They draw comparisons to the supposed middle-class heroin crisis of the mid-1990's or the supposed rise in teenage marijuana use a few years earlier - drug epidemics, they say, that never really panned out.

The Justice Department has quietly ended a program to measure criminals' use of drugs and forecast new drug epidemics, citing budget cuts by Congress.

Rampant drug epidemics and rising gang dealing would eventually lead to a massive operationalization of drug enforcement.

Mr. Barry appointed him as police chief, and Mr. Turner was in command of the force when the city was hit by one of the nation's worst crime and drug epidemics.

No previous drug epidemics had ensnared so many women, and most of the drug treatment centers - few that there were - catered to men.

Finally, the drug epidemics of the 1980's have swelled inmate populations.

History has shown that drug epidemics often do peak, as one drug simply replaces another.

Crack use has most heavily afflicted minority neighborhoods and has taken a higher toll among women than other drug epidemics.

While the discussion of AIDS as a white conspiracy against blacks is new, the charge that crack was invented to hurt blacks echoes debates from the 1960's over earlier drug epidemics.

In an interview in his office at Yale University School of Medicine, Dr. Musto discussed the nature of drug epidemics.