The 2008 National Survey on Drug Use & Health was released today.  This is the annual survey where federal surveyors go door-to-door asking people if they smoke, drink, and do drugs.  So keep in mind as you review these figures that these represent people aged 12 and older who are willing to admit to breaking state and federal laws when asked by a total stranger at their doorstep.

Use of Marijuana is up again for nearly every age demographic and frequency of use

Lifetime Use of Marijuana:  In 2007, 40.6% of Americans admitted to trying cannabis at least once in their life.  This year, the figure rose to 41%, representing an additional 2 million Americans who’ve smoked pot, for a total of 102,404,000.  Youth marijuana use rose for 12-, 13-, & 15-year-olds and declined slightly for 14-, 16-, and 17-year-olds.  At ages 18 & 19, lifetime use remained topped 40%, and for adults in their twenties, over half have tried marijuana (ex. age 20 = 49.8%).  Lifetime use figures for thirty-somethings declined to mid-48% levels.  The highest lifetime use rates were reported among Americans in their forties, with 55.1% of those 40-44 and 57.6% of those 45-49 having “experimented a time a two in their youth”, as President Bill Clinton once said.  More than half (53.2%) of people in their early fifties have tried marijuana.

If you meet someone aged 20-55, flip a coin.  Heads they’ve smoked pot, tails they know someone who has.

Regular Adult Use of Marijuana: Focusing now only on adults aged 18 and older, we find that 43.7% of all adults – a record 98,296,000 people – have tried marijuana.  But also, past year (annual) and past month use of marijuana has risen among adults.  A full 10% of all adults used marijuana at least once in the past year – 22,531,000 people – and a full 6% of all adults have consumed cannabis in the past month – 13,546,000.  This represents 593,000 new annual tokers and 784,000 new monthly tokers since the 2007 survey.

Is it really conceivable that 10% of the American people are criminals this year? The current US prison population is 2.1 million – is it really possible that this month there are almost six-and-a-half times more criminals on the streets than behind bars?

Prevalence of Adult Marijuana Use:  For the 22,531,000 adults who used marijuana this year, we find those users to be using more often.  Among 18-25-year-olds, infrequent use (<12 days in a year) dropped from 31.9% to 30.6%, and for those 26 and older, it dropped from 34.1% to 33%.  Among annual users, 41.1% of 18-25-year-olds tokers and 39.2% of the over-25-year-old tokers are using at least 100 days per year.  That makes 9,006,000 adults who are using marijuana at least 100 days per year and 3,586,000 who are nearly daily (300+ days per year) tokers.

That means there are more adult daily tokers than the population of Connecticut. There are more adult weekly tokers than the population of New Jersey.  There are more adult monthly tokers than the population of New York.  There are more people in America who’ve tried marijuana than the populations of California, Texas, New York, and Florida combined.

From the Denver Post:

Coloradans say they are doing less hard drinking than they did in the past few years but say they are more likely to smoke pot, according to a two-year federal assessment to be released today.

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health found Colorado was the only state to log a decrease in those who think they are at risk to binge- drink since the last study completed in 2006, from 29.8 percent in the previous study to 25.8 percent in the most recent.

Meanwhile, Colorado is one of seven states that notched “significant” increases in teens and adults who say they are more likely to smoke pot at least once a month than those who participated in the last government survey.

“We’ve been saying for some time that many adults want a safer alternative to drinking,” said Mason Tvert, executive director of the Denver-based pot-legalization group Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation, which has passed two pro-pot public votes in the city since 2006.

The increase in stoners could logically be tied to the rocky economy, said Tvert, co-author of a book to be released in August that measures the economics of getting buzzed, “Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Do We Drive People to Drink?”

The report also puts Colorado among the top 10 states for:

• The highest illicit-drug use in every age category.
• Failure of teens and adults who need alcohol treatment to receive it.
• Survey takers using cocaine in the past year.

