Editorial – More Kids Dying – Editorial – NYTimes.com
Despite a decline in overall drug use, the rate at which young Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 have been dying from drug overdoses has jumped dramatically — more than doubling between 1999 and 2005. In the same period, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “accidental poisoning deaths” in this age group, mostly drug overdoses, have jumped from 849 to 2,355.Instead of rushing to save these young people, state governments are actually shortchanging them. Only a tiny fraction of the money that Washington sends to the states under the Substance Abuse and Prevention and Treatment Block Grant program is aimed at young drug abusers. This cannot go on.
Prescription painkillers like oxycodone and Vicodin are the most common drugs involved in fatal overdoses by young people. The problem need not be measured only in fatalities.
Other, more familiar kinds of drug abuse have increased as well: the percentage of high school seniors who smoke marijuana on a daily basis tripled from nearly 2 percent to 6 percent in the 1990s. The number drifted down to 5.1 percent last year, but that is still alarmingly high, and marijuana is more potent than ever.
[The current state funding of drug treatment programs is] obviously not enough. If there is any doubt, just take another look at the rising numbers of kids dying from drug overdoses.
And the whole thing has got me wondering, what does the 5% of high school seniors smoking pot have to do with all these overdoses you’re worried about? The government has constantly barraged young people with anti-marijuana advertising and stepped up enforcement efforts, arresting more people for pot than ever. Still, one out of twenty high school seniors smoke it, and you’ve convinced the rest of them that illegal drugs are so bad that they’ve turned to the legal ones in mom and dad’s medicine cabinet. You got less drug use, but ended up with more drug deaths among young people. How is any of this considered a sane drug policy?
