U-M EXPERT JOHNSTON: 'WE WILL NEVER WIN' WAR ON DRUGS

Lloyd Johnston, a research scientist at the University of Michigan,
has headed the federally funded Monitoring the Future study of drug
use and other behaviors among American students and young adults
since 1975. While he used to smoke a pipe as a young social
psychologist, Johnston says he no longer smokes or drinks alcohol,
and even avoids coffee because of its effects on his body.

Richard Burr, associate editor of features for The Detroit News
editorial page, interviewed him this week about recent drug use
trends. The following are excerpts:

Q. Is America winning the War on Drugs?

A. The metaphor of a war on drugs has always been the wrong one
because it is good for mobilizing a country, which is what Richard
Nixon did when he introduced the metaphor. But it is not good for
sustaining the effort because a war implies that somehow there is
going to be a winner and a loser, and there's an end.

This is an ongoing problem that is chronic. We will never win it.
What we do is contain it and reduce it. And we have seen historically
that we've been able to do that to a considerable degree in the
mid-1980s and into the early '90s.

If you want to think of it in those terms, there is a battlefield of
supply reduction and a battlefield of demand reduction. We've not
been terribly successful on the supply reduction battlefield. That's
often where a sense of futility derives. The fundamental reason is
there is an endless supply of suppliers. Whenever we dry up one
source country or one intermediary like Manuel Noriega (in Panama),
there is always a replacement.

Q. What has been the trend of drug use during the 25 years you've
been doing these surveys?

A. This illicit drug epidemic really started in the mid-to late
1960s. The counterculture took some drugs at least as symbolic of its
defiance of societal norms, particularly marijuana and LSD. That
legitimated drug use for broad sectors of society, particularly
youth. We've never really gotten back to before that era (in drug
use), and we may not for a long time.

The thing coasted to a peak in 1978-79, when we saw the highest
proportion of Americans using illicit drugs. After that, there was a
13-year period of almost continuous drop in drug use. The major
exception was cocaine coming along in the early '80s and establishing
itself until 1986. Then, cocaine came to be seen as a very dangerous
drug, and its use dropped dramatically.

In the first half of the '90s, we saw a resurgence of the epidemic
until about 1996, '97. But it was specific to adolescence. It was not
observed among young or older adults. Marijuana and cigarettes were
making a comeback. Then, in the late '90s, there was a turnaround and
some reduction in drug use by older teens and more reduction among
the younger teens. This is probably the most good news for the
future, because they will become the older teens.

Q. Which drug use has fallen most?

A. Some drugs have fallen appreciably, such as LSD and inhalants and
"ice." Other drugs, only very recently, have turned around, including
heroin, cocaine and crack.

We clearly had a relapse of the epidemic in the '90s. Part of that
was explainable by the fact that the country took its eye off the
ball. We forgot that there is a new generation of kids coming along,
and they don't remember all the bad things that were happening to
people when the drug epidemic was more in flower. As soon as you
start to act like you've won (the war), that's when you start to lose
it.

Q. What is the new fad drug?

A. Clearly, ecstasy is the latest drug of growing popularity. It was
around during the 1990s, and we saw sharp increases starting in 1998.
In 2000, for the first time, we saw it migrate down; even the
eighth-graders showed an increase in its use....

In a way, cocaine has many parallels (with ecstasy). Initially,
everybody thought (cocaine) was safe. You couldn't get addicted. You
couldn't overdose. Why not? Even academic experts were saying these
things.

In the case of ecstasy, at least in the early years, its use was
being touted to some degree by psychotherapists and marriage
counselors. It was supposed to be a drug that was good at getting
people to see each other's points of views, and so forth. I think the
word to some degree is getting out (about the dangers of ecstasy).

Q. What seems to be the drug of choice among suburban whites?

A. We haven't in recent years been distinguishing suburban from urban
because there haven't been very big differences in the use of
particular drugs. When you are dealing with a city like Detroit,
which is largely African American, and the surrounding suburbs are
largely white, there is probably a difference, but it has more to do
with being white or black.

We have known for quite sometime, for example, that African-American
kids have never been very interested in inhalants. Similarly,
hallucinogens have not caught on among African-American kids. That
seems so far to include ecstasy.

