COKE, CRACK, POT, SPEED ET AL.

Sociology Drug Abuse

In 1999 illegal drug use resulted in 555,000 emergency room visits, of
which 30 percent were for cocaine, 16 percent for marijuana or hashish, 15
percent for heroin or morphine, and 2 percent for amphetamines. Alcohol in
combination with other drugs accounted for 35 percent. This is not the
first time that the U.S. has suffered a widespread health crisis brought on
by drug abuse. In the 1880s (legal) drug companies began selling
medications containing cocaine, which had only recently been synthesized
from the leaves of the coca plant. Furthermore, pure cocaine could be
bought legally at retail stores. Soon there were accounts of addiction and
sudden death from cardiac arrest and stroke among users, as well as
cocaine-related crime. Much of the blame for crime fell on blacks, although
credible proof of the allegations never surfaced. Reports of health and
crime problems associated with the drug contributed to rising public
pressure for reform, which led in time to a ban on retail sales of cocaine
under the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914. This and later legislation
contributed to the near elimination of the drug in the 1920s.

Cocaine use revived in the 1970s, long after its deleterious effects had
faded from memory. By the mid-1980s history repeated itself as the U.S.
rediscovered the dangers of the drug, including its new form, crack. Crack
was cheap and could be smoked, a method of delivery that intensified the
pleasure and the risk. Media stories about its evils, sometimes
exaggerated, were apparently the key element in turning public sentiment
strongly in favor of harsh sentences, even for possession. The result was
one of the most important federal laws of recent years, the Anti-Drug Abuse
Act of 1986. It was enacted hurriedly without benefit of committee
hearings, so great was the pressure to do something about the problem.
Because crack was seen as uniquely addictive and destructive, the law
specified that the penalty for possession of five grams would be the same
as that for possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine.

African-Americans were much more likely than whites to use crack, and so,
as in the first drug epidemic, they came under greater obloquy. Because of
the powder cocaine/crack penalty differential and other inequities in the
justice system, blacks were far more likely to go to prison for drug
offenses than whites, even though use of illicit drugs overall was about
the same among both races. Blacks account for 13 percent of those who use
illegal drugs but 74 percent of those sentenced to prison for possession.
In fact, the 1986 federal law and certain state laws led to a substantial
rise in the number of people arrested for possession of illegal drugs, at a
time when arrests for sale and manufacture had stabilized.

The data in the chart catch the declining phase of the U.S. drug epidemic
that started in the 1960s with the growing popularity of marijuana and,
later, cocaine. Use of illegal drugs in the U.S. has fallen substantially
below the extraordinarily high levels of the mid-1980s and now appears to
have steadied, but hidden in the overall figures is a worrisome trend in
the number of new users of illegal drugs in the past few years, such as an
increase in new cocaine users from 500,000 in 1994 to 900,000 in 1998. In
1999 an estimated 14.8 million Americans were current users of illegal
drugs, and of these 3.6 million were drug-dependent.

The decline in overall use occurred for several reasons, including the
skittishness of affluent cocaine users, who were made wary by negative
media stories. The drop in the number of people in the 18-to-25 age group,
in which drug use is greatest, was probably also a factor, and prevention
initiatives by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, headed by Gen.
Barry McCaffrey, may have had some beneficial effect. The decrease in
illegal drug use in the 1980s and early 1990s was part of a broad trend
among Americans to use less psychoactive substances of any kind, including
alcohol and tobacco.

Even with the decline, the U.S. way of dealing with illegal drugs is widely
seen by experts outside the government as unjust, far too punitive and
having the potential for involving the country in risky foreign
interventions. The system has survived for so many years because the public
supports it and has not focused on the defects. Surveys show that most
Americans favor the system, despite calls by several national figures for
drug legalization, and there is little evidence that support is softening.