ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 25, 1996 TAG: 9608270060
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE MALES
THE RELEASE of two federal drug surveys has set off another sickening round of moralizing in a nation whose adults seem to hate their adolescents.
The barrage of preaching by candidates, officials and drug authorities deploring ``an explosion in kids using drugs'' despite the best efforts of ``responsible grown-ups'' represented a continuing denial of the clearest fact of today's American drug scene: The worst danger to America's youth is drug abuse by grown-ups.
The 1995 National Household survey showed that 90 percent of teens didn't use any mood-altering drugs in the month before the survey. Of the 10 percent who did, the overwhelming majority used milder drugs such as marijuana. Just 1 percent of youths indulged in cocaine or heroin.
The moderate behavior of today's teen-agers stands in shocking contrast to the ugliest and best-kept secret of the war on drugs: skyrocketing drug abuse among today's middle-agers, whose death and injury toll from heroin, cocaine, pharmaceutical drugs and alcohol mixed with drugs has reached record heights.
Since the war on drugs was launched in 1983, drug deaths have doubled. This epidemic of adult drug abuse was reconfirmed by the U.S. Drug Abuse Warning Network's newest survey of hospital emergency rooms, also released last week.
DAWN surveys show that four-fifths of those hospitalized for heroin, cocaine or marijuana overdoses were over age 25. Only 3 percent - including less than 1 percent for cocaine or heroin - were adolescents.
But nevermind the facts. Grown-ups vote and teen-agers don't. So U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials used the two studies to manufacture the illusion that the rise in occasional teen-age marijuana use was the cause of the jump in serious drug hospitalizations. Officials counted on the press not to read the reports or raise embarrassing questions, and they were rewarded with a coast-to-coast avalanche of front-page hysteria berating teen-agers.
Worse still, DAWN's companion survey of coroners in 42 major cities found a record 8,426 deaths from drug overdoses, drug suicides and drug-related accidents (such as car wrecks) in 1994. Of these, just 95 were 12 to 17 years old. But 7,549 - 90 percent - were 26 or older, and nearly two-thirds were older than 35.
California, which accounts for nearly half the nation's heroin deaths, provides the most astonishing contrast. The state vital-statistics bureau reported that, in 1994, heroin claimed 502 adults and no teen-agers. In Los Angeles County, where 1 million teen-agers reside, not one person 13 to 19 years old died from any kind of drug overdose in 1994 - compared to 552 adults. Yet whom have California's officials and press relentlessly blamed for heroin and other drug woes? You guessed it: kids.
Back in the early 1970s, those who died from drugs were mostly aged 18 to 25. Today, they are 40 to 49. Examination of the trends shows that teen-agers have not been a significant part of the nation's drug-abuse problem for 20 years.
Long-term studies show that occasional pot smoking, which accounts for most teen-age drug use, does not lead to later problems. The tens of millions of casual 1960s and '70s pot smokers (such as Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich) were highly unlikely to abuse drugs later in life. But the smaller number of frequent hard-drug users from that era, many of whom emerged from the Vietnam War with heroin habits, appears to form the bulk of today's drug crisis. Their plight has been ignored in today's anti-youth hysteria.
So, too, has the damage that parents' drug abuse does to children. Recent studies have reported that one-half to two-thirds of all children and teen-agers placed in foster care due to violent victimization or severe neglect have parents who are drug or alcohol abusers.
During her tenure as Health and Human Services secretary, Donna Shalala has never issued a major press statement on the 1 million kids who were victims of violent abuses by adult family members. But she has repeatedly taken the podium to denounce casual pot smoking by a small fraction of the nation's youth.
Millions of America's teen-agers have been reared amidst horrendous conditions of poverty and abuse. Despite that, today's teen-agers are doing remarkably well. It is the grown-ups, from Pennsylvania Avenue to the local neighborhood bar, that we should be worrying about.
Mike Males, author of ``The Scapegoat Generation: America's War on Adolescents,'' is a social ecology doctoral student at the University of California, Irvine.
- Knight-Ridder/Tribune
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