Pulse Check: Trends in Drug Abuse provides a snapshot of local drug abuse situations throughout the country. The focus of Pulse Check is on trends in heroin, cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine within a six-month period. Bringing together data from treatment providers, law enforcement professionals, ethnographers and epidemiologists, Pulse Check helps policy makers and concerned citizens understand the true cost of drug abuse in America today. As a critical qualitative measure of drug abuse, Pulse Check complements, rather than supplants, other methods of estimating the extent of drug abuse.
This edition of Pulse Check reports the following:
- The Northeast region experienced a decline from one-third to 23 percent of treatment clients listing cocaine or crack as their primary drug as did the West and Southwest, whereas rates remained about the same in the Mid-Atlantic/South and Midwest regions.
- Treatment facilities in all regions report no change in the prevalence of heroin use among their clients but some changes were found regarding route of administration with a larger proportion of clients entering who primarily snort rather than inject heroin in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic/South.
- All ethnographic sources described marijuana use as widespread, stable, or increasing. Only sources in Chicago related a possible decrease among youth.
- Consistent with the last issue of Pulse Check, the average age of marijuana users in treatment seems to be dropping. In the Mid-Atlantic/South, 51 percent of clients receiving treatment for marijuana use over the past 6 months were under 20 years old.
- The majority of clients receiving treatment for marijuana use in all regions are treatment novices; this indicates, unlike other treatment clients, a younger, less experienced population seeking marijuana treatment.
- There are more treatment admissions for methamphetamine than alcohol abuse in Honolulu, where methamphetamine is considered the most problematic drug.
Taken together, Pulse Check offers guarded optimism for the future of drug abuse in America. It shows that when Americans become concerned about specific types of drug abuse, they can and will take steps to stop the problem. But Pulse Check also shows that we are in danger of losing another generation of youth to drug abuse. We as a nation must band together to let all of our children know of the dangers inherent in all drugs of abuse, whether it be heroin, marijuana, cocaine or methamphetamine. Read this document to gauge the nature of America’s drug abuse problem: resolve to take action by taking a stand against drugs in your family and community.
Barry R. McCaffrey
Director |