The report and raw numbers for each state, to be released today, will be posted at oas.samhsa.gov/2k7state/TOC.cfm.

Even though the previous drug czar, John Walters, commonly characterized Americans as stupid for choosing a safer alternative, it’s not stupid.

We all know that alcohol kills brain cells, impairs judgment, and has a measurable addiction rate. Alternatively, Cannabis – when consumed responsibly – can help one’s health and happiness.

I’m proud of you folks who live in Colorado for choosing a safer alternative! Lead the charge, Lead the Country and Free the Weed!

[I'll testify - these Coloradoans are not only smoking more pot, it's really good pot! -- "R"R]

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Amid grim news of record deficits unveiled in the US budget, marijuana advocates are welcoming legislation in US states they say could blossom into billions of dollars in tax revenue.

San Francisco state lawmaker Tom Ammiano introduced a bill last Monday projecting a 14-billion-dollar tax base for the full retail treatment — buying, selling and growing cannabis.

The leading legalization advocacy group behind Ammiano’s bill, Washington-based National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), says recession is prompting otherwise skeptical state houses to revisit the ban on marijuana.

Over the last few months NORML has been drafted to work with state lawmakers — even in conservative locales like Texas — on budgetary analysis and review how legalization may enable governments fill yawning deficits.

But legalization opponent Eric Voth is worried “the number of people who will start using or worsen their habit because of the lack of legal constraints is going to cost the system far more than what might be generated through taxation.”

Voth, chairman of the Institute on Global Drug Policy, contends marijuana advocates are “happy to lie to the public” about the gains of their proposals, with an end goal of cannabis legalization “at any cost.”

via AFP: US states mull weed to ease deficit pain.

Uh, Eric?  We’re using the government’s own numbers.  You are quick to call people liars, for example, the sick, disabled, and sense-threatened people you refer to as the “medical excuse movement”.  I think anyone who writes that:

• “Pathologic behavior such as psychosis is also associated with marijuana use” and 
• “Despite arguments from the marijuana advocates to the contrary, marijuana is a dependence-producing drug” and
• “The gateway effect of marijuana along with tobacco and alcohol is also well established in research” and
• “One must then realize that with marijuana the patient is exposed to a veritable “witches brew” of substances, most of which have never been examined for harmful effects.”

…ought to think about putting the rocks down and getting some Windex for that glass house they’re living in.

But let’s take your argument at face value and try to maintain a straight face doing it.  You propose that the legalization of marijuana would end up costing more in social costs through new users and increased use among current users than it would reap in law enforcement savings and direct taxation, plus indirect taxation on the payroll of new employees in this new industry and the economic benefits on ancillary industries that would support the new industry, plus the 800lb. gorilla of legalized industrial hemp farming that would be automatically created (if the marijuana that gets you high is legal, the stuff that doesn’t is going to be, too.)

OK, let’s start with the baseline of right now.  Right now there are about 14M people using marijuana monthly, 25M annually, and 100M lifetime.  Good round figures, close enough for the argument – the survey is for “12 and older”, but legal marijuana would be for adults, so the real number might be smaller, but this is people who are willing to tell a surveyer they do something illegal, so the number might be bigger.  Now, there must be some social cost for this use – TANSTAAFL – and that will be our baseline dollar figure of what marijuana costs society – let’s call it X.

Right now, all the people using marijuana cost society $X per year for the roughly 25 million using it annually.  Now the conservative estimates on taxed and regulated marijuana nationally project $10-$14B annually.  Some project as high as $50B – $300B when you start talking about industrial hemp and ancillary industries and taxable revenue streams.  Let’s lowball it for the sake of easy math – $10 billion a year from legalized marijuana.

Then by your premise there will be enough increase in annual users and usage to generate $10 billion a year in societal costs, offsetting the gains from legalization.  And that has to be new costs, because we already started with a baseline of the existing users and we’ve been absorbing that societal cost, whatever it is, during prohibition.

