ARE THERE ECONOMIC COSTS OF MARIJUANA USE?

描述(由申请人提供)： 大麻是使用最广泛的非法药物，2001年估计有2100多万人在过去一年中使用过大麻。尽管在过去10年中，一般人口的流行率相对稳定，但在1990年代中期，青年的流行率大幅上升，而对伤害的认识有所下降。随之而来的是使用人数的增加，逮捕人数也大幅增加。效仿加拿大、澳大利亚、英国和其他几个欧洲国家的做法，许多州立法机构面临着越来越大的压力，要求它们软化目前对大麻的政策，以此来减轻刑事司法负担。问题是，这些决定是在缺乏关于大麻使用、滥用和依赖的经济成本的相关信息的情况下考虑的。 这项申请是对目前一项名为“使用大麻有经济成本吗？”的研究的竞争延续申请。(NIDA GRANT#R01 DA12724)。之前的研究在探索大麻使用与一些可能给社会带来成本的特定行为之间的关系方面迈出了一些重要的第一步。这一新的三年期项目的目标是在我们以前工作的基础上，提供与大麻使用有关的增量成本的额外估计数，因为它们涉及三个具体领域：(1)在医院环境中治疗依赖和虐待使用者的成本，(B)与涉及大麻的事故有关的成本，以及(C)与犯罪有关的成本。将从各种来源收集信息，包括全国住院调查、全国医院非卧床医疗护理调查、药物滥用警告网、一般估计系统和统一犯罪报告，以产生这些地区使用大麻的社会成本的下限和上限估计。虽然我们认识到大麻使用的其他成本和好处也存在，但我们认为，应当限制这项提案的范围，以便能够对这三个专题进行深入和仔细的分析，因为我们认为，最终有足够的数据可以对这些领域的成本进行合理的初步估计。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug, with over 21 million individuals estimated to have used marijuana in the past year in 2001. Although prevalence rates for the general population have been relatively stable over the past 10 years, prevalence rates among youth rose considerably during the mid-1990s while perceptions of harm declined. With this rise in use has come a significant rise in arrests. There is increasing pressure on many state legislatures to soften their current policies toward marijuana as a way of reducing the criminal justice burden, following the example of Canada, Australia, Great Britain and several other European Countries. The problem is that these decisions are being considered in the absence of relevant information on the economic cost of marijuana use, abuse and dependence. This application is a competing continuation application for a current study entitled "Are there Economic Costs Associated with Marijuana Use?" (NIDA Grant #R01 DA12724). The previous study took some important first steps in exploring the relationship between marijuana use and some specific behaviors that could potentially impose costs on society. The goal of this new three-year project is to build on our previous work and provide additional estimates of the incremental costs associated with marijuana use as they pertain to three specific areas: (1) the cost of treating dependent and abusive users in hospital settings, (b) the costs associated with marijuana-involved accidents, and (c) the costs associated with crime. Information will be gathered from a variety of sources, including the National Inpatient Survey, the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, the Drug Abuse Warning Network, the General Estimates System, and Uniform Crime Reports to produce lower and upper bound estimates of the social costs of marijuana use in these areas. Although we recognize that other costs and benefits of marijuana use exist, we feel it is appropriate to limit the scope of this proposal so that in-depth and careful analyses can be done on these three topics as we believe that adequate data are finally available to generate reasonable first estimates of the costs in these areas.