A groundbreaking new study of drug consumption patterns worldwide raises questions about the basis for America’s war on drugs.

Despite America’s tough anti-drug laws and relatively high drinking ages, the U.S. remains by far the most avid consumer of cocaine, marijuana, hashish and alcohol in the world.

That is one finding of the most precise cross-national study of drug consumption to date. This 17-nation survey involved more than 85,000 face-to-face interviews throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. It was done by the World Mental Health Survey Initiative, a project of the World Health Organization (WHO).

The fact that America has a world-class drug habit is hardly news. But the new study also found what may be a costly disconnect between America’s drug policy and its outcomes.

The study “doesn’t answer questions about drug policy,” says co-author James C. Anthony, chair of epidemiology at Michigan State University’s medical school. “But, it raises questions about drug policy that clearly deserve our attention.”

 
Our interactive graphic and audio feature shows the ins and outs of the study, displaying the data from the World Mental Health Institute.

For Anthony, the most pressing question emerging from the data concerns the balance between punishment and treatment. Drug use in Germany, where laws are similar to those of the U.S., was far more prevalent than it was in neighboring Belgium and the Netherlands, which have decriminalized the personal use and possession of marijuana. That difference suggests, according to Anthony, a need for new research that would inform a comprehensive review of our own drug policy.

America’s decision to emphasize criminal sanctions was made more than 35 years ago, contrary to a recommendation by President Richard Nixon’s National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. The Commission recommended what it called “partial prohibition,” similar to Belgium’s policy and unlike the even more lenient policy of the Netherlands.

On the evidence of the new WHO study, the policies of Belgium and the Netherlands apparently have not encouraged marijuana use among the young. At the same time, they appear to have separated the markets for marijuana and cocaine, closing what some have termed the “gateway” from soft to hard drugs.

Tapes of Nixon’s Oval Office conversations that were released in 2002 suggest that the decision to ignore the Commission’s recommendation had little to do with sound, information-based policy-making.

Instead, it was vintage Nixon, conflating drugs with homosexuality, immorality, Communism, anti-war activists and other perceived threats. “Every one of these bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish,” he said (PDF) to chief of staff H. R. Haldeman as the Commission finished its work. “What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob, what is the matter with them?…By God we are going to hit the marijuana thing, and I want to hit it right square in the puss.”

Since then, marijuana arrests have totaled many millions, and America now has a larger percentage of its population in prison of than any other nation.

According to the FBI, there were almost 2 million arrests for drug abuse violations in 2006, making up 13 percent of total arrests. The most recent data on the prison population from the Department of Justice shows that 21 percent of state and 55 percent of federal inmates—a total of 333,000 people—were being held for drug violations. With higher numbers of inmates entering each year and fewer being released, the cost to taxpayers grows ever more enormous.

For Anthony, the solution is hardly a Woodstock-inspired free-for-all. In a report to Congress seven years ago, titled “Informing America’s Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don’t Know Keeps Hurting Us,” Anthony and his co-authors argued that what was needed was more research, without which it would be impossible to devise a rational drug policy. “I wouldn’t advocate legalization,” he says. “I don’t even know what the right policy is because I still believe, as our expert panel did in 2001, that it’s what we don’t know that keeps hurting us.”

What he calls the “shabby” state of current research is “so crude that we should be embarrassed by [it]…We need more definitive evidence on issues of this type because the way we’re currently spending our tax dollars is in the direction of drug control and drug law enforcement more than treatment and prevention, and someone has to ask whether that should be balanced.”