Drug Abuse, Self Abuse and Abuse of Authority

Abstract

No doubt, scare techniques have no place in any presentation since they only obscure the author's point of view. Further, they barely conceal the anxiety and insecurity of those who use them. The authors' scien tific approach which is free from subjective emotionalism represents a step in the right direction.Stressing the importance of an objective investigation, any discussion on the abuse of drugs should include an unvarnished evaluation of all intoxicants. Also, the personal and social reasons underlying our society's abuse of intoxicants would need to be considered. Our obvious inability to convey satisfactorily to young people our concern regarding drug misuse relates to our unwillingness to admit to and to aban don our ambivalence concerning this area.How can we possibly impress the younger generation of our genuine concern if we accept alcohol as the one mood and behav iour altering agent of our society? How do we arrive at this conclusion anyway? Al though we know more about the damaging effects of alcohol than about those which may be caused by marijuana, the former remains accepted while the latter is being rejected rather arbitrarily. The saying 'Two wrongs do not make a right' represents a slick argument for the rejection of marijuana since it deals only with one wrong. Our society's ambivalence about intoxi cants becomes more obvious when we con sider the fact that we are much less alarmed about the 40 to 60 per cent rate of high school students, as recorded in some cities, who drink alcohol, than about the group of high school students engaged in mari juana smoking which comprises about 5 to 12 per cent. People who know better, for instance doctors, often assume a facetious attitude when alcohol is mentioned. The use of alcohol still stands for 'masculinity'. Recently a medical faculty journal an nounced the medical students association's annual 'Beer and Skits'. At a hospital medi cal staff meeting the otherwise serious scien tific presentation assumed a jocular lightmindedness when the alcoholic history of the same patient was mentioned. The anec-330