Drug use and violence in Central America

Carlos Mendoza has had several posts about violence in Guatemala at Central American Business Intelligence that you might find interesting. In first one, you can view homicide rates by department and by municipality. The second one elaborates on a Siglo XXI article. Apparently, 88% of 2011's murders occurred in 40% of the country's 133 municipalities. And this post links to several articles about the violence as well.  

Mary Anastasia O'Grady at the Wall Street Journal also has an opinion piece on Otto Perez Molina's suggestion that the region should consider decriminalization. It's not terrible, probably because she doesn't really interject her opinion into the piece. However, I still don't like people using 41 murders per 100,000 (2010's numbers)  - double that of Mexico - to characterize disorder in Guatemala. The murder rate declined in 2010 and then again in 2011. I think that it's rather remarkable that the rate went down two years in a row and sits at 39 per 100,000 when El Salvador and Honduras' rates are in the 70s and 80s.

Now I have a question about drug use statistics. According to the US embassy's February statement, 

Although still very high, the rate of overall drug use in the United States has declined by about one third over the past three decades. More recently, the use of cocaine has dropped by 43 percent and use of methamphetamine in the United States has been halved.

Are these commonly accepted statistics? If not, anybody have suggestions for alternative statistics over time? How do we fill in the blanks accurately?

1. Overall violence related to the drug trade in Mexico and Central America has _____.
2. Illegal drug production has _____. 
3. The confiscation of illegal drugs has ____________.
4. The rate of illegal drug use in the US has _________.
5. The total number of people using illegal drugs in the US has ___________.
6. The rate of illegal drug use in Central America and Mexico has _________.
7. The total number of people using illegal drugs in Central America and Mexico has _______.