Drug warriors: start your tsk-tsking.

A federal government report out today shows that illicit drug use, especially of marijuana, went up in 2009.  And who’s to blame? The media, cancer patients and any parent who won’t exaggerate the dangers of marijuana.

Fueled by discussions of legalization, so-called “medical” marijuana, and a proliferation of pro-drug messages in the media and popular culture, young people are misinformed about a drug whose potency has tripled in the past 20 years and sends more youth to treatment than any other drug.*

The report found that 16.7 million Americans had smoked pot in the last month, up 8 percent from 2008. The average age of first use was 17 years old (down slightly from 17.8 years old in 2008, but fairly unchanged for the last several years). The National Office of Drug Control Policy blamed a change in public sentiment toward marijuana, with the survey finding that fewer young people agreed with the statement that smoking marijuana regularly presents a “great risk.”

The “great risk” they should be afraid of turns out to be arrest. Another federal government report out this week, from the FBI, showed that more than 858,000 people were arrested in connection with marijuana in 2009 – mostly (88 percent) for possession. The pro-legalization group Marijuana Policy Project notes that this is up significantly from recent years and amounted to a marijuana arrest every 37 seconds. The two reports taken together should signal a need for change in marijuana laws, the MPP says:

“It’s now more obvious than ever that decades of law enforcement efforts have absolutely failed to reduce marijuana’s use or availability, and that it’s simply an exercise in futility to continue arresting hundreds of thousands of Americans for using something that’s safer than alcohol,” said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, said in a statement. “Rather than criminalize millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens and waste billions of dollars that could be better spent combating violent crime and other real threats to public safety, it’s time we embrace sensible marijuana policies that would regulate marijuana the same way we do alcohol or tobacco.”

Some other things worth noting:

-The age group that saw the largest increase in drug use wasn’t tweens; it was their grandparents. The percent of adults age 50-54 reporting recent drug use went up a whopping 60 percent! That increase was followed by an increase in drug use among 21-25 year olds and 26-29 year olds, which went up 11.4 percent and 10.8 percent, respectively. The increase in drug use among 16 and 17 year olds was nearly 10 percent, but the increase in drug use by all younger age brackets was nominal.

-Marijuana use by youth age 12-17 was up slightly to 7.3 percent from 6.7 percent in 2008. But it was still lower than in 2002-2004.

-*The NODCP’s contention that more youth are in treatment for marijuana than for any other drug can be misleading. That doesn’t mean they are necessarily there because they are “addicted” to pot and need help. There has been a significant increase in diversion programs nationwide through which someone arrested for possession of drugs can avoid jail time by going into treatment. More people use marijuana. More people are arrested for marijuana. So more people are in treatment for it.

-The FBI found that violent crime was down five percent nationwide in 2009. So more people are using drugs but that has not led to more serious crime.

-In Phoenix, The Arizona Republic reports that crime is down across the board except in one category: home invasions. Home invasions went up 48 percent in 2009 over the last four years. These usually involve human smuggling and drug smuggling operations. So more crime from drug users? No. But from prohibition and a broken immigration system that empowers smugglers? Yes.

Read more:

-The AP story on the NODCP’s report.

-The Huffington Post on the Drug Czar’s confrontation with a representative of Students for Sensible Drug Policy over whether legalizing marijuana would help defeat Mexican drug cartels.

–AJC