DRUG TRADE, NOT USE, HIGH IN POOR U.S. AREAS: STUDY

NEW YORK - Although residents of the poorest US neighborhoods are likely to
see illegal drug sales in plain view, they are no more likely to abuse
drugs than people in more affluent neighborhoods, researchers report.

Their study of 41 US communities showed that people living in the most
disadvantaged neighborhoods were about six times as likely as those in
better-off neighborhoods to witness drug sales. Yet drug use in these
poorest areas was only slightly higher.

"This finding indicates that conflating drug sales with use, so that poor
and minority areas are assumed to be the focus of the problem of drug use,
is plainly wrong," Dr. Leonard Saxe and his colleagues conclude in the
December issue of the American Journal of Public Health, journal of the
American Public Health Association (news - web sites).

The researchers looked at 41 sites--encompassing more than 2,100
neighborhoods--that had more African Americans and were more urban and
poorer than the US as a whole. They labeled neighborhoods as more-or
less-disadvantaged based on factors such as rates of unemployment and the
number of residents on public assistance.

More than 40% of residents in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods reported
frequently seeing drug deals, while only about 3% of those in the "least
disadvantaged" neighborhoods did. However, there were no significant
neighborhood differences in drug use, which ranged from just below 13% to
15% across neighborhood types.

Still, the far more common occurrence of visible drug selling in the
poorest neighborhoods is concerning, according to Saxe, a researcher at
Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, and his colleagues.

"The visibility of drug transactions creates the actuality as well as the
perception of greater drug-related individual and social problems," the
authors write, noting that young blacks are far more likely than young
whites to be arrested on drug trafficking charges.

A highly conspicuous drug trade can also make it particularly difficult for
recovering drug addicts living in these neighborhoods to succeed, the
report indicates.

"Only with sustained effort to rebuild the social capital of such
neighborhoods can residents acquire the wherewithal to eliminate drug
markets," Saxe and colleagues conclude.

And, they add, any efforts to cut the demand for drugs in the US "must
reach all of the market's far-flung consumers."

SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health 2001;91:1987-1994.