Surprising, interesting article....aging baby boomer drug use
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Surprising, interesting article....aging baby boomer drug use http://susiebright.blogs.com/MalesDrugs.pdf
"Today, however, the fastest-growing population of drug abusers is
white, middle-aged Americans." And consequently...they are committing many more crimes.....
This Is Your Brain on Drugs, Dad
New York Times
Jan 3, 2007
By Mike Males
Mike Males is a senior researcher at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.
WHEN releasing last week's Monitoring the Future survey on drug use, John P.
Walters, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, boasted that
''broad'' declines in teenage drug use promise ''enormous beneficial consequences
not only for our children now, but for the rest of their lives.'' Actually, anybody who
has looked carefully at the report and other recent federal studies would see a
dramatically different picture: skyrocketing illicit drug abuse and related deaths
among teenagers and adults alike.
While Monitoring the Future, an annual study that depends on teenagers to selfreport
on their behavior, showed that drug use dropped sharply in the last decade,
the National Center for Health Statistics has reported that teenage deaths from illicit
drug abuse have tripled over the same period. This reverses 25 years of declining
overdose fatalities among youths, suggesting that teenagers are now joining
older generations in increased drug use.
What the Monitoring the Future report does have right is that teenagers remain the
least part of America's burgeoning drug abuse crisis. Today, after 20 years, hundreds
of billions of dollars, and millions of arrests and imprisonments in the war on
drugs, America's rate of drug-related deaths, hospital emergencies, crime and social
ills stand at record highs.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of
Americans dying from the abuse of illegal drugs has leaped by 400 percent in the
last two decades, reaching a record 28,000 in 2004. The F.B.I. reported that drug
arrests reached an all-time high of 1.8 million in 2005. The Drug Abuse Warning
Network, a federal agency that compiles statistics on hospital emergency cases
caused by illicit drug abuse, says that number rose to 940,000 in 2004 -- a huge
increase over the last quarter century.
Why are so few Americans aware of these troubling trends? One reason is that today's drug abusers are simply the ''wrong'' group. As David Musto, a psychiatry
professor at Yale and historian of drug abuse, points out, wars on drugs have traditionally depended on ''linkage between a drug and a feared or rejected group
within society.'' Today, however, the fastest-growing population of drug abusers is
white, middle-aged Americans. This is a powerful mainstream constituency, and
unlike with teenagers or urban minorities, it is hard for the government or the news
media to present these drug users as a grave threat to the nation.
Among Americans in their 40s and 50s, deaths from illicit-drug overdoses have
risen by 800 percent since 1980, including 300 percent in the last decade. In 2004,
American hospital emergency rooms treated 400,000 patients between the ages
35 and 64 for abusing heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, hallucinogens
and ''club drugs'' like ecstasy.
Equally surprising, graying baby boomers have become America's fastest-growing
crime scourge. The F.B.I. reports that last year the number of Americans over the
age of 40 arrested for violent and property felonies rose to 420,000, up from
170,000 in 1980. Arrests for drug offenses among those over 40 rose to 360,000
last year, up from 22,000 in 1980. The Bureau of Justice Statistics found that
440,000 Americans ages 40 and older were incarcerated in 2005, triple the number
in 1990.
Yet drug officials seem fixated on paper-and-pencil surveys of drug use by teens.
In releasing its survey last week, the Office of Drug Control Policy trumpeted that
''America's balanced strategy to reduce drug use is working.'' Representative Mark
Souder, an Indiana Republican who has been a top supporter of federal antidrug
efforts, says ''the Bush administration is doing very well'' on this front because
''drug use, particularly among young people, is down.''
But, some may say, don't teenage drug use rates predict future drug problems? To
the contrary: 30 years of experience shows that fluctuations in the percentage of
youths who report using drugs on surveys has almost nothing to do with the harm
that drug abuse causes (addiction, disease, injury, death, crime, family and community distress), either in adolescence or later in life.
I compared teenage drug use trends reported annually by Monitoring the Future
since the 1970s with trends for other behaviors and with federal crime, health and
education statistics. In years in which a higher percentage of high school seniors
told the survey takers they used illicit drugs, teenagers consistently reported and
experienced lower rates of crime, murder, drug-related hospital emergencies and
deaths, suicides, H.I.V. infection, school dropouts, delinquency, pregnancy, violence,
theft in and outside of school, and fights with parents, employers and
teachers.
The data also contradict Mr. Walters's claim that generations reporting lower rates
of drug use enjoy ''less addiction, less suffering, less crime, lower health costs and
higher achievement.'' For example, baby boomers rarely used illegal drugs as
youths.
In 1972, the University of Michigan researchers who carry out Monitoring the Future
found that just 22 percent of high school seniors had ever used illegal drugs,
compared to 48 percent of the class of 2005. Yet as that generation has aged, it
has been afflicted by drug abuse and its related ills -- overdoses, hospitalizations,
drug-related crime -- at far higher rates than those experienced by later generations
at the same ages.
It's time to end the obsession with hyping teenage drug use. The meaningless
surveys that policy makers now rely on should be replaced with a comprehensive
''drug abuse index'' that pulls together largely ignored data on drug-related deaths,
hospital emergencies, crime, diseases and similar practical measures.
A good model is the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs' fledgling
drug abuse index, which I helped compile and which aims to pinpoint which
populations and areas are most harmed by drugs, both legal and illicit.
Few experts would have suspected that the biggest contributors to California's
drug abuse, death and injury toll are educated, middle-aged women living in the
Central Valley and rural areas, while the fastest-declining, lowest-risk populations
are urban black and Latino teenagers. Yet the index found exactly that. These are
the sorts of trends we need to understand if we are to design effective policies.