The African-American kids, especially as they get into their later
teens, tend to be lower on all drugs, licit and illicit.

There's also now a huge difference in the cigarette smoking rates.
Cigarette smoking has clearly lost cache among black adolescents and
is seen as white behavior.

Q. Is ecstasy the drug of choice among whites?

A. Marijuana is still the predominant illicit drug, but ecstasy has
now passed cocaine.

Q. What ethnic or racial group tends to use drugs the most?

A. Good question. Unfortunately, we don't have large enough samples
to characterize some of the smaller ethnic groups, like Native
Americans or Orientals, on an annual basis. But we do look at them
periodically.

In general, Native Americans tend to have the highest illicit drug
use rate among any ethnic group, quite devastating actually. Among
the three large ethnic groups - Hispanics, blacks and whites - whites
generally have the highest rate in the middle and late teen years in
the school samples. But when we look at the eighth graders, when
virtually no dropping out has yet occurred, Hispanics come out high
on a number of things.

Blacks, on average, have the lowest use rate. And if Orientals were
included, they would be lower still.

Q. What message do you think the Oscar-nominated movie Traffic sends
about drug use?

A. The tragedy of addiction was clearly and powerfully communicated
by the daughter (in the movie), not only tragedy for the addict but
the family. I thought they did a pretty good job of emphasizing
family relations and the issue of kids getting off on the wrong
track. And they gave a pretty good portrayal, although in some ways
unrealistic, of the corruption and violence that the drug money
brings to both this country and overseas. (They did a good job in
portraying) the reality that the drug czar is in a tough position.

But it almost portrayed the drug problem as too overwhelming,
something the country really can't get a grasp on and is not really
amenable to effective intervention. That is a disempowering feeling.
This (feeling) is in part because the areas where we have the most
leverage and can make the most progress aren't very dramatic. They
don't make good film footage or news copy or TV drama. And that's the
part about education in schools, in families, persuasion through
media campaigns, counseling and treatment.

Q. What changes in drug policy would you recommend for the Bush administration?

A. One thing we have been moving toward, I'm glad to see, is the
increasing access to treatment and, in particular, introducing
treatment in prisons. We need to have better prevention programs in
the schools than we have.

Q. Is DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) considered an effective
program against drug use?

A. Not by anybody in the drug use field except DARE.

Q. Would you suggest that DARE be dropped or reformed?

A. There is an effort to reformulate what DARE is, to change the
content and so forth. All that is fine. Individual school districts
decide what they are going to have in their curriculum, so they can
choose. It seems to me that when there are programs out there that
are proven effective, it doesn't make much sense to pick up one that
isn't proven effective.

One of the fundamental problems with DARE is that it's premised on
the notion that a police officer is the best change agent in dealing
with kids on this subject. A police officer is an authority figure.
These kids are at an age when they are anti-authority. That may be
the Achilles heel.

Q. Periodically, we hear the occasional politician like New Mexico
Gov. Gary Johnson call for the decriminalization of marijuana or, in
the case of former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, urge the
legalization of drugs. What do you think of these ideas?

A. I'm opposed to legalization because it is likely to increase the
proportion of our population, in particular, our young people, using
drugs. The drugs that are by far the most widely used are alcohol and
tobacco. It is not a coincidence that those are legal drugs. I don't
think any of us really want our kids to be high a lot of the time.

It is also a policy which is a one-way ratchet. If you legalize, it's
very hard to go back. The best illustration of that happened during
Prohibition. (People) thought it was their right to have alcohol, and
any attempt to remove that "right" was seen as illegitimate.

That doesn't necessarily mean I'm in favor of Draconian laws. We can
have much milder responses to users as opposed to dealers. In the war
on drugs, the enemy are our own kids. It doesn't make a lot of sense
(to punish users). Extreme punishment clearly hasn't worked. What has
generally happened is that the stamping has occurred on the little
guys, and the big guys still get away. Even some of the conservatives
in Michigan who favored minimum mandatory sentencing and so forth
want it undone because they basically see it as a failed policy. It
filled prisons with people who shouldn't be there.