NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #19/NN_1992_19.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/6137

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From: [e-mail] (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Studies Show Drug Users Defy Stereotypes
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/** pacnews.sample: 177.0 **/
** Topic: Drug Users Sterotypes **
** Written 11:11 am  Aug 26, 1992 by pacificnews in cdp:pacnews.sample **
From: Pacific News Service <pacificnews>
Subject: Drug Users Sterotypes

/* Written 12:24 pm  Aug 25, 1992 by pacificnews in cdp:pacnews.storie */
/* ---------- "Drug Users Sterotypes" ---------- */

COPYRIGHT PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE
450 Mission Street,  Room 506
San Francisco, CA 94105
415-243-4364
NEWS REPORT -- 955 WORDS

DRUG USERS DEFY STEREOTYPES -- HIGH RISK TAKERS VS. LOW
RISK TAKERS

EDITOR'S NOTE:  A growing body of research describes a very different
profile of drug takers than the stereotype.  Not only are drug users most
apt to be the most inquisitive, talented people in the class or work place
who earn higher wages than non-drug takers.  They are also high risk
takers with an innate sense of adventure.  The new findings have vital
implications for fighting drug abuse.  PNS correspondent Frank
Browning, co-author of The American Way of Crime, reports for
National Public Radio and a number of national magazines.

BY FRANK BROWNING, PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Usually the scenario runs like this:  Drugs lead
to addiction.  Addiction leads to desperation.  Desperation leads to
crime.  People who use drugs are doomed to fail in life and in work.
That's the anti-drug pitch on most TV and billboard campaigns.

A growing number of drug abuse experts, however, say these messages
don't work because they're not true.  And at least one researcher argues
that effective drug abuse prevention depends on revamping our
stereotype of addicts.

Most startling is the relationship between drugs and wages.  Young
cocaine and marijuana users actually earn higher salaries than non-
users, according to a long-term study conducted by the National Bureau
of Economic Research in New York.

Economist Robert Koestner compared the drug use habits and wages of
5,000 young adults nationwide.

"We would expect that the person who uses marijuana or cocaine
would have a lower wage," Koestner said.  "The findings indicate the
opposite -- individuals who use drugs have higher wages than
individuals who don't, and that effect was found in 1984 when they
were 23 and again in '89 when their average age was 27 years old."

People who earn more money -- lawyers, accountants, t.v. producers --
can of course afford more drugs than can low wage earners like bus
drivers and fast food clerks.  But Koestner was careful only to compare
people with similar backgrounds and educational levels.

Koestner also expected to find that drug users would drop out of the
workforce quicker than drug free-employees -- and that also turned out
not to be true.  Overall, he found no difference in the drop-out rates
between the two groups.

None of this surprises long time drug counselor Daryl Inabe who runs
the drug detox program at San Francisco's famed Haight-Ashbury Free
clinic and teaches pharmacology at the University of California medical
school in San Francisco.

Inabe says too many anti-drug campaigns rely on a fundamental
misperception about who uses drugs in America.

"The picture that's often portrayed of drug abusers on TV and
magazines," he says, "is of a ghetto-bred, barrio-bred, Chinatown-bred
person who's poor, desperate -- somebody who's down and out.  But
this picture doesn't hold true...Once we get them into recovery, we find
that they're part of the most productive force in our society."

Inabe says that even in ethnic terms, there are many misperceptions
about who uses drugs.  He cites a recent Gallup survey of illicit drug
use in California which found that 24 percent of white Anglos had
used drugs, 23 percent of Hispanics had, 22 percent of Asians had, but
only 16 percent of African Americans had.

Both Inabe and Koestner are quick to say that they do not believe drug
use itself leads to higher wages or job success.  Koestner suspects that
there is some hidden factor, which his economic research does not
reveal, that leads both to career ambition and to use of drugs.

"I think it isn't the drugs that are causing them to earn more money,"
said Lewis Donohew, a communications researcher at the University of
Kentucky who has studied drug and alcohol abuse among teenagers.
"There's something in the basic personality of the individual that
causes the same person who gets ahead in the workforce and is more of
a risk taker, is more daring, to also be the kind of person who would be
more susceptible to use drugs."

Donohew says his team at Kentucky has found that kind of connection
among junior high and high school students.  He doesn't talk about
drug users and non-drug users but about "high sensation seekers" and
"low-sensation seekers."

High sensation seekers are people who continuously seek out physical,
emotional and mental stimulation, people for whom travel, action,
change of scenery are almost necessities.

"We have found among teenagers that people who are high on
sensation seeking are three to seven times more likely to report having
used drugs in the last 30 days. "

Donohew says that this drive toward high sensation activity and the
love of novelty is a fundamental personality characteristic -- one which
he has come to believe has a biological base.  "We have some research
indicating that these high sensation seekers live a far more active
lifestyle, are much more engaged in political campaigns, are much
bigger users of information, and generally have very different kinds of
lives than low sensation seekers."

Donohew argues that his findings -- which are funded by the National
Institute on Drug Abuse and the Office of Substance Abuse Prevention
-- have vital implications for fighting drug abuse.  Any effective drug
prevention, he says, must distinguish between these high risk takers
and low risk takers.

His project is producing a series of television advertisements that
incorporates "heavy metal" action music, MTV-style quick-cut editing
of hang-gliding, bungee-cord jumping, disco-dancing, skydiving,
rafting, skiing and other high-sensation activities, fading up to a final
message:  "What do all these people have in common?  They don't use
drugs."

As the ad ends a local hot line phone number is flashed on the screen.

When the ad ran last spring in Lexington, counselors were swamped
with calls -- double the number such spots usually generate.  And
businesses and recreational facilities mentioned in the spot had a sharp
upsurge in patronage.

Donohew's approach to drug abuse prevention is the opposite of the
fried-egg anti-drug ads and Just Say No messages that have dominated
the federal campaigns.

Instead of repressing the impulse to take risks and seek out novelty,
Donohew argues that effective drug use prevention must acknowledge
what counselors like Daryl Inabe and economists like Robert Koestner
are finding, that drug users are most often the most inquisitive,
talented people in the class or work place.

A campaign that works must address that innate sense of adventure
and propose stimulating alternatives to drugs.

(08251992)      **** END ****    COPYRIGHT PNS

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