The social demography of drug use

Abstract

This review of the epidemiology of drug use and drug dependence/abuse describes the overall current pattern of use of mood-changing legal and illegal drugs based on the most recently available data, variations in drug use among subgroups in the population, and trends in drug use over time. This is the first systematic attempt to integrate data on patterns of use with data on drug dependence/abuse. In the course of the analysis an effort is made to account for two paradoxes: blacks report the lowest rate of drug use in general population studies, yet constitute the largest category of treated cases or drug-related casualties. Although prevalence of cocaine use in the general population decreased, beginning in 1986, morbidity and mortality related to cocaine increased sharply in 1990.