In 1989, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials warned their English hosts that the crack plague would descend on Britain as it had on America. It was just a matter of time. They were reiterating the two-part premise undergirding the War On Drugs, in which both countries were allies.1 The major premise is that "drugs" spread epidemically, the disease respecting neither na-tional boundaries nor local traditions. Cultural differences might modify or forestall problems, "drug barons" may have difficulty extending supply lines, but there is no stopping the epidemic. The minor premise is that it spreads from the U.S. ("We're Number 1!") to "lesser" lands, like Britain. As the Home Office minister respon-sible for drugs, David Mellor, said after visiting the U.S. in 1985, "VVhen America sneezes, Europe catches a cold."2 (I.e., "We're Number 2!") "The lesson learned from the USA was that drugs can wreck a civilized community."3 His perspective was shared by members of parliament of both major parties who toured New York's Lower East Side, (which, since razed by arsonists in the mid-1970s, has never been mistaken for a civilized community), during a 1985 inquiry into drugs by the Home Affairs Select Committee. "Unless immediate and effective action is taken, Britain and Europe stand to inherit the American drug problem in less than five years," said Gardner, a Conservative. "We have seen the future and it is frightening," said Corbett, a Labourite.4 These fears continued to the end of the decade, when two independent British experts wrote "the British media has been crying wolf over cocaine, and latterly crack, for at least half a decade."5 In 1990 the government acted clairvoyantly by allocating £2.5 million ($4 million) for crack prevention programs in seven British cities, because "the extent of the problems caused to American cities by crack...has raised alarm" to the Home Office.6

When in England for the better part of a year (August 1989 to June 1990) I was struck by the enormous differences between the U.S. and the U.K in how illegal drugs were perceived, handled by politicians, and por-trayed in the media. U.S. public opinion polls showed a sharp increase in the perception of "drugs" as "the most important problem facing our country." In September 1989, over 60 percent of the American public mentioned drugs — up from 27 percent in May 1989, 11 percent in polls from 1986 to 1988, and 2 percent at the start of 1985.7 In the spring of 1988, particularly when New York (N.Y.) was contested, drugs were possibly the major issue in the U.S. presidential primaries. In Britain's local elections of 1990, which were a major test of the Thatcher government and attracted considerable interest for an off-year election, drugs were irrelevant. Later that May, on the Labour Party's lengthy manifesto which set the stage for the national elections to occur within 18 months, drugs (and crime) were not mentioned.

Mainstream British newspapers rarely have a "made in England" drug story, apart from occasional squibs on the latest and largest drug seizure, though most weeks there were larger stories on drugs in the U.S. (the trial of Washington D.C.'s mayor the biggest drug story, by far, the first half of 1990), or violence in Colombia, or some bizarre tale from overseas (i.e., the British governmenes request that Hong Kong not execute drug law violators, or a Bolivian coca growers' union protesting against U.S. funding of their country's corrupt military to stifle coca production). British TV coverage on drugs that spring was mainly the weekly fix of "Miami Vice" offered by the self-proclaimed preservers of British morals and taste — BBC I 8 TV news rarely had a drug story, either local or from overseas. During my stay in England, an average of less than a half minute of 3 hours of weekly news per channel (assuming 6 days of 30 minute news) involved drugs.

As a U.S. drug expert-in-exile, my depression on being cut-off from a daily regimen of televised My Lai-type raids and stories of deformed babies and teen-age confes-sionals and political exhortations and public service announcements by professional athletes and assorted preachings and warnings, was as severe an illegal drug problem as could be found in Northeast England. If the "drug problem" was culturally transmitted, was an epidemic, was catching, than where was it? If the U.S., according to the Home Office minister, was sneezing in 1985, by 1990 it was hemorrhaging.... Yet the English seem immune. 25 years ago illegal drugs became very popular in the U.S.; 20 years ago President Nixon proclaimed drugs "Public Enemy No. 1" and declared a War On Drugs; 17 years ago U.S. arrests surpassed 500,000 per year; 8 years ago cocaine use started burgeoning; 5 years ago annual drug arrests passed 3/4 million and 2 years ago they passed a million. Is there a statute of limitations on how long one must wait for the transmission of a massive drug problem before dismissing the epidemic theory of drugs?

Could I be misreading things? Is the drug problem in the U.S. less substantial, and the one in Britain less minus-cule, than I perceive it? During a televised debate in the U.S. on drug legalization in March 1990, Congressman Newt Gingrich claimed that Britain's drug problem had skyrocketed recently and thus they were no different from, and held few lessons to be learned by, the U.S. Are we viewing the same countries?