Now it gets dicey, because we really don’t know what our original $X is.  How do you measure how much it costs society when one person smokes marijuana?  That one person could be me, working sixty-eighty hours a week and running a small business… am I costing you anything?  Is that person a disabled medical patient, who’s actually saving us money by reducing the need for pharmaceuticals that we taxpayers cover through Medicaid?  Is that one person a lawyer who just puffed a joint as it passed by on vacation last summer?  Or is that person one of the 9% who become clinically dependent and he is costing us, somehow?

Anyway, let’s throw a number down: $50 billion a year.  (Hold on, readers, I know it’s ridiculous, but for the sake of argument let’s say 25 million annual tokers cost society $50 billion a year.)  That’s $2,000 per toker, per year, in costs for lost productivity, under employment, social welfare, non-drug crime, cleaning up parks after jam band festivals, whatever nebulous dangers you conceive of in your reefer mad nightmares.  (Again, readers, a ludicrous claim, especially when these same drug warriors tell us breathlessly that “75% of all illegal drug users are employed!”  But roll with me…)

So for there to be an additional $10 billion in costs, you need five million new annual tokers.  Who are they?  There are already 25 million people who smoke annually despite the threat of arrest and incarceration.  There are roughly 200 million adults in the US.  Half of them have never smoked marijuana.  So to get from 25 million to the new figure of 30 million annual tokers (an increase of 20%), 5 million of the 100 million who never smoked pot and the 75 million who “experimented” but don’t smoke now need to start smoking annually, or one new annual smoker out of the 35 who aren’t smoking now.  Who is this person who doesn’t smoke pot now but really wants to – if only it were legal?

The other way to generate your additional $10 billion in costs would be to assume that increased usage among existing users would lead to greater costs.  OK, fair enough.  That would implicitly mean that the annual smoker is less costly than the monthly smoker, who is less costly than the weekly or even daily user.  If an annual user costs Y, then a monthly user should cost 12Y and a daily user should cost 365Y, right?  Maybe not; maybe daily users are 1000x more costly, but whatever, we need some numbers to crunch.  By my reckoning, that means the daily users account for 88% of the societal costs, monthly users 11%, and annual users 1%.  (3M * 365 + 11M * 12 + 11M – remember, a daily smoker is also a monthly and an annual, so you can’t count them twice.)

The government tells me there are about 3 million daily users.   So that $50 billion we talked about earlier, 88% is their fault, or about $44 billion.  That’s about $15,000 per daily user in costs, so to generate that extra $10 billion in costs, you would get it with two-thirds of a million new daily users.  But again, who are they?  You’d need about one out of fifteen of your monthly users to begin using daily to generate that cost, because I don’t really see any of the 25 million annuals, 75 million experimenters, or 100 million never-users to suddenly become daily users.

So, starting with the most conservative estimate of only $10 billion generated from revenue and savings from legalized marijuana and working with absurdly high estimates of the cost of marijuana users to society, you need probably a million people to shift along the never-used | experimented | annual-user | monthly-user | daily-user axis for the costs to outweigh the benefits.  If marijuana really brings in $50-$300B, now you need 5-30 million new smokers to shift.  Either way, who are these people?  Right now with the threat of arrest, 1 out of 8 adults smokes pot annually.  Which one of the other seven isn’t smoking now solely because it is illegal?

Big hat tip to Dan and Aaron out at the MPP Blog who asked two questions of Drug Czar John Walters at his press conference last week for the release of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.  Go check out the videos, they’re only 3:30 each and watching Walters rhetorically slither around, over, and past MPP’s questions is watching political doublespeak spin at its finest.  I just had to bring you a couple of gems from the Drug Czar.

We just announced that 872,721 Americans were arrested for marijuana in 2007, and of those arrests, 89% or 775,138 were arrests for simple possession, this according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report for 2007.  Well, according to Walters, after all these arrests – over 5 million during the Bush Administration – nobody goes to jail for simple possession.  He says “first-time, non violent” offenders in prison for possession of marijuana are like “unicorns”.

