Drug Abuse: The Chemical Tomb (1969)

This is the now generation. They feel disenchanted with the world around them. While they may for the most part be outside the mainstream of American life, they are a part of the wave of the future. Webster defines the word now as meaning at the moment or at once. Seldom has a nation been able to witness such an explosion, a new mass mind, a now-ness as it takes place. Today, we are seeing it. The age of bobby socks and ice cream sodas is gone. These people no longer feel constrained by the social rules of the past. They are better read and more concerned about all people and all cultures. An older generation could learn about fresh thinking from them. Their energy is boundless. They play hard, but they are also involved. They are free thinking for the most part and not afraid to voice their criticisms. But many more of them have simply dropped out. They have made what they consider their own peace with America and are now involved in finding out who they are. Discovering the inner man cannot be minimized, but a nation in turmoil needs the bigger, the newness of its young. This exploration, this search for new values has led into a new and dangerous area, the use of narcotics and hallucinogens. The brain, the body, indeed the freedom to do can be so jeopardized by these drugs that new politics, more realistic values, and a meaningful, less materialistic society may never have the opportunity of becoming a reality. The turned-on people who seem to set many of today's lifestyles are not the only ones smoking grass, popping bennies, shooting speed, or dropping acid. If they were, the problem would be somewhat less tragic. These practices have spread to colleges, high schools, and even elementary schools. The students are being exposed to drugs that many of them believe are without lasting physiological or mental effects. On the contrary, these substances are extremely dangerous. This trend toward drugs has alarmed every responsible segment of the community, for they know that there are inherent risks in the drug experience. Aside from its illegality, there's a medical risk to the brain and body. Perhaps the biggest risk is the placing of the psyche in peril. At the moment, these students are striving for something. In time, they may become total dropouts from a world that needs desperately what they can offer. To try and cut through the undue propaganda on both sides of the drug problem, Dr. John T. Burrows, medical director of narcotics education for the Los Angeles District Attorney's Youth Advisory Council, clarifies the extent of the drug problem and the term addiction. Well, I think the use of the word addiction is definitely obsolete and it's been a a very unfortunate thing that it is been used to try to define whether a drug is harmful or not. Uh this use of the word addiction was started with the World Health Organization in 1950 and they have realized their great mistake in this and have recently in 1965 completely redefined drug problems in other terms. Uh we know that the drugs have two effects that cause dependency or the desire for the use of the drug. And the most important one and the one that was not emphasized in the previous definition is the psychic dependence, the dependence of the person from a mental point of view upon needing or desiring the drug. Now, there is also with some drugs physical dependence. One important part of the drug problem is that so many substances are available or are being made available for use. Dr. Burrows describes some of the major ones and their effects. From the complete anesthetics or the ones that'll put you entirely to sleep, we can go into the depressants or the downers as they're known and these are, of course, primarily the barbiturates. These are known as the uh red devils, uh the second owls, uh the nembutals, or yellow jackets, the uh tuinals, or rainbows, and so forth. These are all, of course, the barbiturate drugs. They can be taken by mouth, or some people prefer to take them out of the capsule and give themselves the drug intravenously. Now, the barbiturates have some very severe problems with them. For one thing, they do produce tolerance to a certain degree, and it's then necessary to take more and more of the drug to produce the same effect. However, this tolerance uh is limited. Now, under the effects of the drug, there tends to be a distortion of time, and of course, the person is confused, and the person may accidentally take more drug than he had anticipated, forgetting that he had just taken a dose a few minutes before. In addition to this, the barbiturates, when withdrawn, do produce a physical dependence or withdrawal-type reaction, and with the barbiturates is a marked tendency for the person to develop convulsions. Grand mal convulsions or seizures, and unless these are controlled, they can lead to the death of the individual. After the uh depressants, we come to the next major group of drugs, which is the stimulants. Uh the first ones to be used were the more mild forms, the Dexedrine hearts, as they were called, peaches, and so on. And Dexedrine is a mild form of a stimulant drug used in medicine uh for appetite control and in certain diseases. In medicine, we might give 5 to 10 mg of Dexedrine or Benzedrine, or the new drug uh methamphetamine, Methedrine, which is known uh among drug users as speed. As incredible as it may sound, the person who is using this drug as a drug user will smack or mainline, that is take intravenously, 1,000 mg. 100 times the dose that any person would give in the medical use of this kind of drug. And the effect is overwhelming. In this kind of dosage, it causes a fantastic speeding up of the mind function, so that the person suddenly feels a rush of tremendous numbers of ideas flashing through his mind and as a matter of fact, with hallucinogenic type overtones. His blood pressure may exceed 300 mm of mercury and as you know, normal blood pressure is perhaps 110 or 120 mm. At the same time, his heart is beating at a fantastic rate, maybe in excess of 150 beats a minute, normal being 70 to or so. And he may develop arrhythmias of the heart, that is the beat instead of being regular becomes highly irregular. And there have been rare deaths reported from that. As this drug begins to wear off, there's a tremendous psychic reaction and a and an overreaction, so the person becomes markedly depressed, severely depressed, which in itself is