Young people and drugs.

Young people and Drugs

* Spiky-haired teenagers sniffing glue beside a railway track;

* Students injecting heroin at a local "shooting gallery";

* Youths buying marijuana outside a schoolyard;

* Young people in a country village smoking coca-paste.

Say the word "drugs", and most of us would probably come up with an image such as these--a scenario that inevitably involves young people.

The current concern over youth's experimentation with illegal drugs is understandable, but researchers say there may be an even greater problem. Although illegal drugs can be very dangerous, such common "legal" drugs as tobacco and alcohol also have far-reaching health consequences. A 1980 Australian survey which estimated that drugs were responsible for nearly 19 per cent of all deaths found that 79 per cent of drug-related deaths were caused by tobacco, 18 per cent by alcohol and only 3 per cent by all other drugs put together, including prescribed medications.

The problems of drinking and smoking arouse less concern than illegal drug use because those substances are so widely used by adults in many societies. Yet smoking is one of the greatest health hazards today and a major cause of avoidable death.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "the earlier a person begins to smoke, the greater the risk of developing lung cancer, as well as other life-threatening diseases". Someone who starts smoking before age 14 is fifteen times more likely to develop lung cancer than a non-smoker, while someone who begins at 24 is three times more likely. There is also a greater risk of heart disease, emphysema and chronic bronchitis for those who start smoking in their teens.

In the developed countries, smoking is still a widespread problem--43 per cent of French teenagers smoke, for example, and 38 per cent of Canadian youths. But it is in the developing countries that the problem is growing fastest. The amount of tobacco consumption between 1976 and 1980 increased by 5 per cent in Indonesia, 3 per cent in Brazil and 6 per cent in Turkey, while it declined in some industrialised countries. In France, it actually dropped by 7 per cent and in the United States, by 2 per cent.

Young people's drinking habits are also causing ceoncern around the world. Over the past 30 to 40 years, according to WHO, increasing percentages of children and adolescents have begun to drink alcohol; the quantities and frequency of consumption have increased; and the age at which drinking begins has declined. Between 1960 and 1973 in Finland, for instance, there was a rise of 30 per cent in the number of 18-year-olds who drank alcohol at least five times a month. Surveys in the United Kingdom show that 64 per cent of boys and 51 per cent of girls are downing their first alcoholic drink before their thirteenth birthday.

Illegal drug abuse may be preceded by drinking alcohol and may be associated with experimental use of both legal and illegal drugs. An important distinction must be made, however, between experimental use and dependence. Of those young people who experiment with drugs, including heroin, only a minority become dependent or form a life-long habit. Most drugs, including tobacco and heroin, are unpleasant at first, and it takes an "apprenticeship" of use before a habit is firmly established.

According to the United States Office of Drug Abuse Policy, only one in ten of those who try heroin becomes dependent. Estimates for alcohol dependence are about the same. Rather than indiscriminately punishing young people who take drugs, a more valid approach, suggests WHO, would be to explore why they do. Young people who become drug-dependent need special understanding and treatment, whether their drug of choice is heroin, alcohol, barbituate, or another legal or illegal substance. To fight illicit drug abuse, Governments should direct their efforts at early detection and treatment of those at risk, and at rigorous enforcement of legislation against illegal drug production and sales.