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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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US DC: Marijuana Is The Drug Of Choice For Young, Study Says
ccguide Sunday 01 Jul 2001 Pubdate: Sat, 30 Jun 2001 Source: Detroit News (MI) Copyright: 2001, The Detroit News Contact: Website: http://www.detnews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/126 Author: Greg Krikorian, Los Angeles Times Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis) MARIJUANA IS THE DRUG OF CHOICE FOR YOUNG, STUDY SAYS WASHINGTON -- While marijuana use during the 1990s held steady in the nation's general population, its popularity among 18- to 20-year-olds arrested for crimes soared and is now epidemic, according to a report released Friday by the U.S. Department of Justice. Moreover, the study of 23 cities found that as marijuana use grew, crack and heroin use declined significantly -- raising questions about the long-debated inevitability that marijuana use will lead to harder drugs. "I think the findings are powerfully significant," said the study's co-author, Andrew Golub, a senior researcher at the National Development and Research Institute, a New York-based private, nonprofit foundation. "Fifteen years ago, we documented that the use of cocaine, particularly crack cocaine, was rampant among arrestees. Five years ago, we documented that crack (use) was declining," Golub said. "What we see today is that the drug of choice among arrestees is marijuana, and that it is not serving as a gateway to something else," Golub said. Nationally, the study found, the rate of 18- to 20-year-old youths who tested positive for marijuana at the time of their arrests for any crime rose from 25 percent in 1991 to 57 percent in 1996. From 1996 to 1999, the study found, marijuana use among that group of youths rose to about 60 percent and remained at that percentage through 1999, the most recent year for which statistics were available. The high percentage accounted for most of the increase reported among all adults, 18 years and over, who tested positive for marijuana after their arrests in the 1990s, the study found. In that group, the study says, marijuana use went from about 20 percent of the arrested population in 1990 to about 37 percent from 1996 on. By comparison, the rate of marijuana use in the nation's general population has remained static at about 5 percent for more than a decade, according to the study. "Marijuana appears to have become the drug of choice among youths coming of age in the 1990s who tend to get in trouble with the law in the same way that crack had been the drug of choice previously," the report says. The research, Golub said, suggests that the spike in marijuana use is attributable to several factors, including its acceptance as a far-less-damaging alternative to harder narcotics. "Many of these individuals have seen the devastation resulting from crack and heroin use and they blame their parents' experiences on their use of these drugs," he said. "And this explains why for many of these youths, use of marijuana is perceived as an act of resilience" that is celebrated in everything from clothing to music. "This is a social phenomenon," Golub said. "These youths define marijuana as not a drug." The study was funded by the National Institute of Justice and is part of a larger project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The 23 cities involved in the study are Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, Calif., Portland, Ore., Phoenix, Ariz., Denver, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Texas, Omaha, Neb., St. Louis, Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit, Cleveland, New Orleans, Birmingham, Ala., Atlanta, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York. - --- MAP posted-by: GD
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