Biden Doubles Government Estimate of Cocaine Users : Addicts: Key Democrat cites a new study that puts the number at 2.2 million Americans. Bush’s drug policy czar angrily challenges the figure.

Charging that the Bush Administration has underestimated the extent of the nation’s drug problem, a key Democratic senator Thursday unveiled a new staff study estimating that 2.2 million Americans are frequent users of cocaine.

The figure, more than twice the number cited in the most recent government report, incorporates new estimates of drug use among criminals and the homeless, who are not included in an authoritative household survey by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

If accurate, the conclusion would mean that about one in 100 Americans uses cocaine at least once a week.

“These findings should give pause to us all,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr., who said the new report on “hard-core addicts” raises new questions about an Administration strategy based on more sanguine estimates.

But William J. Bennett, director of the White House Office of Drug Control Policy, angrily retorted that Biden ought to “do his homework.” A top aide contended that the Administration already has taken into account the fact that significant sectors of society were overlooked in the previous study.

“This is a cheap shot,” said David Tell, Bennett’s deputy chief of staff. Tell charged that Biden had “cooked up” the report in a bid to “resuscitate” support for his own drug strategy. Biden’s plan would add nearly 40% more money to a $10.6-billion Administration package.

With the contending plans soon to come before Congress, the harsh exchange appears to mark the onset of a new political drug war, with Biden leading an effort to put a Democratic stamp on the electorally potent issue.

In his opening salvo at a news conference Thursday, Biden said the findings of his report demonstrate the need for spending on drug treatment and prison construction far beyond what the Administration has endorsed.

The senator charged that the nation “cannot afford” to continue with an Administration policy that leaves “addicts roving the streets of our cities and towns, neither in treatment or in prison, wreaking havoc on our neighborhoods and on themselves.”

Bennett has warned that the number of cocaine addicts is increasing even while the overall number of drug users declines. But in recent appearances, both he and President Bush have emphasized more positive signs, saying they believe the United States is beginning to succeed in its anti-drug effort.

Aides to Bennett questioned some of the methodology used by the Senate staff in developing the new estimate of American cocaine addiction and said the small number of individuals sampled made it impossible to know if the figure is accurate.

In measuring the extent of the nation’s drug problem, they said, Bennett’s office has given more credence to a broader survey by the National Institute on Drug Abuse showing that some 4 million Americans use illegal drugs more than 200 times a year.

The new congressional study was drafted for Biden by staff members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was not endorsed by any other panel member.

It used as a starting point the 1988 household survey by the institute, which put the best estimate of weekly cocaine users in the United States at 862,000. But in adding projections based on studies of criminals, the homeless and others, it concluded that more than 1.7 million frequent cocaine addicts likely had been overlooked.

Among those the study said had not previously been included in government assessments were 1,530,000 people arrested for criminal offenses, 200,000 in prisons, hospitals or drug treatment facilities and about 55,000 homeless people.

The study sought also to provide estimates of cocaine addiction by state and identified Washington, D.C., as the home of the largest number of frequent cocaine users per capita, with 32.9 such users per 1,000 population. California, with an estimated per capita rate of 11.8 per 1,000, ranked fifth among states, behind New York, Nevada, Arizona and Illinois.

In appealing for additional anti-drug spending Thursday, Biden repeatedly labeled these once-a-week users as “hard-core addicts.” But Mark A. R. Kleiman, a Harvard University professor who helped to oversee the project, described them only as frequent cocaine users and said: “I would not use the phrase hard-core addict.”

Those who expressed skepticism about the new study focused most often on its conclusions about frequent drug use among people arrested, who are reported to represent by far America’s largest segment of weekly cocaine users.

The conclusions were based on the national Drug Use Forecast system, which collects data from 20 cities where some of those arrested are tested to determine if they had used drugs in the last 72 hours.

The study assumed that 80% of those arrestees who tested positive for drugs were likely to be weekly users of cocaine. Dr. Edgar Adams, chief of epidemiology at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said that assumption “may be too high.”