NO PLACE TO HIDE PART ONE

DRUG ABUSE IN THE HEARTLAND

Part I

The Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University has recently released the results of a study on drug abuse in rural American communities. This study was funded by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.  The results  are shocking and are rattling the rafters of  Midwest America.  Per this study,  8th graders living in rural American communities are 34% more likely than their urban counterparts to smoke marijuna; 83% more likely to use crack cocaine;  and 104% more likely to have used amphetamines within the last month.

The study also reports that drugs are as readily available in rural areas as in large urban cities.  Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) seizures of meth labs jumped from 263 in 1994 to 1,627 in 1998 - a sixfold increase, concentrated in rural areas of the Heartland.

Besides scaring the hell out of middle America and painting a pretty black picture of the fate of our youth as far as drug abuse is concerned,  what is the message we should be receiving from this study?    To answer that let's backtrack into history 45 years.It is the mid 1950's.  The illegal drug problem is not yet on society's radar screen. 

In the 1950's all anyone knew about illicit drugs like marijuna was that Jazz Drummer/bandleader Gene Kruppa and actor Robert Mitchum smoked it, got caught and the media damned them for it. Cocaine?  That word was in a line from the popular Cole Porter hit "I Get A Kick Out Of You".  As for heroin, that is a drug of horror used only by the most degenerate and despairing individuals. 

Frank Sinatra's character in the movie "Man With A Golden Arm" teaches us that. Most Americans tend to view drug addiction as an affliction of the urban poor or an evil obsession of a handful of  musicians and actors who are too far left of center to worry about.  In short, Americans are completely naive to what drug addiction is.  And we are most certainly clueless about the role illicit drugs will play in the course of our precious country's future.

Moving forward 10 years, it is now 1965.  The country is in the post mourning years of  JFK's assassination.  The first onslaught of the English rock 'n' roll music invasion with the Beatles and Rolling Stones hits our shores and  takes American youth by storm while  President Lyndon Baines Johnson is grappling with the escalating Viet Nam War. LSD is finding its way from the experimentation laboratories of the Sandoz Drug Company to the streets of  San Francisco.

It is also at this time the first indications of increased heroin abuse in urban ghettos catches the attention of  President Johnson's White House staff.  The increased use of  heroin, considered small by today's numbers,  is of enough concern for Johnson to convince Congress to enact the Drug Rehabilitation Act and ask for an annual appropriation of $15 million.  At the time, no one in government at the Federal, State or Local level has any idea that in just over 20 years' time heroin abuse in the U.S. will escalate to a point where it will cost tax payers over $50 million annually to treat the problem.  Society's radar screen is beeping. 

Unfortunately not enough of us notice.  In the mid 60's adult Americans still tended to view drug addiction as a problem inherent to the underprivileged.   By the end of the decade, however,  America's view on drugs began changing.  Drugs, in particular marijuna, hashish, LSD, cocaine and other hallucinogens, became socially acceptable on a large scale during the Flower Power era. 

And while this was alarming to many parents of this period, most of us thought of mid-size cities and rural America as drug-free oases that would insulate our kids from these pro-drug influences.  The truth was that drugs did not respect geographic boundaries: they broke out of the big city limits and began to swarm into the heartland of mid-sized cities, rural towns and farm communities. Hindsight is 20/20, and in looking back it is easy to see our nation's failure to fully recognize and act effectively to stop the drug problem then. 

However, if we look closer we will see that this failure was driven in no small measure by the assumption of the masses that it was someone  else's  problem, not our problem.  And it is this assumption that allowed drugs the time they needed to seep into every neighborhood in every city and class across America without prejudice. As we begin the 21st Century in America the message is loud and clear:  There is no place to hide from the problem of substance abuse and addiction.

---