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How the opioid epidemic became America’s worst drug crisis ever, in 15 maps and charts - Vox

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How the opioid epidemic became America’s worst drug crisis ever, in 15 maps and charts - Vox

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Evidence of how the opioid epidemic was so bad and how it killed a large amount of people.

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America is in the middle of its deadliest drug crisis ever.

With all the other news going on, it can be easy to lose track of this fact. But it's true: In 2015, more than 52,000 people died of drug overdoses, nearly two-thirds of which were linked to opioids like Percocet, OxyContin, heroin, and fentanyl. That's more drug overdose deaths than any other period in US history - even more than past heroin epidemics, the crack epidemic, or the recent meth epidemic. And the preliminary data we have from 2016 suggests that the epidemic may have gotten worse since 2015.

This situation did not develop overnight, but it has quickly become one of the biggest public health crises facing America. To understand how and why, I've put together a series of maps and charts that show the key elements of the epidemic - from its start through legal painkillers prescribed in droves by doctors to the recent rise of the highly potent opioid fentanyl.

1) Drug overdoses now kill more people than gun homicides and car crashes combined

To understand just how bad the opioid epidemic has gotten, consider these statistics: Drug overdoses in 2015 were linked to more deaths than car crashes or guns, and in fact killed more people than car crashes and gun homicides combined. Drug overdoses in 2015 also killed more people in the US than HIV/AIDS did during its peak in 1995. So just as HIV/AIDS lives in the American mind as a horrible epidemic, the current opioid epidemic should too.

2) Drug, painkiller, heroin, and other opioid overdose deaths are still on the rise

It took years of increasing deaths to get to this point, but the opioid epidemic has only gotten worse over time. The result is horrifying: Between 1999 and 2015, more than 560,000 people in the US died to drug overdoses - a death toll larger than the entire population of Atlanta.

The epidemic has by and large been caused by the rise in opioid overdose deaths. First, opioid painkiller overdoses began to rise, as doctors began to fill out a record number of prescriptions for the drugs in an attempt to treat patients' pain conditions. Then, people hooked on painkillers began to move over to heroin as they or their sources of drugs lost their prescriptions. And recently, more people have begun moving to fentanyl, an opioid that's even more potent and cheaper than heroin. The result is a deadly epidemic that so far shows no signs of slowing down.

3) Opioid overdoses are one reason US life expectancy declined for the first time in decades

In 2015, US life expectancy dropped for the first time in decades. There are many causes behind the drop, including rising rates of diabetes, obesity, and suicide. But a big reason for the decrease was the rise in alcohol poisonings and drug overdoses.

4) The epidemic is much worse in some states than others

Not every state in America has been equally impacted by the opioid epidemic. States like West Virginia, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Ohio have been hit particularly hard, suffering far more deaths than even their neighbors on an annual basis. And the epidemic has generally been concentrated along the Rust Belt and New England - due in large part, it seems, to the enormous number of painkiller prescriptions that doctors doled out in those areas.

5) By and large, the drug overdose epidemic has hit white Americans the hardest

The drug overdose epidemic hasn't hit people of all racial groups equally either, with white Americans suffering far more overdose deaths than their black and Latino peers. As the chart above shows, this is a shift from before the 2000s, when past drug crises tended to hit black, urban communities much harder.

One reason for the disparity may, ironically, be racism against nonwhite Americans. Studies show that doctors are more reluctant to prescribe painkillers to minorities, because doctors mistakenly believe that minority patients feel less pain or are more likely to misuse and sell the drugs. In a perverse way, this shielded minority patients from the tsunami of opioid painkiller prescriptions that got white Americans hooked on opioids and led to a wave of deadly overdoses.

6) Americans consume more opioids than any other country

This is perhaps the most important chart to understand why America in particular is suffering from the epidemic: Simply put, the US consumes far more opioid painkillers than any other country in the world. When a country collectively consumes more of a deadly, addictive drug, it's obviously going to have more deaths as a result of those drugs.

7) In some states, doctors have filled out more painkiller prescriptions than there are people

So why do Americans consume so many opioids? In short, it's because doctors have prescribed a lot of them. Starting in the 1980s and '90s, doctors were under pressure to take pain more seriously. There was some good reason for that: About 100 million US adults suffer from chronic pain, according to a 2011 report from the Institute of Medicine. So doctors - under pressure from drug companies, medical organizations, government agencies, and pain patient advocates - resorted to opioids.

