Drug Use Forecasting in 24 Cities in the United States, 1987-1997

The Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) Program measures levels of and trends in drug use among persons arrested and booked in the United States. The data address the following topics: (1) types of drugs used by arrestees (based on self-reports and urinalysis), (2) self-reported dependency on drugs, (3) self-reported need for alcohol/drug treatment, (4) the relationship between drug use and certain types of offenses, and (5) the relationship between self-reported indicators of drug use and indicators of drug use based on urinalysis. Participation in the project is voluntary, and all information collected from the arrestees is anonymous and confidential. The data include the arrestee's age, race, gender, educational attainment, marital status, and the charge at the time of booking. The recently modified DUF interview instrument (used for part of the 1995 data and all of the 1996 and 1997 data) also collected information about the arrestee's use of 15 drugs, including recent and past use (e.g., 3-day and 30-day drug use) of each of these drugs, age at first use, and whether the arrestee had ever been dependent on drugs. In the original DUF interview instrument (used for the 1987 to 1994 data and part of the 1995 data), the information collected was the same as above except that the use of 22 drugs was queried, and the age at which the arrestee first became dependent on the drug was included. Arrestees also were questioned in the original instrument about their history of intravenous drug use, whether the consideration of AIDS influenced whether they shared needles, history of drug and alcohol treatment, their past and current drug treatment needs, and how many persons they had sex with during the past 12 months. Finally, arrestees were asked to provide a urine specimen, which was screened for the presence of ten drugs, including marijuana, opiates, cocaine, PCP, methadone, benzodiazepines (Valium), methaqualone, propoxyphene (Darvon), barbiturates, and amphetamines (positive test results for amphetamines were confirmed by gas chromatography). The Gun Addendum Data (Parts 27, 35, and 37) contain variables on topics such as arrestees' encounters with guns, whether they agreed or disagreed with statements about guns, gun possession, how they obtained handgun(s), whether they were armed with a gun at their arrest or during crimes, and if they had ever used a gun against another person. The Heroin Addendum Data, 1995 (Part 29) contains information that was formerly covered in the main annual file in 1992-1994, but in 1995 was revised and prepared as a separate dataset.

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  "fn": "Jennifer Scherer",
  "hasEmail": "mailto:Jennifer.Scherer@usdoj.gov"
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  "id": 8,
  "name": "External system not available in CSAM"
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