Chronic Addicts Seen at Core of U.S. Drug Abuse

Illicit drug use by Americans leveled off last year after declining for 13 years, illustrating that many of the nation’s remaining drug users are chronic addicts and not casual users, the government reported Wednesday.

Releasing their annual household survey on drug abuse, officials of the Department of Health and Human Services said that the remaining 11.7 million drug users include many hard-core addicts who have been difficult to reach with education and treatment programs.

Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala said that, from a peak of 24.3 million in 1979, the number of Americans who used cocaine, heroin, marijuana and other drugs dropped gradually to 11.4 million in 1992. Drug abuse then rose to 11.7 million last year, a marginal increase not statistically significant, she said.

Results of the survey show the need to focus treatment efforts on longer-term, hard-core drug users “if we are ever going to solve America’s drug problem,” Shalala said.

Lee P. Brown, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said at a news briefing with Shalala that “there should be no question now about treatment.”

“Treatment does work and can save this country millions of dollars in lost productivity in the workplace and can reduce crime and violence in our communities,” he said.

Noting a rise in the rate of marijuana use by 12- to 17-year-olds from 4% in 1992 to 4.9% last year, Shalala told reporters: “It’s worrisome news that we have not changed young people’s minds about the dangers of drug use.”

She said that she fears young pot smokers will show up as users of hard-core drugs in the years ahead.

The national rise of marijuana use among the young mirrors results of a California-wide study released last month by state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren. In that study, two of five California 11th-graders said that they had used pot at least once within a six-month period, an increase of 10% from a similar study conducted two years earlier.

The number of current cocaine users was placed at 1.3 million by the national survey, the same as in 1992 and down from a peak of 5.3 million in 1985. Occasional users--less often than monthly--numbered 3 million last year, down from 8.1 million in 1985, according to the study. There was no significant change in the number of hard-core, weekly users of cocaine, which remained stable at slightly under 500,000.

However, Brown said that the annual household drug survey traditionally underestimates some chronic groups of addicts because it does not reach prisoners, institutionalized persons, the homeless, students living at college and active-duty military personnel.

Brown’s office estimates that there are 2.1 million hard-core cocaine addicts, for example, while the survey placed the figure at less than one-fourth that number.

Brown and Shalala both made a pitch for passage of Clinton Administration legislation that they said is needed to treat hard-core users, even though they acknowledged that it might be politically unpopular.