The result: In 2012, US physicians wrote 259 million prescriptions for opioid painkillers - enough to give a bottle of pills to every adult in the country. And these pills didn't just end up in patients' hands; they also proliferated to black markets, were shared among friends and family, landed in the hands of teens who rummaged through parents' medicine cabinets, and so on.

8) Drug companies have made a lot of money from opioids

One of the undeniable contributors to the opioid epidemic is drug companies. Seeing the demand for doctors to take pain more seriously, drug companies pitched newer products like OxyContin as the big medical solution. The marketing was extremely misleading, often presenting these drugs as safer and more effective than other painkillers and opioids on the market - when these drugs were in fact extremely addictive and dangerous.

Ultimately, some drug companies would pay for their misleading marketing. Purdue Pharma, producer of OxyContin, in 2007 paid hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for its false claims. And Purdue and other opioid producers remain in legal battles over the drugs to this day.

9) At the same time, Americans report greater levels of pain

Despite the increase in painkiller prescriptions, studies show that Americans generally report higher levels of chronic pain than they did before the epidemic started.

This gets to a crucial point in the opioid epidemic: Despite drug companies' marketing, opioid painkillers may not be an effective treatment for chronic pain. There's simply no good scientific evidence that opioid painkillers can actually treat long-term chronic pain as patients grow tolerant of opioids' effects, but there's plenty of evidence that prolonged use can result in very bad complications, including a higher risk of addiction, overdose, and death.

Yet painkillers, due to how they work, can actually trick patients into believing that the drugs are effective for chronic pain. As Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke, author of Drug Dealer, MD, recently explained:

It's absolutely true that if you were to get opioids for your pain, it would be like a magical cure for about a month or maybe two. But after a while, there's a very high likelihood that they would stop working. And then you would have two problems: You would have your pain, and you would be dependent on this drug and experience painful withdrawal if you try to get off [opioids].

So after prolonged use, some patients who try to stop taking opioids will feel a sudden surge of pain. They'll likely think the pain they're feeling is their chronic pain coming back in full force now that the painkillers are gone. In reality, the opioids have likely stopped working on the original chronic pain due to tolerance, and the surge of pain is an entirely new pain from drug dependence withdrawal. Only by slowly weaning themselves off opioids can they permanently stop this new withdrawal-induced pain.

There's also evidence that opioids can make pain worse. Opioids might make people more sensitive to pain. They might weaken the bones, leading to painful fractures.

And they might get people to behave in ways that expose them to greater injury, which of course would lead to far more pain. Lembke gave an example of someone popping extra pills to let them do more yard work: "If you take additional opioids, you can't hear the signals from your body about what you shouldn't be doing, and then maybe you're going to do some long-term damage above what's already been done."

10) Painkillers are often prescribed for long periods of time, even though there's no evidence they effectively treat chronic pain

Despite the lack of evidence for opioids' effectiveness in treating chronic pain, doctors have resorted to prescribing the opioids to patients for exorbitant periods of time. (I can't even count the number of people, from friends to family to colleagues, who have told me that a doctor prescribed extra weeks of pills "just to be safe.")

This, it turns out, is extremely dangerous: A recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that the risk of dependency increases dramatically for each day someone is prescribed opioids. Overly long prescriptions, then, contribute to the cycle of addiction, overdose, and death that's spread across the US in the past few years.

Ideally, doctors should still be able to get painkillers to patients who truly need them (and they can work for some individual chronic pain patients) - after, for example, evaluating the patient's history of drug addiction. But doctors, who weren't conducting even such basic checks, are now being told to give more thought to their prescriptions.

Yet if opioids aren't the answer to chronic pain, what is? There are alternative treatments, although these can involve more work (and money) than just taking a pill - such as physical therapy, massage, and acupuncture. More exotic but less tested ideas include medical marijuana and kratom.

But the reality is that, at some level, some patients struggling with chronic pain may just have to learn to live with the pain. This may sound cruel, but it's something that's asked of patients dealing with other chronic conditions when medicine just has no good answers. For example, a patient with heart disease might be told that she needs to eat less or adjust her activity level - potentially ruining her interests or hobbies - to avoid a heart attack as she becomes older.

"You can't use the pills to extend your limits. You have to accept that there's some things you just won't be able to do anymore," Lembke told me. "People are very resistant to that idea. I think that speaks to some of the core hope for at least Americans that they should really be able to keep doing what they were doing in their 20s, and that somehow a doctor should be able to fix them and make that happen, instead of accepting that maybe that's something that they just can't do anymore."

