Drugs

American teenagers—in fact, teens throughout the Western world—suffer a massive drug crisis… among their parents. Middle-aged abuse of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, pharmaceutical drugs, multiple drugs, and drugs mixed with alcohol now constitutes the worst drug abuse epidemic the United States has ever suffered, inflicting massive damage on families, communities, and the criminal justice system. 

Does this reality strike you as the exact opposite of how drug issues are depicted in U.S. media reports, policy forums, and political speeches? Welcome to the upside-down world of American policy discussion, in which spokespersons for the massively failed “war on drugs” and drug policy reform groups refuse to talk about the middle-aged drug abuse and crime epidemic and instead squabble over an endless series of “teen drug crises,” nearly all of them fabricated.

So poisonous has America's drug policy non-debate become that all sides--from the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and Partnership for a Drug-Free America to the so-called "reform" groups such as Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), and Marijuana Policy Project (MPP)--now willfully endanger young people in order to defend rampant adult drug and alcohol abuse they're too cowardly to admit is even occurring.

All sides now endorse absolute prohibition on teenage drug use, including interchangeable schemes to variously enforce arrest, forced treatment, and laws providing for lengthy prison terms* for anyone under age 21 (or, in the case of DPA's Marsha Rosenbaum, "well into his or her twenties") for even the most casual use of marijuana. Their punitive anti-youth stance is not scientific; these groups readily admit marijuana poses no substantial risk to teens. Other than the debate over medical marijuana (which is not about drug use, but pharmaceutical treatment), there is no meaningful discussion of America's catastrophic tolerance for skyrocketing adult drug abuse or of realistic policy reforms going on today. All the drug-war and drug-reform groups disagree about is which drugs adults should be allowed to abuse while "educating," coercing, and locking up hundreds of thousands of young people who typically use drugs more responsibly than their elders. Both drug-war and drug-reform groups support continuing and even escalating the "war on drugs" as long as their own favorite drugs and older ages are exempt.

The universal attack on young people and drugs is motivated, as in other realms, by unadmitted adult crises. The middle-aged drug and crime crisis all sides ignore stands out like the Matterhorn in Kansas. Note first the trends in deaths from abuse of illicit drugs (drugs that either are illegal, such as cocaine, or are used illegally, such as unprescribed OxyContin). Note two trends: the long-term explosion in illicit drug abuse overdose among adults in the 35-54 age range, who are the parents of teens today, since the mid-1970s (Figure 1, Table 1). This drug abuse increase overwhelmingly involves aging Baby Boomers, whose cohort suffered the worst drug death levels at age 20-24 in the early 1970s, age 25-34 in the early 1980s, age 35-44 in the early 1990s, and now age 45-54. The fact that America’s drug abuse crisis over the last three decades has centered on Boomers has proven a taboo topic. All sides insist on misrepresenting the drug problem as one of teens and young adults. 

The second troubling trend is the upsurge in drug deaths among all ages, including teens, over the last decade. This indicates a price for officials’ continued failure to address the middle-aged drug epidemic—or, in fact, even to admit it exists. Traditionally, the biggest predictor of whether teens will abuse drugs is having parents who abuse drugs or living in communities where adult drug abuse is widespread. 

It’s not just overdose deaths that reveal this trend. The latest federal Drug Abuse Warning Network survey of hospitals nationwide, which finds that adults 35 and older comprise 55% of emergency cases involving heroin, 59% involving cocaine, 55% involving illegal use of pharmaceutical drugs, 54% involving alcohol mixed with drugs, 38% involving methamphetamine, and 31% involving marijuana (Table 2).  

Meanwhile, persons under 21 comprised 6% of cases involving heroin, 7% involving cocaine, 12% involving alcohol mixed with drugs, 15% involving illicit pharmaceutical abuse, and 29% involving marijuana. Note that even though teens comprise only small fractions of drug problems (including for pharmaceuticals), they receive a vast majority of negative publicity on drug issues. 

The mammoth, unadmitted middle-aged drug crisis has not only jeopardized children and teens in families and communities, including the fueling of markets for illicit drugs that create violence in inner cities, it has spurred a giant, also unadmitted, middle-aged crime and imprisonment wave (Tables 3 and 4). This is unheard-of. Middle-agers, the richest groups in society by far (teens and young adults suffer poverty levels two to three times higher than those age 35-54), should not be suffering drug, crime, and imprisonment epidemics.

 
The reason for the anti-youth, racism of both drug-war and drug-reform groups is further visible in Table 4. The worst, fastest growing drug abuse crisis is among white (and, secondarily, black) Americans ages 35 to 54--exactly the ages and races that comprise the leadership of major groups as well as the constituencies they seek to flatter. While drug-reform lobbies correctly point out that imprisonment tends to worsen drug abuse problems, their hypocrisy is revealed in their support continued arrest and even imprisonment of persons under 21 even for casual marijuana use.
 

Why aren’t we hearing more about middle-agers, and less about teens, when it comes to rising drug abuse and crime? Because American social policy discussion is based on outdated ideology and the needs of interest groups. Obsolete ideology, much of it formed in the 1960s and 1970s when Baby Boomers were crime- and drug-troubled youths, holds that (in the words of the progressive lobby, the Sentencing Project) “crime is a young person’s game.” Interest groups, from the War on Drugs officials and drug-war consultants like Columbia University’s Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse to drug-policy reform groups like Marijuana Policy Project and National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, popularize themselves by flattering powerful demographics like Boomers and stigmatizing powerless groups such as youth. 

Exacerbating the problem: the biggest cohort of drug abusers by far are white middle-agers, exactly the group interests from left to right, including the news media, seek to flatter. Thus, while these interests divert Americans’ attention to largely fabricated teen drug crises, or meaningless surveys* of how many teens report using drugs, the ignored middle-aged drug crisis has become our worst social problem. 

Mike Males, YouthFacts.org

*DPA and NORML both supported the MPP's Measure 7 in Nevada in 2006, which would have legalized possession and use of marijuana by adults age 21 and older while refusing to change state laws providing for prison terms of up to 5 years, fines of up to $4,000, and permanent felony records for persons under 21 who possess a single joint. These groups have all called for regulation of marijuana similar to alcohol, a scheme which is not only a policy failure but which has resulted in the arrests of 500,000 persons under 21 every year for alcohol possession. All of these groups have refused my repeaeted requests that the go on record opposing arrest and imprisonment of persons under 21 for marijuana possession. All have called for an end to the "war on drugs," but none have noted that nearly half the arrests for drug possession are of persons under age 21. As a result, the debate over drug policy has degenerated into a rhetorical exercise of who should be arrested by the hundreds of thousands for what drug, with both drug-war and drug-reform groups scapegoating young people for an older-age crisis.