http://blog.norml.org/2010/05/24/marijuana-arrests-continue-to-drive-drug-treatment-boom/Nearly six out of ten people admitted to drug ‘treatment’ for marijuana are referred there by the criminal justice system, according to a just-released report by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association (SAMHSA).
In 2008, 57 percent of persons referred to treatment for marijuana as their ‘primary substance of abuse,’ were referred by the criminal justice system. For adolescents, nearly half (48 percent) were referred via the criminal justice system.
By contrast, criminal justice referrals accounted for just 37 percent of the overall total of drug treatment admissions in 2008.
“Primary marijuana admissions were less likely than all admissions combined to be self-referred to treatment,” the study found.
Since 1998 the percentage of individuals in drug treatment primarily for marijuana has risen approximately 25 percent, the report found. This increase is being primarily driven by a proportional rise in the percentage of criminal justice referrals. According to a previous federal study, the proportion of marijuana treatment admissions from all sources other than the criminal justice system has been declining since the mid-1990s.http://www.alternet.org/drugs/144243According to a widely publicized 1999 Institute of Medicine report, fewer than 10 percent of those who try cannabis ever meet the clinical criteria for a diagnosis of "drug dependence" (based on DSM-III-R criteria). By contrast, 32 percent of tobacco users and 15 percent of alcohol users meet the criteria for "drug dependence."
Nevertheless, it is pot -- not booze or cigarettes -- that has the federal government seeing red and clinical investigators seeing green. As I reported for AlterNet last year, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which overseas more than 85 percent of the world's research on controlled substances, recently appropriated some $4 million in taxpayers' dollars to establish the nation's first-ever Center for Cannabis Addiction. Its mission: to "develop novel approaches to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of marijuana addiction."Courts, in order to not spend a lot of time on victimless "crimes," have people arrested for mj pay a fine and attend drug treatment programs. People are labeled as "drug dependent" when they really aren't - this perpetuates myths about cannabis use.
I hope Californians will lead the way for the rest of the nation, as they have done in the past on many issues, to begin the end of prohibition.