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Bush Says Drug Policy Working
12-11-07|Washington Post|By Debbi Wilgoren

President Bush today hailed a decade-long decline in teen drug use as proof that his administration's drug interdiction efforts are working, citing an annual study that shows no dramatic drops from last year but confirmed a significant reduction since 1997 in the number of young people experimenting with illegal drugs.

Teens in the 2007 "Monitoring the Future" study reported that their use of most drugs either became less frequent or held steady during the previous 12 months. But researchers noted a gradual increase during the past few years in the number of teenagers using the drug known as ecstasy, following a period of sharp decline.

They said the percentage of students who see "great risk" in using ecstasy has gone down in the past few years and theorized that students may be more willing to experiment with ecstasy because of a "generational forgetting" of the hazards widely associated with the drug when its usage peaked in the late 1990s.

The 33rd national survey showed the percentage of eighth-graders who had used any illegal drug at least once in the past year fell from 24 percent to 13 percent between 1997 and 2007. The percentage of 10th-graders in the same category fell from 39 percent in 1997 to 28 percent this year; and the percent of 12th-graders using an illicit drug in the past 12 months dropped from 42 percent in 1997 to 36 percent this year.

Declines for the past year were mostly modest or statistically insignificant, according to the study, which is sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and designed and conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan.

Use of marijuana, which remains the most widely used illicit drug, fell slightly -- with 10.3 percent of eighth-graders saying they had used it in the past year, compared to 11.7 percent in 2006. Rates of illicit use of amphetamines, Ritalin and methamphetamines also fell modestly.

The rates of use of cocaine, crack cocaine, LSD and other hallucinogens, heroin and most prescription-type psychoactive drugs held steady during the past year among teens surveyed, but thanks to sharp declines earlier this decade remain much lower, for the most part, than they were a decade ago.

Illegal use of certain prescription narcotics, such as Vicodin and OxyContin, showed no systemic change over the past year, the study said. More than one in 20 high school seniors reported trying OxyContin in 2007, and nearly one in 10 high school seniors said they had tried Vicodin.

Bush, speaking to an audience of drug-policy experts, enforcement officials, treatment workers and recovering addicts, said the declines documented by the study proved the success of his efforts to curb teen drug use during the past six years.

While the numbers had begun to decline significantly when Bush pledged in 2002 to cut drug use among young people by 25 percent, they continued to fall for the next several years.

The study released this morning showed a 24 percent drop since 2001 in the number of teens acknowledging drug use within a month of the survey being taken, the White House said. It showed a 25 percent drop in marijuana use over the same period, and a drop of more than 50 percent in the rate of ecstasy use among teens.

Bush said he wanted to "celebrate progress" while acknowledging that there is still work to be done on curbing teen drug use.

"Thousands of children still live in homes torn apart by drugs. Thousands more are still considering whether to try drugs for the first time," Bush said. "It's up to all Americans to be involved in this important struggle against drug addiction. It's up to all of us to urge our fellow citizens to make the right choice -- and to help those who make the wrong choice understand the consequences and that there is a more hopeful future."

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troublemaker_42

If drug policyu is working, how come drug purity levels are rising while the costs are dropping? The system is broken, and everyone knows it. This isn't a war on drugs, its a war on freedoms aand civil liberties. Of course, THAT is certainly nothing new to the Bush Administration. They might as well have formally declared war on such things when the pledged to fight a war on terror.

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Ted Nugent: "To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic." Also by Ted "If guns cause crime, all of mine are defective"
unknown- Gun control theory: Those who are willing to ignore the law and rights of others i.e. murder, robery, rape etc will obey a law which prohibits the possesion of a firearm.

SirSmokaALot

Wow how can Bush lie.... This law is failing our country slowly by murdering our economy by not having an balanced income and spending because the spending greatly surpass income currently.

edit: and at same time the problem isn't even getting any better. They probably edited the "statastics" a bit to make people believe that "dreamland" is possible when it's already so damn far away from being "drug-free" that they're seeking past 30 years.

I'm not saying any of what i said is a fact... its just my thoughts and opinion.

butyleson

What this article fails to mention is the fast that among teens, illegal use of prescription drugs has skyrocketed something like 300 percent over the last 10 years. I'm not pulling that out of nowhere. Just didn't bother to find the "exact" stat to quote here. But that fact alone should completely wipe out any sense of success regarding administration drug policies. It was conveniently left out of this article, but speaks volumes. More kids are trying prescription drugs because they falsely believe they are safer than things like marijuana. They're simply trading one "drug" for another, and in the process removing themselves from being grouped as drug users altogether and making these such stats seem so nice sounding.

In fact, this article is so misleading, it's actually quite sick.

Oh yeah - and the drug companies are sure making a fortune out of victimizing teens in this manner.

Kushable

I dont belive it these must be falsified. What about regional studies? You cant catagorize the nation as a whole.