Posted on 09/10/2007 12:10:36 PM PDT by cryptical
These are perilous times for drug warriors. With self-reported illicit drug use flat or declining, there is a danger of complacency—or, worse, smaller budgets. At the same time, it's important to claim a victory now and then; otherwise taxpayers may begin to worry that their money is being wasted in a futile effort to stop people from using politically incorrect intoxicants. In its description of the latest numbers from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the Office of National Drug Control Policy walks that thin line between gratitude and apathy, panic and hopelessness:
YOUTH DRUG USE AT A FIVE YEAR LOW, NEW SURVEY SHOWS
25 Percent Drop in Marijuana Use by Teen Boys
More Youths Starting Drug Use with Painkillers Than Marijuana;
Prescription Drug Abuse Remains a Concern
In short, we know the war on drugs is working because fewer teenagers are smoking pot, but we need to redouble our efforts, because a lot of them are still swiping Percocets from the medicine cabinet. This carefully calibrated message does not hold up very well when you look at the actual numbers. It turns out that self-reported "prescription drug abuse" among teenagers is not only not going up; it fell between 2003 and 2005, then leveled off. Overall, past-month "nonmedical use of psychotherapeutics" by 12-to-17-year-olds went from 4 percent in 2002 to 3.3 percent in 2006, a drop of about 18 percent. That's roughly the same as the decline in past-month marijuana use, which went from 8.2 percent to 6.7 percent during the same period. So one could just as easily say that prescription drug abuse is down, while pot smoking remains disturbingly common, as the reverse. Presumably the ONDCP went with the prescription drug angle for the novelty factor, although it's already getting pretty old.
But what about the "methamphetamine epidemic"? It still stubbornly refuses to show up in nationally representative surveys of drug use. No matter which age group or measure you look at, illegal use of "stimulants" (a subcategory of "psychotherapeutics" that does not include cocaine) has been flat or declining in this survey since 2002, the first year it was conducted. For 2006 the government did not even bother to break out methamphetamine as a separate category.
[Thanks to Mike Kelty for the tip.]
What a quandary: They have to show success to keep up the funding, but they can’t be too effective (or lucky) or there will be no need for their funding. An institution usually has two choices at this stage. They can do mission creep, where they invent new problems to solve. Or they can just lie. Or both.
Anybody every hear of downsizing in law enforcement?
It’s gotta be paid for somehow.
Tell me about it...
When I was in middle school, my friends and I thought it would be hilarious to lie on the surveys that the government (and school officials) distributed to us about frequency of drug use. They are anonymous, and practically beg to be tampered with by michievous youngsters. I can’t believe that we were the only ones exaggerating our use to be funny.
The statistics SAMHSA gives in the NSDUH are really fishy in the last few years. I looked at the last five years of the NSDUH and can see a clear pattern. The percentage of people admitting that they have ever used marijuana is going down when in past years a greater percentage of people from the same age cohort admitted having used the drug in the past. For example, if you look at “marijuana use by detailed age category” tables on the past five years worth of NSDUH surveys you will see that on the 2002 NSDUH apparently 62% of 21 year olds admitted to having tried marijuana. A year later on the 2003 survey only 58.3% of 22 year olds admitted to having tried marijuana. Close to 200,000 fewer of these people who were 21 the year before had ever smoked marijuana? Did all these folks just die before the next survey? No. According to the CDC in recent years we’ve seen less than 34,000 people 15 to 24 die in any given year, so even if every single 21 year old who died was a marijuana user, that few thousand who would die in a year wouldn’t come even remotely close to explaining the drop in the number of people who would admit having tried marijuana in the past. When we follow that cohort of kids who were 21 in 2002 all the way to 2006, only 53.8% of these 25 year old young people who were 21 in 2002 admitted using marijuana in the past. In 2002 62% of them admitted marijuana use, but by 2006 only 53.8% of these young folks had smoked it? Impossible. If you look at all the drug use surveys, it is clear that most people who are going to try marijuana do so before they turn 21, but some try it after, still usually in their early to mid twenties. What we should see is a slight increase in the percentage of people who have tried marijuana when we follow a cohort of young people from when they are 21 until the year they are 25. We should not be seeing a big drop in the percentage of these folks who admit having tried it.
Compare the numbers on the NSDUH over the past few years and you’ll see a lot of this crap for the various age categories. Fewer senior citizens, for instance, are admitting prior drug use. That fewer of these people have ever actually tried drugs is statistically unlikely. Looking at past national surveys, we can see that the later people were born, the more likely it is that they have tried drugs. According to past surveys by SAMHSA for instance, only about 1% of those born between 1919 and 1929 admitted having ever tried marijuana in the past, compared to the about 6% of those born from 1930 to 1940 who admitted to having tried marijuana. The percentage jumps to 24% for those born between 1941 and 1945, and 38% for those born between 1946 and 1950. Over 50% of those born from 1951 to 1955 admitted past marijuana use, and the percentage goes higher for those adults born from 1956 on and then stops climbing but remains over 50% for all of those born thereafter. (There is a five year group in there somewhere where they are now showing slightly less than 50% have tried it, but in the past the percentage for that group showed to be over 50%—still even current numbers work out to where greater than 50% of those born from 1950 on have tried it) Anyway, according to the CDC lately about 2.4 million or so die every year, and the vast majority of those people are senior citizens, mostly those born well before 1940. Most of the people dying these days have never tried marijuana, but those hitting 65 every year now are increasingly likely to have tried it. If you turned 65 in 2006 you were born in 1941, and again about 24% of those surveyed who were born from 1941 through 1945 admitted having tried marijuana. We should be seeing an increase in the percentage of senior citizens who have tried marijuana as they are slowly replaced in the senior citizen ranks by people more likely to have tried it, not the decrease reflected in the 2006 NSDUH. Something fishy is going on, and if it’s making it look like fewer have ever tried it, it’s no doubt going to make it look like fewer are current users as well.
Shhhh, you'll give John Walters an idea for another PSA...
Kids who try pot quit the hard way, BECAUSE THEY'RE DEAD.
This is one of the things I like about the internet, it's getting harder and harder to pull the wool over peoples eyes (and not just on this issue, in general).
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