11) States are now cracking down on opioid prescriptions

As the problem with opioid painkillers continues, different levels of government and regulatory bodies have taken steps to restrict their use. Some states, for example, have limited how long opioid painkillers can be prescribed. The idea is simple: After years of letting these painkillers run amok and kill tens of thousands of people, doctors need to be told to take a much more conservative approach to dangerous drugs.

12) Opioid users moved from painkillers to heroin, because heroin is so cheap

As governments and regulators cracked down on painkillers, however, many people addicted to the drugs didn't just stop using. Many instead resorted to another opioid to fill their habit: heroin. A 2014 study in JAMA Psychiatry found many painkiller users were moving on to heroin, and a 2015 CDC analysis found people who are addicted to prescription painkillers are 40 times more likely to be addicted to heroin. Not all painkiller users went this way, and not all heroin users started with painkillers, but painkiller use played a big role in leading more people to heroin.

The main reason for this: Heroin is extremely cheap in the black market, despite law enforcement efforts for decades to push up the price of drugs by cracking down on the illicit supply. In fact, over the past few decades, the price of heroin in the US has dramatically dropped - to the point that it's not only cheaper than opioid painkillers sold in the black market, but frequently even candy bars.

But heroin is also more potent and, therefore, deadlier than opioid painkillers. So even though not every painkiller user went to heroin, just enough did to cause the big spike in heroin overdose deaths that America has seen over the past few years. So now more people die of overdoses linked to heroin than die of overdoses linked to commonly prescribed painkillers.

That doesn't mean cracking down on painkillers was a mistake. It appeared to slow the rising number of painkiller deaths, and may have prevented doctors from prescribing the drugs - or letting them proliferate - to new generations of people who'd develop drug use disorders. So the crackdown did lead to more heroin deaths, but it will hopefully prevent future populations of drug users, who could have suffered even more overdose deaths.

13) Fentanyl has become a growing problem as well

As if the rise in heroin deaths wasn't bad enough, over the past few years there has been evidence of another opioid that's even more potent than heroin leading to more drug overdose deaths: fentanyl. Sometimes drug users purposely seek out this drug. But often it's laced in other substances, like heroin and cocaine, without the users knowing it, leading to an overdose.

The fact that the efforts to crack down on the supply of opioid painkillers has only led people to even more dangerous drugs hints at another lesson from the epidemic: Just cutting access to opioids isn't enough. As long as people are addicted, they're going to try to find ways to satisfy that addiction, even if it means using more dangerous drugs.

So while cutting access to opioids might in the long term stop the creation of new generations of people with drug use disorders, in the shorter term the country needs to devise solutions for how to get people to stop using drugs and how to make their drug use less deadly and dangerous. That's where drug treatment, including medication-assisted treatment that replaces dangerous opioid use with safer opioids like buprenorphine, and harm reduction efforts, such as clean needle exchanges, can help.

14) Anti-anxiety drugs are involved in more overdoses as well

Opioid painkillers aren't the only legal drug that's killing more people. Federal data shows that benzodiazepines, such as Xanax and Valium, are also increasingly involved in overdose deaths.

This speaks to another aspect of the drug overdose epidemic: It's not always just one drug killing people. Very often, people use multiple drugs, from painkillers to cocaine to alcohol. This is especially bad because different drugs can heighten other drugs' risk of overdose. Alcohol and benzodiazepines, for instance, are known to compound the overdose risk of opioids.

The data speaks to this: Most benzodiazepine overdoses have involved opioids in the past few years, as the chart above shows. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention previously found that 31 percent of opioid painkiller overdose deaths in 2011 were also linked to benzodiazepines.

15) Most people who meet the definition for a drug use disorder don't get treatment

While drug treatment may be the true solution to the opioid epidemic, the reality is it remains inaccessible to a lot of people. According to 2014 federal data, at least 89 percent of people who met the definition for having a drug use disorder didn't get treatment. And that's likely an underestimate: Federal household surveys leave out incarcerated and homeless individuals, who are more likely to have serious, untreated drug problems.

The reasons why vary. People might not have insurance to pay for drug treatment. If they do have insurance, their plans may not fully cover drug treatment. And even if their plans do cover drug treatment, there might not be enough space in treatment facilities to take them, leading to weeks- or months-long waiting periods for care.

In general, all of this suggests that the country as a whole needs to put more resources toward making drug treatment options more widespread, accessible, and affordable. So far, Congress has taken some steps to that end, including a recent $1 billion boost in drug treatment funding over two years. But as so many people with drug use disorders struggle to get into treatment and the opioid epidemic continues, the call will likely grow for more action.

