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Who says we are winning the
$19 billion-a-year drug war?
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- New drugs and more dangerous forms of the old drugs are widely
available, e.g. crack and methamphetamine.1
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- Adolescent drug use has been increasing since 1990.2
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- The age at which people first try heroin, cocaine, and marijuana
is constantly dropping because there are so many new users.3
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The price of heroin and cocaine is at the lowest point in 20 years
and the purity of both drugs is at near record levels.4
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Overdose deaths and mentions of drugs in hospital emergency rooms
are at record levels.5
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Bans on the sale and availability of clean syringes have added
significantly to the spread of HIV/AIDS.6
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Who says we're winning . . . other than frightened politicians,
ideologues, and people who make their living from prohibition?
Prohibition. It still doesn't work.
1
ONDCP, National Drug Control Strategy, "Methamphetamine Lab Seizures,
by State 1995-2001," February 2002, p. 108, Table 67, citing
El Paso Intelligence Center; ONDCP.
2
Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan,
Monitoring the Future, December 2001
3
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration,
Office of Applied Studies, "Summary of Findings from the
2000 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse" (Rockville,
MD#&058; September 2001).
4
ONDCP, "The Price of Illicit Drugs: 1981 Through the
Second Quarter of 2000," prepared by Abt Associates
(Washington, DC: ONDCP, October 2001), Table 1, pp.
28-30, and Table 2, pp. 31-33.
5
Murphy, Sheila L., Centers for Disease Control, "Deaths:
Final Data for 1998," National Vital Statistics Reports,
Vol. 48, No. 11 (Hyattsville, MD: National Center
for Health Statistics, July 24, 2000), pp. 1, 10;
Office of Applied Studies, Drug Abuse Warning Network, 2000
(March 2001 update).
6
CDC, "HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report, 2000,"
12(2)2001, Table 30; Lurie, P. & Drucker,
E., "An Opportunity Lost: HIV Infections Associated
with Lack of a National Needle-Exchange Programme in the USA,"
Lancet, 349:604-8 (1997).
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