Gov't Abandons Best Survey for Counting U.S. Drug Users

The Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring survey (ADAM) was terminated in March, and not one congressmen tried to save it. Now the U.S. is without an accurate estimate of its drug users. That means less funding for research and treatment.

A new study revealing 67 percent of Americans want the government to focus on treatment for drug abusers was met with joy last week. A “truce” in the war on drugs, experts opined, may be just around the corner.

But while the public looks poised to make good, the government is quietly quitting. In March, the nation’s richest source of information about cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine abuse was terminated. Not one congressman tried to save it.
Pioneered by Eric Wish in the 1970s, The Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring survey (ADAM II)—cancelled as a result of budget cuts—went into what has become the virtual hub of America’s drug war: prison.

Originally known as Drug Use Forecasting (DUF), it revolved around the practice of interviewing prisoners and taking urine samples. The procedure was simple: Researchers would speak with arrestees in booking facilities and ask them questions about their drug use. Which ones. How often. For what cost. Who else likes it, too.
Promised (and delivered) confidentiality and anonymity, arrestees had nothing to lose—and, therefore, tons to offer. A urine test offered at the end, always optional, was the final step. It was an objective test that, for the first time, let the enormity of the drug problem in America rear its ugly head.

Instead of filling a hole in the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)—which doesn’t account for the homeless or prisoners—ADAM’s numbers blew it out of the water. The only large-scale measuring system to rely on an objective measure of recent drug use, it provided more accurate information than any survey in history. Anyone that disagreed need only look at the numbers.
In 2010, NSDUH reported just 60,000 daily or near daily heroin users in American; the number, according to the RAND Corporation (a nonprofit research organization that improves policy through research), was closer to 1 million.

Month-to-month reports exposed an even more alarming inconsistency. In 2010, NSDUH estimated roughly 239,000 monthly heroin users; the RAND Corporation counted 1.5 million.
While the NSDUH’s numbers on marijuana came close to those represented in ADAM, its estimates on hard drugs were a mere fraction of the real picture. Those taking NSDUH’s voluntary survey either don’t use hard drugs, or don’t tell the truth about it. Without an accompanying urine sample, the lie becomes the truth. ADAM picked up where it left off. Reaching people without cell phones, permanent residences, or any residence at all. Underprivileged. Homeless. Addicts. Criminals. In the eyes of drug policy experts: the causalities of the war on drugs. In the eyes of everyone else: the problem.

But while the public looks poised to make good, the government is quietly quitting. In March, the nation’s richest source of information about cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine abuse was terminated. Not one congressman tried to save it.
Pioneered by Eric Wish in the 1970s, The Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring survey (ADAM II)—cancelled as a result of budget cuts—went into what has become the virtual hub of America’s drug war: prison. Originally known as Drug Use Forecasting (DUF), it revolved around the practice of interviewing prisoners and taking urine samples.

The procedure was simple: Researchers would speak with arrestees in booking facilities and ask them questions about their drug use. Which ones. How often. For what cost. Who else likes it, too.
Promised (and delivered) confidentiality and anonymity, arrestees had nothing to lose—and, therefore, tons to offer. A urine test offered at the end, always optional, was the final step. It was an objective test that, for the first time, let the enormity of the drug problem in America rear its ugly head.
Instead of filling a hole in the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)—which doesn’t account for the homeless or prisoners—ADAM’s numbers blew it out of the water.

The only large-scale measuring system to rely on an objective measure of recent drug use, it provided more accurate information than any survey in history. Anyone that disagreed need only look at the numbers.
In 2010, NSDUH reported just 60,000 daily or near daily heroin users in American; the number, according to the RAND Corporation (a nonprofit research organization that improves policy through research), was closer to 1 million. Month-to-month reports exposed an even more alarming inconsistency. In 2010, NSDUH estimated roughly 239,000 monthly heroin users; the RAND Corporation counted 1.5 million.

While the NSDUH’s numbers on marijuana came close to those represented in ADAM, its estimates on hard drugs were a mere fraction of the real picture. Those taking NSDUH’s voluntary survey either don’t use hard drugs, or don’t tell the truth about it. Without an accompanying urine sample, the lie becomes the truth. ADAM picked up where it left off. Reaching people without cell phones, permanent residences, or any residence at all. Underprivileged. Homeless. Addicts. Criminals. In the eyes of drug policy experts: the causalities of the war on drugs. In the eyes of everyone else: the problem.

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