Drugs and Political Smoke

Since the release this week of a federal study finding that teenage drug use has more than doubled in four years (one in 10 now say they use drugs each month), political fingers have been pointing in partisan frenzy.

“The statistics confirm an upward spiral of drug abuse across the nation since President Clinton took office,” declared Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah). Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole deemed the trend a “national tragedy” and promised to attain “absolute victory” over drug abuse should he win the White House.

Offering a rejoinder, President Clinton’s Health and Human Services secretary, Donna Shalala, said the study reflected multiyear development. “Before this administration came to Washington this trend began,” she said. “But,” she conceded, “it continues.”

So far, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have offered any visionary solutions. Dole has endorsed a military-minded campaign, a “full-fledged war against drugs.”

A more promising solution lies in restoring funding to the drug treatment and prevention programs that Congress largely stripped of money for fiscal years 1996 and 1997. Lost in those cutbacks were substance abuse programs that offered affordable treatment to families of drug users.

The key with treatment and prevention programs is not simply to inveigh against the evils of marijuana, as did those films many of us saw in high school. Such programs, by overstating dangers, risk ending up losing credibility with students.

One approach worth trying is to embrace the “social skills” programs, which, rather than telling students to “just say no,” focus on getting them to think about why they have come to let peer pressures carry so much clout in their daily lives.