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dependency issues in this country.
Minor tranquili zers and alcohol
tend to be pushed to the back burn–
er. lllegal drugs are in reality more
of an American problem.
l s lt really possible t o wean people
off hard drugs? ls there really any
hope f or say the hero in addict ?
There are two kinds of depen–
dence- physical and psychological
dependence. It's very easy to get a
person temporarily off a pbysical
dependence on any drug. You sim–
ply have got to get them into a
hospital situation for two or three
weeks. T here are certain kinds of
chemical treatment you can give
them to actually wean them off a
hard drug.
That's not rea ll y the issue
though. To keep people drug free
you have actually got to
rearrange
TOOMUCH?
(Continued from page 20)
abor tion would most likely be rec–
ommended.
Doctors have s trongly suspected
for years the link between this kind
of alcohol consumption by pregnant
women and brai n damage in thei r
c hildren. Early in 1981 , however,
the first direc t evi d e nce was
announced by University of Towa
researchers.
Th e American researchers
proved with experimentation on
rats that prescribed levels of alco–
hol consumed by the mother rat
caused abnormal brain circuitry in
her unborn offspring- damage
that continued into adulthood.
Their findings appeared in the
F eb ru a r y 27, 198 1 issue of
Science,
the journal of the Amer–
ican Association for the Advance–
ment of Science.
Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)
has been notably associated with
abnormal physical characteristics–
usually a small head and various
facial deformities such as flat mid–
face, smaller- th an-average eyes,
long thin upper lip, short nose, epi–
canthic folds on upper eyelids, low
nasal bridge and fac ial asymmetry,
along with low birth weight and
size. Skeletal abnormal ities have
been added to the list.
30
their life-style to get tbem off
psy–
chofogicaf
dependence. And that is
the hardest job in the whole world.
To change their life-styl e- to
change their behavior and their rou–
tine habit
p~tterns-is
the hardest
thing that has ever befallen human
beings. There is notbing harder
than changing your behavior!
To isolate drug use from the con–
text of people's complete life-styles
is absurd . 1 mean you not only have
to get them off drugs, you have to
actually give them alternatives.
M ay be an alternat ive concept,
maybe alternative activities, maybe
new friends!
The use of drugs in a psycholog–
ical sense actually can give a person
a certain sort of equilibrium, or a
kind of sensibleness to life even
thougb it is abusive and leads to
damage that could actually kill the
Dr. Patrick M. MacLeod, a
Canadian med ica l ge neticist,
warns,
"It
is important to diagnose
the skeletal abnormal ities becausc
these children have a greater risk of
di s locating their necks in t he
rough-and-tumble activi ties of in–
formal play or gym"
(Medica/
World News,
August 6, 1979) .
Alcohol flows easily from a
mother's bloodstream through the
placenta into her unborn child. The
odds of damaging the fetus go even
higher when drugs are combined
with alcohol by the pregnant moth–
er.
Research is also being dqne on
the possibility that a drinking
father may contribute to birth
defects o r fetal death. lni tial
research shows a greater percent–
age of bir th defects in children of
fathers who drink heavily.
We shouldn't be surprised to
find that a substance used to kili
bacteria would interfere, when tak–
en in significant amounts, with the
development of a tiny, delicate
fetus.
A Safe Drlnk l ng Le ve l
And how much is too much? ls
there a safe drinking level for a
pregnant woman? Most all authori–
t ies would agree that there are def–
inite r isks beyond three ounces of
alcohol a day. Studies show about
person. So you have got to provide
real alternatives.
Having said that, without a
doubt drugs like alcohol and tobac–
co cause far more problems than
the illegal drugs. That is not to say
they are more dangerous. They are
simply more ava.ilable. Take pubs
in this country.
If
certa.in illegal drugs were to be
made legal, then we would have an
escalation of problems. So al though
tobacco and alcohol are more c f a
problem than the otbers . in quan–
tifiable terms, the cause is funda–
mentally one of availability.
One of the crucial things that
our country needs to do is to sort
out what we really want to achieve.
What are our goals? What are the
objectives? Then we can apply a
sound educational framework to
this whole area.
o
11 perce nt of the childre n of
women who drink even one to two
ounces of alcohol a day had devel–
opmental problems.
The decision by a pregnant
mother to drink an alcoholic bever–
age should certainly be arrived at
by taking into consideration meta–
bolic and other factors such as
weight, diet and drugs used, ill ici t
or otberwise.
In the United States the Nation–
al Council on Alcoholism (NCA)
concludes that pregnant women, to
be on the safe side, should not
drink any alcoholic beverage.
A Leading Cause o f Birth De fects
Tragically, fetal alcohol syndrome is
one of three leading birth defects in
the United States. And the only one
apparently so easily preventable.
Readers of
The Plain Truth
are
responsible for this kind of demon–
st rable informat ion just as much as
we are all held responsible for the
knowledge we have of that conspic–
uous warning on cigarette pack–
ages. Perhaps smokers before the
seventies could at least claim igno–
rance as an excuse. But no longer.
And no Jonger can those who
indulge in alcohol and drugs justify
the abuse to their bodies and those
of their offspr ing.
You have the knowledge. What
are you going to do about it? o
The PLAIN TRUTH