Simple Gifts

What Would Happen To America’s Security, Safety, Heath, and Economy with a 25% to 50% Reduction Drug Use?

By Dennis D. Embry • PAXIS Institute • May 1, 2010

Summary: this blog details how we might reduce drug use among America’s kids, teens and young adults by 25% to 50%.

This week in Pima County, AZ, my home, drug smugglers shot a sheriffs’ deputy.  Smugglers killed a Southern Arizona rancher a few weeks ago, resulting in Arizona’s infamous “Papers Please Law.”  People are worried about border violence, drug cartels and our safety.

My mind wanders to solutions by nature. I have a fixit orientation, which seems to have emerged from my preschool years of taking everything apart and putting it back together.  So my mind wonders what would happen if we reduced drug use by 25% quickly in America—since drug use seems to underlie so many of our security, safety, health, and economic issues.  Now that is an interesting fixit problem!

You’re probably thinking I’m smoking something, causing hallucinations of grandeur. You’d be right if the facts for the possibility were not before us for anybody to see or hear.

So, consider some facts—those pesky, thought provoking things for possibility.

Fact 1:    In 1978, 50.2% of high-school seniors used marijuana. Fourteen years later, only 21.9% did.  That is a 28% absolute prevalence reduction, and nearly a 60% relative reduction. Now imagine that we had such a 60% relative reduction among America’s youth using drugs today. What would that be? Instead of 32% of our kids using, about 12.8% would use. 

Gosh, would that have any impact on smuggling, crime, incarceration rates, traffic crashes, health-care costs, educational success, the economy, taxes, business productivity, personal freedom, and national security?  Instead of every 3^rd kid using in America, only every one in 9 or 10 would be using. As a small business owner, would you rather hire from a pool of non-using folks or using folks? 

How did that rapid change happen?  By parents mobilizing to protect their kids and their kid’s friends. Just maybe we should re-kindle that? Most folks don’t realize that thousand and thousands of parents converged at national events just for this.  Mrs. Reagan didn’t do this; she surfed it for political advantage.  So, let’s empower all parents to fix it.

Fact 2:    America’s rate of disturbing, aggressive, and disruptive behaviors among our children and youth has objectively risen in the past 25 years.  Our rates of these problems are much larger than leading economic competitors.  These behaviors predict crime, reckless behavior, drug use, personality disorders, cheating in relationships, poor work and school performance, and stealing in business (Oh? Maybe Wallstreet?). Could these trends be reverse quickly, especially given that other countries competing against us have half these problems?

               The 2009 Institute of Medicine Report details one example tool, invented by a 4^th grade teacher (Muriel Saunders) in Baldwin, Kansas 41 years ago, and described in an experimental study in 1969 by the University of Kansas See http://bit.ly/bWI9mJ About 70 studies later, we know that using that simple classroom “behavioral vaccine” during normal instruction in the elementary school reduces cocaine use by 75% in youth, reduces ADHD, reduces all other lifetime addictions as adults, reduces lifetime crime, and increases high-school graduation. See review: http://bit.ly/9G1mlB 

               These large social effects are clearly measureable in 5-8 years, and grow more 10 years later.  Now imagine we made sure every elementary school teacher knew how and did use this simple behavioral vaccine, just as elementary teachers insist that children wash their hands after going to the restroom.  Recently, my colleague Dr. Diane Galloway has been field-testing coaching student teachers how to do this behavioral vaccine at the University of Texas-Arlington. The videos, observations and testimony are remarkable, fitting all the accumulated science. 

               In Baltimore, my colleagues and I, using funds from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Institute on Educational Sciences, will have implemented this behavioral vaccine in 50 schools. That is about 1,500 classrooms, pre-K through grade 8.  You can see it work in an 8^th grade classroom from Hell bit.ly/8th-Grade-GBG, after a visiting 4^th grade teachers teaches to the teens who have been out of control for 7 months. So, let’s empower teachers in every classroom in America to fix it, especially since the same tool really helps school success and teacher sanity.

Fact 3:    Some people use drugs to feel good, and a large number of people use drugs to feel better.  People who want to feel better have the choice of using illegal drugs, prescription drugs or both. Today, prescription psychotropic drugs are the fastest rising expense in publicly and privately funded health-care. And some of those drugs are really pricy—$300 or so per month.  Before health-care reform, 7% of our kids were being prescribed psychotropic drugs, compared to 2% in Germany and 2.9% in The Netherlands. Those numbers were with 50 million people NOT insured by any public or private health-care plan in America, but with 100% insured in Germany and The Netherlands. 

               Given that our kids actually have objectively more mental health problems that some of those European countries, we have a further exploding problem. Theoretically, this means that will about 6 million kids on mind-bending drugs, but only 1.4 to 2.1 million would need those drugs if we did some of the things they do in Germany and The Netherlands.  And what do Germany and The Netherlands do more of than we do in America? They actually provide more “behavioral vaccines” to parents and teachers via health-care and prevention services, which ironically were either developed or extensively tested and proven in America like the 4^th grade teacher’s game and parenting supports for every parent who chooses them. 

               Gosh, maybe we should empower every doctor and clinic to prescribe or deliver these low-cost behavioral vaccines as an option, which they don’t have in America but do in many European countries. That might be a good fix it, and save a bundle in health-care costs, too.

These are not the only facts at hand to change America’s insatiable demand for addictive drugs, which drive so many of economic, social, safety and security problems. There are plenty of other simple, low-cost, proven and tested procedures that could…

· Make it safe for us to crawl out of our musty fallout shelters, put away our open or concealed weapons,

· Have our classrooms filled with energy and excitement of engaged learners and teachers,

· Have prosperous businesses again on Main Street,

· See healthy and friendly people as we go about our lives, and

· Have borders that don’t look like the Berlin Wall.

The tools to fix it exist. It’s the American habit to mend broken things or invent things when need arises.

So let’s get with it. We have the tools and knowledge to reduce all drug use and related problem pretty quickly by 25%, 35% maybe 50% in say 5-10 years. 

The country could use a lot of hands, just like raising a barn for the future of America. What do you say?  Take a poll on the idea at http://bit.ly/Drug-free-border

My colleagues and I are starting with a concrete action: Families United http://bit.ly/a3RR3B , to empower every family. #FamUnited