Trends Federal surveys detail scope of illegal drug use

[Junkhead23]

Some statistics about illegal drug use in the United States, taken from the most recent available federal data:

• Drug abuse — mostly of heroin, cocaine and marijuana — is responsible for more than 1 million admissions annually to medical facilities for treatment.

• The percentage of people reporting illegal drug use within the past 30 days was 9.3 percent in the West, 7.9 percent in the Midwest, 7.8 percent in the Northeast and 7.4 percent in the South.

• Of 14.2 million arrests in 2007, drug abuse violations accounted for 13 percent — more than 1.8 million. Marijuana busts mostly for possession rather than sale — accounted for nearly half the drug arrests.

• Drug offenders make up about 20 percent of the state prison population and more than half the federal prison population. In Chicago last year, 87 percent of men arrested and booked by police tested positive for at least one illicit drug.

• Rhode Island had the highest rate of people 12 and older who had used illegal drugs in the past month — 11.2 percent. North Dakota had the lowest rate, 5.7 percent. Vermont has the highest rate of marijuana usage; Utah the lowest.

• Among 8th graders, 28 percent have tried an illicit drug — if inhalants are included — and 49 percent of 12th graders have done so.

• About 15 percent of Americans have tried cocaine by age 30, and 8 percent have tried it by their senior year of high school.

• Five percent of 12th graders smoke marijuana daily.

• Nearly 51 percent of males 12 and older have tried illegal drugs at some point, compared with 42 percent of females.

Sources include the 2007 National Survey on Drug Usage and Health and the Monitoring The Future survey conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research for the National Institute on Drug Abuse.


Source - http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...KIUXgD98E41I03


Associated Press

[dyingtomorrow]

In Chicago last year, 87 percent of men arrested and booked by police tested positive for at least one illicit drug.

That's how we ROLL son...

Yeah I'd also love to know the cost of all that. Just the money our government would have if they quit "cold turkey" (sorry couldn't resist), let alone if we invested that money in education, technology, harm prevention, public health. It seems like we'd have at least hundreds of billions, probably a trillion if they stopped wasting money in a futile war.

It's saddening really, because our country could be such an enlightened, healthy, beautiful place compared to where it is now. If they'd just admit defeat in a war they should admit never should have been started, our country could make an enormous leap forward practically overnight. Imagine the ingenuity and power that would come back in the economy if all these people branded CRIMINAL for petty drug crimes were allowed to fulfill their workforce potential again?

Fortunately it seems a lot of states are being pinched so bad, they are being veritably forced by sheer economics to look towards alternatives for the future. Unfortunately it is still a ways away. And we can only hope in America to watch as certain European countries advance decades ahead of us socially and in turn economically, thus pulling the rest with, as they experiment with progressive and effective laws such as legal marijuana and heroin clinics. I doubt the religious fundamentalists in America would even allow it then, believing that drug users should be punished by draconian measures, denied health access, denied simple laws that would save hundreds of lives a year (as they instead cruelly taking such measures as strengthening laws to arrest people that bring ODing friends to the hospital), and left in the dark about safety information that maims and kills untold tens of thousands or more a year.

[Master_Khan]

Originally Posted by dyingtomorrow

That's how we ROLL son...

Nothing wrong with a little Windy City pride!

Da Bears, and all that.

[old hippie 56]

Guess the other 13% hadn't got caught yet!