And young people are increasingly using drugs and at an earlier age. The police made approximately 1,400,000 drug arrests in the United States in 1998 alone. Furthermore, the decline in casual drug use may be unrelated to the war on drugs. Cigarette smoking and consumption of hard liquor and high-cholesterol food, all as dangerous as illegal drug use, declined because of greater awareness of health dangers, not because consumers were jailed or because the government reduced the supply of these substances. During the past decade, opium production has more than doubled in Southeast Asia and cocaine production also increased.
Illegal drugs are cheaper and more potent.
The United States, indeed the world, is awash in illegal drugs. The vast profits resulting from prohibition a markup as great as 17,000 percent have led to worldwide corruption of public officials and widespread violence among drug traffickers and dealers that endangers whole communities, cities, and nations. In our own country, drug-related overdose deaths and drug emergency room visits have increased. Half of seniors in high school report using an illegal drug, and 85 percent of them say illegal drugs are easier to obtain than beer. As the year 2000 begins, we should be mindful that the drug war started about a hundred years ago, when Protestant missionaries in China and other religious groups joined with temperance organizations in convincing Congress that drugs were evil and that drug users were dangerous, immoral people.