Statistics are useful here. What is the numerical relation between U.S. and U.K. drug problems? Have American patterns and trends become those of Britain a few years later? In other words, has the U.S. drug problem spread, like an epidemic, to Britain.... Or do some politicians and government representatives think they can say anything with impunity?

Ways of Comparing U.S. and U.K. Drug Problems

Law enforcement statistics are the best available indicator of a sizable drug problem and of drug use and problem trends...and the only indicator permitting com-parison of the U.S. and U.K. However, since the police model is maligned by many medical and social science experts for being moralistic, it is necessary to show why non-criminal measures are virtually useless.

Inadequacies of Non-Law Enforcement Drug Indicators

Surveys of Drug Use: To the extent the War On Drugs is pursued, direct measures of drug use are difficult to obtain. The more heinous a drug is considered, the less reliable are survey measures. Persons will not admit to strangers, such as survey interviewers, that they are Public Enemy No. 1.

The three major U.S. surveys of drug users miss those populations in which heroin or cocaine use is substantial. Studies of high school seniors and college students, and a household survey which excludes the homeless and imprisoned 9 each show that cocaine,10 marijuana 11 and (where it registers) heroin 12 use decreased the latter part of the 1980s. These survey results are at odds, particularly cocaine, with other drug indicators. For example, urine specimens obtained from new arrestees in U.S. cities since 1988 revealed over 50 percent positive for cocaine, over 15 percent in the eastern U.S. positive for opiates, and in the west 15 percent positive for amphetamines.13 Is drug use declining among the haves and escalating among the have-nots? If so, all the more reason to focus on police measures which tap out-of-the-mainstream populations.

In Britain, to my knowledge, there are no annual or periodic surveys of drug use, and no urine tests of any sizable British population.

Emergency Room Admissions: Since the late 1970s drug-related hospital emergency room (ER) mentions have been collected in over 20 metropolitan areas by the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN). Though not true for every city every year, overall the ER mentions have soared...regardless of actual usage trends. For marijuana, contrary to declines on nearly all other indicators, ER mentions rose 150 percent from 1984-88. Heroin ER mentions were up 55 percent from 1984-88, even though the average age of these cases increased substantially and that should be reflected in a decline in heroin use. Even for alcohol, noted only if found with another drug, ER mentions soared. In a recent epidemiological report, alcohol ER mentions in three cities were 75 percent to 150 percent higher in 1988 than in 1986.14 The vast rises in ER mentions seem a reporting artifact. Therefore, the only DAWN data considered relevant to this report is the boom in cocaine use which began just before the mid-1980s and continued escalating almost to the end of the decade, and the steady increases in the median age of heroin ER mentions. There is nothing in Britain to compare with the DAWN statistics.

Drug Treatment Clients: Drug treatment in both the U.S. and U.K serves opiate users primarily. Therefore, treatment data is essentially useless for showing trends for non-opiates, though in a few U.S. cities which publish such data the minority of clients who are "primary cocaine abusers" has substantially increased since the mid-1980s (and the "primary marijuana abusers" substantially declined).15 The U.S. heroin treatment statistics cannot show trends because they come from publicly funded facilities in which the number of clients is determined largely by government allocations which have been con-stant for a few years (though in places have recently risen slightly in response to the AIDS epidemic). Further, in many U.S. cities the efforts to expand treatment agencies (or replace old ones) have often been stymied by community resistance to new facilities. (The NIMBY or Not In My Backyard syndrome).

The British "treatment" statistic is for "new addicts notified to the Home Office.'16 Individual physi-cians must report such cases, but treatment clinics need not. Treatment is often provided by general practitioners, each with a few clients, these doctors often sharing responsibility with central drug clinics. (Independent physicians do not dare treat addicts in the U.S.) For 1989, 46 percent of the notifications were by general medical practitioners, 18 percent by police surgeons or prison medical officers, and 37 percent by hospitals or treatment agencies. Since most addict notifications were made by sources receiving no special government funding they might reflect trends in opiate use whereas U.S. data cannot.

Even these addict notifications, in recent years, distort usage trends. To judge from a recent study of Londoners who began smoking heroin in 1983, users first became interested in quitting (and treatment) a year or two after initiation.17 Thus, treatment statistics reflect usage trends of two or more years previously, and might continue to rise when usage tapers off. Further, when drug injectors became aware of the threat of AIDS (usually in 1985 or shortly thereafter) treatment became more desirable. Just as the stable number of U.S. heroin addicts in treatment the past few years might mask a decline in users, the British treatment statistics exaggerate the number of addicts "on the street."

Keeping in mind the above considerations, the British "notified addicts" statistic can show trends, and there is no U.S. equivalent.

