80 percent of adolescents in the United States try drugs, but only 10 percent become addicted

[dkf]

Overcoming Addiction and Ending America’s Greatest Tragedy
By David Sheff

374 pp. An Eamon Dolan Book/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $25.

If that book, “Beautiful Boy,” was a cry of despair, “Clean” is intended as an objective, if still impassioned, examination of the research on prevention and treatment — a guide for those affected by addiction but also a manifesto aimed at clinical professionals and policy makers. Sheff’s premise is that “addiction isn’t a criminal problem, but a health problem,” and that the rigor of medicine is the antidote to the irrational responses, familial and social, that addiction tends to set off.

Sheff, a journalist, writes that America’s “stigmatization of drug users” has backfired, hindering progress in curbing addiction. The war on drugs, he says bluntly, “has failed.” After 40 years and an “unconscionable” expense that he estimates at a trillion dollars, there are 20 million addicts in America (including alcoholics), and “more drugs, more kinds of drugs, and more toxic drugs used at younger ages.”

Sheff says that drug addiction is a disease as defined by Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, since it causes “anatomic alterations” to the brain that result in “cognitive deficits” and other symptoms. But isn’t drug use an act of free will, distinguishing addiction from other diseases? Sheff responds that behavioral choices contribute to many illnesses: think of unhealthy diets and diabetes.

Like other diseases, addiction has a substantial genetic component. Mental illness and poverty are major risk factors. These susceptibilities help explain why 80 percent of adolescents in the United States try drugs, but only 10 percent become addicted. Sheff emphasizes the vulnerability of adolescents. Neuroscience corroborates our intuition that their impulsivity develops faster than their inhibitions, and drugs may stunt their emotional growth, making them yet more prone to addiction.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/books/review/clean-by-david-sheff.html?_r=1&utm_source=feedly&

[Fumesucker]

1. Sheff is touchingly naive

The drug war hasn't failed because it never had anything to do with cutting down addiction and drug abuse, it was all about power and money at the beginning and it has only gotten more so.

You have Barack Obama who is an admitted drug user and yet still adamantly maintains the drug war is necessary. Obama's position is that it would have done him good as young man to have been arrested and sentenced for his drug use.

[HiPointDem]

5. after 40 years of drug war drugs are more accessible and ubiquitous than ever, & i believe a

good many of those addicted are addicted because there's nothing better for them out there and they're sunk into despair.

that's the way it is in my town, anyway. just the hoops you have to jump through to wind up with nothing better than an unstable shit job in the chicken processing plant or unstable govt subsidized work at a 'non-profit'. one mishap -- your car breaking down -- and you're back to square one; there's just not enough money in it to get past square one unless you're lucky or have connections.

[pipoman]

2. I agree

some people are more or less prone to addiction. Other factors apply, for instance "80% try drugs"..and 80% of them only try pot? I don't know, I do know trying pot is one thing, trying meth, crack, coke, etc. is quite another..

[dkf]

3. I just thought the stat was worth noting.

But you are right that not all drugs are created equal.

[darkangel218]

4. IMO that 10% would have become.addicted to alcohol if the illegal drugs didnt exist.

The war on drugs is non sense. Everything should be legalized and get rid of the black market.

[SoCalDem]

6. I am a firm believer that some people are more susceptible than others

to becoming addicted to anything.. The numbers are probably constant throughout time, but once law enforcement/legislators made them illegal, the data gets hopelessly skewed.

Young people almost always experiment with "dangerous" stuff/activities.. It's a rite of passage. probably MOST of them try something a few times or occasionally, but eventually stop because it costs too much, they get jobs, spouses, etc..and they just outgrow it.

The few who get themselves addicted get arrested over and over and go through rehab over and over..and probably most of them never stop doing whatever it is they picked.

The numbers are probably constant

[MrScorpio]

7. The Drug War was never about rich/upper middle class whites…

Obviously, he doesn't understand that fact.