ONDCP was created in 1988. Everything on the charts prior to 1988 are meaningless. ONDCP has not met its goal of reducing drug use. The War On Drugs is a failure by ONDCP's own standards and mission statement.
The "War on Drugs" was coined by President Nixon in 1971. The DEA has been around since 1973.
Start there.
"Cautious evaluation of this data is necessary because the NHSDA cannot accurately measure rare or stigmatized drug use, relying as it does on self-reporting and on people residing in households. In alternate research, the number of hardcore* users of heroin in 1998 was estimated to be 980,000,"
"Estimates of heroin use from the NHSDA are considered very conservative due to the probable underreporting and undercoverage of the population of heroin users."
________________________________________
Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, Oct 4, 2000:
"For example, numbers like heroin addiction. You can find numbers that go from 255,000 up to the one I'm currently using, 980,000, if I remember the last time we updated it, and those are all valid scientific studies."
--http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/symposium/panelmccaffrey.html
So, the government says its own household survey numbers are not reliable, and both the ONDCP and the Drug Czar said there were 980,000 heroin addicts.
-- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1454298/posts?page=87#87
Rio Linda summary: Heroin addiction rate in the US is about 0.35% of the population, rather than the 0.09% used by the NHSDA and other weasels.