Let’s All Grow Up and Admit Who’s the Real Problem Here

The headlines: Teenagers are “Scary,” “Violent,” “A Time Bomb,” “A New Wave of Mayhem,” “Killer Kids,” “A Crime Storm,” “A Culture of Drugs,” “A Bad Scene Getting Worse” . . . on and on, day after day.

The reality: Today’s rising anti-youth scare campaign is wildly overblown hysteria, spawned by politicians eager for an easy Campaign ’96 scapegoat to blame for problems they refuse to face, and abetted by academics and a news media which perpetuate blatant stereotypes and distortions.

Objective sources show Orange County’s skyrocketing adult violence and drug abuse dwarf anything attributable to teens. The real headline is that our kids are doing as well as they are amid a grown-up culture of violence, addiction, negativism and detachment.

Yes, violent crime rates have risen among Orange County youths aged 10 to 17--up 80% from 1985 to 1995, according to the most recent California Department of Justice crime profiles, generating histrionic howls. But violent crime rates among Orange County adults aged 18 to 69 jumped 106% during that same period, generating silence.

Yes, 1,000 youths were arrested for felony violence in 1995--as well as 6,500 adults. In addition, Orange County law enforcement officers responded to 10,000 domestic violence incidents involving weapons.

The fastest-rising violent crime in this country is adults committing felony assault (assault with a weapon or intent to cause serious injury): from 1,500 in 1985 to 5,200 in 1995, a rate increase of 185%. And “experts” are “baffled” about where kids learn about guns, knives and beatings?

A Centers for Disease Control study issued in June found 60 students were murdered in public schools nationwide in the two-year period of 1992-94. During that same time, the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect reported 4,000 children and youths were murdered by their parents or caretakers.

The harsh fact, generating utter indifference in the violence debate except when celebrity or spectacular cases arise, is that a juvenile is a dozen times more likely to be murdered at home by a household grown-up than at school around hundreds of young peers. While the press screams about “children killing children” and politicians push escape tactics such as curfews, V-chips, and school uniforms, the U.S. Department of Justice reports that three-fourths of all murdered youths are killed by adults.

Media hyping of “youth violence” is out of control. Even though FBI and California arrest statistics show six out of every seven violent crimes are committed by adults, studies show that half to two-thirds of news reports on violence focus on juveniles. A 1994 Gallup Poll found the average American thinks youths commit 43% of the nation’s violent crime--three times more than they do.

Drug publicity follows the same bash-teens pattern. Yes, there is a teenage drug problem in Orange County. It is tiny compared to the adult drug abuse problem.

While politicians and the media wax hysterical on recent increases in occasional use of marijuana by teenagers, long-term studies by UCLA and Berkeley researchers find that casual teenage drug use is not linked to later problems. Surveys and drug abuse measures show only a tiny fraction of adolescents use drugs regularly or patronize harder drugs. Los Angeles and Orange County teen drug deaths have plummeted since 1970.

In contrast, adult drug abuse has exploded. Hospital emergency reports show that 97% of the patients treated for emergencies related to marijuana, cocaine and heroin are adults. In 1993-94, adults accounted for 96% of Orange County’s 500 drug-related overdose, suicidal, homicidal and accidental deaths.

This epidemic of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and medical drug abuse among adults in the 30-50 age group creates a major danger to children. More than half of California’s foster care placements for child abuse and neglect are related to parental drug addiction.

The high level of adult drug abuse that today’s youth grow up with (and fortunately are not emulating, yet) is obscured by rampant denial of drug counselors, academics and the media, who remain fixated on the “teenage problem.” Growing 1990s negativism toward youths has resurrected 1910-era stereotypes of youths as innately impulsive, rebellious, violent and delusional, qualities research has shown apply equally to adults.

In reality, the biggest violence and drug dangers afflicting the young are not due to their own behaviors or those of their youthful peers, but those of grown-ups around them. That adult interests are now engaged in scapegoating adolescents for the problems of their elders is further testimony to where America’s real maturity problem lies.