IRVINE — As White House drug czar Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey and assorted drug-war-nurtured interests step up their exaggerated talk about teenagers and heroin use, and youth and marijuana use, America's true drug crisis has erupted--among adults in their 30s and 40s, the age group parenting teens.
More serious by far than the increase in teenage marijuana use--and ignored by drug-war officials--is the explosion in middle-aged hard-drug abuse. In 1980, 260 Californians age 30-49 died of drug overdoses; in 1995, 1,400 died. Emergency hospital treatments of middle-aged people for drug overdoses quadrupled over the last decade, the largest increase of any age group. Today, drugs send 400,000 middle-agers to emergency care and half a million to addiction treatment annually.
The 1995 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse studied this "aging cohort," which now accounts for most drug abuse, hospital emergencies and deaths: "In 1979, 12% of patients with cocaine episodes were age 35 and older," it reported. "By 1985, that proportion was 19%; and by 1995, it was 43%." Equally ominous, 15 million Americans over age 35 reported regular "binge" drinking of alcohol in 1995, 4 million more than in 1992.
Along with this explosion in drug abuse has come rising household violence. From 1980 to 1995, the per-capita rate of felony violent-crime arrests among 30- to 49-year-olds rose by 76%, faster than among teens (61%). The most recent National Household Survey, hospital and coroner reports compiled by the federal Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), and the FBI show that, according to their own figures, the line that drug officials are handing the public is malarkey.
Unfortunately, the public is buying it. Last year, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and the major media focused on a "crisis" of "teenage heroin smoking." Ads and news stories defamed the typical eighth-grader as a smack junkie. But the teen-heroin scare campaign was not backed by any solid data. DAWN surveys showed that teens comprised just 150 of the nation's 38,000 hospital emergency-room treatments for heroin abuse in the first half of 1995. The household survey found that only two in every 1,000 12- to 17-year-olds use heroin. In fact, the only age group to show a significant increase in smoking heroin was "adults age 35 and older."
