There was encouraging news Tuesday when the Bush administration unveiled its national anti-drug strategy here in Denver: Overall, teen drug use is down. White House drug czar John P. Walters said the decline amounts to 19 percent since 2001. That’s 700,000 fewer teens using drugs, an impressive decline. And though the nation, and Colorado, have a long way to go, it’s great to see progress.
Walters says he traveled to Denver to release the administration’s annual drug control strategy because the city is a “model of what we see and what we’re trying to face.” He dismissed cynics who wondered if he chose Denver because a majority of voters last fall approved legalizing adults’ possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. (A similar proposal could be on the statewide ballot this November.) Even if he did, who could argue that drug use is a serious problem among our youth or that marijuana is the drug of choice?
Overall drug use is declining in Denver and in Colorado as a whole, yet it is clear from an October report from the state Department of Human Services’ Alcohol and Drug Abuse Division that the state faces serious challenges. There are an estimated 253,000 substance abusers in Colorado 12 years of age and older; a 2005 national study ranked Colorado first among the states in illicit drug use, other than marijuana, and in the use of cocaine in the previous year. The drug-related death rate per 100,000 population rose from 39.3 in 2002 to 41.8 in 2003, the report said.
This year’s White House strategy amounts to an expansion of efforts started in the past, such as encouraging more high schools to screen students for drug use and developing more treatment programs. Walters said the number of districts participating has grown by about one a week since last spring.
Walters presented the 2006 strategy at a University of Colorado School of Medicine youth substance abuse center located at the Fort Logan mental health campus. He said that nationwide more youths seek treatment for marijuana use than for alcohol or other drugs. Gov. Bill Owens accompanied Walters and warned that marijuana is a precursor to greater drug use. He also vowed that if an initiative makes it to the November ballot in Colorado proposing to legalize an ounce of marijuana for people 21 or older, a huge effort would be mobilized to oppose it.
Denver’s chief prosecutor Mitch Morrissey said drug use among Denver youth not only mimics national trends, but this generation of city kids is “getting in trouble less” than their predecessors.
