Why is it that young people these days are increasingly turning to the recreational use of prescription and over-the-counter drugs? That was the question that inspired a hearing last week before the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs and the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control. The transcript of the hearing is intriguing to me because it seems to consider every possible reason for young people's behavior except the most obvious one: that young people are rational actors, who are responding to the incentive structures that our society has created through extremely powerful laws around drug use.
(Below: Senator Joseph Biden, who convened the hearing on youth use of over-the-counter and prescription drugs.)
For example, Stephen Pasierb, the head of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, cites five reasons that he thinks teens are using more pharma-type drugs recreationally: 1)ready availability, 2)low perception of risk associated with use, 3)"utilitarian" use to self-medicate, 4)lack of parental awareness of the issue, and 5)inadequate societal response to the issue. Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, testifies that the trend toward more pharma use stems "not only from the greater prescribing of medications, but also from misperceptions of their safety." Derek Clark, executive director of the Clinton Substance Abuse Council of Clinton, Iowa, cites many of the same factors, along with the growing prevalence of "user generated video websites [that] show youth how to get high."
These folks seem to think, in other words, that young people are just kind of bumbling along and are opportunistically and cluelessly using certain drugs because they happen to be easier to get, because their peers are doing it, and so forth.
That's probably part of what's going on, and I have no doubt that these experts are sincere in their concern about the problem of youth drug use. But how can the experts be ignoring the role of criminal laws that allow extremely invasive policing around and attach exceedingly harsh penalties related to the use of some drugs and not others?
(Above: Dextromethorphan: the "rational" -- if unhealthy -- recreational drug for an intelligent young person to use, given the incentive structure established by the American criminal regulation of drugs.)
Take a concrete example: Why use cough syrup rather than marijuana or heroin? One reason might be because "it's easy to get." But that doesn't really explain that much, because marijuana is easy to get, too, at least in many cities.
The fundamental reason is that cough syrup is legal. It's probably less safe to use recreationally than marijuana, but that's just an unfortunate quirk of the system. The point is,it's less likely to land you in jail or prison. Your financial aid won't get cut off for getting stoned on cough syrup, your parent's car won't get seized by the district attorney for having a bottle of Robitussin in the glove compartment, and you won't get shot by a SWAT team after the team executes a no-knock search warrant because you bought it at Rite-Aid. You won't be placed on a "drug offender registry" and forced to notify law enforcement officials when you move. You won't be placed on an electronic monitoring program or forced to consent to being searched, day or night, without probable cause or reasonable suspicion. You won't have to pee in a cup, and you won't get fired from your job. Nor will a drug dog "alert" on you at an airport for carrying cough syrup, nor will you be subjected to a warrantless pat frisk (strictly for "officer safety" reasons, of course) because you were carrying it. Nor will the DEA fly over your house in a helicopter looking for cough syrup. Nor will they rummage through your trash looking for empty bottles. Nor will they tap your phone or use thermal imaging devices to scan the heat in your home trying to find a cough syrup operation. Nor will they examine your bank records to see if you've been spending too much money on cough syrup. Nor will they employ other anonymous drug addicts to testify against you for using cough syrup and provide sealed evidence justifying the issuance of search warrants for your car, home and possessions.
In short, only a really naive young person can fail to be aware, these days, that the government is engaged in an elaborate, all-encompassing campaign to detect and prosecute the use of some drugs. The government has piled on sanction after sanction around the use of some drugs -- 55 years in prison for dealing marijuana? No problem! -- and stripped away right after right around the use of some drugs -- even going so far as to conclude that the First Amendment doesn't apply to advocating illegal drug use.
When it comes to some drugs, the government is on a real crusade, and any kid who uses those drugs is putting him or herself directly in the way of a bureaucratic steamroller.
For that reason, rational young people will do exactly what kids are in fact doing: switch to different drugs. They'll use drugs that produce many of the same psychoactive effects that illegal drugs produce but which are sold by big pharma corporations and so are regulated in a much less draconian fashion.
Is that good or is it bad? Whatever one thinks about it, we should at least acknowledge that it is happening. The whole point of criminal law is to change societal behavior. We are doing that, to some extent. Kids, too, are rational actors. They are acting rationally.
Perhaps it's time to stop assuming that these young people are stupid or clueless. Maybe the issue isn't that they need to be "educated about risks" but rather that they already understand our drug policies better than we ourselves do.
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