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WHAT YOU NEED
TOKNOW
ABOUT DRUG ABUSE
The Director of the United States
bi lity that this problern wi ll contin–
ue to be with us, and might worsen
if we don't get at its roots.
National l nstitute on Drug Abuse speaks out!
P
sychiatrist William Pol–
lin, director of the N IDA
s ince 1979, was inter–
viewed by
Plain Truth
writers Don–
ald D. Schroeder and Michael A.
Snyder in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Pollin, if you had only this one
opportunity to speak to our read–
ers, how would you describe the
drug abuse situation today?
We've gone through a period of
approximately 20 years during
which there was dramatic inctease in
the use of drugs in this country.
In most health and social prob–
lem fields, if you get a 20 to 50
percent increase- that's dramatic.
1f you get a 100 percent increase,
that 's epidemic. l n the area of drug
abuse, we bad a
3,000 percent
increase.
lf you go back to the early six–
ties, the late fifties, there were Iess
than 1 percent of American youth
of high school age who were using
drugs.
It
was practicaJly unknown.
By the mid-1970s, it was the
exception rather than the rule for
American youth not to experiment
with
sorne
illicit drugs-10 to 15
percent of high school seníors were
using marij uana daily.
In the past three years, we've
seen three consecutive years of
downturn in the daily use of mari–
juana by high school seniors. But
despíte the recent improvernent,
rnost knowledgeable authorities
still are convinced that the leve! of
drug use by our young people is
higher
than is the leve! of drug use
by young people in any [other]
developed count ry in the world.
One has aJso to be aware of an
May 1982
underlying phenorneno.n-narnely,
the continuing, accelerating rate of
discovery, developrnent and produc–
tion of ever more powerful new
kinds of psychoactive substances.
Many of the drugs whicb were our
There was a marked tendency in
thís country for 1
O
or 15 years.
among significant parts of the socie–
ty, to accept the rnistaken notion
that society overreacted to drugs.
For a while, that really was a preva–
lent view.
It
led, in sorne ways, to all
"There is a much wider acceptance ... that drugs
are a major problem ... for young people
in particular, their consequences can be tragic."
greatest concerns in t"he past
decade-PCP, LSD, Yaliurn, just
to name three-didn't exist 15 or 20
years ago. And the very great proba–
bility is that 1
O
or 20 years frorn
now, tbere will be
many times
the
nurnber of drugs available. Histori–
caJly, whenever a really potent new
kind of psychoactive drug becornes
available, sorne people are going to
use it. T here's going to be sorne
degree of popularity.
So, we have to recognize that
there's good news
and
bad news.
And that there is a very real proba-
the pressu res for decrirninalization
of marijuana and the like.
ls what you mean by " overreacted"
the thought that perhaps drugs
weren't t hat bad?
That's r ight. That becarne an
increasingly prevalent point of
view. And that's unfortunate. 1
think that has changed. There is a
rnuch wider acceptance of the fact
that d rugs
are
a rnajor problem–
that for young people in particular,
their consequences can be tragic.
(Continued on page 38)
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