Is it drugs or people?

John Walters, the Federal Drug Czar, released his annual report today. He claims that teen-age use of illegal drugs is down substantially, but that teen-age use of prescription drugs has gone 'way up so that now prescription drugs are now second only to marijuana (I have to ask: what about the really dangerous ones -- tobacco and alcohol?).

He is making a false distinction, here; and that distinction has been drummed into kids until they believe it.

The body makes no distinction between illegal and legal drugs. An opioid affects a person the same way whether it is illegal heroin or prescribable morphine, Oxycotin, methadone, Vicodin, fentanyl, or codeine. There is very little difference, as far as the body is concerned between Ritalin, Adderal (dexadrine), the dextroamphetaine given out as go-fast pills to military pilots and soldiers, and the methamphetamine cooked up in a motel room. The body uses them all in the same way. In fact, cocaine and these amphetamines are also interchangable with some differences in effect.

The kids may know heroin is evil, and they are probably scared of injections, smoking, or snorting; but they feel safe with the little white Vicodin pill they swiped from mother's medicine cabinet.

The law is wrong in two respects. First, it tries to separate illegal drugs from legal ones when there is no difference; and second, it makes no distinction between use, abuse, and addiction.

Those of use who have one or two drinks to "loosen up" for a party are using alcohol, as humans have done for at least 6000 years. Those who have five or six drinks (or fewer in many cases), and get behind the wheel of their cars are abusing alcohol; and they can hurt the rest of us. Those who can't do without their alcohol, even when drinking hurts them, are addicted, and probably need medical assistance to break the habituation.

Only one of those three conditions calls for legal intervention -- abuse like drunk driving or spousal abuse; but the law lumps all three together.

Almost all humans like to get high. Watch pre-schoolers spin around until they are dizzy and then laugh as they stagger about. Many kids endanger themselves by playing the "choking game" for the same effect. Many carnival rides are designed to make the riders dizzy. Chemical highs spring from the same impulse.

But most users don't become abusers or addicts. Most will experiment with a drug a few times and then quit. Many will continue to use in moderation in proper circumstances. A very few will continue into patterns of abuse or addiction.

The trick would be to find out who those very few are before they start using. We have some ideas, but nothing yet that amounts to real predictability.

Kids should be taught the truth about use, abuse, and addiction; they should learn the effects, contraindications, side effects, and overdose risks of the major drugs; they should have someone non-judgmental to talk to if they have problems.
What they do not need is scary preaching based on "evil drugs" and old wives tales.

And we need to divert a small percentage of what we spend on trying to arrest and shoot our way out of a "drug problem" to more and better research on problem users, abuse, addiction, and their prevention and cure.