Drugs—The Problems Escalate
DRUGS are very much in the news these days. It is difficult to pick up a newspaper or a news magazine and not see some reference to drug problems: A diplomat is caught carrying drugs into a country. A national leader is denounced for his role in drug-smuggling activities. A prominent athlete has to undergo drug rehabilitation. Federal agents raid a plane or a boat and uncover a large haul of narcotics. A famous entertainer dies from a drug overdose. An engineer involved in a train wreck is found to be under the influence of drugs. A politician makes drug control a main issue of his campaign. And on and on it goes.
So pronounced has the drug issue become that last year 24 nations joined together in a crackdown on drugs. They “destroyed 5,046 metric tons of coca leaf and 17,585 tons of marijuana plants,” says U.S.News & World Report. “Still, the [U.S.] State Department concludes that current eradication programs are ‘insufficient to reduce the worldwide supply of narcotics.’”
Confiscation of drugs, arrests, and convictions have increased, but so have supplies of the illicit drugs. Only a small portion of the drug output is found and seized, and in many places drugs are easier to get than ever before. For instance, despite concerted efforts in 1986 to raid and destroy cocaine-processing laboratories, the production of cocaine from coca leaves in Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru actually grew by 10 percent between 1986 and 1987. The cocaine now sold on the streets is much purer, and prices have plummeted—giving evidence of increased supplies.
“The United States has the highest level of illicit drug use by young people in any industrialized nation in the world, and drug use initiation is occurring at earlier ages than ever before,” says a report from Behavior Today. A survey disclosed that over half of all high school seniors admitted to having tried an illicit drug during their lifetime and that this high proportion grows to about 80 percent up through those in their mid-20’s. The United States now has an estimated 1.2 million drug addicts, and 23 million more are “recreational” drug users.
Other countries are not exempt from the drug epidemic. The Soviet newspaper Pravda quoted Internal Affairs Minister Alexander Vlasov as saying: “The struggle against drug addiction and crime connected with it has become one of the main tasks of the Internal Affairs Ministry.” As reported in the Soviet Weekly, “drug-related charges have been made against 80,000 Soviet people over the last two years,” and despite treatment for addicts, “the problem remained a major one, with 131,000 registered drug users.”
Hungary is said to have between 30,000 and 50,000 drug abusers, and Poland an estimated 200,000 to 600,000 addicts and users of hard drugs, mostly youths under 25 years of age. Pakistan estimates that it has close to 313,000 opium addicts and 150,000 heroin addicts. European Parliament member Sir Jack Stewart Clark predicts that the number of regular cocaine users in Western Europe may reach three to four million by the mid-1990’s. Spain already has an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 cocaine users.
The drug problem has grown so much that a United Nations study said that it is at the point now of endangering “the very security of some states.”
Why are drugs so much in the limelight? Indeed, why do people even take drugs? Why have large-scale efforts to contain the escalating drug problem failed? What can be done to stop the growing drug menace?