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How the opioid epidemic became America's worst drug crisis ever, in 15 maps and charts

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America is in the middle of its deadliest drug crisis ever. With all the other news going on, it can be easy to lose track of this fact. But it's true: In 2015, more than 52,000 people died of drug overdoses, nearly two-thirds of which were linked to opioids like Percocet, OxyContin, heroin, and fentanyl.

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The Crack Epidemic - The History of Crack Cocaine - Drug-Free World

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The Crack Epidemic - The History of Crack Cocaine - Drug-Free World

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I used this website to learn about what was going on during the crack epidemic. Most of the information in this article I already had but it was good confirmation that what I was writing about was reliable.

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The Crack Epidemic - The History of Crack Cocaine - Drug-Free World

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Watch Truth About Drugs Documentary Video & Learn About Substance Addiction. Get The Facts About Painkillers, Marijuana, Cocaine, Meth & Other Illegal Drugs.

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Statistics about the opioid crisis.

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Opioid crisis weighs on New Hampshire’s chief medical examiner - The Boston Globe

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Opioid crisis weighs on New Hampshire’s chief medical examiner - The Boston Globe

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Explained how bad the opioid crisis was.

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CONCORD, N.H. - On some days, Dr. Jennie Duval calls as many as six families after fatal overdoses - some of the families stunned and heartbroken, some of them resigned to a death they saw coming.

This, Duval said, is the most difficult part of her job as the only full-time medical examiner in New Hampshire, which leads the nation in per-capita deaths caused by fentanyl and other synthetic opioids.

"It's not like I can rush the call," said Duval, the state's chief medical examiner, as she described a heart-wrenching notification. "It takes a lot of time. But sometimes I feel like a broken record."

The crush of fatal overdoses has forced the office to abandon its practice of conducting an autopsy on each suspected overdose victim. Still, Duval has no alternative but to work a grueling schedule of 10- to 12-hour days that drains her physically and emotionally.

"If this epidemic is cresting, I'm not feeling it," Duval said in a conference room at Concord Hospital, the strain of another long day visible on her face. "There are many more autopsies that I'm not doing."

A Chelsea physician writes of the importance - and rewards - of treating opioid addiction in primary care.

Duval's only assistance comes from two contractors who each work five days a month. Among them, they conducted 548 autopsies last year - about one-third for overdoses in a state where 476 people are confirmed or suspected to have died from drugs in 2017. Duval conducted nearly 300 autopsies, far above the profession's suggested limit of 250.

The state Legislature has approved funding for two physicians to join the office. But in the ultra-competitive field of forensic pathology - a limited pool of doctors to fill many openings in the country, coupled with the challenge of recruiting in a rural state with long winters - Duval is crossing her fingers that help arrives soon.

"It takes a certain kind of person to do this job," she said. "It's not pleasant. You're dealing with death every day."

The state's former chief medical examiner, Dr. Thomas Andrew, said the opioid epidemic was part of the reason he retired last year to pursue a calling for the ministry.

The office's overall caseload has more than doubled since 1997, the year Andrew became chief medical examiner, and reached 1,820 in 2017. Twenty years ago, opioids were linked to less than 10 percent of deaths referred to the office, Andrew estimated.

"It was simply a slowly unfolding catastrophe that, even in seeing it coming, we didn't have the surge capacity to account for it," Andrew said. "The casework was getting done, don't get me wrong, but the numbers became so overwhelming."

The medical examiner's office investigates fewer than 20 percent of the approximately 12,000 people who die in New Hampshire each year. They include victims of suicide, accidents, and sudden, unexpected deaths of people under 60.

The number of cases that include an autopsy makes up about one-third of all referrals, although they are mandatory for some cases, such as homicides.

Choosing which overdose victims to autopsy "is a gamble," Duval said.

Some cases seem obvious - a syringe in the arm, opioids near the body, and a documented history of drug abuse, she said. But even cases that appear straightforward can involve factors that are discovered only through an autopsy, Duval said. Perhaps a pulmonary embolism will be found. Perhaps other damage might have caused or contributed to the death.

And as the opioid crisis continues, autopsies can yield valuable information about the effects of synthetic drugs such as fentanyl.

"It's the right thing to do," Duval said. "You want to have every piece of the puzzle."

New Hampshire is not alone in its staffing struggles.

Dr. Kim Collins, a South Carolina physician who is president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, said the profession is finding it hard to fill vacancies as fewer students choose the field and more forensic pathologists are retiring.

