SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Spinning A Failed War on Drugs
Sep 24, 2007
Our government says we're winning the war on drugs. At a press conference to release results of the government's major annual drug use survey Sept. 6, both White House drug czar John Walters and Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt said so, with Walters touting "fewer teens using drugs today."
Not quite.
When you cut through the spin and look at the actual numbers, it's clear that Walters is again trying to fool the public - much as President Richard Nixon did back in 1972, when he first claimed we were "winning" the war on drugs.
While drug-use rates reported in the just-released 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health are essentially unchanged from 2005, Walters and Leavitt touted declines in current teen use of illicit drugs since 2002, from 11.6 to 9.8 percent, and a parallel decline in current marijuana use from 8.2 to 6.7 percent.
That sounds impressive - until you look at the long-term trends. If you go back another 10 years, to 1992, the rate of current teen use of illicit drugs was just 5.3 percent, and current marijuana use was at 3.4 percent. So while it edged down a bit in the last five years, teen drug use is actually nearly double what it was 15 years ago.
Walters and Co. has an explanation for this, of course. They say that the methodology of the survey was changed in 2002, so you can't compare earlier figures with recent ones. But that claim is shaky, at best.
First, not all experts agree that the changes in the survey were enough to drastically alter the results. Second, another government-funded survey of teen drug use that hasn't changed its methodology, called "Monitoring the Future," has documented strikingly similar trends.
In the 2006 "Monitoring the Future" survey, released last December, 16.8 percent of 10th-graders reported using at least one illicit drug - a drop from 20.8 percent in 2002, but a substantial increase over the 11 percent rate in 1992. For marijuana, current use among 10th-graders soared from 8.1 percent in 1992 and 14.2 percent in 2006.
None of this stopped Leavitt from claiming, "The trends in general are very encouraging." Do these people not read their own data?
The fact is that Walters and colleagues have squandered well over a billion of our tax dollars on a failed ad campaign, mostly aimed at demonizing marijuana, and are desperate to show some results. So they cherry pick a few numbers that seem to make their case, and ignore the rest.
And before you buy Walters' frequent claim that "we took our eye off the ball" fighting drug abuse in the '90s, don't forget that between 1991 and 2000, marijuana arrests skyrocketed from 282,000 to 734,497.
But buried in the new national survey on drug use results are some fascinating and sometimes disturbing tidbits. The percentage of Americans who reported using illicit drugs in the past year or past month edged up slightly, and this increase was driven by jumps in use of some of the most dangerous drugs: cocaine, narcotic pain drugs, and stimulants (a category that includes methamphetamine).
While most of the changes were small and not statistically significant, those that were significant are alarming. For example, among 14- to 15-year-olds, past-month use of deadly inhalants (glues, spray paints and solvents) rose significantly, as did past-month use of sedatives. This raises the disturbing possibility that scare campaigns focused on marijuana are driving kids to try drugs that are far more dangerous.
The drug czar will never admit it, but the long-term picture is clear: Our drug policies don't work. The government's bizarre overemphasis on marijuana - a drug that is safer than such legal drugs as alcohol and tobacco - has had little effect on marijuana use, but may well be making our hard-drug problem worse. It's long past time we had policy based on facts, not spin.
To view the 2006 survey of drug use and health, go to www.oas.samhsa.gov/nsduhLatest.htm. To view the "monitoring the Future" survey, go to www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/overview2006.pdf
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Bruce Mirken
Bruce Mirken is a longtime activist, journalist and communications professional. He now volunteers as Communications Co-Chair for Defend Public Health, a volunteer-driven network of public health researchers, healthcare workers, advocates and allies fighting to protect the health of all from the Trump administration's cruel attacks on proven, science-based public health policies.
Our government says we're winning the war on drugs. At a press conference to release results of the government's major annual drug use survey Sept. 6, both White House drug czar John Walters and Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt said so, with Walters touting "fewer teens using drugs today."
Not quite.
When you cut through the spin and look at the actual numbers, it's clear that Walters is again trying to fool the public - much as President Richard Nixon did back in 1972, when he first claimed we were "winning" the war on drugs.
While drug-use rates reported in the just-released 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health are essentially unchanged from 2005, Walters and Leavitt touted declines in current teen use of illicit drugs since 2002, from 11.6 to 9.8 percent, and a parallel decline in current marijuana use from 8.2 to 6.7 percent.
That sounds impressive - until you look at the long-term trends. If you go back another 10 years, to 1992, the rate of current teen use of illicit drugs was just 5.3 percent, and current marijuana use was at 3.4 percent. So while it edged down a bit in the last five years, teen drug use is actually nearly double what it was 15 years ago.
Walters and Co. has an explanation for this, of course. They say that the methodology of the survey was changed in 2002, so you can't compare earlier figures with recent ones. But that claim is shaky, at best.
First, not all experts agree that the changes in the survey were enough to drastically alter the results. Second, another government-funded survey of teen drug use that hasn't changed its methodology, called "Monitoring the Future," has documented strikingly similar trends.
In the 2006 "Monitoring the Future" survey, released last December, 16.8 percent of 10th-graders reported using at least one illicit drug - a drop from 20.8 percent in 2002, but a substantial increase over the 11 percent rate in 1992. For marijuana, current use among 10th-graders soared from 8.1 percent in 1992 and 14.2 percent in 2006.
