HaCKeRz Kr0nlcKLeZ 1/HaCKeRz Kr0nlcKLeZ.iso/drugs/choose.your.poison

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"Choose Your Poison"
From Time magazine July 26, 1993 pages 56-57 by Jill Smolowe


    In New York City's Spanish Harlem, the highs come
cheap. To create a "blunt," teenagers slice open a cigar and mix
the tobacco with marijuana. To enhance the hit, they fashion "B-
40s" by dipping the cigar in malt liquor. In Atlanta, police
observed 100 teenagers and young adults at a rave party in an
abandoned house - the rage among middle-class youths
everywhere with money to burn - and their rich assortment of
hooch: pot, uppers, downers, heroin, cocaine and Ecstasy, a
powerful amphetamine. In Los Angeles, Hispanic gangs chill out
by dipping their cigarettes in PCP (phencyclidine, an animal
tranquilizer), while black gangs still favor rock cocaine. Some of
the city's Iranians go in for smoking heroin, known as "chasing
the tiger," while Arabs settled in Detroit prefer khat, which gives
an amphetamine-like high and is also the drug of choice in
Somalia.
    The high times may be a changin', but America's drug
scene is as frightening as ever. Last week the University of
Michigan released a survey showing a rise in illicit drug use by
American college students, with the most significant increase
involving hallucinogens like LSD. Meanwhile a canvas of
narcotics experts across the country indicated that while drug
fashions vary from region to region and class to class, crack use is
generally holding steady and heroin and marijuana are on the
rise. Junior high and high school students surveyed by the
government report a greater availability of most serious drugs.
Law officials and treatment specialists on the front lines of the
drug war report that the problem transcends both income and
racial differences. "When it comes to drugs, there is a complete
democracy," says Clark Carr, executive director of Narconon
Professional Center in North Hollywood, California.
    The government paints a much brighter picture.
According to the 1992 Household Survey on Drug Abuse,
released last month by the Department of Health and Human
Services, the nationwide pattern of drug abuse is in decline. The
study shows an 11 percent dip in illicit drug use by Americans 12
years or older, from 12.8 million in 1991 to 11.4 million in 1992.
The drop is pronounced in all age groups except those 35 and
over, who use drugs at a rate comparable to 1979 levels. Yet the
number of hard-core abusers remains unchanged. And a
smorgasbord of nouvelle intoxicants is being served up to a new
generation of users.
    The frenetic '80s infatuation with stimulants has become
the mellower '90s flirtation with depressants. Heroin, which has
a calming effect, is gaining on crack, which produces high
agitation. Some drug experts sense a sociological sea change. "It's
really relevant that in the '80s the drug of choice was one that
the second you did it, you wanted more," says Carlo McCormick,
an editor at a culture and fashion monthly who was the host of
LSD parties in New York City in the '80s. "At this point with the
current crop of drugs, you're set for the night." Others have a
wider perspective. "If you look historically at a large population
that has been using a stimulant like cocaine," says James
Nielsen, a 26-year veteran with the Drug Enforcement
Administration, "they will then go on to depressant like
heroin."
    Ironically, the heroin surge also reflects a new health
consciousness on the part of drug abusers. Youthful offenders,
scared off by the devastation of crack, are dabbling in heroin
instead, while chronic crack addicts are changing over to heroin
because of its mellower high and cheaper cost. Among both
groups, fear of HIV transmission has made snorting, rather than
injection, the preferred method of ingestion. "The needle is out,
man," says Stephan ("Boobie") Gaston, 40, of East Harlem, a 26-
year abuser. "All they're doing is sniffing." Even so, the risks
remain high. Heroin-related incidents jumped from 10,300
during a three-month period in 1991 to 13,400 during a
comparable period in 1992, according to a Federal Drug Abuse
Warning Network survey of hospital emergency rooms. Heroin-
treatment admissions have also increased over the past year.
    The turn toward heroin is coupled with a sharp
recognition among youthful abusers of the dangers of crack.
Anthony M., 13, who is detoxifying from a marijuana habit at
the Daytop Village Bronx Outreach Center in New York City,
estimates that 20 or so of his 200 classmates use heroin or other
drugs, but among them, only one goes in for crack. "That kid
wanted others to do it too," he says, "but the other kids were like,
'Nah,' because some of the kids, their parents had died because
of crack."
    Other hard-learned lessons seem not to affect young
people today. LSD use among high school seniors reached its
highest level last year since 1983, according to an annual study by
the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. In the
rave clubs of Los Angeles, 2 to 5 dollars buys a teenager a 10-12-
hour LSD high. "LSD may be a prime example of generational
forgetting," says Lloyd Johnston, principal investigator for the
study. "Today's youngsters don't hear what an earlier generation
heard - that LSD may cause bad trips, flashbacks, schizophrenia,
brain damage, chromosomal damage and so on."
    Marijuana, usually the first illegal drug sampled by
eventual hard-core abusers, is also back in vogue. Of the 11.4
million Americans who admitted to using drugs within a
month of the 1992 Household Survey, 55 percent referred solely
to pot; an additional 19 percent abused marijuana in
combination with other drugs. "Cannabis is the drug that teaches
our kids what other drugs are all about," says Charlie Stowell,
the DEA's cannabis coordinator in California. He says today's
marijuana is considerably more potent and expensive than the
pot of the '60s because the amount of THC - the ingredient that
provides the high - has risen from 2 or 3 percent to 12 percent.
    The '90s also ushered in the drug novelties. Since the turn
of the decade, gamma hydroxy butyrate, known as GHB, has been
used illegally in the body-building community to reduce fat.
Recently, however, youths have begun to abuse the drug to
achieve a trancelike state. In New York City kids concoct a "Max"
cocktail by dissolving GHB in water, then mixing
amphetamines. A different mix resulted in several overdoses in
the Atlanta area in the past few months. Manhattan's hard-core
sex community has also turned on to "Special K," or Cat
Valium, an anesthetic that numbs the body.
    The Administration appears to be pursuing several drug
strategies simultaneously. The President has asked for a 7
percent rise in the budget for law enforcement as well as 13
billion dollars for drug-control program, an increase of 804
million dollars over the current year. Last month Lee Brown,
the Administration's drug czar, told a Senate subcommittee that
the drug-control programs would now emphasize "demand-
reduction programs" would now emphasize young people."
[that's how it's printed] Attorney General Janet Reno has also
adopted a high profile on drugs, campaigning for a "national
agenda for children" that would attack the root causes of drug
abuse and violence.
    Meanwhile the daily challenge of containing the drug
epidemic falls largely to local cops and DEA field offices.
Ingenuity is the name of the game. In California, where 10
percent of the state's marijuana is grown indoors to evade
detection, the DEA tracks purchases of illicit equipment, such as
high-pressure sodium lights, to pick of the trail of growers.
Minneapolis police have grown more sophisticated in tracking
crack dealers who no longer keep cars, residences or bank
accounts in their own names. "We've begun using financial
records and become more knowledgeable in accounting and the
flow of money," says Lieut. Bernie Bottema, supervisor of the
city's narcotics units. "We've had to rise to the level of our
competition." It appears that level is not going to drop off
anytime soon.

