Cocaine is cheaper than ever, and heroin is selling at purity levels three times greater than those of the mid-1980s. And drug abuse remains rampant. Looking at numbers like these, it may seem as if the nation's drug problem is all but intractable. But it isn't. In all, there are an estimated 3.6 million hard-core users in the United States.
Heavy users are disproportionately poor, unemployed and members of minority groups.
No headway can be made in alleviating the nation's drug problem without finding a way to get such users off drugs . . . . A good place to begin is suggested by a 1994 RAND study. Rydell and Everingham developed a model of the national cocaine market, then fed into it more than 20 variables, from seizure data to survey responses. They were amazed at the results. Rooted as it is in low income communities, that problem is inseparable from the nation's other social ills, like inadequate housing, poor schooling and unemployment.