DRUG WAR TURNED TOWARD MARIJUANA IN '90S

WASHINGTON -- The focus of the drug war in the United States shifted
significantly in the past decade from hard drugs to marijuana, which
accounts for nearly half of drug arrests nationwide, according to an
analysis of federal crime statistics released yesterday.

The study of FBI data by a Washington-based think tank, the Sentencing
Project, found that the proportion of heroin and cocaine cases
plummeted from 55 percent of all drug arrests in 1992 to less than 30
percent 10 years later. During the same period, marijuana arrests rose
from 28 percent of the total to 45 percent.

Coming in the wake of the focus on crack cocaine in the late 1980s,
the increasing emphasis on marijuana enforcement was accompanied by a
dramatic rise in overall drug arrests, from fewer than 1.1 million in
1990 to more than 1.5 million a decade later. Eighty percent of that
increase came from marijuana arrests, the study found.

The rapid increase has not had a significant impact on prisons,
however, because just 6 percent of the arrests resulted in felony
convictions, the study found. The most widely quoted household survey
on the topic has shown relatively little change in the overall rate of
marijuana use over the same time period, experts said.

"The question is, is this really where we want to be spending all our
money?" said Ryan King, the study's co-author and a research associate
at the Sentencing Project, which is a left-leaning group that
advocates alternatives to traditional imprisonment.

Bush administration officials attribute the rise in marijuana arrests
to a variety of factors: increased use among teen-agers during parts
of the 1990s; efforts by local police departments to focus more on
street-level offenses; and growing concerns over the danger posed by
modern, more potent versions of marijuana. The White House Office of
Drug Control Policy released a study yesterday showing that youth who
use marijuana are more likely to develop serious mental health
problems, including depression and schizophrenia.

"This is not Cheech and Chong marijuana," said David Murray, analyst
for the drug control office. "It's a qualitatively different drug,
and that's reflected in the numbers."