Law Enforcement Statistics: The Basic Drug Trend Measure

In light of the above, the problems with law enforcement statistics are pale in comparison with their virtues. They are the only comparable, though not identical, national drug statistics.

Available U.S. and U.K. Law Enforcement Statistics: The best U.S. law enforcement measure on drugs is of arrests. Almost all U.S. police departments submit uniform crime reports (UCRs) to t'he F.B.I. which are tabulated in the annual Crime In America: Uniform Crime Reports. Almost all U.S. police departments use UCR categories of "narcotics" which combine opiates and cocaine, "marijuana" and "dangerous drugs" including amphetamines, psychedelics, PCP and more. Arrests for a particular drug (besides marijuana) are only available from departments using special detailed categories, of which I know of two — N.Y.C. starting in 1986, and San Francisco which since 1980 separately noted "actual offenses" for opiates and marijuana but combined cocaine and amphetamines (as "dangerous drugs").

U.S. court data on drug cases was non-existent until a computerized Offender Based Transaction System (OBTS) became operational. The first OBTS drug data was published in 1989 and compared 1986 to 1983 for five states.18 The OBTS format, however, does not differentiate between drugs. National correctional statistics typically do not specify drug offenses. There is a national survey every few years of either state prisoners or inmates of local jails, but the number or percentage of those incarcerated who are serving drug charges have not been published since the 1970s. A few states' prisoner statistics delineate those serving drug charges, and at least two report the type of drug which resulted in conviction: California uses UCR categories to delineate "newly received" felons, and Florida's "admissions" are reported for cocaine vs "other drugs." For now, court and prison data barely supplement the primary drug arrest data in the U.S..

U.K. arrest figures specify only drug trafficking (and production) offenses, but the Home Office publishes annual figures of all drug cases coming to the attention of the courts.19 There are probably only a few arrestees who do not come before the courts, since many court cases are dealt with by a simple warning. The Home Office tracks cases through sentencing, and other reports show prisoners serving drug sentences.20 The Home Office delineates drug "offenses" and "subsequent adjudications" by cocaine, heroin, cannabis (marijuana or hashish), methadone, LSD, amphetamines and "other."21 U.K. prison statistics merge all drugs.

It may not be elegant or precise, but the U.S. data can show trends in drug problems as seen by law enforc-ers. Since cocaine has increasingly dominated U.S. drug arrests the past few years, the key task for comparing countries is estimating how "narcotic" cases split between heroin and cocaine. In the tare instances where types of drug are specified, there's a further problem determining which is the major drug when heroin and cocaine are involved in a single case. The British law enforcement statistics are relatively easy to analyze since only 3 percent of the drug arrests involve two or more drugs.

The Special Virtues of Law Enforcement Drug Statistics

For a cross-cultural comparison of drug problems, the major virtue of law enforcement over survey, treatment or emergency room data is the clarity of the meaning of an arrest, trial, sentence or incarceration. By definition, such difficulty with the law is a problem. When drug arrests and imprisonments increase, by definition the drug problem increases. When hospital ER mentions, or the proportion who admit to using 1drugs, or treatment agency rosters increase, this is not necessarily a sign of an increasing drug problem. For example, what problem is represented by the 10,722 ER mentions for marijuana in 1988, when 84 percent of these involved another drug? The annual increase in ER mentions of all major illegal drugs suggests steadily improving data reporting. Likewise, measures of drug use cannot be equated with a problem, since many drug users seldom or never experience a problem with drugs. Even the drug treatment statistics do not easily translate into a problem. Those on long-term methadone maintenance are, by definition, ex-addicts; many others are in treatment against their wishes and consider treatment, not drug use, as their problem.

Every drug arrest (and trial and imprisonment) is a problem, probably the major problem for most users (and the only significant problem for the vast majority of cannabis users). Since most of the 1990 U.S. War On Drugs budget of $25 billion is for police, courts and prisons, drug arrests are a major problem for the U.S. tax-payer.

The increasing fear of and vituperation towards users of illegal drugs, particularly in the U.S., has led to huge increases in funding for drug law enforcement which results in more arrests (trials and imprisonments). For comparative purposes, it does not matter if the indicators are sensitive to public attitudes and consequent government policies, for that alone indicates societal differences.

Maybe in countries where drug users are not vilified and are not afraid of public exposure, and where medical services are considered a right for all citizens, the survey, emergency room and drug treatment indicators would accurately reflect the drug problem, but in the U.S. and the U.K. the law enforcement data is the best measure of the drug problem...and the only measure which permits comparison.