Each year, only about 30 to 40 young doctors in the United States become certified in forensic pathology, Collins said. Medical schools are devoting less attention to the subject - "some medical students will never even see an autopsy,'' Collins said - and the field pays far less than many other specialities.

Massachusetts, for example, is working to add three or four more doctors to a staff that already has hired two others since the beginning of the fiscal year, said Daniel Bennett, the state secretary of public safety, who oversees the medical examiner's office.

The state's nine full-time medical examiners average more than 300 autopsies a year, Bennett said. Massachusetts also has three part-time forensic pathologists, nine contracted examiners, and three young physicians who work for the office on a fellowship program.

Still, Massachusetts must improve to be fully accredited by the national association that Collins leads. Bennett said the opioid epidemic, mirroring its impact elsewhere, has created a backlog in completed autopsy reports that the office hopes to shrink to industry guidelines this year.

The national association requires that 90 percent of autopsy reports be completed in 90 days. In Massachusetts, 58.3 percent of autopsy reports met that standard between October 2015 and September 2017.

To help address the lag, Governor Charlie Baker wants to boost funding for the office by $1.7 million in fiscal 2019, to a total of $11.9 million.

In Maine, two full-time forensic pathologists handle nearly all the autopsies. Two others work on a per-diem basis and handle about 10 percent of the cases.

"We did have trouble with turnover in this office, and it was difficult. Once you get an employee trained, they leave, usually for more money," said Mark Belserene, administrator of the state's medical examiner's office.

"We were successful in reclassifying positions to better reflect the actual tasks and also to bring the salaries up to a more competitive level," Belserene said.

Despite the physical and mental stress, Duval plans to stay put as New Hampshire's chief medical examiner.

"I'm not going anywhere," she said with a small smile.

Although the caseload continues to climb, the addition of two doctors should make the work more manageable. Still, Duval said she does not expect the yearly number of autopsies to fall below 250 for any examiner.

The opioid crisis should ensure that.

Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at brian.macquarrie@globe.com.

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Opioid crisis weighs on New Hampshire's chief medical examiner - The Boston Globe

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CONCORD, N.H. - On some days, Dr. Jennie Duval calls as many as six families after fatal overdoses - some of the families stunned and heartbroken, some of them resigned to a death they saw coming.

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I used this website to learn about drugs so I knew and understood more about the situation involving drugs.

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1. Number Of People Serving Time For Drug, Violent, Property, and Other Offenses In US Prisons

Federal Prisons:
"Forty-seven percent (81,900) of sentenced federal prisoners on September 30, 2016 (the most recent date for which federal offense data are available) were serving time for a drug offense (table 14; table 15).
"More than a third (38% or 65,900 prisoners) of federal prisoners were imprisoned for a public order offense, including 17% (28,800 federal prisoners) for a weapons offense and 8% (13,300) for an adjudicated immigration offense.
"More than half (56% or 6,300) of female federal prisoners were serving sentences for a drug offense, compared to 47% of males (75,600)."

State Prisons:
"More than half (54% or 707,900 prisoners) of all state prisoners sentenced to more than 1 year at year-end 2015 (the most recent year for which state prison offense data are available) were serving sentences for violent offenses on their current term of imprisonment (table 12; table 13).
"At year-end 2015, an estimated 14% of sentenced prisoners (177,600 prisoners) were serving time in state prison for murder or nonnegligent manslaughter, and an additional 12% of state prisoners (161,900) had been sentenced for rape or sexual assault.
"Among sentenced prisoners under the jurisdiction of state correctional authorities on December 31, 2015, 15% (197,200 prisoners) had been convicted of a drug offense as their most serious crime."

3. People Serving Time in Federal Prisons in the US For Whom Drug Possession is the Most Serious Offense

The US Dept. of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that on Sept. 30, 2012, there were a total of 187,773 people sentenced and serving time in US federal prison for any offense. Of those, 97,214 people (51.8% of the total) had as their most serious charge a drug offense: 96,907 of them for drug trafficking or manufacture (51.6% of the total), 296 for drug possession (0.16% of the total), and 11 for "other"* drug offenses.

(* "Other" includes investing illegal drug profits, operating a commercial carrier under the influence, and drug offenses that involve using the U.S. Postal Service.)

6. Past-Month Drug Use By Adults On Parole In The US, 2015

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that there were 870,500 people in the US aged 18 and over on parole at yearend 2015. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an estimated 31.1 percent of people on parole had used an illicit drug in the past month. An estimated 21.2 percent of those on probation were past-month users of marijuana. An estimated 20.4 percent of people on parole in 2015 were reportedly past-month users of any illicit drug other than marijuana. An estimated 10.7 percent of people on parole in 2015 were past-month users of illegal pain relievers.

Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality. (2016). 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Detailed Tables. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Rockville, MD, p. 1967, Table 6.103B.
https://www.samhsa.gov/data/po...
https://www.samhsa.gov/data/si...
https://www.samhsa.gov/data/si...
Danielle Kaeble and Thomas P. Bonczar, "Probation and Parole in the United States, 2015" (Washington, DC: US Dept of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, Dec. 2016), NCJ250230, p. 1.
https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?...
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pu...

7. Drug Use by Adults on Probation in the US, 2015

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were a total of 3,789,800 people aged 18 and over in the US who were on probation at yearend 2015. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 31.6 percent of that population were past-month users of any illicit drug. Past-month use of marijuana was reported by 23.8 percent of people on probation. Past-month use of illicit drugs other than marijuana was reported by an estimated 16.9 percent of people on probation. Past-month illegal use of pain relievers was reported by an estimated 8.3 percent of people on probation in 2015.

Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality. (2016). 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Detailed Tables. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Rockville, MD, p. 1957, Table 6.98B.
https://www.samhsa.gov/data/po...
https://www.samhsa.gov/data/si...
https://www.samhsa.gov/data/si...
Danielle Kaeble and Thomas P. Bonczar, "Probation and Parole in the United States, 2015" (Washington, DC: US Dept of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, Dec. 2016), NCJ250230, p. 1.
https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?...
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pu...

8. Cost Effectiveness of Prison Compared With Treatment

"Substance-involved people have come to compose a large portion of the prison population. Substance use may play a role in the commission of certain crimes: approximately 16 percent of people in state prison and 18 percent of people in federal prison reported committing their crimes to obtain money for drugs. ²¹ Treatment delivered in the community is one of the most cost-effective ways to prevent such crimes and costs approximately $20,000 less than incarceration per person per year. ²² A study by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy found that every dollar spent on drug treatment in the community yields over $18 in cost savings related to crime. ²³ In comparison, prisons only yield $.37 in public safety benefit per dollar spent. Releasing people to supervision and making treatment accessible is an effective way of reducing problematic drug use, reducing crime associated with drug use and reducing the number of people in prison."

10. Offense Distribution of People Serving Time In State Prisons in the US, by Race/Ethnicity and Gender

"Violent offenders represented more than half (54%) of the sentenced male state prisoners. More than a third (36%) of female prisoners were violent offenders. Eighteen percent (223,700) of male state prisoners and 28% (26,000) of females were sentenced for property offenses. Twenty-five percent of female state prisoners (23,500 females) and 15% of male state prisoners (182,700 males) were sentenced for drug offenses.
"A smaller percentage of whites were serving sentences of more than 1 year in state prison for violent offenses (47% or 210,400 prisoners) than blacks (58% or 263,800) or Hispanics (59% or 152,900). This pattern was consistent across racial and ethnic groups for murder or nonnegligent manslaughter, robbery, and assault. Whites had a higher percentage of sentenced prisoners serving time in state facilities for rape or sexual assault (16%) than blacks (8%) or Hispanics (13%). Whites also had a higher percentage offenders serving a sentence of more than 1 year in state prison for property crimes (25%) than blacks (16%) and Hispanics (14%) at yearend 2014. The proportion of prisoners sentenced to more than 1 year in state prison for drug offenses was roughly equal between whites, blacks, and Hispanics (15.0% or 67,800 white prisoners, 14.9% or 68,000 black prisoners, and 14.6% or 28,800 Hispanic prisoners)."

12. People in Prison with Drug Addiction or Dependence

"Violent offenders (47%) were the only offender group in State prisons with less than half meeting the DSM-IV criteria for drug dependence or abuse. Property and drug offenders (63% of each) were the most likely to be drug dependent or abusing.
"Drug offenders (52%) were the only group of Federal inmates with at least half meeting the drug dependence or abuse criteria. Property offenders (27%) reported the lowest percentage of drug dependence or abuse."

13. Parents in Prison, by Offense

"Among male state prisoners, violent (47%) and property (48%) offenders were less likely to report having children than public-order (60%) and drug (59%) offenders (table 6). For women held in state prison, violent (57%) offenders were less likely than drug (63%), property (65%), and public-order (65%) offenders to be a mother.
"The prevalence of being a parent differed by gender and offense for inmates held in state and federal prisons. For state inmates, female (65%) property offenders were more likely to be a parent than male (48%) property offenders. In federal prison, male (69%) drug offenders were more likely than female (55%) drug offenders to report having children.
"Among men held in federal prison, drug offenders (69%) were more likely than property (54%) and violent (50%) offenders to report having children (appendix table 5). Public-order offenders (62%) were also more likely than violent offenders to report having children. For women in federal prison, the likelihood of being a mother did not differ by offense."

