Dan Hemesath's Blog

Over the past years, I’ve written several articles on drug abuse prevention. The articles are the product of my ten years of working in drug abuse treatment and prevention in three different California counties, along with a continued interest in the subject.

I have combined a number of these articles into  one paper which summarizes my current thoughts on the subject.  It’s a bit long for a single blog, so I’m dividing it into four chapters. I plan to post one chapter every two or three days until complete.  I want to make it available for any kind of re-publication, in whole or in part, or for use in classrooms — whatever.

I think think that it has some real value, but then I am be prejudiced. Your comments are welcome.

Chapter I The Problem

Perhaps the best, and most honest summary of the drug abuse problem was written by John Kroger in his book “Convictions”

Ironically John Kroger was a successful federal prosecutor. Up until just a couple of years ago he worked as an Assistant US Attorney.

After prosecuting several important narcotic cases, his conclusion is that the most effective way to deal with the problem of drug abuse is through treatment programs. The fact that he was a prosecutor gives his statements far more credibility than the same statements from someone whose background was drug abuse treatment or prevention.

In general, prosecutors are more interested in convicting and locking up drug dealers, but Kroger looks at the complete futility of this approach. Despite the tens of billions that have been spent yearly in an attempt, over the past 40 years, to win the war and drugs, he notes that the statistics show that we are not winning this war through our present policy.

Kroger points out how drug abuse continues to go up. The availability of drugs is greater than ever. He describes in great detail how the billions we spend to eradicate drugs at the source, primarily in Colombia, has been and continues to be a dismal failure.

Attempts to seize drugs at our borders have also been ineffective. In spite of the occasional bust, over 90% of the drugs get through. Millions of cars and trucks cross the US border from Mexico every month. If we tried to search them all, traffic will be backed up into Guatemala.

According to Kroger, law enforcement in the United States is also largely ineffective. Drug dealers are caught and sent to jail, but there is a waiting line and of new dealers to take their place. In the United States, 16 million drug users spend over $60 billion on drugs every year. (The costs to society are actually much more.)  Drug dealers are willing to take great risks to get a piece of that pie.

The only approach that makes sense is to reduce demand through treatment and prevention programs.

Doing his research, Kroger discovered that over the last 30 years the percentage of government money earmarked for prevention and treatment has gone down while money for law enforcement has gone up. Why? Political expediency based on the public misperception. Drug abuse treatment programs  prevent drug abuse  because a certain percentage of the drug abusers stop using drugs.  Not all drug abusers are cured by treatment programs, but studies have shown that every dollar spent on treatment saves taxpayers four dollars . This figure was arrived at through studies that were conducted by researchers at UCLA.

Back in the 70s we spent about 60% of our anti-drug money on treatment. Now it’s down to 33%.

After reading many  books, and after working in the field for over ten years, and following the situation for many more years, I’ve come to the conclusion that the most fruitful area to place our efforts is not waging war on drugs, but in decreasing the demand.

Every year tons of cocaine, marijuana, and other drugs are seized before reaching the consumer. Effective? The records show that less than 10% of the drugs are discovered. The drug lords lose a few kilos here, a few tons there, but, as usual, about 90% of the drugs shipped are getting through. In fact the pushers have been so successful that they can intentionally slow down the supply in order to take fewer risks and keep the prices higher.

Does this mean that we should drop efforts in curbing the supply of drugs? Probably not, but enforcement should not be the main focus of our efforts.  We will always need law enforcement, at least within our own country and on our borders but it has it has been proven over and over, that law enforcement cannot do it alone—in fact – law enforcement has never come close to stopping illegal drugs.

If a solution will occur, and I think that it will someday, prevention or decreasing demand must be an indispensable piece of the solution.  Regardless of whether drugs are decriminalized, or penalties are stiffened even more, prevention is the only real answer.

Drug abuse right now it just may be the biggest problem our society faces. We’ve been fighting the battle against drug abuse for over 70 years, and it is worse now then it has ever been.

