decreased 29.2%, combined cocaine and heroin arrests decreased 28.0%. Is there a connection between these two phenomena?

Data on arrests are fairly solid. Data on the user community are based more on guesswork and on surveys. But if these numbers are to be believed, might it turn out that easing up on law enforcement efforts would cause drug use to drop?

We turn next to expenditures on drug control in light of expenditures on drugs.

Sources: Office Of National Drug Control Policy, the White House, What America's Users Spend on Illegal Drugs, 1988-1998, Abt Associates, available at http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/pdf/spending_drugs_1988_1998.pdf. Arrest data from U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States, annual, Uniform Crime Reports, downloaded from http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dcf/enforce.htm.