The War on Drugs Can’t Ignore 2 Big Targets: Alcohol, Tobacco

You probably heard the radio spots or watched the television commercials with the message “this is your brain” as a teenager stands in the kitchen holding up an egg. “This is heroin,” she says while holding up a frying pan. “This is what happens to your brain after snorting heroin,” she says as she smashes the egg and proceeds to get more angry and destroy the kitchen.

This scare-tactic approach works only short-term and is the latest attempt led by the federal government to reduce drug use. The isolated focus of a teen shooting heroin in a kitchen is powerful but minimizes the broad problem of youth availability of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs (ATOD).

Furthermore, it focuses on individual drug use and not the huge industry that supplies drugs to youth. A mammoth marketing campaign costing taxpayers $2 billion, this effort by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy is the largest in history, and includes TV, radio, print and Internet messages.

The exception is a focus on alcohol and tobacco, the largest drugs of choice. Alcohol is the most widely used drug by young people in this country and kills more youth than all others combined.

According to the 1997 Monitoring the Future study of 51,000 high school students, 74.8% of 12th graders drank alcohol at least once, whereas 1.2% used heroin and 5.5% used cocaine. High school experimentation with heroin increased from 1% to 2% of students compared to nearly 75% who drank alcohol.

Alcohol and tobacco together kill more than 50 times the number of people killed by cocaine, heroin and every other drug combined. So it does not make sense to put billions of prevention dollars into illegal-drug campaigns.

In California, youth smoking rates have risen from 10.8% in 1990 to 16.2% in 1996. Given the recent trends of binge drinking on college campuses and alcohol’s role as the No. 1 killer of youth, is there any legitimate reason to exclude alcohol from the war on drugs?

Prevention of drug problems needs more resource allocation. To address illegal drugs effectively, more research and strategies should be developed. Providers have tested strategies for alcohol and tobacco, for example, addressing promotions targeting youth, lowering youth access by decreasing availability through policy, and the best-tested strategy--increasing price via taxation.

Long-term tax increases, such as the 50 cents from Proposition 10, have been shown to be the best strategy for lowering tobacco access among youth, which in turn lowers youth smoking. If taxpayers are going to shell out to reduce drug problems, let’s at least use what works and adequately fund prevention programs.

After adults allow the alcohol and tobacco industries to bombard youth with liquor store and TV advertisements, we expect teens not to touch the forbidden fruits, then we penalize them and not the profiteers. Research shows successful prevention approaches should address the social, economic and political environment where young people live and go to school.

Several Orange County nonprofit projects like Community Service Programs’ Project PATH, YMCA Communities in Prevention-North and Friday Night Live are training youth and communities to address the economic and social environment young people live in. This includes alcohol and tobacco advertising in their neighborhoods, cheap and enticing booze near schools, and rap music on the radio suggesting alcohol consumption, drug use and violence.

For example, teens in Placentia and La Habra organized around the issue of fortified products and have worked with retailers to make voluntary changes that lower youth access to alcohol and potential violence. It is a sad day in America when we continue to use “just say no” messages and media blitzes to address youth drug issues.

Although the campaign is well-intended, drug use is a public health problem that cannot be adequately addressed with a “war-like” approach led by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey. Science tells us that most effective anti-tobacco ads for youth are those that attack the industry.

Our lawmakers should encourage inclusion of alcohol in national prevention efforts to address youth smoking. Otherwise, we will continue to bang pans and to lose a major battle on preventing drug access and use.