Back to Menu

The drug abuse epidemic II: A better potential solution
(September 2003)

For the last fifty years, illicit use of mind-altering drugs has plagued all parts of American society. It spread progressively from 1950 to the mid-1970s. Since then, little has changed, despite massive efforts and expenditure of huge amounts of money. New fads have appeared and faded, use of specific drugs has increased somewhat or decreased somewhat; but, overall, the chronic use of drugs such as heroin and cocaine is largely unchanged - a persistent societal problem that refuses to go away.

Our approach has been twofold - reduce supply or react to illegal use either by putting users in jail or attempting to “treat” them. These approaches have failed to solve our drug problem for the last fifty years, and will fail for the next fifty or one hundred years.

Reducing supply. That will not succeed so long as there is continuing demand for the drugs by young people and so long as they are willing to pay a lot of money for those drugs, thus creating huge profits. If the billion dollar campaign to wipe out the cocaine supply from Colombia were to succeed (it won’t), another source of supply would crop up. The same is true of heroin. Cut off one supply route, say in Mexico, and another will develop through the Caribbean immediately. And then, there are clandestine laboratories manufacturing drugs like Ecstasy. Reducing supply is still worthwhile - you can win individual battles, but you cannot win the war so long as demand is strong.

Incarceration. We continue to throw non-violent users and small-time drug sellers into prison for extended periods. That is stupid, cruel, and unproductive. They account for more than about 20 percent of our jail and prison population, and that is a major reason our jail and prison population now exceeds two million people - at a cost of $20,000 or more per person per year. Building more prisons is not the answer to our drug problem. New York State is among the worst. I was the President of Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s Drug Abuse Control Commission and supposedly his top advisor on drugs. He spent $500,000,000 on rehabilitation efforts. When that failed, in frustration and desperation, without adequate consultation, he enacted the draconian, lock-them-up laws that are still in place in New York State. Nelson Rockefeller was an intelligent, compassionate pragmatist. Had he remained governor he would have rescinded those cruel laws decades ago. The prolonged incarceration of non-violent users and small-time sellers (supporting their own habits) is a disgrace that tarnishes any claims of accomplishments by governors and legislators in New York State over the last three decades.

Incarceration is not the answer or even an intelligent approach to the drug problem - except for major sellers and suppliers and violent drug offenders who ought to be given long prison sentences.

Treatment. That is the current rage. But, it is largely a mirage. With heroin, the best rehabilitation programs for motivated heroin abusers can achieve about a 35 percent one-year abstinence rate. That is all and most heroin users are not motivated to enter drug rehabilitation The situation is similar with cocaine. With cocaine the treatment programs are still in the experimental phases; we have no standard and effective treatment for cocaine abuse, just some encouraging approaches.

For other drugs, we have no well-established, adequately evaluated rehabilitation programs.
So, treatment may succeed for one-third or fewer of the heroin and cocaine users who are motivated to stop use. There is no reason to believe that compelling “treatment” will succeed for arrested users who are not motivated to undergo treatment and rehabilitation.

We need good treatment and rehabilitation programs, and we desperately need post-treatment support by social workers, counselors, etc. Good programs deserve public and financial support. But, treatment is not the answer to our drug problem - it can help, but it is not the answer.

Is there a potentially much more effective approach? I would propose that we invest in true prevention.

Why do young people use illicit mind-altering drugs? There are many reasons. Probably the top three are: curiosity; pleasure; and peer group pressure. It is hardly surprising that curiosity heads the list. A biblical phrase goes “a man should live if only to satisfy his curiosity”. Equally unsurprising is pleasure seeking; we are, after all, a hedonistic society focused on both pleasure and instant gratification. Peer groups have an extraordinary influence, for good or bad, on the fragile egos of adolescents seeking acceptance.

The best way to prevent commitment to the drug scene is to create positive peer pressure by having young people involved in activities that make them feel good about themselves and, at the same time, avoid boredom. Boredom is an invitation to involvement in the drug scene. As Shakespeare noted in Antony and Cleopatra, “10,000 ills more than the harms I know my idleness doth hatch”. The highest juvenile crime period is between the end of school and dinner time - a period in which boredom and bad peer group pressure dominate.

The proposed remedy is a wide variety of extracurricular activities that should be an intrinsic part of the program of every junior high school and high school, and should be mandatory unless there is a valid excuse. All sorts of activities should be encouraged so that each young person can find something that he/she finds interesting and self fulfilling. If that is done, it will not prevent experimentation with drugs such as marihuana, but it will markedly reduce serious involvement in the drug scene and it will create constructive peer groups.

We have known this for forty years. I emphasized it in books and articles I wrote in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Despite that knowledge, what have we done as a society in the last three decades? Counterproductively, we have progressively reduced funding for extracurricular activities in our schools, a move that is catastrophic in regard to the drug scene and promotes the influence of unconstructive peer groups. Everybody shares the blame - politicians, school boards, members of communities who regularly vote down school budgets, school administrators who have not formulated adequate plans and have not been effective advocates for extracurricular programs. All these individuals and groups decry the drug scene, but then take actions that promote it. That is sheer stupidity. Parents, too, have a responsibility to find interesting, constructive activities that occupy their children. But, the major preventive societal action we could take is to establish extensive extracurricular activities that provide plenty of individual choice, fund them adequately, and then make individual involvement mandatory.

Reducing supply, laws and incarceration, voluntary and involuntary treatment can help keep the drug scene from getting worse, but cannot provide a solution to this persistent societal malady. It is time to turn to true prevention - getting young people involved in extracurricular activities that will help protect them against serious involvement in the drug scene. True, it is no panacea, nothing is, but it could have a major impact. It does take thought, careful planning, and commitment of resources; but, if we are not willing as a society to make such a commitment, then we ought to stop complaining about the severity of the drug scene.

Supported by