Not all are addicts.

• Position: Letter to the editor

I hope you can pass this along to Luis Rodriguez, who--in making a sensible argument in favor of treatment instead of jail for addicts--repeats the drug warriors' common and intentional mistake of conflating drug use with addiction ("Paths out of Addiction," June issue). He writes, "This country is a highly addicted one. An estimated 19.1 million people over the age of twelve in the United States were illegal drug users in 2004, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health."

The figure he cites refers to anyone who used any illicit drug at least once in the past month. The vast majority of these people are not addicts. For example, about 14 million out of that 19 million figure used only marijuana, but only 3.1 million of these were "daily users" (defined as having used marijuana at least 300 days in the past...