Differences in Drug Problems: U.S. vs. U.K. The Magnitude of Difference - All Illegal Drugs

The fundamental difference between the U.S. and the U.K. drug problem is sheer magnitude. In 1988 the per capita ratio for drug arrests was 10:1 (1,155,000 in the U.S.; under 31,000 "persons dealt with for drugs offences" in Britain. To make a per capita ratio one must account for a 4/1 U.S./U.K. population difference.) Excluding marijuana/cannabis, the per capita arrest ratio was 35:1 (763,600 arrests in the U.S.; 5,400 offences in the U.K). To equate the drug problem in the two countries is liké equating nasty pussy cats and lions. Pet owners, animal tamers, experts and government officials overlook this fundamental difference at their own peril.

The U.S:U.K. per capita ratio for incarcerated drug offenders is even higher — 13:1. ( In mid-1988, 3,200 of the 37,300 sentenced prisoners in Britain were in for drugs. At roughly the same time, there were 825,000 persons incarcerated in the U.S. — 581,000 in state and federal prisons at the end of 1987 22 and 344,000 in local jails in 1988.23 As a conservative estimate, 20 percent of them, 165,000, were serving time for drugs. This is based on data from four sources. Combining all 1983-86 cases on the five-state OBTS data, 15 percent of the prisoners and 18 percent of the local jail inmates were sentenced on drug charges.24 In N.Y. State, the prison inmate population at the end of the year went from 10 percent in 1983 to 25 percent in 1988.25 In Florida26 and California27 the percentage of new prisoners admitted for drug charges doubled from 1983 to 1986 (from 12 percent to 23 percent), and increased over a fifth again from 1986 to 1987 (to 28 percent and 29 percent). Since the average prison sentence in the U.S. is well over a year, the percentage serving drug charges will be lower for current than for newly admitted prisoners. In California at the end of 1987, the major offense of 18 percent of the (66,100) state prisoners was drugs.)

The U.S.:U.K. drug imprisonment ratio is going to increase because of different government penal policies. Recent British policy is to reduce the number of prisoners, especially those on drug charges. In 1988 the number of offenders known to the Home Office was the highest ever, yet the number receiving unsuspended prison sentences was lower than any of the previous four years. Further, "the Home Office was trying to persuade the courts to keep users, rather than dealers, out of jail and put them on a probation order which included treatment."28 By contrast, in the U.S. new prison construction, heavier drug law sentences, and more police and court personnel directed at drug users, are continuing to soar, unabated, as they have the past few years.

Different Trends for Different Drugs

The 1980 to 1988 increase in the total number of U.S. and U.K. drug arrests or offenses was similar. In the U.S. they rose 99 percent (from 580,900 to 1,155,200); in the U.K. 73 percent (from 14,500 to 25,100). However, there were very different patterns and trends for the specific drugs which feed into the "total." From 1981 to 1988 non-marijuana/cannabis drug arrests soared 375 percent in the U.S. (159,600 to 762,400) but only 75- percent in the U.K. (3,100 to 5,400). Using a shorter time frame, from 1985 to 1988, U.K. non-cannabis offences declined 31 percent (7,900 to 5,400) while in the U.S. they more than doubled (360,300 to 762,400).

In measuring trends in the use of legal drugs it would be stupid to combine data for alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. Similarly, epidemiologists do not combine data for measles, AIDS and the flu. Except for their illegality, it seems unscientific to consider as one the users of opiates, excitants (like cocaine), and cannabis. When considered separately, each of these three illegal drugs have unique roles either within the U.S. or the U.K., and trends for any specific drug are not parallel in the two countries.

Cocaine Trends: In the U.S., cocaine's popularity began to rise in the early 1980s, and skyrocket by the mid-1980s. Today, more Americans are arrested for cocaine than for any other drug. British statistics up to 1988 show no increase in the popularity of cocaine through the 1980s. Offences were virtually the same in 1988 as in 1981 (591 vs. 566). Given recent increases in drug police, the flat arrest rate for cocaine since the mid-1980s actually suggests a decline in usage. British treatment statistics — new cocaine addicts notified to the Home Office — likewise show no increase from 1984 (the record high of 686) to 1989 (682).

