Pubdate: Mon, 24 Sep 2007
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Page: B - 5
Copyright: 2007 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact:  http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Bruce Mirken
Note: Bruce Mirken, a longtime health journalist, serves as director 
of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, www.mpp.org. To 
view the 2006 survey of drug use and health, go to 
www.oas.samhsa.gov/nsduhLatest.htm. To view the "monitoring the 
Future" survey, go to 
www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/overview2006.pdf

SPINNING A FAILED WAR ON DRUGS

Our government says we're winning the war on drugs. At a press 
conference to release results of the government's major annual drug 
use survey Sept. 6, both White House drug czar John Walters and 
Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt said so, with 
Walters touting "fewer teens using drugs today."

Not quite.

When you cut through the spin and look at the actual numbers, it's 
clear that Walters is again trying to fool the public - much as 
President Richard Nixon did back in 1972, when he first claimed we 
were "winning" the war on drugs.

While drug-use rates reported in the just-released 2006 National 
Survey on Drug Use and Health are essentially unchanged from 2005, 
Walters and Leavitt touted declines in current teen use of illicit 
drugs since 2002, from 11.6 to 9.8 percent, and a parallel decline in 
current marijuana use from 8.2 to 6.7 percent.

That sounds impressive - until you look at the long-term trends. If 
you go back another 10 years, to 1992, the rate of current teen use 
of illicit drugs was just 5.3 percent, and current marijuana use was 
at 3.4 percent. So while it edged down a bit in the last five years, 
teen drug use is actually nearly double what it was 15 years ago.

Walters and Co. has an explanation for this, of course. They say that 
the methodology of the survey was changed in 2002, so you can't 
compare earlier figures with recent ones. But that claim is shaky, at best.

First, not all experts agree that the changes in the survey were 
enough to drastically alter the results. Second, another 
government-funded survey of teen drug use that hasn't changed its 
methodology, called "Monitoring the Future," has documented 
strikingly similar trends.

In the 2006 "Monitoring the Future" survey, released last December, 
16.8 percent of 10th-graders reported using at least one illicit drug 
- - a drop from 20.8 percent in 2002, but a substantial increase over 
the 11 percent rate in 1992. For marijuana, current use among 
10th-graders soared from 8.1 percent in 1992 and 14.2 percent in 2006.

None of this stopped Leavitt from claiming, "The trends in general 
are very encouraging." Do these people not read their own data?

The fact is that Walters and colleagues have squandered well over a 
billion of our tax dollars on a failed ad campaign, mostly aimed at 
demonizing marijuana, and are desperate to show some results. So they 
cherry pick a few numbers that seem to make their case, and ignore the rest.

And before you buy Walters' frequent claim that "we took our eye off 
the ball" fighting drug abuse in the '90s, don't forget that between 
1991 and 2000, marijuana arrests skyrocketed from 282,000 to 734,497.

But buried in the new national survey on drug use results are some 
fascinating and sometimes disturbing tidbits. The percentage of 
Americans who reported using illicit drugs in the past year or past 
month edged up slightly, and this increase was driven by jumps in use 
of some of the most dangerous drugs: cocaine, narcotic pain drugs, 
and stimulants (a category that includes methamphetamine).

While most of the changes were small and not statistically 
significant, those that were significant are alarming. For example, 
among 14- to 15-year-olds, past-month use of deadly inhalants (glues, 
spray paints and solvents) rose significantly, as did past-month use 
of sedatives. This raises the disturbing possibility that scare 
campaigns focused on marijuana are driving kids to try drugs that are 
far more dangerous.

The drug czar will never admit it, but the long-term picture is 
clear: Our drug policies don't work. The government's bizarre 
overemphasis on marijuana - a drug that is safer than such legal 
drugs as alcohol and tobacco - has had little effect on marijuana 
use, but may well be making our hard-drug problem worse. It's long 
past time we had policy based on facts, not spin.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake