cannabisnews.com: Fighting a War Armed With Baby-Boomer Myths 





Fighting a War Armed With Baby-Boomer Myths 
Posted by FoM on February 04, 2001 at 07:23:36 PT
By Mike Males
Source: Los Angeles Times 
Remarks by retiring drug czar Barry McCaffrey and accolades for the Steven Soderbergh film "Traffic" by drug-policy reform groups frame a vigorous drug-war debate--circa 1970. Thirty years ago, McCaffrey's goal to save our children from their own drug use might have been relevant. So, too, "Traffic" 's scenes of the daughter of the film's drug czar sampling heroin in response to the hypocrisies of liquor-swilling and pill-popping grown-ups. 
But these vintage baby-boom notions have little to do with today's drug realities. On one side, the rhetorical distortions and misdirected policies of the Office of National Drug Control Policy squandered billions of dollars and locked up millions of drug users--and the United States is enduring the worst drug-abuse crisis in its history. As McCaffrey leaves office, the federal Drug Abuse Warning Network reports that drug abuse soared to record peaks in 1999: An estimated 555,000 Americans were treated in hospitals for drug-related visits; at least 11,600 died from overdoses. On the other side, reformers seeking to decriminalize marijuana and relax drug policies perpetrate so many drug-war myths that they reinforce hard-line attitudes even as they win minor improvements.   The chief drug-war myth is the "demographic scapegoat." Wars against drugs (including Prohibition) always seek to link feared drugs to feared populations: the Chinese and opium; Mexicans and marijuana; black musicians and cocaine; and Catholic immigrants and alcohol. Today's war on drugs sustains itself by depicting white suburban teenagers menaced by inner-city youths' habits.   No matter who peddles it, this image is unreal. In truth, the drug-abuse crisis chiefly concerns aging baby boomers, mostly whites. A high schooler is five times more likely to have heroin-, cocaine- or methamphetamine-addicted parents than the other way around; far more senior citizens than teenagers die from illegal drugs. Accordingly, a "war on drugs" that truly cared about protecting children would make treating parents' addictions its top priority.   The "teenage heroin resurgence" repeatedly trumpeted in headlines and drug-war alarms is fabricated; it shows up nowhere in death, hospital, treatment or survey records. The Drug Abuse Warning Network's most recent hospital survey reports 84,500 treatments for heroin abuse nationwide in 1999; just 700 of these were for adolescents. Of 4,800 Americans who died from heroin abuse, only 33 were under 18 years old. Press panics over supposed teenage heroin outbreaks in Portland and Seattle last summer collapsed when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the average overdoser was 40 years old.   Teenage "heroin epidemics" breathlessly clarioned in some California cities are refuted by hospital records that show just nine of San Francisco's 3,100 emergency treatments for heroin overdoses in 1999 were teenagers, as were 17 of San Diego's 1,100 and two of Los Angeles's 2,950. Why aren't there more teen heroin casualties? Few use it. The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, released in September 2000, showed that .2% of 12- to 17-year-olds had used heroin at any time in the previous year. Nor are the few heroin initiators getting younger (most remain over 21).   There are preppie kids who smoke heroin, as "Traffic" depicts, but their numbers pale beside the tens of thousands of baby boomers whose addictions are rooted in the Vietnam era. Four-fifths of California's heroin decedents over the age of 30, and three-fourths of them are white, a quintessentially mainstream demographic neither drug warrior nor drug reformer wishes to target. Thus, policy debate and cinematic representations promote a comfortable myth: Baby-boom drug days are behind us.   Similarly, drug-reform publications such as DrugSense Weekly allege an "increase in heroin use among our youth" to indict the drug war. Mike Gray, author of "Drug Crazy," and other reformers claim decriminalizing and regulating marijuana for adults would make it harder for teenagers to get. Ridiculous. The 1999 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse reports 12- to 17-year-olds use legal, adult-regulated cigarettes and alcohol 100 times more than they use heroin; two to three times more teens drink or smoke than use the most popular illicit, marijuana. Teenagers can get alcohol and drugs whenever they want them, yet suffer very low casualties. Drug reformers' own research gospel, the Lindesmith Center's exhaustive "Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts," finds no scientific reason why teenagers should be banned from using marijuana that would not also apply to adults. In short, teenagers are not the issue.   Drug policy will change only when compelling new information is introduced. That means discarding first-wave baby-boomer drug images and moving toward second-generation realities. Throughout the Western world, young people are reacting against their parents' hard-drug abuse by patronizing softer drugs such as beer and marijuana. It's understandable that baby boomers would indulge moral panic over any drug use by kids while denying their own middle-aged drug woes, but these illusions should not govern 2000-era drug policy.   The Netherlands' 1976 Dutch Opium Act reforms recognized that modern soft-drug use by young people is separate from the midlife hard-drug crisis. Dutch studies showed that marijuana and hashish use was unrelated to hard-drug abuse, except among a small fraction already inclined to addiction. These conclusions were confirmed by the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse analysts and long-term studies by University of California researchers. True, most drug abusers first tried drugs in their youth, as did most non-abusers. But 90% of the 160 million American adults who used marijuana or alcohol during adolescence did not find them "gateways" to later addiction.   The Netherlands' reforms stressing public-health strategies to contain hard-drug abuse, coupled with tolerance for marijuana use by adults and teenagers, has produced a spectacular benefit: a 65% decline in heroin deaths since 1980 (while U.S. heroin death rates doubled).   Whether or not Dutch-style reforms are feasible here, the U.S. will not reduce its worst-ever drug-abuse crisis until politicians radically revamp the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the facile demographic scapegoating of young people. Yet, because drug reformers, copying drug-war hard-liners, increasingly promote their agendas by exploiting youth as fear-invoking symbols in today's anachronistic "debate," genuine reform seems remote. * Mike Males, Justice Policy Institute Senior Researcher and Uc Santa Cruz Sociology Instructor, Is the Author of "Kids and Guns: How Politicians, Experts, and the Press Fabricate Fear of Youth."Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)Author: Mike MalesPublished: February 4, 2001Copyright: 2001 Los Angeles TimesAddress: Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053Fax: (213) 237-4712Contact: letters latimes.comWebsite: http://www.latimes.com/CannabisNews Articles - Barry McCaffreyhttp://cannabisnews.com/thcgi/search.pl?K=Barry+McCaffrey
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Comment #4 posted by Mr. 2toes on February 05, 2001 at 09:19:04 PT
umm
Forgive my 'barely graduated highschool' intelligence level, but perhaps someone can explain this to me;"Accordingly, a "war on drugs" that truly cared about protecting children would make treating parents' addictions its top priority."So, to help children, we should throw there parents in jail or treatment?
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Comment #3 posted by Juan Costo on February 05, 2001 at 06:13:33 PT
When I was under 21 during the Reagan Era
I had the same experience during the so called glory days of the drug war when Nancy was telling the kids to Just Say No. Hardcore reactionaries claim we were allegedly winning back then before the Clintons came into power. Getting alcohol was a real hassle. None of my older friends wanted to do it twice for fear of setting a precedent. Can't say I blame them. Illegal drugs, on the other hand, were not only readily available, but usually delivered via door to door service 24/7. So much for protecting the children. This guy is simply trying to shop his thesis around, that being that fear of youth is exploited. Its exploited by politicians who refer to inner city youth as "super predators," but no one in the reform movement is guilty of such charges. 
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Comment #2 posted by Stripey on February 04, 2001 at 23:11:07 PT
Got one thing. . .
Well, I'm under 21. I drink. But not nearly as often as I toke. You know why? It's really hard for me to get alcohol. I have to ask someone else to violate the law, or get a fake ID and directly violate the law in the presence of a law-abiding citizen who is at risk if I AM breaking the law. Or, I go find a hookup that's breaking more laws than I am. He's not really afraid of me getting in trouble. It's my trouble, not his (yeah, I know, I could narc, but that's not as much an issue as him getting his money.)My point is, it's very much easier for me to get weed than alcohol. Unless I'm in the minority, which I don't think I am, she's dead wrong about it being easier to get booze than weed.
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Comment #1 posted by kaptinemo on February 04, 2001 at 14:17:46 PT:
"Debate"? What "debate"?
'Yet, because drug reformers, copying drug-war hard-liners, increasingly promote their agendas by exploiting youth as fear-invoking symbols in today's anachronistic "debate," genuine reform seems remote. * Somebody, please, help me out here...have I missed something? Somthing seems amiss, here. Namely, the bit that we are copying antis. Implying that we are as dishonest as they are. Somebody get this man some medical help; he seems delirious.'But these vintage baby-boom notions have little to do with today's drug realities.' Okay... I've no problem with that. Nor with the following:'On one side, the rhetorical distortions and misdirected policies of the Office of National Drug Control Policy squandered billions of dollars and locked up millions of drug users--and the United States is enduring the worst drug-abuse crisis in its history.'True, very true. Sadly so...and whose policies are to blame for that eruption? But here's where it starts to get weirdly distorted: 'As McCaffrey leaves office, the federal Drug Abuse Warning Network reports that drug abuse soared to record peaks in 1999: An estimated 555,000 Americans were treated in hospitals for drug-related visits; at least 11,600 died from overdoses.' We already know about the way these figures were garnered; a med tech asks a seriously injured person in an Emergency Room if they have used illegal drugs recently. Injured person says yes. Check mark on clipboard denoting that fact. Antis then fraudulently claim that the drug usage was *directly causative* of the ER visitation. Hardly good actuarial process, but what do you expect from people who still tell you that cannabis use causes murderous rampages by axe-wielding psychos? So why does Mr. Males use these very same incredibly suspect figures from equally suspect agencies? Especially after he has just called into question the ONDCP's own lack of efficacy and fiscal ineptitude?But it gets worse:'On the other side, reformers seeking to decriminalize marijuana and relax drug policies perpetrate so many drug-war myths that they reinforce hard-line attitudes even as they win minor improvements.'Huh? Say what? *We* perpetrate 'drug war myths'? *We* do? Preposterous! Unlike our opponents, who have literaly done everything in their power to stifle objective research into cannabis, fudged figures, and generally lied through their teeth, we have sought to bring to the public's eye the verifiable facts concerning cannabis usage. The "demographic myths" that Mr. Males refers to *are* countered here and in other websites. The only reason such things are brought up at all is because the antis regularly use the holy mantra of 'for the children, for the children' to justify their worst excesses; as the title of an old Billy Joel song goes, "WE didn't start the fire." The antis did. But at least we try to pour some water on it.Secondly, Mr. Males seems to overlooking something. Namely that, historically, there has been *no debate* on this subject between antis and reformers. None whatsoever. That antis have sought to use every opportunity to AVOID the possibility of directly debating reformers on neutral ground. They literally run out of media studios in the hopes that thay can dodge running into a reformer and being editorially flayed alive on the air for their cavalier attititude towards the truth.This is very disappointing; I suppose Mr. Males believes that he has found a safe passage through the intellectual minefield that surrounds the entrenched DrugWarriors. He may honestly believe he has found a new wrinkle in the drug policy connundrum which will part the governmental Red Sea. But, at the risk of seeming eaten up with hubris, all he has demonstrated to me is that he will have no luck whatsoever in trying to teach reformer Granmas how to suck eggs. We've been at this a LOT longer than he has.
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