Determining the increase of cocaine arrests in the U.S. is virtually impossible given the typical merger of cocaine and opiates as "narcotics." Cocaine's popularity soared in the mid-1980s, but in some cities it occurred a year or two earlier and in others a year or two later. Based on my reading of: (a) 1980s "offenses" data of the San Francisco police department (which combines cocaine and amphetamines, and where cocaine use did not start to take off until after 1985); (b) arrests since 1986 in N.Y.C. (where heroin arrests, as of 1989, were still rising contrary to the situation in many other U.S. cities); (c) DAWN hospital ER mentions for the entire country (which, as noted, are difficult to interpret); and (d) Florida prison data (which, comparing 1987 -88 to 1985-86 fiscal year data, showed almost a 10-fold increase in cocaine admissions while "other drug" admissions were halved).... I conclude that the cocaine proportion of the nation's "narcotic" arrests rose from 20 percent in 1981 to 40 percent in 1985 to 80 percent in 1988. Thus, U.S. cocaine arrests, I assume, were 14,000 in 1981, 96,000 in 1985, and 384,000 in 1988 (20 percent x 72,100 vs. 40 percent x 239,400 vs. 80 percent of 599,500). By my figuring, U.S. cocaine arrests increased over five-fold from 1981 to 1985 and another three-fold from 1985 to 1988. From 1981 to 1988 the increase in U.S. cocaine arrests was over 2,500 per-cent!

These calculations may underestimate the extent to which cocaine has replaced heroin as the drug of choice in the U.S. A substantial proportion of arrests (and DAWN ER mentions) involve heroin and cocaine, and on the few arrest statistics where type of drug is differentiated the convention, I believe, is to record the "strongest" drug which, for historical reasons, has been cocaine. This occurs even when heroin is of minor interest to the arrestee. So, the one U.S. city, N.Y., which separates opiate and cocaine arrests, 36 percent of opiate, cocaine or crack arrests in 1988 were for opiates (28,083 of 77,356) whereas on a study there based on detailed police reports and interviews with police, 97 percent of the drug-related homicides that year involved cocaine or crack and 1 percent involved heroin to any degree.29

So, any detailed calculations of the proportion of cocaine cases among the narcotics arrestees is speculative. The key point is the staggering increase in U.S. cocaine arrests from 1981 to 1988. The only precedent is for U.S. marijuana arrests from the mid 1960s to the early 1970s, but even at that time marijuana was dealt with far more leniently than cocaine arrests have been through the 1980s. In terms of dollars spent, the pain experienced by users and their families and communities, and the social upheaval which must follow massive cocaine use and dealing in a highly punitive society, the recent cocaine-dominated U.S. situation dwarfs anything even in its own past...and the problem escalated the entire last half of the 1980s. Britain's cocaine problem was teeny at the start of the 1980s, teeny in the middle of the decade, and teeny in 1988. It would require an empiricist more intimate with Britain than I to determine if, over the last half of the 1980s, there were more experts and officials warning about the impending cocaine and crack epidemic coming from the U.S. than there were British citizens tried on cocaine charges.

Heroin Trends: It is impossible to determine if the overall trends in heroin problems in the U.K. mimic those in the U.S. because the U.S. data does not permit a description of trends. National U .S. arrest data combines cocaine and heroin under "narcotic"; where relevant, the local reporting convention is to list a case involving heroin and cocaine as an opiate arrest, thus exaggerating the relative importance of heroin and possibly concealing a decline in its use; the increase in ER mentions over the 1980s is probably a reporting artifact and that increase is substantially lower than even marijuana ERs; and the combination of government funding, community resistance to new clinics, and the impact of AIDS guarantees consistency in the number of heroin addicts in treatment. Data on the age of those seeking ER assistance or treatment for heroin indicate that heroin has been eschewed by up-and-coming cohorts of illegal drug users since the end of the 1970s. When the 1980s began, half of the heroin ERs were under 30; at the end of the decade this was down to 30 percent.

The only arrest data I know of which delineated opiate arrests ("actual offenses") for the entire 1980s is from San Francisco, which contains a quarter of 1 percent of the nation's population, is a very unique metropolis, and since the mid-1980s has had the most AIDS-informed communities of drug injectors in the U.S. Hardly typical. Opiate offenses there rose each year from 1981 to 1986 (from 173 to 627), but then tapered off (to 511 in 1988). In N.Y.C. from 1986-89, opiate arrests rose 62 percent (17,289 to 28,063) while cocaine and crack arrests climbed 90 percent (28,594 to 53,915), but as noted this may exaggerate the relative importance of heroin. My interpretation of the U.S. UCRs, which is as much impressionistic as empirical, is that heroin arrests increased substantially (though less rapidly than in San Francisco) during the early 1980s, then tapered off in mid-decade as cocaine replaced heroin as the drug of choice (which occurred later in San Francisco than in major East Coast cities), and like in San Francisco declined in the late 1980s

In Britain, heroin offenses coming to the attention of the courts soared from 1982 to 1985 (from under 1,000 to over 3,200), then dropped sharply (to under 1,900 by 1988). The pattern reflected in "new heroin addict notifica-tions" is similar to, but not as clear as, the law enforce-ment data. From 1981-85 the number of notifications soared, but has since declined just slightly. Partly this small decline of addict notifications reflects the time lag frorn the onset of use to the desire for treatment; partly it is because Britain's drug injectors since the mid-1980s have especially sought treatment due to the fear of AIDS. Both the time lag and the fear of AIDS will inflate the number of those seeking medical help (reflected in notifications) relative to the number arrested. Thus, as a reflection of trends in heroin use, law enforcement seems better than medical data.