Download audio file (john-walters-mj-prisoners-like-unicorns.mp3)

After all, according to Walters, “we didn’t arrest 800,000″ people for marijuana last year.

Download audio file (john-walters-we-didnt-arrest-800000-mj-users.mp3)

Walters wants you to think all the people arrested for marijuana were (a) pleading their case down from a larger cultivation or trafficking charge, (b) involved in some other sort of violent crime, or (c) involved in a driving while intoxicated charge.

(a) If they’re pleading down charges, you sure are letting a whole lot of growers and traffickers avoid serious jail time (thanks, I guess) – so how is it that you’re so lenient on the marijuana growers/sellers (11% of marijuana arrests) but so tough on the heroin/cocaine traffickers (27% of heroin/cocaine arrests) and the meth/Ecstasy labs (31% of meth/Ecstasy arrests)?  You might lead people to believe you don’t think marijuana is as bad as those other drugs, don’t you think?

(b) If you’re arresting them for violent crimes and then tacking on the marijuana charges, how is it your violent crime arrests have remained steady or declined while marijuana charges have increased, and how is it you have fewer violent crime arrests than marijuana arrests?  

(c) If these are all DUI-related, how is it that DUI arrests have dropped 1.8% in the past ten years while marijuana arrests have increased by 28% over the same period of time?

I know!  There must have been a huge increase in the number of drunk-driving, gun-toting, pot-growing unicorns over the past ten years!

The new National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH… one of my favorite acronyms… I like to call it “No Shit, DUH!) from the Subtance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA… sounds like a drunk calling for “Samantha”) for 2007 is now online.  I wonder why it was released without much fanfare during the landfall of a hurricane and the beginning of the Republican National Convention?  Surely the drug warriors would prefer the news of their incredible successes not get buried beneath so many other headlines, right?

Let’s see what major accomplishments have been acheived by the latest Drug Czar, John Walters, in the five years he has been on the job (2002 vs. 2007)

In 2002, of the population aged 12 and over, there were 19.5 million users of “any illicit drug” in the past month.  In 2007, the figure is 19.9 million.

In 2002, in that same demographic, there were 14.5 million marijuana users in the past month.  In 2007, the figure is 14.4 million.

So what would that headline be?  Drug Czar reduces monthly pot smokers by 100,000, but hard drug users increase by 400,000.

In 2002, of people 12 and over, there were 92 million who have ever used marijuana in their lifetime. In 2007, the number has topped 100 million for the first time.

In 2002, 614,000 people were arrested for possession-only marijuana crimes. In 2007, 739,000 were arrested.

Headline: Marijuana users top 100 million for first time, despite 20% increase in arrests.

In 2002, for kids 12 to 17, the percentage of those who perceived a “great risk” of smoking marijuana “once or twice a week” was 51.5%, for heroin it was 58.5%, and for LSD it was 76.2%

In 2007, the marijuana number increased to 54.7%, but the heroin number dropped to 57% and the LSD number dropped to 74.2%

Headline: More kids see risk in frequent pot smoking, but less risk in frequent heroin and acid use.

Now remember, the reason Walters tells us we have to arrest people for smoking weed is because of the children.  Won’t you think of the children?  What kind of message do you want to send to the children?  Only by keeping marijuana illegal and arresting its users can we get the message through to the kids that marijuana’s use is unhealthy and harmful.

In 2002, 15.2 million teens aged 12 to 17 used tobacco products.  In 2007, the number has dropped to 12.4 million.

Headline: Teen tobacco use drops 18% while adult tobacco arrests remain steady at ZERO.

John Walters, as Drug Czar for the past five years, has spent $12.6 billion taxpayer dollars and made 3,396,180 arrests for marijuana possession, and yet marijuana use remains steady.  Tobacco has been legal the whole time and through education and regulation, its use has plummeted.

Headline:  Drug Czar John Walters is a colossal failure.