Comment & Debate
US Drug Enforcement Administration (2003). “Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization”[83]
The U.S. government began the Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) program in 1987 to collect information on drug use among urban arrestees. In 1997, the National Institute of Justice expanded and reengineered the DUF study and renamed it the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program. ADAM is a network of 34 research sites in select U.S. cities.[84]
DUF research indicates that:
Frequent use of hard drugs is one of the strongest indicators of a criminal career.
Offenders who use drugs are among the most serious and active criminals, engaging in both property and violent crime.
Early and persistent use of cocaine or heroin in the juvenile years is an indicator of serious, persistent criminal behavior in adulthood. Those arrested who are drug users are more likely than those not using drugs to be rearrested on pretrial release or fail to appear at trial.
—[85][86]
Detective superintendent Eva Brännmark from the Swedish National Police Board, in a speech given to Drug Free Australia’s first international conference on illicit drug use, said: The police have been able to solve other crimes, e.g. burglaries, thefts and robberies, by questioning people arrested for using drugs. Some even provide information about people who are selling drugs, and the police have seized large amounts of drugs as a result of information from people brought in for a urine test. Many interrogations of drug abusers have also resulted in search warrants and the recovery of stolen property. — Brännmark, Eva (2007). “Law Enforcement – the Swedish Model” in Drug Free Australia’s First International Conference on Illicit Drug Use.[87]