Basic HTML Version
ANGELDUST
(Continued from page 17)
uncontrolled. unsupervised condi–
tions of the street was summarized
in a recent article in the
Journal of
the American Medica! Association:
" un predicta ble destructiveness,"
with users "running a imlessly, per–
forming bizarre actions, striking by–
standers." or attempting to commit
s uicide.
"People can use terrible, terrible
judgment when th ey have been
using PCP," says Dr. Gerald Crary
of the Los Angeles County-USC
Medica) Center. "They think they
can stop a train with their finger, or
they can fly. Man y o f them are
really terrified. frightened, con–
fused," he states. "Sorne people will
flip o ut on a low or normal dose."
Physicians say that there is no
direct antidote for PCP, and its tox–
icity, unlike that of other psy–
choactive drugs. can last for weeks.
Because of its unpredictable ef–
fects, many hard-core drug users
scorn it as a "freak drug," and
sorne street dealers misrepresent
the drug to be cocaine, LSD, heroin
or THC, the active ingredient
in
marijuana, in selling it to unsus–
pecting users.
Recently, PCP has also been
used to "boost" cocaine and heroin
that has been diluted or "cut" to
two to three percent purity to pro–
duce higher profits.
A youth emerging from a five–
day PCP coma in San Diego said
he thought he had been buying
ba rga in-priced coca ine. He re–
mai ned in a psychotic state for a
month and is still confined to a
mental hospital with frontal-lobe
brain damage.
Allhough many youngsters may
be unsuspecting use rs of the drug,
which can be detected only by
chemical analysis. others have ac–
quired a bravado craze for it.
"Even though they're gambling
with death. many high school kids
consider PCP to be very macho,"
says Howard D. Young of the San
Diego Department of Substance
Abuse. "If you can handle it , then
you're supposed to be aman."
PCP is another in a long list of
psychoactive drugs used for fun
The
PLAIN TRUTH March 1978
and pleasure by a la rge number of
young people and adults since the
drug revolution of the l960s. A lot
of drug use is- and always has
been-experimental. lt's something
people do maybe once or twice out
of curiosi ty or peer pressure.
Drug Abuse Syndrome
But a s ignifican! minority of
young people and adults continue
to use drugs over and over. Once
upon a time, drug cultists were trip–
ping on LSD, then floating high
on cocaine. then spaced out on
marijuana. Now they are freaking
out on angel dust. The drug fads
come and go. but the underlying
problems remain the same. Drug
abuse is a symptom of a society
that is failing to meet individual
human needs. Drugs stand in for
wha tever is missing in life. They
are a buffer from problems people
don't know how to cope with in
real life. They provide stimulation
when there is nothing else stimu–
lating to do. They are a dramatic
way of killing time- and maybe
killing oneself.
O
DRUGS:
the good,
the
bad,
and the
deadly
From booze to hash, from
caffeine to heroin , mind-al–
tering drugs have become a
way of lite. Nearly everyone
needs a "fix" -for pleasure,
for escape, or just to keep
going. lf you'd like to know
more about drug use, its
benefits and dangers, write
fo r
The Dilemma of Drugs.
lt's free-just return the cou–
pon on the back cover.
CONSERVATION
(Continued from page
14)
s upply 8 percent of her trans–
portation needs.
7)
Industrial conservation. A
vigorous conserva tion program in
the industrial sector could cut en–
ergy use there by 10 to 20 percent.
Significan! savings can often be
made with little or no capital ex–
penditure by utiliz ing relatively
simp le techniques such as leak
plugging, replacement of broken
windows, and reduced lighting lev–
els. Other more sophisticated mea–
sures would generate even larger
savings. lf ncw techniques such as
continuous cas ting and cooling with
inert gas were adopted in the steel
industry. for example, energy con–
sumption in that sector of industry
could be cut by an es timated 50
percent by the mid-1990s.
Cogeneration- or producing elec–
tricity as a secondary by-product
from industrial steam- would a lso
result in monumental savings. A re–
cent study by Dow Chemical Com–
pany estimated that cogeneration
could save industry $20 to $50 bil–
lion in investment and thc energy
equivalen! of two to three million
barreis of oil per day.
8)
Bring ba ck the rails. Rail–
road travel is one of the most effi–
c ient mod es of transportati o n
currently available- especially for
intracity mass transi t. Compared to
the automobile it uses 40 percent
less fuel on a per-passenger-mile
basis. Understandably it would
take a sizable expenditure to revita–
lize mass raíl transit in most Ameri–
can cit ies. Howcver. financing could
be accomplished if the Unitcd
States government were willing to
make an unwavering commitment
to it. The means are al ready avail–
able- through the
$6.5
billion
high–
way trust fund .
Obvio us ly this last proposaL
a long with a numbe r of the others
mentioned above. runs counter to
the pattern of energy development
now being pursued by government
and industry. But in the long run a
program with conservation as its
first priority is the only viable a lter–
native for solving the energy crisis
in the United States.
o
41