None of this stopped Leavitt from claiming, "The trends in general are very encouraging." Do these people not read their own data?
The fact is that Walters and colleagues have squandered well over a billion of our tax dollars on a failed ad campaign, mostly aimed at demonizing marijuana, and are desperate to show some results. So they cherry pick a few numbers that seem to make their case, and ignore the rest.
And before you buy Walters' frequent claim that "we took our eye off the ball" fighting drug abuse in the '90s, don't forget that between 1991 and 2000, marijuana arrests skyrocketed from 282,000 to 734,497.
But buried in the new national survey on drug use results are some fascinating and sometimes disturbing tidbits. The percentage of Americans who reported using illicit drugs in the past year or past month edged up slightly, and this increase was driven by jumps in use of some of the most dangerous drugs: cocaine, narcotic pain drugs, and stimulants (a category that includes methamphetamine).
While most of the changes were small and not statistically significant, those that were significant are alarming. For example, among 14- to 15-year-olds, past-month use of deadly inhalants (glues, spray paints and solvents) rose significantly, as did past-month use of sedatives. This raises the disturbing possibility that scare campaigns focused on marijuana are driving kids to try drugs that are far more dangerous.
The drug czar will never admit it, but the long-term picture is clear: Our drug policies don't work. The government's bizarre overemphasis on marijuana - a drug that is safer than such legal drugs as alcohol and tobacco - has had little effect on marijuana use, but may well be making our hard-drug problem worse. It's long past time we had policy based on facts, not spin.
To view the 2006 survey of drug use and health, go to www.oas.samhsa.gov/nsduhLatest.htm. To view the "monitoring the Future" survey, go to www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/overview2006.pdf
Bruce Mirken
Bruce Mirken is a longtime activist, journalist and communications professional. He now volunteers as Communications Co-Chair for Defend Public Health, a volunteer-driven network of public health researchers, healthcare workers, advocates and allies fighting to protect the health of all from the Trump administration's cruel attacks on proven, science-based public health policies.
Our government says we're winning the war on drugs. At a press conference to release results of the government's major annual drug use survey Sept. 6, both White House drug czar John Walters and Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt said so, with Walters touting "fewer teens using drugs today."
Not quite.
When you cut through the spin and look at the actual numbers, it's clear that Walters is again trying to fool the public - much as President Richard Nixon did back in 1972, when he first claimed we were "winning" the war on drugs.
While drug-use rates reported in the just-released 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health are essentially unchanged from 2005, Walters and Leavitt touted declines in current teen use of illicit drugs since 2002, from 11.6 to 9.8 percent, and a parallel decline in current marijuana use from 8.2 to 6.7 percent.
That sounds impressive - until you look at the long-term trends. If you go back another 10 years, to 1992, the rate of current teen use of illicit drugs was just 5.3 percent, and current marijuana use was at 3.4 percent. So while it edged down a bit in the last five years, teen drug use is actually nearly double what it was 15 years ago.
Walters and Co. has an explanation for this, of course. They say that the methodology of the survey was changed in 2002, so you can't compare earlier figures with recent ones. But that claim is shaky, at best.
First, not all experts agree that the changes in the survey were enough to drastically alter the results. Second, another government-funded survey of teen drug use that hasn't changed its methodology, called "Monitoring the Future," has documented strikingly similar trends.
In the 2006 "Monitoring the Future" survey, released last December, 16.8 percent of 10th-graders reported using at least one illicit drug - a drop from 20.8 percent in 2002, but a substantial increase over the 11 percent rate in 1992. For marijuana, current use among 10th-graders soared from 8.1 percent in 1992 and 14.2 percent in 2006.
None of this stopped Leavitt from claiming, "The trends in general are very encouraging." Do these people not read their own data?
The fact is that Walters and colleagues have squandered well over a billion of our tax dollars on a failed ad campaign, mostly aimed at demonizing marijuana, and are desperate to show some results. So they cherry pick a few numbers that seem to make their case, and ignore the rest.
And before you buy Walters' frequent claim that "we took our eye off the ball" fighting drug abuse in the '90s, don't forget that between 1991 and 2000, marijuana arrests skyrocketed from 282,000 to 734,497.
But buried in the new national survey on drug use results are some fascinating and sometimes disturbing tidbits. The percentage of Americans who reported using illicit drugs in the past year or past month edged up slightly, and this increase was driven by jumps in use of some of the most dangerous drugs: cocaine, narcotic pain drugs, and stimulants (a category that includes methamphetamine).
While most of the changes were small and not statistically significant, those that were significant are alarming. For example, among 14- to 15-year-olds, past-month use of deadly inhalants (glues, spray paints and solvents) rose significantly, as did past-month use of sedatives. This raises the disturbing possibility that scare campaigns focused on marijuana are driving kids to try drugs that are far more dangerous.
The drug czar will never admit it, but the long-term picture is clear: Our drug policies don't work. The government's bizarre overemphasis on marijuana - a drug that is safer than such legal drugs as alcohol and tobacco - has had little effect on marijuana use, but may well be making our hard-drug problem worse. It's long past time we had policy based on facts, not spin.
To view the 2006 survey of drug use and health, go to www.oas.samhsa.gov/nsduhLatest.htm. To view the "monitoring the Future" survey, go to www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/overview2006.pdf
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.