Not entirely. Dole gets his statistics from the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, an annual government report released every August. The 1996 edition does show that marijuana use among teens shot up in the ’90s. The number who said they had smoked pot in the previous month rose from 4 percent in 1992 to 8.2 percent last year (though that’s still below 1979, when 11 percent of high-school seniors said they smoked pot every day). But his statements about harder drugs are more dubious. This year’s survey revealed that.8 percent of teens reported having used cocaine in the previous month, compared with.3 percent last year. Of course, any uptick in drug use is troubling, and Clinton–by giving drug czar Barry McCaffrey such a high profile–seems to know it. But experts in survey methodology say that the changes Dole cites are too small to be statistically significant in a study this size.
Then there’s the issue of who’s to blame. Though the marijuana numbers appear to be the most troublesome, they actually began to rise in 1992, when President Bush was in office. Furthermore, many drug-policy experts point out that government efforts to reduce drug use–prevention programs in elementary schools, special drug courts for low-level offenders–usually take years to become effective. And, in fact, overall drug use for the entire population has actually remained steady or dropped slightly since Clinton moved into the White House. The Household Survey showed that the percentage of all Americans who used cocaine dropped from 2.6 to 1.7 percent last year, a phenomenon Clinton touts whenever possible. ““Overall in America, cocaine use was down 30 percent in the last year,’’ he said in the first presidential debate. But his claims aren’t always entirely accurate, either. The figure is closer to 21 percent. Clinton also countered Dole’s assault by saying that ““we have dramatically increased [drug] control and enforcement at the border.’’ In fact, his administration actually cut interdiction funding by 50 percent in 1993, then raised it again, but not to the previous level.
One trouble spot is getting little attention: the Household Survey’s disturbing findings about drinking among minors. Of the 10 million respondents age 21 or younger who said they’d had a cocktail in the last month, 4.4 million admitted to being ““binge drinkers’’–people who sometimes consume more than four drinks at one sitting. ““It’s scandalous that people aren’t paying any attention to the alcohol numbers,’’ says Peter Miller, a survey specialist at Northwestern University. That could be the next front in the war on drugs.
Though drug use is declining in the larger population, teens are smoking, snorting and drinking more each year. The number of kids who used drugs in the last month is up 105 percent in four years. A breakdown:
Drug use in the previous month among Americans 12 to 17 years old (percent)
1992 1995 % CHANGE Cocaine 0.3 0.8 +166.0 Marijuana 4.0 8.2 +141.0 Cigarettes 18.4 20.2 +9.7 Alcohol 20.9 21.2 +.9
Source: National Household Survey on Drug Abuse