Though the U.S. and U.K heroin trends over the 1980s appear similar, there are two fundamental differ-ences (besides the "pussy cat vs. lion" phenomena). The U.K. arrest figures clearly reflect usage trends; the U.S. data might largely reflect increased enforcement funding and an emphasis on law enforcement. Additionally, the spurt in British heroin use in the mid-1980s occurred mainly among people in their early 20s, though in the U.S. at the same time there were few active heroin addicts much under 30.

MarijuanalCannabis: Although marijuana arrests are still several times higher in the U.S. than the U.K (4:1 per capita), the gap between the two countries has narrowed. This is due to opposite trends. In the U.S., marijuana was the dominant illegal drug problem in the 1970s, to judge from arrests. From 1973 to 1982, over two thirds of U.S. drug arrests were for marijuana. With the subsequent upsurge in "narcotic" arrests, the proportion of U.S. arrests which were for marijuana began to decline in 1982, fell to under 50 percent in 1986 and 34 percent in 1988. There was a minuscule decline in U.S. marijuana arrests from the mid-1970s through 1985, but a clear drop since then.30

In Britain, over three fourths of all drug offences have been for cannabis in every year since 1977, except in 1984 and 1985 when they were just under this. Cannabis remains the dominant British drug problem, as reflected in offence figures, while it is a shrinking problem in the U.S. Were it not for cannabis, the comparison of the U.K. and U.S. drug problems would be between kittens and lions.

Conclusions

The U.S. is certainly "Number 1" in the number of illegal drug users and even more so in the problems besetting them. Does this primacy entitle U.S. drug officials and experts to claim a special wisdom bestowed by experience, or does it indicate a fundamental misreading of the situation?

The notion that U.S. drug problems will, like an epidemic, contaminate other lands follows from the ideol-ogy of the War On Drugs. Evil, from that perspective, resides in chemicals...as in the beginning it resided in the apple. According to War On Drug proponents, societies similar to the U.S., once they have tasted the drug (in recent years cocaine and crack), will likewise experience a chemical plague. But, if people in fairly similar societies do not experience drugs the way people in the U.S. do — either in their rush to use them or with associated prob-lems — then the chemicals per se are not the carriers of evil, or at least something special about U.S. society generates massive drug problems. If the drug problem which is tearing apart U.S. society is not caused by chemicals, then something about that society is eating away at itself. For example, for inner-city minority youth in the U.S. the measures on education, unemployment, teenage pregnancy, single-parent families, homelessness, and medical care all suggest a societal calamity apart from drugs. The epidemic notion of drugs serves as a cover, a diversion, a scapegoating intended, consciously or uncon-sciously, to avoid some very real crises of U.S. life. Unfor-tunately, this projection not only manages to avoid meaningful contact with the underlying non-chemical sore spots of U.S. society but, by buttressing the national and international War On Drugs it contributes to a host of substitute problems such as a doubling of prison capacity, a breakdown of the court system, overloading the parole and probation systems, and a failed AIDS prevention policy.

The magnitude of the U.S.'s "drug problem" is unparalleled (and unimagined and unbelievable to most people) on the British Isles. On a per capita basis, in 1988 there were 10 times as many drug arrests in the U.S. than in Britain and 13 times as many persons incarcerated on drug charges...and these are increasing. Were marijuana/cannabis excluded (say, by legalization) the ratio would be 35:1 or more...and increasing. If these figures reflect differences in usage rates, than U.S. society facilitates the use ofrdrugs, or particularly illegal drugs; if usage rates are much more alike than the law enforcement statistics indicate, then England's drug enforcement policy is very lax or inept, and lax enforcement is not associated with drug problems but the opposite.

The 10:1 or 13:1 or 35:1 ratios are but one aspect of the differences in the drug problems experienced by Britain and America. For each major illegal drug the national trends differ. The past 5 years: marijuana use faded considerably in the U.S. but cannabis has consistently accounted for three fourths of Britain's drug of-fences and over half the imprisonments of drug offenders; cocaine use has zoomed in the U.S. but (through 1988) hardly at all in Britain; and heroin's popularity in the U.S. so faded that the average age of the heroin addict there is now near 40, whereas in Britain heroin popularity peaked in the mid-1980s, especially among persons in their early 20s. In sum, trends for specific illegal drugs in the U.S. and U.K are independent.

