U.S. leads world in drug use
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 8:02 am | By: Radical Russ
Bloomberg.com: U.S.
Cocaine and marijuana have been tried by more Americans than residents of 16 other countries surveyed, researchers said, even though tough U.S. laws seek to discourage the use of the drugs.In the U.S., 42 percent said they had used marijuana and 16 percent had tried cocaine, according to the study published in the journal of the Public Library of Science. In the Netherlands, where people can go to cafes to smoke marijuana, 20 percent have tried that drug and 1.9 percent sampled cocaine.
The higher incidence of drug use in the U.S. may be linked to the nation’s relative affluence, not its anti-drug laws, said James Anthony, chairman of the epidemiology department at Michigan State University’s medical school in East Lansing, Michigan, and an author of the study.
“Drug use is related to income, but does not appear to be simply related to drug policy, since countries with more stringent policies toward illegal drug use did not have lower levels of such drug use than countries with more liberal policies,” the study’s authors wrote.
“In the Netherlands, despite a less restrictive approach, the population hasn’t taken up cannabis smoking to the extent that’s true in U.S., or New Zealand,” Anthony said.
Trying to find a link between drug use and drug enforcement doesn’t make sense, said Tom Riley, spokesman for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington.
“The U.S. has high crime rates but we spend a lot on law enforcement and prison,” Riley said yesterday in a telephone interview. “Should we spend less? We’re just a different kind of country. We have higher drug use rates, a higher crime rate, many things that go with a highly free and mobile society.”
Yes, Mr. Riley, we should spend less. Or, more accurately, we should spend a lot of that prison and drug war money for funding education and drug treatment.
I’m confused by the idea that we have higher crime and drug use rates because we are a “highly free and mobile society”. I’ve never been outside the United States (a sin I will repent for someday), but aren’t Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Israel, Japan, and New Zealand “highly free and mobile societies”? (You also have the irony of a spokesman who represents an agency sworn to lock you up if you smoke cannabis saying we are “highly free”.)
And if you do a little more digging, you’ll find that the racist underpinnings of the drug war are really what they are referring to by a “highly free and mobile society”. I’ve read this line from the Drug Czar before, when confronted with the metrics of their own failures in reducing drug problems in the US: you can’t compare the US and Europe (the Netherlands) because we have different cultures.
“In addition to the factors measured in this study, the role of culture, drug availability and knowledge about drug use are likely to be important in the types and patterns of drug use throughout the world,” said Dr. Nora D. Volkow, NIDA director. “Even within the United States, rates and patterns of substance use differ based on geographical location and ethnicity, among other factors.”
According to your own NIDA report on Drug Use Among Racial / Ethnic Minorities (pg 51), use of marijuana among whites is more prevalent than Hispanic use, but less prevalent than black use. However, all drug use, legal and illegal, was far less prevalent among Asians/Pacific Islanders. So, couldn’t you say that the ethnic problem in America regarding drugs includes the white Americans, too? The white folks in the Netherlands aren’t using as much drugs as the white folks in America.
Topics: NIDA, Nora Volkow
