On the demand side of the drug war, what portion of US demand is coke vs. marijuana?

[LuckyLib]

[cliffordu]

1. Or Crystal meth....

[blogslut]

2. I don't know

Personally, I think there's more to this than just drugs, guns and gangs.

What kills me is that while we spend all this time pondering cross-border drug trafficking, meth use lives on.

[truedelphi]

3. I think I remember hearing the hard drugs being about ten percent of the

Drug Trade.

[msongs]

4. coke is the world's best selling....soda nt

[B o d i]

5. I found this with some googling. It's dated 2001, but I imagine the percentages are roughly similar

http://www.policyalmanac.org/crime/archive/drug_abuse.shtml


Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug. In 2001, it was used by 76 percent of current illicit drug users. Approximately 56 percent of current illicit drug users consumed only marijuana, 20 percent used marijuana and another illicit drug, and the remaining 24 percent used an illicit drug but not marijuana in the past month. Therefore, about 44 percent of current illicit drug users in 2001 (7.0 million Americans) used illicit drugs other than marijuana and hashish, with or without using marijuana as well.

Of the 7.0 million current users of illicit drugs other than marijuana, 4.8 million were current users of psychotherapeutic drugs. This represents 2.1 percent of the population aged 12 or older, which was higher than the rate observed in 2000 (1.7 percent). Of those who reported current use of any psychotherapeutics, 3.5 million used pain relievers, 1.4 million used tranquilizers, 1.0 million used stimulants, and 0.3 million used sedatives.

In 2001, an estimated 1.7 million (0.7 percent) of Americans aged 12 or older were current cocaine users and 406,000 (0.2 percent) were current crack users.

Approximately 1.3 million (0.6 percent) of the population aged 12 or older were current users of hallucinogens.

In 2001, an estimated 8.1 million (3.6 percent) of Americans aged 12 or older had tried "Ecstasy" at least once in their lifetime. This is more than the estimated 6.5 million (2.9 percent) lifetime users in 2000. The number of current users in 2001 was estimated to be 786,000 (0.3 percent). The 2000 NHSDA was not designed to report past month or past year use of Ecstasy.

In 2001, approximately 957,000 persons aged 12 or older had used Oxycontin nonmedically at least once in their lifetime. This number is higher than estimates from both 1999 (221,000) and 2000 (399,000). The NHSDA was not designed to report past month or past year use of Oxycontin.

Current heroin use was reported by an estimated 123,000 Americans in 2001. This represents 0.1 percent of the population aged 12 or older and is similar to the number estimated for 2000 (130,000).

[Fumesucker]

6. To put things in perspective...

About 75% of adult Americans consume alcoholic beverages at least occasionally.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. Difference is alcohol is a legal drug

and quite damaging if abused too...

[Fumesucker]

10. I did not know that..

/Johnny Carson

But we get all bent out of shape about "drugs" which only a tiny minority of Americans indulge in the use of while ignoring the "quite damaging if abused" beam in our own eye.

Which was my point.

[LuckyLib]

9. Thanks, Bodi. It's tough to imagine all that killing at the border is going on over pot.

Especially given that there's an annual crop of it grown here as well.

[Kip Humphrey]

12. Illegality of marijuana facilitates impulse shopping and peer-pressure buys of hard drugs.

Its the distribution network made possible by marijuana prohibition that enables widespread availability and marketing of hard drugs.

[Mike 03]

7. I'm no expert, but a lot of the marijuana is coming from Canada, so I'm guessing

that the more lucrative drugs coming up from the south are cocaine, meth (although that is easy to produce in the U.S., the southwest in particular), and possibly heroin, but shipped via Asia through South America.

[Fumesucker]

11. 123,000 is simply not that big a market..

The largest "drug" market by far and away in the USA is for alcohol, and yet, unlike the Prohibition years, there is zero violence surrounding the marketing of that drug.

Correlation does not imply causation but sometimes you just have to wonder.