Even within the U.S., "drugs" have special appeal to, and consequences for, different sub-groups. As noted earlier, surveys of students or of adults which excluded the homeless and the imprisoned, show a decline in the use of each major drug since the mid-1980s (or earlier), which is the opposite of drug arrest trends which can be viewed as surveys of the very poor and alienated. Separate cultures have their own ups and downs in drug problems, within a country just as between nations. This is illustrated by differences between Angloes (non-Hispanic White), Blacks and Mexican Americans on California's felony drug arrest data for 1982-1988. Over those years, narcotic arrests not quite doubled for Angloes, but increased 430 percent for Mexican Americans and 850 percent for Blacks; marijuana felony arrests declined over 40 percent for Angloes and Blacks, and rose 75 percent for Latinos; and dangerous drug arrests tripled for Angloes, doubled for Latinos, and decreased by more than half for Blacks. Sub-cultural differences would be even clearer if the UCR categoriza-tion did not largely conceal the enormous growth of cocaine use among Blacks and amphetamine use among Angloes, or the decline of PCP use among California's Blacks.

Just as between the U.S. and U.K, so within the U.S. there are "pussy cat and lion" subcultures. In California for 1988, a young Black was 8 times more likely to have been arrested for a drug felony than his Anglo peer...double what it was six years earlier. I'd bet dollars-to-donuts that for the drug which causes the greatest fear in the U.S. — cocaine, or specifically crack — the discrep-ancy in Black vs. Anglo arrests is far greater than 8:1, and that ratio for imprisonment for cocaine is higher still.

In sum, drug use is not an uncontrolled epidemic, spreading between countries or subcultures within the U.S., because it is not an epidemic. No germ crosses national, or subcultural, boundaries. If there is a time-lag before "backward cultures" emulate "number 1 cultures," how long is it supposed to take, and what will the copy-cat culture's year-to-year fluctuations look like? The data examined in this report shows the opposite of a virulent unstoppable epidemic. British drug problems and trends are uniquely their own, as are the U.S.'s.

They may be held in awe, but it is arrogant for lion tamers to make general pronouncements on the care and feeding of all cats, and self-deprecating and stupid for pussy cat owners to believe them and act accordingly.

Footnotes

1 The ruling Conservative Party's 1987 election manifesto boasted: "We have taken the battle against drugs into every corner of the globe where production or trafficking flourishes.... We have strengthened the effectiveness of the police in the fight against drug abuse.... We will continue to make the defeat of the drug trade a key priority." Quoted in Susanne MacGregor, "The Public Debate In The 1980s,": in Drugs and British Society edited by Susanne MacGregor, Routledge, London, 1989. (P. 6)

2 David Mellor, quoted in the Daily Mail, April 18, 1985, requoted in MacGregor, ibid.

3 David Mellor, paraphrased by MacGregor, ibid.

4 Edward Gardner and Robin Corbett, Daily Mail, May 24, 1985, cited by MacGregor, ibid.

5 Robert Power and Brian Wells, "Responding to Crack," Interna-tional Journal of Drug Policy 1(2):13-15 (Sept/Oct 1989).

6 "Mellor Sets Up Task Forces To Tackle Threat Prom Crack," (London) Independent, April 11, 1990.

7 Gallup Polls of 1/85, 4/87, 9/88 and 5/89 reported in Drugs and Crime Facts, 1989, Bureau ofJustice Statistics, U.S. Department ofJustice, 1990. Michael Kagay, "Deficit Raises As Much Alarm As Illegal Drugs," N.Y Times, July 25, 1990, also cit,es 9/89, 11/ 89, 4/90 and 7/90 Gallup Polls. Since 9/89 other fears have increasingly supplanted "drugs" to the U.S. public.

8 I saw two drug documentaries that spring — of an English evangelist's large, successful drug treatment program in Hong Kong, and of Liverpool's harm reduction program which is the antithesis of the War On Drugs. During winter 1989-90 I saw a documentary favoring drug legalization, a four-part series called "Traffik" and an episode on drugs on Yellowthread Street. While I did not watch all drug programs, I may have caught most of them.

9 High school data from Richard Berke, "Survey Shows Use of Drugs By Students Fell Last Year," N.Y Times, February 14, 1990. College students data in Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, Drugs and Crime Facts, 1989, 1990. Data for persons age 18-25 from National Institute On Drug Abuse, NIDA Capsules Overview of The 1988 National Household Survey On Drug Abuse, 1989.

