Drop in Use of Cocaine Claimed : Drugs: Bush hails figures showing 72% decline; Sen. Biden says U.S. survey ‘misses more addicts than it counts.’

The government today released figures showing a 72% drop in the use of cocaine over five years. President Bush said they show that “our hard work is paying off” but he added that it’s still too early to declare victory in the war on drugs.

“There has been some marked progress--changing attitudes and behaviors as more and more of our neighbors and co-workers have turned away from illegal drugs,” Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan said in announcing the new figures.

He said the number of people using illicit drugs was down 44% over the last five years, from 23 million in 1985 to 12.9 million in 1990.

“The news we have today sugggests that our hard work is paying off,” Bush said. He spoke briefly at a news conference called to release the 1990 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse.

“These figures must be greeted with guarded optimism,” Sullivan said. “In spite of our individual and national efforts, there are still millions of Americans trapped in the web of addiction, poor health, violence, crime and death.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) criticized the survey, saying it “actually misses more addicts than it counts.”

A study by his committee’s staff estimates that about 2.4 million people use cocaine at least once a week, not the 662,000 claimed by the survey by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The committee report says the number of such cocaine users actually has increased by 200,000, rather than declining by that number as the NIDA survey showed.

Although the government study showed dramatic declines in casual and moderate use of cocaine, it showed continued high rates of frequent or intense cocaine use.

Among 6.2 million people who used cocaine at least once in 1990, the study showed that about 662,000 people used it once a week or more--down from 862,000 in 1988.

However, the number of people who use cocaine daily actually increased--to 336,000 for 1990 from 292,000 in 1988.

The survey found that while the overall number of current cocaine users decreased in 1990 from 1988, the number of crack-cocaine users “remained stable.” There were nearly half a million current crack users among the 1.6 million who used cocaine at least once a month in 1990.

Other key findings:

-Current cocaine use (use at least once in the last month) has decreased 72% since 1985 and 45% since the last study was conducted in 1988.

-The number of current cocaine users dropped from 5.8 million (2.9% of the population over age 12) in 1985 to 2.9 million (1.5%) in 1988 to 1.6 million (0.8%) in 1990.

The survey was based on interviews with 9,259 people age 12 and over.