Drug education, anyone?
By Chris Jungle

According to surveys, teenage drug use has jumped up since 1992. Republicans blame Clinton, while the administration claims the trend started during Bush's term. It appears that when drug trends rise, politicians say "it wasn't me" but are quick to take credit for the times when drug use goes down. The truth is that no president has much affect on drug use statistics. People will take the drugs that are available.

Methamphetamine abuse is a huge problem in San Diego, Denver, and Kansas City but is nearly non-existent in New York City. The reason being that New York is saturated by crack while the other areas of the country have large meth laboratories. Twenty-five percent of the marijuana used in the U.S. is domestically grown and therefore fairly easy to get in any mid-sized city. The Chinese Mafia recently expanded its range into North American cities like Vancouver and San Francisco and coincidentally the purity of heroin on the streets went up.

I blame Clinton for the current "drug crisis" about as much as I blame Reagan for the boom of cocaine sales in the 1980s. Both were at the mercy of the dealers. Kids say that if they want drugs they know where to get them. In short, the United States is full of narcotics. The answer is not spending billions of dollars to go burn cocaine labs in Colombia or raid poppy fields in Pakistan. Although more money could go to stopping drug dealers inside the United States, that would not solve the problem either. It's time to accept that we, as a nation, have a permanent drug problem. By permanent, I mean it won't go away. If we can admit that, then we can properly educated our youth about drugs.

I asked a six year old girl once if she would ever do drugs, and the answer was no. When I asked her why, the response was "because I'd die." I think that strategy works for kids until they hit their teenage years and realize people aren't dying. In 1993, 120 teenagers in the entire United States died of drug over doses, and it's estimated that 5,000 people of all ages combined die from illegal drug use per year‹which includes marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, ecstasy, etc... When that is compared to the 100,000 that die from alcohol per year, it does not seem so large. It doesn't mean kids should be doing either, but another approach at education needs to occur.

When I recall my drug education, it all seems like lies. They told me cocaine would rot my nose out, hash would make me retarded, and LSD would make me jump out of a window. With the exception of the hash comment, I'm sure the other claims have occurred only with a few cases. They said the only words I needed to know were "Just Say No." Unfortunately, that didn't explain to me why some people choose to do drugs. I think if they would have just stated what drew people to drugs and the common health dangers of taking the drugs, that would have scared me enough. Maybe if we had drug councilors at schools, students would have a place to go if they already had a problem.

Teenagers represent only 2% of the total drug using population, so narcotics aren't their most prevalent concern. The biggest problem each teenager personally must face is puberty, and puberty will make a kid do some crazy things. Some will rebel against their parents, some will become isolated, and some will even go so far as to take drugs. They may be doing them to be cool, to rebel, or to escape. Even with all of the education in the world, some kids will still venture over to that dealer across the street. We need to make sure that once they cross the line, they are still welcome back.

An attitude has sprung up that suggests people that use or have used drugs are wasted, irresponsible individuals. There has been an uproar about people in the White House staff having used drugs in their past (maybe even recently in their past). A civilized, nurturing society would say that it is present performance that matters, not past occurrences (re: rehabilitation theory). Instead, a certain pack of people (and I won't name names, Senators) have taken the stance that if you do or once did drugs you can no longer be a benefit to society. If all past and present drug users were not allowed to try and help society, there would be a serious unproductive mob out there.

So, if we could stop blaming and denying fault for the current statistics and start teaching and helping those kids (and adults) in need, something positive might actually happen.

Chris Jungle is experimenting with a type of drug that will force people to judge others solely by the conduct of their character. The results are so far discouraging.

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