14. Parents in Prison

"Mothers in state prison (58%) were more likely than fathers (49%) to report having a family member who had also been incarcerated (table 11). Parents in state prison most commonly reported a brother (34%), followed by a father (19%). Among mothers in state prison, 13% reported a sister and 8% reported a spouse. Six percent of fathers reported having a sister who had also been incarcerated; 2%, a spouse.
"While growing up, 40% of parents in state prison reported living in a household that received public assistance, 14% reported living in a foster home, agency, or institution at some time during their youth, and 43% reported living with both parents most of the time (appendix table 11). Mothers (17%) held in state prison were more likely than fathers (14%) to report living in a foster home, agency, or institution at some time during their youth. Parents in federal prison reported lower percentages of growing up in a household that received public assistance (31%) or living in a foster home, agency, or institution (7%). These characteristics varied little by gender for parents held in federal prison.
"More than a third (34%) of parents in state prison reported that during their youth, their parents or guardians had abused alcohol or drugs. Mothers in state prison (43%) were more likely than fathers (33%) to have had this experience. Fewer parents (27%) in federal prison reported having a parent or a guardian who had abused alcohol or drugs."

16. Estimated Number Of People In The US Sentenced To State and Federal Prison For Marijuana Offenses

Total Federal Prisoners 2004 = 170,535
Total State Prisoners 2004 = 1,244,311

Percent of federal prisoners held for drug law violations = 55%
Percent of state prisoners held for drug law violations = 21%

Marijuana/hashish, Percent of federal drug offenders, 2004 = 12.4%
Marijuana/hashish, Percent of state drug offenders, 2004 = 12.7%

(Total prisoners x percent drug law) x percent marijuana = "marijuana prisoners"

Federal marijuana prisoners in 2004 = 11,630
State marijuana prisoners in 2004 = 33,186
Total federal and state marijuana prisoners in 2004 = 44,816

Note: These data only address people in prisons and thus exclude the 700,000+ offenders who may be in local jails because of a marijuana conviction.

Mumola , Christopher J. and Karberg, Jennifer C., "Drug Use and Dependence, State and Federal Prisoners, 2004," Bureau of Justice Statistics (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, January 2007) NCJ 213530, p. 4.
http://www.bjs.gov...
Harrison, Paige M. and Beck, Allan J., "Prisoners in 2004," Bureau of Justice Statistics, (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, October 2005), NCJ 210677, Table 1, page 2.
http://www.bjs.gov...

17. Estimated Number of People Sentenced To Federal Prison For Drug Offenses

Federal-Specific Data

"More than half (54%) of drug offenders in the federal prison system had a form of cocaine (powder or crack) as the primary drug type (table 2). Methamphetamine offenders (24%) accounted for the next largest share, followed by marijuana (12%) and heroin (6%) offenders. Offenders convicted of crimes involving other drugs (including LSD, some prescription drugs, and MDMA or ecstasy) made up 3% of offenders."

20. Incarceration Growth 1995-2003

"Violent offenders under Federal jurisdiction increased 46% from 1995 to 2003, and accounted for almost 8% of the total growth during the period. Homicide offenders increased 146%, from 1,068 in 1995 to 2,632 in 2003.
"While the number of offenders in each major offense category increased [from 1995 to 2003], the number incarcerated for a drug offense accounted for the largest percentage of the total growth (49%), followed by public-order offenders (38%)."

21. Prisons - Data - Number of People Serving Time in State Prisons for Drug Offenses

State- and Local-Specific Data

(Number of People Serving Time in State Prisons in the US for Drug Offenses) According to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, of the estimated 206,300 sentenced prisoners under state jurisdiction serving time for drug offenses at year-end 2014, 67,800 were non-Latino whites (32.9%), 68,000 were non-Latino African Americans (33.0%), 28,800 were Hispanic (7.2%). The ethnicity of the remaining 41,700 is not reported, meaning they could have been of another ethnicity, multiracial, or unknown.

