ABSTRACT
The State Office of Drug Abuse, which was the official agency charged with the responsibility for compiling statistics, and with developing treatment and prevention strategies, could only estimate drug use in Alaska in the mid 1970s. Attempts by the State Office of Drug Abuse to estimate drug use, beginning in 1976, were first made by evaluating information about clients who entered treatment programs funded by state agencies. T. D. Lonner indicated that the use of cocaine and marijuana was probably directly related to the prevalence of money, and to the earlier derived (drug) habits pipeline workers brought with them to Alaska. The Alaska experience has become the basis for arguments for or against recriminalization, and the results of the 1983 studies have been cited to indicate that legalization of marijuana leads to an increase in its use.