enough reason for him to want to take more drugs or perhaps to take barbiturates to ease this feeling of anxiety and depression or other drugs or back to meth or speed again. This depression is so marked that the person may wish to and does sometimes commit suicide. Dr. Burroughs describes two more categories of drugs, the deliriants and marijuana. important entity, marijuana. Now, the deliriants are the the drugs such as the glue, the the glue sniffing. Uh which include gasoline, ether, uh paint thinners, even some deodorants have been used. They, like all the other drugs, produce a mind-changing effect, so that the person feels uh a feeling of euphoria, uh unusual happiness, a feeling of unreality. These drugs have some severe physical effects. If they are sniffed, so that the actual material that is being used, such as airplane glue, uh can get into the nose or mouth, it causes a real burning of the mucous membrane, and can cause rather severe damage. And it is becoming overwhelmingly evident that an increasing number of children are showing up with brain damage and what we call chronic brain disease. The marijuana is not a separate thing. This again is a drug. Just like LSD is a drug, just like amphetamine is a drug, or just like barbiturate is a drug. There's a specific chemical in marijuana known as tetrahydrocannabinol, or let's call it THC from here on out for short, which is the uh material, the chemical, that produces the high of marijuana. Dr. Burrows pointed out that a good deal of the confusion concerning the effects of this drug is due to its very low concentration in American marijuana, or grass. Smoking typical pot usually produces mind-altering or hallucinogenic experiences, though sometimes it has little or no effect on some people. But as the drug becomes more concentrated, it has all of the effects of any of the hallucinogens. In high dosage, it parallels LSD. And already more purified marijuana, hashish, and the synthesized THC itself are readily available. I think it becomes obvious after having categorized all these drugs, we've now talked about all these different categories, one thing keeps coming up all the time, and that is the drug-dependent mind-changing or mind-altering effect of all of these drugs. The unfortunate person who gets started in this finds himself getting into an ever-increasing abyss. Where he starts out with the idea I'll have a kick or a high, and that'll do something for him. Well, uh it's true. These things do have a kick, or obviously people wouldn't try them. But the trouble is the person then gets involved in this vicious cycle. The kick becomes something that is not as good as he thought it was. He finds by using his drug that he has lost his capability to be responsible, he's lost his ability to be a worthwhile, uh successful student or successful individual. So he starts to seek ways to help him, and the only way he can seek, since he's using the drug now to avoid the reality of his failures, is to take more drugs. And down and down he spins. And he spins into a situation where he is virtually buried alive in a chemical tomb. This is the problem of drug dependency. One of the most tragic things about all this, as far as teenagers are concerned, is what this does to the teenager. The teenager is a person who is finally grown up to the point that he can begin to struggle with making his own personal decision. And he makes these decisions and finally learns how to do them. And when he has gone through this decision-making process, he suddenly turns from a teenager to a mature adult. One of the things that will stop it cold, sooner than anything else, is the taking of drugs. Because in taking the drugs, a person is doing exactly the opposite of what he's trying to do as a teenager. He is putting himself into a position where he cannot make decisions, where he is only irresponsible and incapable of doing this, and he is cutting his life off. But there are other reasons not to smoke marijuana or to take dangerous drugs. Possession of them is illegal. It is not, as many seem to believe today, an unenlightened law. Nearly every country in the world, including the United States, is a signatory to an international law banning the use, sale, cultivation, and possession of dangerous drugs that have no useful place in medicine, such as heroin and marijuana. Is the gamble of drug exploration worth this? Is it worth the physical and mental risk as well? The courts today are crowded with young offenders. Tragically, many of them are from good homes. They're well-educated and have opportunities that are available in no other country in the world. One immature and irresponsible action, for whatever motivation, can bring serious fines, prison terms, or both. A criminal record is never an asset. It can mean the end of a fine future. The drug question is a subtle one. This is an age of change, an age when society and authority are constantly being challenged. All too often, drugs have played a part in or have been used as a principal means of rebellion against authority. But drugs are not the proper tools with which to confront, to change a society that somehow hasn't fulfilled all its promise. Quite the contrary, drugs rob one of the energy, the attention, the very ability to see what is, and the ability to work for effective changes of any kind depends on clear and disciplined minds. Those who take drugs to produce new insights, or for self-discovery, or for a host of other romantic reasons, find themselves snared and deluded. Illicit drugs are sold for a price, the price of helplessness and suffering for the buyer, for the greed and gain of the seller. Many of today's young people are meeting the challenges before them. They are turning on to a world that needs more involvement, more selflessness. The extreme danger today is that which is created by the closed mind. We must not accept some facts about drugs and ignore others. The drug issue is wide and complicated and cannot be faced only by the police. They need the active cooperation and the involvement of enlightened parents, school, church, and community leaders. But above all, the need is for clear-thinking young people who are the most involved and who have the most to lose. If communication has broken down between the younger and older generations, it must somehow be reestablished. At the same time, it will be necessary for the young to communicate common sense one to the other.