Excerpt from the USDOJ website, my comments [bracketed]:
In 1880, many drugs, including opium and cocaine, were legal — and, like some drugs today, seen as benign medicine not requiring a doctor's care and oversight. Addiction skyrocketed. There were over 400,000 opium addicts in the U.S. [50,000,000 census in 1880 =0.8% addiction rate] That is twice as many per capita as there are today.
By 1900, about one American in 200 [=0.5%] was either a cocaine or opium addict. [that is a 37.5% DECLINE. The declne would be even greater if cocaine addicts were not included in the 1900 figure]
http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/demand/speakout/06so.htm
______________________________________ Now on to 2000:
"There were an estimated 980,000 hardcore heroin addicts in the United States in 1999, 50 percent more than the estimated 630,000 hardcore addicts in 1992."
--www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/heroin.htm
"The demand for both powdered and crack cocaine in the United States is high. Among those using cocaine in the United States during 2000, 3.6 million were hardcore users who spent more than $36 billion on the drug in that year."
--http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/cocaine.htm
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Using figures from the USDOJ, and a population of 280,000,000, the rate of addiction to either cocaine or heroin in 2000 is about 1.6%, or just over 3X the 0.5% rate in 1900.
2000 NSDUH shows 1.2 million cocaine (last month) users -- and my guess is maybe half are addicts. Add 200K heroin addicts, and you get around .25%, or half the 1900's legal rate.
Give it a rest already.