Editorial:
Are
the
drug
warriors
really
fighting
for
this
nation's
youth?
11/7/97
The release this week of the EU's annual report on kids and drugs highlights a debate which is beginning to gain popular prominence across the globe. The report concludes that teens in Ireland, a country with historically "tough" policies on drugs, are using substances at higher rates than their European neighbors, and, significantly, at more than three times the rate of their compatriots living under the notoriously "lenient" drug policy of The Netherlands. Another report, this one out of the UK, finds that despite government-perpetuated stereotypes about what types of kids use drugs, the typical young recreational user is socially well-adjusted, knowledgeable about the substances they are using, and disapproving of "out of control" or "problem" use-behavior. In the US this week, DEA administrator Thomas Constantine released a statement in response to the airing of an episode of "Murphy Brown" in which the title character smokes marijuana to relieve the nausea brought on by chemotherapy. In the statement, Constantine's main assertion is that this representaion sends the "wrong message" to kids and that the show would mislead kids into thinking that recreational pot use was "OK." Without disputing the fact that many young people do, in fact, have problems with substance use, these reports effectively demonstrate how current drug policies, particularly in the US, woefully underestimate both the intelligence and the social skills of young people who use drugs. This disconnect undermines our ability to communicate important information about drugs and their use aimed at reducing both the incidence of use and the harms associated with misuse of various substances. What could be the possible implications of the fact that the EU study found that only 14% of Dutch teens had even tried "drugs" while 40% of Irish teens have done so? Or that in America, where "zero tolerance" has been an official policy for decades, over 25% of teens are estimated to have used illegal substances? Rational observation of such trends can lead to no conclusion other than that the "zero tolerance" approach has failed miserably in its stated goal of reducing drug use among youth. Judging by the recent actions of the US government, however, rationality is far from the rule when it comes to the Drug War. Take, for example, Constantine's statement with regard to Murphy Brown's use of medicinal marijuana. The very assumption that American kids cannot differentiate between the medical and recreational use of a substance is more than simply insulting; it is indicative of a naive and counterproductive approach to a generation far more sophisticated and far less vulnerable to scare tactics and propaganda than its government believes it to be. Dr. Joel Brown, in his landmark study of California's Drug, Alcohol and Tobacco Education program (DATE), found that by the time kids turned 13 or 14 years old, the overwhelming message that they had garnered was that educators and police had systematically lied to them about drugs and drug use. This led, Brown concluded, to a general disrespect for those authority figures and disdain for their message. In a nation where leaders seem intent on basing drug policy on "messages" this is a very disturbing finding indeed. The fact is that the rumblings coming from our elected and appointed leaders amount to little more than pandering to the fears of parents, and has little basis in either the realities of the lives of teenagers or in any pragmatic strategy for the reduction of harms associated with drug use. Are American kids somehow intellectually or morally inferior to their Dutch counterparts? In The Netherlands, drug policy aims to impart factual information, based upon the assumption that kids exist in the real world, where they will be faced with real choices and opportunities, including choices concerning drug use, and that kids armed with the facts will act in a more or less rational manner. In the US, the assumption seems to be that we must somehow protect our kids from the facts, lest they be tempted to make choices that make adults uneasy. This strategy has served only to alienate and disenfranchise our youth, leaving them to drift through their world without the very moral compass that our wrongheaded policies are attempting to instill. The lesson to be drawn from these bits of news from around the world is that lies, threats and oppression are likely to lead teens to far different conclusions than the ones we intended for them to reach. So let us reassess our direction. It is worth considering that for all the assertions of the US government that Dutch drug policy is a failure, the numbers show that in rejecting the "drug free" American ideal they have, ironically, come far closer to achieving it than the American model itself. And for all the U.S. government's talk of "zero tolerance," the fact is that American kids are making their own decisions with little regard for the rhetoric. If the numbers of American and Dutch kids who used drugs were reversed, our leaders would be proclaiming, rightly, the success of their system. Now that it is clear that this isn't so, the time has come to learn from our mistakes, and to finally allow our kids to learn from the facts. Adam J. Smith
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