Getting Tough on Gateway Drugs
Robert L. DuPont, American Psychiatric Press, Washington, D.C., 1984, 260 pages, $16.95.
Marijuana Alert
Peggy Mann, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1985, $10.95.
Not My Kid: A Parent's Guide to Kids and Drugs
Miller Newton and Beth Polson, Arbor House, New York, 1984, 256 pages, $15.95.
All three books reviewed by Francis A. Soper, retired editor, Listen magazine.
Today there's both good news and bad news in the field of health. First, let's look at the good news. On the average we're living longer than ever before. A newborn baby now can expect to live seventy-three years this is twenty-six years longer than a baby born at the turn of the century.
The good news is better for women than for men. The newborn girl can look forward to seventy-seven years of life, whereas the newborn boy can expect only sixty-nine years. That's a gap of eight years. In 1900 women averaged only two extra years of life. Now the bad news. About one third of the people who die actually die too early. Thirty percent of all deaths in our country are premature for two reasons: alcohol drinking and cigarette smoking.
And the gap of eight years' life expectancy between men and women is largely explained by the difference in rates of alcohol and tobacco use. When the death rates of men who don't smoke or drink are compared with those of women who don't smoke or drink, the life-expectancy gap almost disappears.
The bad news is especially bad for one age group: the 15-to 24-year-olds. Their health is actually deteriorating. The three major killers here are accidents, suicides, and homicides. All these are on the increase, much of the problem stemming from drug use, which has shot up 1,000 to 3,000 percent in only twenty years.
All this news--both good and bad--comes from the vital, interesting new book Getting Tough on Gateway Drugs: A Guide for the Family, by Robert DuPont, one of the world's foremost and most forthright authorities on the drug scene.
The word gateway is significant. For example, the author points out that tobacco use is the most common and deadly of all addictions, the death toll of 320,000 annually exceeding the toll from all other drug addictions combined.
Dr. DuPont focuses mainly on three gateway drugs:
1. Alcohol--the most widely used drug in all the world. It causes 15 percent of all deaths in the United States, and costs $200 for every man, woman, and child. It's a gateway to all nonmedical drug-taking.
2. Marijuana--the smoke contains more tar and carcinogens than tobacco. Eighty percent of marijuana smokers also use tobacco.
3. Cocaine--usually thought of as harmless. This drug has become a major problem for more and more of its 22 million users.
Dr. DuPont's book is necessary reading. Books of such value are few and far between. It is very unusual, however, to have three vital books in the same subject area appear all at once, but such is the case here.
Peggy Mann's Marijuana Alert is the best and most comprehensive popularized book on a topic of increasing concern. Marijuana has been thought of as relatively innocent, but the more that is discovered about it, the more frightening it becomes.
Especially significant in Peggy Mann's up-to-date review of marijuana's physical effects is the unexpected generational carryover. Animal experimentation has shown that the drug transmits abnormalities across generations, such abnormalities appearing in infants even when only their grandfathers were exposed to the drugs. One can only speculate on the generational impact of the use of drugs today.
Third in this triumvirate of books--all easy to read and conveying important information in their messages--is Not My Kid, by Beth Poison and Miller Newton.
Dr. Newton, because of drug problems in his own family and concern for other families so involved, founded Straight, one of the most effective treatment programs available today.
From his experience in helping thou sands of young people in trouble, he presents tested ideas for dealing with drug use.
"Show me a druggie kid," he says, "and I will show you a family in pain." This easy-to-read parent's guide to kids and drugs shows not only that all kids may be vulnerable to drugs, but also that there's a way out, as demonstrated by the many success stories in the book.
The main purpose of all three of these timely books is "building strong bodies . . . and minds . . . and souls," as summarized by the subtitle of Dr. Newton's final chapter.
