DRUG USE DOWN, DRUG DEATHS UP

NEW YORK, Jan. 11 (UPI) - A new report shows the number of drug users
in the United States has declined dramatically since 1979, but
cocaine and heroin-related deaths and emergency room visits have
climbed sharply in the same period.

Drug deaths have hit black communities especially hard.

Dr. Ernest Drucker, a professor of epidemiology at Montefiore Medical
Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine, reports on the research in
the January-February issue of the journal Public Health Reports.

While rates of illicit drug use are similar among blacks, Hispanics
and whites, blacks are 3.5 times as likely to die of drug-related
overdoses as whites and have 7.5 times the rate of drug-related
emergency room visits.

These disparities, he told United Press International today, are due
to tighter enforcement for blacks. For example, he said that even
though drug rates are comparable among the three ethnic groups,
blacks are almost four times as likely as whites to be arrested for
drug offenses.

``Drugs can certainly cause harm, but our selective application of
punitive drug prohibition laws is at least as dangerous,'' he said.

He blames U.S. drug policy, and contends decriminalizing drug use
could help. By criminalizing drugs, ``we force drug users into a life
of crime, increase their risk of infectious diseases and other health
threats and expose others around them to increasing levels of
violence.'' massive, cruel imposition on millions of young men and
women have destabilized America's poorest communities and endangered
society as a whole,'' Drucker said.

Another consequence is higher incidence of HIV infection and AIDS in
the black community, he said.

Last year, 400,000 people were arrested for marijuana possession, out
of 1.5 million total arrests for buying, possessing or using all
types of drugs. About 25 million people use marijuana, compared to
less than 3 million for cocaine and heroin.

``But the drugs that kill through overdose or put them in the ERs are
cocaine and heroin, mostly,'' he told UPI. More blacks get arrested
because their neighborhoods are more closely monitored, and the sale
of drugs has become a booming industry.

``The poor community is far more subject to police intervention than
the middle class community,'' he said. ``The assumption that blacks
use drugs more than whites is wrong. For heroin, arrests by
percentage are a bit lower for blacks than whites, cocaine higher for
blacks than whites, marijuana higher for blacks than whites.''