a strong prison fine for evading this tax, America was well on its way to the establishment of an anti-drug policy and a national attitude of disapproval of their recreational use. The Controlled Substance Act of 1970 consolidated a number of disparate federal laws against drug use. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was soon established as a division of the Justice Department, and a number of high-profile drug deaths, such as that of comedian John Belushi, as well as the rise of HIV, attributed in part to needle sharing by drug abusers, helped the federal government garner widespread public support to declare a war on drugs.
In a recent study, the DEA (Overview, 1999) estimates that 13.6 million American had "used an illicit drug at least once in the 30 days prior to being interviewed" (p. 1). The DEA interprets this as a decrease in the all-time high of 25.4 million in 1979 but emphasizes that individuals are abusing more hard-core drugs than before, such as heroin, and beginning use at a much younger age: "In 1997, the typical heroin user was 17.6 years old the first time they tried the drug, down from 26.4 years old in 1990
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