Arrests and Lifetime Substance Use and Abuse of Drugs Among American Adults

Gordon E. Kenney, Ph.D. Licensed Psychologist The University of Memphis Memphis, Tennessee, USA

The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), home of the "Drug Czar" (or is it Tsar?), has been charged with eradicating illicit drug use since 1982. The ONDCP's budget increased over 600% between 1982 and 1992, and now well exceeds $13 billion.

The attached graph compares arrests and lifetime substance use and abuse (including dependence) rates pertaining to alcohol and illict drugs in the United States in an effort to evaluate the "impact" the ONDCP has had on illicit drug use and abuse. The following information concerns 1985 data from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the American Psychiatric Association, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The year 1985 was chosen because it is the latest year for which there are solid national estimates of drug and alcohol abuse.

The data indicate that many more Americans used alcohol than illicit drugs in 1985. Among alcohol users, about 14% were abusers (or were otherwise dependent on it), whereas illicit drug abusers (or dependents) comprised about 17% of illicit drug users. This illicit drug abuse rate may even be inflated, because rates cited by the American Psychiatric Association were aggregated for use in the graph below which did not account for concurrent abuse of multiple drugs. About 1% of alcohol users/abusers were arrested for drunkenness or DUI/DWI offenses, whereas about 0.5% (i.e., one-half of 1%) of illicit drug users/abusers were arrested for possession of illicit drugs.

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