29. Effectiveness of Incarceration Against Drug Crimes

Sociopolitical Research

"The potency of incarceration is further diminished by three other forces, researchers have found. The first, sometimes referred to as the 'replacement effect,' applies largely to crimes that occur as part of a market, such as fencing stolen property or, most notably, drug transactions. Once incarcerated, drug dealers tend to be quickly replaced by new dealers and, as during the crack epidemic, the new recruits can be younger and more prone to violence than their predecessors. ⁵⁷ Thus while drug dealers no doubt deserve punishment, most leading researchers, and many law enforcement officials, now agree that incarcerating the foot soldiers in drug gangs, not to mention drug users, has a negligible impact on crime. ⁵⁸ Moreover, by creating job openings in drug-dealing organizations, it draws more people into criminal lifestyles and may in certain cases exacerbate crime. ⁵⁹"

30. People of Color in State Prison for Drug Offenses

"The number of people in state prisons for drug offenses has increased 550 percent over the last 20 years. A recent JPI report found that the amount spent on 'cops and courts' - not rates of drug use -- is correlated to admissions to prison for drug offenses. Counties that spend more on law enforcement and the judiciary admit more people to prison for drug offenses than counties that spend less. And increases in federal funding through the Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Grant Program have promoted increases in resources dedicated to drug enforcement. As crime continues to fall in many communities, law enforcement will have more time to focus on aggressive policing of drug offenses; this can be expected to lead to even higher drug imprisonment rates and crowded jails and prisons. According to FBI reports, 83 percent of drug arrests are for possession of illegal drugs alone. ¹⁶ And regardless of crime in a particular jurisdiction, police often target the same neighborhoods to make drug arrests, which can increase the disproportionate incarceration of people of color."

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1. Number Of People Serving Time For Drug, Violent, Property, and Other Offenses In US Prisons Federal Prisons: "Forty-seven percent (81,900) of sentenced federal prisoners on September 30, 2016 (the most recent date for which federal offense data are available) were serving time for a drug offense (table 14; table 15).

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Products - Data Briefs - Number 294 - December 2017

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Products - Data Briefs - Number 294 - December 2017

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This website was used to prove my statement about drugs taking over a country and killing a large amount of people.

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national vital statistics system mortality file

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Products - Data Briefs - Number 294 - December 2017

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Drug Overdose Deaths in the United States, 1999-2016

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What is Crack Cocaine? How to Smoke Crack? Street Names for Crack - Drug-Free World

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What is Crack Cocaine? How to Smoke Crack? Street Names for Crack - Drug-Free World

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I used this website to learn about what crack cocaine was doing to people and communities during the crack cocaine epidemic.

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Crack cocaine is the crystal form of cocaine, which normally comes in a powder form. It comes in solid blocks or crystals varying in color from yellow to pale rose or white.

Crack is heated and smoked. It is so named because it makes a cracking or popping sound when heated.

Crack, the most potent form in which cocaine appears, is also the riskiest. It is between 75% and 100% pure, far stronger and more potent than regular cocaine.

Smoking crack allows it to reach the brain more quickly and thus brings an intense and immediate-but very short-lived-high that lasts about fifteen minutes. And because addiction can develop even more rapidly if the substance is smoked rather than snorted (taken in through the nose), an abuser can become addicted after his or her first time trying crack.

Because of cocaine's high cost, it has long been considered a "rich man's drug." Crack, on the other hand, is sold at prices so low that even teens can afford to buy it-at first. The truth is that once a person is addicted, the expense skyrockets in direct ratio to the increasing amount needed to support the habit.

"I lived with a crack addict for nearly a year. I loved that addict, who was my boyfriend, with all my heart but I couldn't stick [with] it anymore. "The police stopped and searched me; we were raided at 6:00 A.M. My ex stole incessantly and couldn't tear himself away from his pipe. "I think crack is more evil than heroin-one pipe can be all it takes to turn you into an immoral monster." -Audrey

STREET NAMES

CRACK COCAINE 24-7 Apple jacks Badrock Ball Base Beat Candy Chemical Cloud Cookies Crack Crumbs Crunch & munch Devil drug Dice Electric kool-aid Fat bags French fries Glo Gravel Grit Hail Hard ball Hard rock Hotcakes Ice cube Jelly beans Kryptonite Nuggets Paste Piece Prime time Product Raw Rock(s) Rock star Rox/Roxanne Scrabble Sleet Snow coke Sugar block Topo (Spanish) Tornado Troop

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What is Crack Cocaine? How to Smoke Crack? Street Names for Crack - Drug-Free World

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Crack cocaine is the crystal form of cocaine, which normally comes in a powder form. It comes in solid blocks or crystals varying in color from yellow to pale rose or white. Crack is heated and smoked. It is so named because it makes a cracking or popping sound when heated.