reported by Ann Blackman/Washington, Massimo
Calabresi/New York and Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles

=============================================================================

From: [e-mail]
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Re: "Choose Your Poison" Lloyd Johnston replys!
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 29 Jul 93 14:04:39 -0600

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (William December Starr) writes:
>
> There's a two-page article at page 56 of the July 26, 1993 issue of Time
> magazine (cover story: The Flood of '93") entitled "Choose Your Poison,"
> with a sub-headline that reads "While the government boasts that drug
> use has fallen, the range of intoxicants has increased, snaring a new
> generation."  (That's right, folks: if you're under thirty or so and you
> enjoy using drugs, you're a victim of ensnarement! Congratulations!)
>
> It's a nice article in that it lets most of the air out of the standard
> government claims that they are "winning" their putrid little war, but
> it doesn't exactly qualify as objective journalism.  I was especially
> impressed (not positively) by two quotes in the article:
>
> (1) "LSD may be a prime example of generational forgetting.  Today's
> youngsters don't hear what an earlier generation heard -- that LSD may
> cause bad trips, flashbacks, schizophrenia, brain damage, chromosomal
> damage and so on."
>
>   -- Lloyd Johnston, principal investigator for an annual study on drug
>      usage by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.
>


Since none of you bothered to call Lloyd Johnston, I did so myself.
('can't pawn work off on anyone anymore!)

Lloyd says that the press release was mis-quoted  (Only Time and News Week
could "mis-quote" a written press release!)

Here is an excerpt:

"... don't hear what an earlier generation heard -- that LSD may
 cause bad trips, flashbacks, schizophrenia, brain damage, chromosomal
 damage and so on.  Some of those early assertions never were
 substantiated, some were, and young people today are not as likely to
 know about the dangers of the drug."

I asked Lloyd Johnston if he was upset that Time misquoted him.  He said
"no, you have to expect that from the press."

I wonder why "young people today are not as likely to know about the
dangers of the drug."  Could it be that no one gives a shit?



> [...]
>
> Quote #1 is more interesting... my intuitive response is that there's a
> _reason_ why today's LSD users aren't hearing all those bad things about
> the drug, namely, that for the most part they aren't true.  However, I'm
> not an expert on what is and isn't known (as opposed to what's widely
> believed and/or broadcast in war propaganda) about the effects and
> dangers of LSD... could somebody who does know the, ahem, Straight Dope
> :-) about this please post the data?  Thanks.


LSD may cause bad trips.        Marijuana _may_ cause bad trips.

LSD may cause Flashbacks        Police _may_ cause flashbacks.

LSD caused psychosis does not occur.  Is has been shown that
    LSD has been shown to bring out existing schizophrenic behavior in
    some subjects, but even this is under dispute.

    "Hensala et. al.... concluded that LSD was basically just
    another drug of abuse in a population of frequently hospitalized
    individuals in the San Francisco area, and that it was unlikely
    that psychedelic use could be deemed etiological in the development
    of their psychiatric disorders."  ("Adverse Reactions to
    Psychedelic Drugs: a Review of the Literature" in J. Nerv and
    Mental Disease 172(10))

LSD is not known to cause brain damage although there was some research
    a while back suggesting a link between LSD and night blindness.

LSD does not cause chromosome damage.  "From our own work and
    from a review of literature, we believe that pure LSD ingested in
    moderate doses does not damage chromosomes in vivo, does not cause
    detectable genetic damage, and is not a teratogen or carcinogen in
    man."  ("LSD and Genetic Damage" Norman I. Dishotsky et. al.
    Science, Apr 30, 1972.)  Studies that have shown damage were done
    on chromosomes removed from the protective membranes of the cell.
    In this environment virtually anything can damage them.

LSD may cause "and so on."  This has happened to me several times.
    Current research is investigating a link between this and what
    my girl friend calls "the circle thing."  :)



-- Danny