In an effort to compare substance abuse problems and levels of treatment need across states, NCRPG developed indexes that show how each state compares with all other states. The indexes are constructed from 1999 national drug arrest and mortality data. Those data are tested for reliability, and the indexes are tested for validity using drug-related data that are not index components including demographics, drug-related diseases, property arrests that are drug-related (prostitution, burglary, robbery), and treatment data. A state with a score of 0 had no drug deaths or drug arrests in 1999, and a state with a score of 100 had the highest observed rate for both deaths and arrests in the last decade. For more on this methodology, refer to the references below.

1999 Drug Need Index

The map reveals that the highest Drug Need Index (DNI) scores in the US were concentrated in the most heavily urbanized states including New York, New Jersey, and Maryland in the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic Region, Florida in the South, Illinois in the Mid-West, and California in the West. Nevada and New Mexico are western states that also had high scores. North Dakota had the lowest DNI score in the US in 1999. North Dakota is in the middle of  the upper Mid-West states, all of which had low to moderate DNI scores. The northern New England states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont had low scores, as well.

Below, a map shows county-level drug mortality mean rates calculated using 1993 through 2000 data. The drug mortality rate is a component of the Drug Need Index described above, and this map is meant to illustrate how the index score in a given state is a result of variations in the indicator rates within that state. For example, a large majority of counties in New York State have drug mortality rates in the lowest two categories according to this map, but the very high drug mortality rate in New York City and the immediate surrounding counties contributes to an overall DNI score for the state that is the highest in the nation. Because the populations of many individual counties are small, it is necessary to create composite rates from multiple years of data to insure the results are reasonably reliable.

References

McAuliffe, W.E., R.A. LaBrie, N. Pollock, N. Lomuto, E.A. Fournier, and R. Betjemann. (1999). "Measuring Interstate Variations in Drug Problems." Drug and Alcohol Dependence. 53 (2): 125-145.

McAuliffe WE, LaBrie R, Woodworth R, Zhang C, Dunn R. State Substance Abuse Treatment Gaps. American Journal of Addiction, 2003.

McAuliffe WE, Woodworth R, Zhang C, Dunn R. Identifying Substance Abuse Treatment Gaps in Substate Areas. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 2002, 23.

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