Vincent Bugliosi’s book, “Drugs in America”, tells us about the $120 billion of illicit drugs that Americans buy annually, about the thousands upon thousands of drug-related deaths and murders, as well as the incalculable human suffering, illness, and lost productivity. To call it a great problem is an understatement because normal problems are not as serious.

Only if we can take away the demand, will the problem significantly diminish. If we look at why people need drugs and fill those needs with something constructive, we’ve prevented the problem.

What is that need? In other words why do young people use drugs?

If we can answer this question accurately, then we have at least a chance to stop young people from using illegal drugs. Any other approach and we’re back to the same dead-end ballgame — dealing with symptoms instead of the cause. Let’s get to the real causes. If we go down a list of the causes of drug abuse in each of the major areas of life, psychological, social, physical, and the spiritual it would include the following:

I .Psychological Needs

Lack of self-esteem: If we don’t esteem ourselves, we can find all kinds of ways of escaping the pain and punishing ourselves for imagined guilt.

Lack of Interest: This is the absence of passion for positive pursuits. Much of what we have to offer our young people is boring and meaningless to them.

II. Social Needs

Loneliness, isolation, and non-belonging: Kids use drugs because they desperately want to belong to a group of caring human beings. Groups of drug users form a kind of community that meets this need for young people even if the drugs themselves don’t.

Peer Pressure:   This is especially deadly for the kids without friends. If just about everyone else in the group uses drugs, there is intense pressure on non-using kids to use drugs too.

III. Physical needs

The area of physical need is something that many people don’t like to hear anything about. As Americans we don’t like to think that in this great country anyone really hurts for the basic necessities like food, basic medicine, and shelter unless it is their own fault. Yet millions of people suffer from deadly grinding poverty, in spite of all the government and private programs. No, this is not the only cause of drug abuse, but it is an important factor. Young people living in the slums, in desperate poverty, see themselves as having nothing to lose and much to gain by involvement with drugs.

IV. Spiritual needs

1. Lack of a role or function for young people in society.  Years ago, when I was a kid growing up on a farm, the boys worked shoulder to shoulder with grown men, doing everything from picking corn, plowing the ground, and milking cows to put food on the table. When our ancestors were boys 15 and 16 years old some were warriors protecting their family and country from attacks by the enemy. My grandmother married to 17 years of age and had 10 children all them welcome hands to strengthen the family. In those days young people were given important and fulfilling roles at an early age. These roles made them feel important, even though it wasn’t easy. Today with the parents work so far removed from anything in which the kids can participate, there often seems to be no meaningful role for teenagers. And when a girl produces a child before completing college, whether she’s married or not, it certainly doesn’t have the status that it used to have.

2. The lack of inspiring examples or heroes for youths to live one’s life for a cause — the spiritual inspiration that in the past, drove many young people to lives of service. Examples of the Dr. Schweitzer’s, the missionaries in many different churches, to a great extent has been replaced by the inspiration of  greed as exemplified by numerous example of self serving leaders–religious and otherwise,

There are many inspiring people in the world today–many people who are truly heroes and role models.  But the noise of the material centered, consumer society is so loud, that the voices of our modern day heroes are too seldom heard.

Perfection not required

The aim of prevention isn’t to do everything perfectly. It is to do enough things right for a kid that he or she is able to maintain his or her life above the point of surrender to harmful drugs.

New or old solution?

In looking at the solutions that I propose, people often ask whether these solutions have been tried already.

The answer is, Yes, they have been partially tried. Where seriously tried, they have worked.The point is not that this is a matter of solutions that have been tried and found wanting. It is rather that the solutions want trying.

Preventing drug abuse is a demanding task on the level of  waging a world war.  But that is no reason to say we can’t make positive progress. We can and eventually we will turn the corner. But it will take the involvement of millions of people living with a bit less greed, a bit more compassion, and a bit more understanding.

In simple language, what do we have to do? That’s what my paper is about–to be elaborated in the coming chapters

This entry was posted on June 25, 2010 at 5:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.