200 Leaders Gather to Discuss Drug Epidemic : Thousand Oaks: A speaker tells law officials, social workers and others that the problem cannot be tackled without understanding history.

In the late 1800s, Americans sipped Coca-Cola for a cocaine high, used the drug to fight hay fever and considered heroin the most effective cough remedy money could buy. By 1915, the President declared drug abuse the most pressing domestic problem in the country.

Despite conventional wisdom, today’s drug epidemic is not the nation’s first, a Yale University professor told 200 state and county leaders gathered for a daylong conference at California Lutheran University on Friday.

David Musto, author of “The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control,” told law enforcement leaders, social workers and politicians that without understanding the country’s past, they could not effectively tackle the current problem.

“We have no sense that we ever went through it, and it went away,” Musto said.

Americans were introduced legally to cocaine in 1885 and the problem peaked in 1910, he said. But by 1930, because of education and the public’s negative experience with the drug, use declined for more than 30 years.

After Musto’s talk and addresses given by a variety of community leaders, about 50 drug-control activists agreed to meet again on the Thousand Oaks campus in January to form a countywide council to better organize the area’s prevention services.

The Ventura County Council of Alcohol and Drug Issues will be modeled after city-based programs in Ventura, Santa Paula and Thousand Oaks, said Stephen Kaplan, director of Ventura County Alcohol and Drug Programs.

While specific goals have not been outlined, the council will review the county’s services to determine which areas have duplicated prevention efforts, he said. Committees will be formed in the county’s remaining cities and on regional levels, and will be instrumental in responding to the state’s request for a five-year master plan against substance abuse, Kaplan said.

Between 1987 and 1989, 178 people died in accidents linked to substance abuse, the county coroner’s office reported. And, according to the district attorney’s office, 70% of violent crimes committed in the county were drug- or alcohol-related.

Medical Examiner Warren Lovell said those whose deaths were linked to cocaine ranged in age from 16 to 63.

“The dead should teach the living,” he said.

Musto stressed that history can also be educational. Racial prejudice fueled the public’s ambivalence toward drugs in the 1800s and still does today, he said. People look for an easy solution to their fear of the drug crisis and use racial minorities as scapegoats. “It’s a very powerful temptation to connect two social fears and make it one,” Musto said.

Further, the presidential “war on drugs” sends a dangerous message that a solution can be immediate, he said.

“It implies quick results,” he said. “Almost everyone thinks a war is a quick, dramatic thing.”

Other speakers advocated different solutions.

Marvin Cobb, athletic director of the University of Southern California, stressed his belief that the deterioration of family values account for today’s drug problems.

“Everybody’s me, me, me” Cobb said. “We mortgage our futures to have our pleasures right now. Substance abuse is another manifestation of how we’ve been conducting ourselves the past few years.”