Washington.--Many of us read with dismay last Tuesday that the use of marijuana and other illicit drugs is rising alarmingly among the nation's junior and senior high school students.
A University of Michigan survey shows marijuana use among high school seniors at a 31 percent level, up from 22 percent in 1992. The Drug Abuse Warning Network tells us that over the last year drug overdoses, drug-related suicide attempts and emergency hospital visits increased by 8 percent.
This is as sad a period as I have known since I began a personal journalistic war on drug abuse a generation ago. That's because these new figures tell only a fraction of the destructive impact of the use of marijuana, LSD, cocaine, heroin, crack and other illicit drugs on our young population.
Drugs loosen the moral resolve of young women and increase the sexual aggressiveness of young men, and that produces babies out of wedlock. This in turn fires up an ugly and divisive battle over welfare "reform" and state-run orphanages.
Drug users and dope peddlers commit a disproportionate number of the serious crimes in this society. Drugs turn "babies" into brutal criminals. It is not just frightening, but shameful that in 1993 people under 18 years of age were arrested in 3,284 murders, 5,303 rapes, 43,340 robberies and 67,751 assaults.
Our current curse of children killing children arises largely from the easy availability on our streets of vast supplies of both dope and handguns.
No one can be happy about this situation except, perhaps, those who profit from America's lushest new cottage industry: the building of $31 billion worth of prisons and jails to hold more than a million inmates. Many of these inmates are young minority drug users, teen-age "mules" who tote drugs for big syndicate bosses, a tragic lot of young men who are guilty of nothing.
The resurgence in teen-age use of dope and alcohol I attribute to these factors:
* The people decided a few years ago that we were losing the "war on drugs." No number of arrests and jailings stopped the demand, especially among the moneyed, "glamorous" people. No "interdiction" program could stop the cartels from delivering drugs to Americans who were willing to pay dearly for them. No undercover programs could root out all the cops, deputy sheriffs and other law-enforcement people who were paid handsomely to protect drug smugglers and merchants.
* The media -- myself included -- stopped writing articles to enlighten teen-agers as to how drug abuse would kill their dreams and warp their futures in grotesque ways. We were replaced by musicians and filmmakers who made drug use look "cool," "trendy" and "glamorous."
* The anti-drug war became a political football, kicked around by those who thought military interdiction abroad and massive arrests at home would solve the problem against those who argued that we had to spend more on prevention -- that is, on the education and medical care of teen-agers who were at risk.
Lee Brown, President Clinton's "drug czar," saw his Office of National Drug Control Policy staff cut from 146 to 25. When he and Mr. Clinton asked for a special allocation of $355 million to treat 140,000 chronic hard-core drug users, Congress provided $57 million. When they sought an additional $191 million to produce safe and drug-free schools, they got only $87 million.
The leaders of the new Republican-controlled Congress ridicule social programs designed to reduce drug abuse and the crime that goes with it. They make jokes about "midnight basketball."
Parents of the eighth-graders who are just entering the drug culture know that the problem is no joke. Their children need a panoply of social and medical help. Putting their names on future prison cells is no answer for them -- or America.
Carl T. Rowan is a syndicated columnist.