At the time of this writing, July 1986, the United States army has helicopters and troops in Bolivia trying to find and destroy hidden cocaine factories. Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill has called for a bipartisan House effort to develop a new comprehensive drug law that would include (1) eradication of drug crops, (2) interception of drug shipments and drug traffickers, (3) law enforcement, (4) public education, and (5) treatment of drug users.
Richard M. Smith, editor-in-chief of
Newsweek
, recently called the use of illicit drugs “the plague among us” and wrote,
It has taken lives, wrecked careers, broken homes, invaded schools, incited crimes, tainted businesses, toppled heroes, corrupted policemen and politicians, bled billions from the economy and in some measure infected every corner of our public and private lives. It is a national scandal, and if we seem powerless to stop it, it is because so many of us are willing to spend the money and break the law to sustain what has become, by government estimate, a $110 billion-a-year drug habit. We have met the enemy, and he is us
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.
But Mr. Smith was talking about illegal drugs, and it seems that these are not the only ones with which to be concerned. Richard Hughes and Robert Brewin, in The
Tranquilizing of
America
,
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discuss such things as (1) roughly 25% of the nations drug bill goes for prescription tranquilizers (about 2 billion dollars), (2) there are some 300,000 nonprescription over-the-counter drugs many of which if taken in excess or mixed with other substances can cause serious problems or even death, (3) a number of studies are suggesting that many prescription and nonprescription drugs which women take during pregnancy can cross the placental barrier and cause serious problems for the fetus, and (4) drugs are often used to control others—such as to unnecessarily induce labor, to sedate anxiety rather than to find its cause and to quiet hyperactive children who may be hyperactive because of the chemical additives in their food or simply because they are energetic.
If we add to the number of people using illegal, prescribed and nonprescribed drugs,the 10 million alcoholics and an estimated 8 million to 20 million more with moderate to severe drinking problems, 50 million smokers, and all the caffeine users of coffee, tea, cola drinks, diet pills and other stimulant pills, a picture of the extent of our culture’s drug usage begins to emerge.
Dr. Ingrid Waldon, a biologist at the University of Pennsylvania, feels that to understand the drug use in America, it must be looked at in the social context. Societal problems such as the Vietnam War, the change in male and female roles, economic uncertainty and an increasingly competitive climate in school and work have caused the rise of social stress. People feel overwhelmed by these issues and, instead of learning to deal with the stresses and problems such issues cause, take drugs to obviate the discomfort and pain. This practice is supported by peer groups, doctors and the culture in general. However, she says, taking drugs not only attacks the wrong problem, but it leaves the individual and society with even greater problems. Besides the physical and psychological problems caused by taking too many drugs, it focuses attention on the individual and treats his symptoms rather than focusing on the social and political context of the issues and developing co-operative efforts for social change.
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Whose fault is it that we are so involved in drugs? Is it the fault of the drug companies who promote them? The doctors who prescribe them? The government for not having better laws and enforcement? The individuals who take them? Among the views Hughes and Brewin present is that of Dr. Edward Tocus, a twenty year veteran of the Federal Drug Administration. Dr. Tocus believes that
. . . the answer to the problem lies with each and every individual, who sooner or later must come to the conclusion that life without recourse to drugs is far better than life with drugs.
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A final viewpoint is that of Howard P. Rome,MD, editorial director of
Psychiatric
Annals
, who refers to drug abuse as substance abuse. He feels that though different addictions may require different treatments, it is important not to see addiction to different substances as different phenomena, but to look beyond the differences to underlying similarities.
In the tangled skein of the history of these drugs, if one looks carefully, one finds the generic problem to be that of substance abuse.
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There is an important project being done at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. Each year since 1975 they take a national survey of high school seniors. It is sometimes called the High School Senior Survey, and it is part of a larger program entitled Monitoring the Future: A Continuing Study of the Lifestyles and Values of Youth. Many important findings have come from this study. Three of these finding are as follows.
Probably the most important finding in 1985 is that the rather steady decline of the past four years in overall illicit drug use among high school seniors appears to have halted. The proportions of seniors using
any
illicit
drug in their lifetime, the past year, and the past month remained virtually unchanged in 1985, compared to 1984, as did the proportions of seniors using
any
illicit
drug
other
than
marijuana
. This halt in a longer term decline was replicated in trend data derived from the nation’s college students and young adults generally.
Concurrent with this halt in the decline in overall involvement with illicit drugs came the equally disturbing finding that
cocaine
use increased among seniors in 1985. Current use (i.e., use in the prior 30 days) rose from 4.9% in 1983 to 5.8$ in 1984 to 6.7% in 1985. Some 17% of all seniors in 1985 have tried it.
Clearly this nation’s high school students and other young adults still show a level of involvement with illicit drugs which is greater than can be found in any other industrialized nation in the world. Even by historical standards in this country, these rates still remain extremely high.
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