Mind Altering Drugs

The media is finally beginning to focus, however fleetingly, on America’s drug problem.

Recent news accounts of the heroin-overdose death of Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman point the startling increase in heroin-related deaths in the last four to five years. The problem, reporters explain, is the vast number of Americans addicted to prescription pain meds like OxyContin, many of whom discover heroin to be both cheaper and easier to obtain than the prescription opioid drugs to which they initially became addicted.

But by digging deeper, we discover that not only has the traditional distinction between illegal “street drugs” and legal “therapeutic prescription drugs” become so blurred as to be almost nonexistent, but between America’s twin drug epidemics – one illegal, the other legal – well over 70 million Americans are using mind-altering drugs. And that number doesn’t include abusers of alcohol, which adds an additional 60 million Americans or about 130 million drugged-out Americans.

The New York City-based publication “High Times” announced a new private-equity fund to “raise $100 million over the next two years to invest in cannabis-related businesses,” and ad agencies geared up to support “an industry estimated to already be generating revenues in the billions of dollars.”  The dramatic change in Americans’ attitude is reflected in a recent CNN poll headlined “Support for legal marijuana soaring.”

A massive, four-decade study published in 2012 by the National Academy of Sciences, titled “Persistent cannabis users show neuropsychological decline from childhood to midlife,” followed more than 1,000 subjects from birth until age 38! The researchers’ core finding? Repeated marijuana use by teenagers lowers their IQ – permanently.

According to a 2010 study by the federal Department of Health and Human Services, over 22 million Americans use illegal drugs, comprising marijuana/hashish, cocaine (including crack), heroin, hallucinogens, inhalants and prescription-type psychiatric and opioid drugs used without a prescription. And of those, fully half admit to driving on the public roadways under the influence of drugs!

When we think of driving “under the influence,” our minds turn to alcohol, so fasten your seatbelts: In 2010, nearly one-quarter of all Americans aged 12 and up participated in binge drinking, about 58.6 million people, and heavy drinking was reported for 16.9 million people. An estimated 11.4 percent of persons 12 or older drove under the influence of alcohol at least once in the past year.

Bottom line, according to HHS: “In an average year 30 million Americans drive drunk [and] 10 million drive impaired by illicit drugs.”