Whose Brain on Drugs?

The New York Times had an interesting op-ed article by Mike Males, a senior researcher for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice and a founder of Youthfacts.org last week. He felt it important to counter some of what he calls the slandering of youth.

Commentators brand teenagers as stupid, crazy, reckless, immature, irrational and even alien, then advocate tough curbs on youthful freedoms. Jay Giedd, who heads the brain imaging project at the National Institutes of Health, argues that the voting and drinking ages should be raised to 25. Deborah Yurgelun-Todd, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, asks whether we should allow teenagers to be lifeguards or to enlist in the military. And state legislators around the country have proposed raising driving ages.

One troubling possibility: youths are being maligned to draw attention from the reality that it’s actually middle-aged adults — the parents — whose behavior has worsened.

Our most reliable measures show Americans ages 35 to 54 are suffering ballooning crises:

• 46,925 fatal accidents and suicides in 2004, leaving today’s middle-agers 30 percent more at risk for such deaths than people aged 15 to 19, according to the national center.

• More than four million arrests in 2005, including one million for violent crimes, 500,000 for drugs and 650,000 for drinking-related offenses, according to the F.B.I. All told, this represented a 200 percent leap per capita in major index felonies since 1975.

• 630,000 middle-agers in prison in 2005, up 600 percent since 1977, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

• 21 million binge drinkers (those downing five or more drinks on one occasion in the previous month), double the number among teenagers and college students combined, according to the government’s National Household Survey on Drug Use and Health.

• 370,000 people treated in hospital emergency rooms for abusing illegal drugs in 2005, with overdose rates for heroin, cocaine, pharmaceuticals and drugs mixed with alcohol far higher than among teenagers.

Whoa! What a concept. Yet, as Males points out, these are being ignored with the focus continuing to be aimed at teenagers and young adults. As might be expected from my generation (Baby Boomer, naturally) we have an amazing ability to ignore out faults- or our implication in something negative. The problem can't be ours. In the 60s and 70s we said- "well if our parents can drink, we can use pot." Today we say, "Well, it's those teenagers. At least we aren't doing that."

But the statistics seem to say we are. (Remember that the Boomers are currently between ages 43 and 61.)

What experts label “adolescent risk taking” is really baby boomer risk taking.
It’s true that 30 years ago, the riskiest age group for violent death was 15 to
24. But those same boomers continue to suffer high rates of addiction and other
ills throughout middle age, while later generations of teenagers are better
behaved. Today, the age group most at risk for violent death is 40 to 49,
including illegal-drug death rates five times higher than for teenagers.

I guess we have to admit that we are no better (and perhaps in some ways a little worse) than others might be. Let's not demonize, criminalize, or infantalize (?) our adolescents and young adults while ignoring the continuing love affair with risky behaviors at older ages as well.