Misleading Official Statistics on Interdiction and Seizures: "Comparing absolute numbers of total cocaine seizures and manufacture could be misleading. To understand the relationship between the amount of annual seizures reported by States (694 tons cocaine of unknown purity in 2010) and the estimated level of manufacture (788-1,060 tons of cocaine of 100 per cent purity), it would be necessary to take into account several factors, and the associated calculations would depend on a level of detail in seizure data that is often unavailable.

Estimated Prevalence of Current Cocaine Use in the US: "In this report, estimates of the use of cocaine include use of crack cocaine. Estimates also are presented separately for crack use. In 2015, the estimate of about 1.9 million people aged 12 or older who were current users of cocaine (Figure 1) included about 394,000 current users of crack. These numbers correspond to about 0.7 percent of the population aged 12 or older who were current users of cocaine (Figure 7) and 0.1 percent who were current users of crack (Table A.1B in Appendix A). The 2015 estimate for current cocaine use was similar to the estimates in most years between 2007 and 2013, but it was higher than the estimate in 2014. The 2015 estimate of crack use was similar to the estimates in most years from 2008 to 2014. The 2015 estimates of both cocaine and crack use were lower than most of the estimates between 2002 and 2006."

Estimated Past Year Prevalence of Cocaine and Crack Use Among Young People in the US: "Past-year cocaine use in 2015 among 12th graders has been essentially the same across regions and varied between 1.8% and 2.3%, with the exception that the West stood out and climbed to 4.4% in 2015 (Figure 5-10b; also Tables 36-38 and Figure 81 in Occasional Paper 86). In past years regional variation in cocaine use was the largest observed for any of the drugs.

How the Crack vs Powder Disparity Was Created: "In July 1986, in the midst of a surge of articles regarding the crack 'epidemic'³⁷ both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives held hearings on the perceived crisis.³⁸ At these hearings, it was asserted that crack: (1) was more addictive than powder cocaine,³⁹ (2) produced physiological effects that were different from and worse than those caused by powder cocaine,⁴⁰ (3) attracted users who could not afford powder cocaine, especially young people,⁴¹ and (4) led to more

Legal Coca Production: "Coca is regarded as a sacred leaf by some of the indigenous American communities of the Andes and Amazon basin, where it has been used for a variety of purposes for thousands of years (Mortimer, 1974). As a consequence, the legal status of coca is sometimes ambiguous in South America, complicating efforts to control cocaine production.

Worldwide Coca Cultivation As Estimated by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime: Although global coca bush cultivation in 2014 increased by 10 per cent compared with the previous year, the total area under coca bush cultivation worldwide, 132,300 ha, was the second smallest since the late 1980s. Global coca bush cultivation in 2014 was 19 per cent lower than in 2009, 40 per cent lower than the peak level in 2000 and 31 per cent lower than in 1998.

Crack Smoking and Risk of HIV

Estimated Worldwide Cocaine Seizures According to UNODC: "Data suggest that the global cocaine interception rate, based on cocaine production estimates and quantities of cocaine seized, reached a level of between 43 and 68 per cent in 2014."