10 "Cocaine use in the past 30 days" for H.S. seniors fell from 6 percent+ to under 3 percent from 1986 to 1989, for college students from 7 percent+ in 1981-84 to under 5 percent in 1987; and for persons age 18-25 from 20 percent in 1979 to 12 percent in 1988.

11 "Marijuana use in the past 30 days" for H.S. seniors declined from 33 percent to 18 percent from 1980-89, for college students from 34 percent to 20 percent from 1980 to 1987, and for adults age 18-25 from 35 percent in 1979 to 16 percent in 1988.

12 Heroin use was too infrequent to register on the H.S. or college student surveys. For adults 18-25, annual use was 0.8 percent in 1979 to 0.3 percent in 1988.

13 National Institute of Justice, U.S. Justice Department, DUF - Drug Use Forecasting July to September 1989.

14 Community Epidemiology Work Group, National Institute on Drug Abuse, proceedings, December 1989, Epidemiologie Trends in Drug Abuse. The cities noted were Detroit, Phoenix and Boston.

15 Treatment data (in the Community Epidemiology Work Group proceedings, op. cit.) shows increases in San Francisco's cocaine clients, and a rise in cocaine and a decline in marijuana clients for both N.Y. and Los Angeles.

16 Home Office Statistical Department, Statistics of the Misuse of Drugs: Addicts Notified To The Home Office, United Kingdom, 1989 and prior years.

17 Angela Burr, "An Inner-City Response To Heroin-Use," Drugs arid British Society, op. cit. (Pp. 77-100)

18 Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department ofJustice, Criminal Cases In Five States, 1983-86. The 5 states include N.Y., California and Pennsylvania, thus ensuring that no one state's data will dominate the total.

19 Home Office Statistic Department, Statistics Of the Misuse of Drugs: Seizures and Offenders Dealt With, United Kingdom, 1988 and Statistics Of the Misuse of Drugs: Seizures and Offenders Dealt 'With, United Kingdom, 1988 - Supplementary Tables...and similar reports for previous years.

20 Home Office, Prison Statistics England and Wales, 1988. Annual reports for 1985-87 were also used for this study.

21 On the British court statistics, in cases involving several drugs each is listed separately. Therefore the sum of specific offenses is greater than the "total" number of cases, but in fact not by much (i.e., in 1988, 3,650 vs. 3,523 for "persons sentenced to immediate custody for drug offenses").

22 Bureau ofJustice St,atistics, U.S. Department ofJustice, Correctional Populations In The U.S., 1987, December 1989.

23 Bureau ofJustice Statistics, U.S. Department ofJustice, Census of Local Jails, 1988, February 1990.

24 Criminal Cases In Five States, 1983-86, op. cit. owrs under-states drug offenses as the cause of incarceration because persons in for parole violations are classed as "public order offenses." Many parole violators were originally sentenced for drugs, and many parole violations involve drugs. (I.e., being caught in a drug raid could result in parole revocation even if not a felony charge.) Urine testing on parolees also increases "public order" violations which directly reflect drug use. From 1983-86, 8 percent of the prisoners and 21 percent of those sent to jail were "public order offenders." Subtracting "public order offenders" from OBTS's 1983-86 totals, 16 percent of the prisoners and 23 percent of inmates in local jails were sentenced on drug charges.

25 New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, Annual Report - Crime and Justice for 1983-1988 (1983 = p. 252; 1988 = p. 271).

26 Florida Department of Corrections, Annual Report - 1987-88 (Pp. 50-53).

27 California Department of Corrections, Offender Information Services, California Prisoners and Parolees 1987 (and 1986), and California Prisoners and Civil Narcotic Addicts 1985 (and 1984 and 1983).

28 "Mellor Sets Up Task Forces To Tackle Threat From Crack," (London) Independent, April 11, 1990.

29 Paul Goldstein, H. Brownstein, P. Ryan and P. Bellucci, "Crack and Homicide In New York City, 1988: A Conceptually Based Event Analysis," Contemporary Drug Problems, 651 -687 (Winter 1989).

30 To smooth out year-to-year 'blips", annual averages were obtained for three year brackets of UCR marijuana arrests. 1974- 76 = 434,300; 1977-79 = 431,700; 1980-82 = 420,500; 1983-85 = 425,800; 1986-88 = 377,400. In N.Y.C., the decline in marijuana arrests has been much steeper, though possibly police there are becoming so preoccupied with "hard drugs" that they neglect marijuana. Cannabis arrests there declined 44 percent from 1986 to 1989 (12,614 to 7,069).