Drug Abuse Tightens Its Global Grip
FOR some time, the United States has been labeled as the industrial area with the worst drug problems. No more. “Police now feel Europe is facing a heroin epidemic,” reports the Belgian newsmagazine To the Point International.—March 21, 1977.
Last year European police seized more illegal heroin than did American crime fighters. Known addicts in the countries of the European Common Market are now said to number 100,000, and 2,000 reportedly paid for their habit with their lives last year.
In Portugal, officials admit that drug abuse is reaching the ‘magnitude of a national calamity.’ That nation is said to have one of the highest per person narcotics consumption rates in Europe.
“We’re fighting a losing battle,” says a French drug clinic operator. “Whenever we gain an inch, something happens to throw us back a mile.”
Narcotics-related deaths reflect this sudden jump in European drug abuse. For example, such deaths in France rose from 13 in 1973 to 59 in 1976; in Germany, from 104 in 1973 to 156 during just the first half of 1976; and in Italy, from one death in 1973 to 30 in the first six months of 1976.
But Europe is not the only part of the world feeling the tightening grip of drug abuse. The Far Eastern Economic Review reports:
“Hard-drug trafficking and addiction in Southeast Asia are at an appalling level. In Hong Kong, according to a reliable estimate, about one person in forty-three is addicted to opium or heroin. In Thailand, where narcotics were traditionally thought of as a ‘European problem,’ there is a burgeoning population of heroin addicts believed to number from 300,000 to 600,000. Reports from Singapore and Malaysia are equally alarming.”—April 30, 1976.
Despite stiff penalties, known drug addiction in Singapore multiplied eight times and arrests of drug pushers tripled from 1974 to 1975. Japanese drug arrests quadrupled between 1971 and 1975. And in the Melbourne region of Australia, there was a 60-percent increase in marijuana arrests from 1974 to 1975. “It is widely used among all levels of Australian society,” observes the Age of Melbourne.
Neither has the African continent escaped the grip of drugs. The U.N. Commission on narcotic drugs recently called the drug situation south of the Sahara “grave.”
America’s drug problem has not gone away, either. A recent Department of Defense study reveals that almost half of all the enlisted men in the armed forces regularly use drugs. This is nearly twice the rate found in a similar study made five years earlier. But the most tragic aspect of the problem is drug use among the young.
Growing Among Youth
A government survey revealed that in 1976 over half of American high-school senior class members had tried marijuana, and almost a third of the class admitted to using the drug currently—one in twelve using it every day. Other countries also reflect the trend to this and other, more damaging drugs.
“You can find heroin in every high school, university and youth center,” worries a West German drug counselor. “The situation is catastrophic.
“Youthful addiction is also a mounting problem in Hong Kong,” says the Far Eastern Economic Review. And an Italian official noted that, in his country, the “victims seem to be getting younger every day.”
Because of the huge profits to be made, the drug distribution systems have made narcotics readily available to youths in school. “It is as easy to get drugs in schools as it is to obtain note paper,” reports a U.S. congressional committee.
This same government committee also stated that drugged students routinely sleep at their desks without interference from school authorities. Why? “Teachers advised us that they are afraid to take any action relating to drugs,” says the report, “because they will not be supported by the school authorities or by the child’s parents.” Youths who want to learn must continually be surrounded by this disruptive and unwholesome atmosphere.
Authorities Helpless
When the mayor of New York city and other city officials hid in a camouflaged police van to observe narcotics transactions firsthand, the mayor “was kind of shaken by what he saw,” said his press secretary. “He was amazed how open it was and how impotent the present system is to deal with the problem.”
To the Point International explains: “The problem can only worsen, because the demand is ever present and the sources are the most ruthless farmers, processors and marketers in the world.”
One U.S. government agency recently proposed calling in the military to handle the “war” on drugs. The Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee said that the armed forces alone possess “the air and land vehicles needed to pursue and overtake the drug traffickers.”
But, really, more enforcement is not the answer. As the head of the French narcotics squad, Francois Le Mouel, observes, drug abuse “seems to be a general civilization problem.” The life-style, philosophy and goals of today’s “civilization” have left an emptiness that many are filling with drugs.
“And why not?” they feel. “Even the danger of taking drugs has been overblown by the authorities. Some drugs are as harmless as having a drink.” Is this true? Note the answer in the following article.