The United States' drug abuse crisis has exploded out of control. Scientifically designed strategies are urgently needed to target the manifest drug-caused damage
that current policies are failing miserably to address.
"Today, however, the fastest-growing population of drug abusers is
white, middle-aged Americans." And consequently...they are committing many more crimes.....
This Is Your Brain on Drugs, Dad
New York Times
Jan 3, 2007
By Mike Males
Mike Males is a senior researcher at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.
WHEN releasing last week's Monitoring the Future survey on drug use, John P.
Walters, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, boasted that
''broad'' declines in teenage drug use promise ''enormous beneficial consequences
not only for our children now, but for the rest of their lives.'' Actually, anybody who
has looked carefully at the report and other recent federal studies would see a
dramatically different picture: skyrocketing illicit drug abuse and related deaths
among teenagers and adults alike.
While Monitoring the Future, an annual study that depends on teenagers to selfreport
on their behavior, showed that drug use dropped sharply in the last decade,
the National Center for Health Statistics has reported that teenage deaths from illicit
drug abuse have tripled over the same period. This reverses 25 years of declining
overdose fatalities among youths, suggesting that teenagers are now joining
older generations in increased drug use.
What the Monitoring the Future report does have right is that teenagers remain the
least part of America's burgeoning drug abuse crisis. Today, after 20 years, hundreds
of billions of dollars, and millions of arrests and imprisonments in the war on
drugs, America's rate of drug-related deaths, hospital emergencies, crime and social
ills stand at record highs.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of
Americans dying from the abuse of illegal drugs has leaped by 400 percent in the
last two decades, reaching a record 28,000 in 2004. The F.B.I. reported that drug
arrests reached an all-time high of 1.8 million in 2005. The Drug Abuse Warning
Network, a federal agency that compiles statistics on hospital emergency cases
caused by illicit drug abuse, says that number rose to 940,000 in 2004 -- a huge
increase over the last quarter century.
Why are so few Americans aware of these troubling trends? One reason is that today's drug abusers are simply the ''wrong'' group. As David Musto, a psychiatry
professor at Yale and historian of drug abuse, points out, wars on drugs have traditionally depended on ''linkage between a drug and a feared or rejected group
within society.'' Today, however, the fastest-growing population of drug abusers is
white, middle-aged Americans. This is a powerful mainstream constituency, and
unlike with teenagers or urban minorities, it is hard for the government or the news
media to present these drug users as a grave threat to the nation.
Among Americans in their 40s and 50s, deaths from illicit-drug overdoses have
risen by 800 percent since 1980, including 300 percent in the last decade. In 2004,
American hospital emergency rooms treated 400,000 patients between the ages
35 and 64 for abusing heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, hallucinogens
and ''club drugs'' like ecstasy.
Equally surprising, graying baby boomers have become America's fastest-growing
crime scourge. The F.B.I. reports that last year the number of Americans over the
age of 40 arrested for violent and property felonies rose to 420,000, up from
170,000 in 1980. Arrests for drug offenses among those over 40 rose to 360,000
last year, up from 22,000 in 1980. The Bureau of Justice Statistics found that
440,000 Americans ages 40 and older were incarcerated in 2005, triple the number
in 1990.
Yet drug officials seem fixated on paper-and-pencil surveys of drug use by teens.
In releasing its survey last week, the Office of Drug Control Policy trumpeted that
''America's balanced strategy to reduce drug use is working.'' Representative Mark
Souder, an Indiana Republican who has been a top supporter of federal antidrug
efforts, says ''the Bush administration is doing very well'' on this front because
''drug use, particularly among young people, is down.''
But, some may say, don't teenage drug use rates predict future drug problems? To
the contrary: 30 years of experience shows that fluctuations in the percentage of
youths who report using drugs on surveys has almost nothing to do with the harm
that drug abuse causes (addiction, disease, injury, death, crime, family and community distress), either in adolescence or later in life.
I compared teenage drug use trends reported annually by Monitoring the Future
since the 1970s with trends for other behaviors and with federal crime, health and
education statistics. In years in which a higher percentage of high school seniors
told the survey takers they used illicit drugs, teenagers consistently reported and
experienced lower rates of crime, murder, drug-related hospital emergencies and
deaths, suicides, H.I.V. infection, school dropouts, delinquency, pregnancy, violence,
theft in and outside of school, and fights with parents, employers and
teachers.
The data also contradict Mr. Walters's claim that generations reporting lower rates
of drug use enjoy ''less addiction, less suffering, less crime, lower health costs and
higher achievement.'' For example, baby boomers rarely used illegal drugs as
youths.
In 1972, the University of Michigan researchers who carry out Monitoring the Future
found that just 22 percent of high school seniors had ever used illegal drugs,
compared to 48 percent of the class of 2005. Yet as that generation has aged, it
has been afflicted by drug abuse and its related ills -- overdoses, hospitalizations,
drug-related crime -- at far higher rates than those experienced by later generations
at the same ages.
It's time to end the obsession with hyping teenage drug use. The meaningless
surveys that policy makers now rely on should be replaced with a comprehensive
''drug abuse index'' that pulls together largely ignored data on drug-related deaths,
hospital emergencies, crime, diseases and similar practical measures.
A good model is the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs' fledgling
drug abuse index, which I helped compile and which aims to pinpoint which
populations and areas are most harmed by drugs, both legal and illicit.
Few experts would have suspected that the biggest contributors to California's
drug abuse, death and injury toll are educated, middle-aged women living in the
Central Valley and rural areas, while the fastest-declining, lowest-risk populations
are urban black and Latino teenagers. Yet the index found exactly that. These are
the sorts of trends we need to understand if we are to design effective policies.
The United States' drug abuse crisis has exploded out of control. Scientifically designed strategies are urgently needed to target the manifest drug-caused damage
that current policies are failing miserably to address.
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