TERRORISM AND THE DRUG SCENE

by Donald B. Louria, MD

Is there a potential connection between global terrorism, the new "war" against that terrorism, and the severity of the drug scene in the United States and elsewhere? The short answer is that, potentially, there is - and we had better pay attention to that possibility.

There are an estimated 500,000 to one million heroin or cocaine dependent people in the United States, and another more than ten million who suffer from alcohol dependence or are alcohol abusers. And, those figures, of course, do not include the millions of heavy users of marijuana, the irregular users of any illicit drug, or those who have become dependent on mind-altering prescription drugs.

Our response to this vexing and persistent problem has been, in large part, to attempt to interdict the supply of illegal drugs. That has not succeeded. Similarly, rehabilitation succeeds in only a relatively small percentage of "motivated" drug abusers..

If we cannot interdict supply and rehabilitation success is clearly unsatisfactory, the focus has to be on reducing demand for illegal drugs and reducing the number of people using more than two or three alcoholic drinks a day. That, in turn, requires attention to reasons for use. There are many, including: peer group pressure; stress; drug availability; curiosity; pleasure seeking; boredom; underlying emotional and psychological problems; despair; escapism; alienation; family discord; adolescent rebellion; loneliness; poor parental example; and depression.

Another critical variable in regard to the illicit drug scene is supply - the availability of illegal drugs - and that too may relate to terrorism, anti-terrorism, and wars.

Even fully-justified wars, such as that in Afghanistan against the Taliban, have unanticipated adverse consequences. The Taliban had markedly reduced opium production. In the aftermath of that war, in large areas of rural Afghanistan not controlled by the US and our allies, desperately poor people are turning to cultivation of huge amounts of opium poppies. If the US does not move to control this production, one apparently unexpected result of the war may be the virtual flooding of the US with relatively inexpensive heroin.

I have been interested in an additional potential drug use-promoting variable, and that is a perception that we cannot solve or significantly ameliorate one or more of the major society-threatening problems facing us - problems such as nuclear holocaust, bioterrorism, the consequences of global warming, environmental destruction, among others.

The problem, in essence, is a potential loss of faith in the future, a conviction we cannot solve or control society-threatening problems by the dint of our own efforts. That is the nexus between terrorism, the anti-terror campaign, and the future of the legal and illegal drug scene in this and other countries. If young people in our society get to believe that one or more of these global problems is unsolvable, the result may be a form of escapism, a withdrawal into pleasure seeking (hedonism), including the increasing frequency of and intensity of use (and abuse) of both legal and illegal intoxicants.

It is the perception of a bleak future, not necessarily the reality, that can propel young people into drug abuse. That is one danger of the incessant governmental and media pronouncements that biological, chemical, nuclear, and radiation terrorists are about to invade America by land, sea, and air - threats that are usually acknowledged to be based on flimsy or non-credible information. Obviously, the country has to be protected as well as possible and the public has to be aware of imminent threats; but, instilling fear with hyperbolic pronouncements or scare tactics has its own inherent dangers. If this were combined with a few small terrorist actions in the United States or Canada, or a series of obvious terrorist attacks in other countries (such as the recent one in Indonesia), the result could be a major erosion of confidence among young people that they have a future in our society. That, in turn, could result in a drug scene that would dwarf anything we have experienced in the past. After all, if you believe there is no tomorrow, why not enjoy the pleasures of today, regardless of the potential consequences. And, excessive drug use would not be limited to legal and illegal intoxicants; use of sedatives, tranquillizers, anti-anxiety drugs, and anti-depressants would also increase dramatically.

There are several ways we can reduce the chances of this societal catastrophe. First, governmental spokespersons and the media can be more circumspect in their pronouncements about actual or potential terror threats. It will also depend on how we cope with and react to the almost inevitable (but, hopefully, localized) terror attacks on American soil.

Second, we can attempt to prevent intensive involvement in the drug scene by individuals. Educators and others can work hard to create positive and helpful 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 drug use.

This requires a wide variety of extracurricular activities. These 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 for non-participation. 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 marijuana, but it will markedly reduce serious involvement in the drug scene and it will create constructive peer groups. We have known this for 40 years, but 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.

Parents, too, have a responsibility to find interesting, constructive activities that occupy their children. So, 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.

If there are constructive peer groups, if young people are involved in activities they find exciting and fulfilling, we will have, to some extent, inoculated them against deep involvement in the drug scene whenever outside events make them question their future and society’s future.

Finally, there must be a basic change in the way we educate young people. What we need is something we have called societally-connected thinking.

Societally-connected thinking includes three components. The first is teaching young people about the major problems facing our society at local, national, or international levels, and about their frequent interconnectedness. It is a way of thinking broadly about issues-that is holistically- looking at specific problems as part of bigger, more complex systems. This is often called systems thinking. People frequently devise simple answers to complex problems, but these solutions are usually wrong.

The second component is to teach young people to think like futurists - drawing up alternative scenarios for future years or decades for important problems, and then figuring what could be the best way to move towards the most attractive of those scenarios (for example, how to cope with or avoid global warming). If young people spend time preparing for the future, it is likely they will have considerable faith that they do indeed have a future.

The last of the components of societally-connected thinking is that we must literally instill into young people a lifelong commitment to participate in solving or reducing major societal problems whether at local, state, national, or international levels.

In essence, whether we have a future is likely to depend, in considerable part, on whether we are willing to change the way we think about critical problems and how we teach young people in our society to think about those issues.

We must not allow the lives of young people to be dominated by terrorism and the "war" on terrorism. Additionally, we must persuade them that we are attending to major societal problems, that we, and they, can solve or ameliorate those problems, and that they can indeed be optimistic about the future. If we do not do this, we are likely to be appalled at some of the consequences of our inaction.

This editorial, in slightly different form, appeared in Adolescent Medicine, volume 27, October 2002.