HaCKeRz KrOnIcKLeZ 3/HaCKeRz_KrOnIcKLeZ.iso/drugs/pot.alcohol

Text File | 1996-05-06 | 10KB | 195 lines

                  Copyright 1992 The New York Times Company
                               The New York Times
                 June  17, 1992, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section D; Page 2; Column 1; Financial Desk
LENGTH: 823 words
HEADLINE: Economic Scene; Less  Marijuana,  More Alcohol?
BYLINE: By Peter Passell

 BODY:
   WHAT do teen-agers do when they are priced out of the market for  marijuana?

Some, presumably, take oboe lessons or join the 4-H Club. But others look for
solace in less wholesome pursuits. And, surprisingly, economists may have more
to say on the subject than toilers in the fields of psychology or criminology.

   Drug policy is grounded on the premise that illicit drugs are birds of a
feather -- that reducing the availability of one decreases the consumption of
others. But economists who measure the demand for illicit substances the way,
say, Exxon analyzes the demand for grades of gasoline, challenge this
conventional wisdom. Their identification of a strong substitution effect
between  marijuana  and alcohol suggests that the full court press against the
weed is partly responsible for stubbornly high levels of binge drinking by
teen-agers.

    According to the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, the
proportion of high school seniors regularly using  marijuana  fell to 14
percent last year, barely one-third the rate reported in 1978. Their use of
alcohol has been on the wane, too, slipping by a fourth since the late 1970's.

   This might seem proof that alcohol and  marijuana  drugs are complements --
more like bread and jam than cake and pie. But simple correlation cannot
account for the slew of factors that influence drug consumption over time and
place.

   That is where a yet-to-be-published study by John DiNardo of the University
of California at Irvine and Thomas Lemieux of Princeton fits in. Their work,
supported by the Rand Corporation and the National Institute of Alcoholism and
Alcohol Abuse, focuses on the mid-1980's, when the threat of losing Federal
highway aid forced states to adopt a uniform minimum drinking age. In 1980, 1/2
the states had minimum drinking ages ranging from 18 to 20. Eight years later,
all states were up to age 21.

   The two economists estimated demand curves for  marijuana  and alcohol, using
a variety of data that might influence consumption -- everything from parents'
education to unemployment rates -- to isolate the effect of drinking sanctions.
The good news is that the higher "price" for alcohol -- that is, the greater
difficulty of obtaining it -- reduced drinking. The bad news: Other factors
being equal, raising the drinking age from 18 to 21 increased the proportion of
high school seniors who smoked  marijuana  by an estimated 10 percent.

   To Peter Reuter, an economist at Rand, this conclusion is most interesting
for what it implies about  marijuana  policy in the 1980's. If  marijuana  is a
substitute for alcohol, he notes, alcohol is, by definition, a substitute for
 marijuana.  Thus tough  marijuana  enforcement must increase drinking. And,
indeed, another new study for the National Bureau of Economic Research by Karen
Model suggests Mr. Reuter is on the mark.

   Ms. Model, a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard, examined the impact of  marijuana
decriminalization on hospital emergency room admissions for drug abuse reported
to the Federal Drug Abuse Warning Network in the mid-1970's. And as the
substitution hypothesis would suggest, Ms. Model found that emergency room
episodes related to drugs other than  marijuana  were 12 percent lower in the
states that had decriminalized the weed. Lowering the effective "price" of
 marijuana,  she concluded, reduced the abuse of other substances.

   The data did not allow Ms. Model to isolate alcohol emergencies from those
caused by the use of heroin, cocaine or prescription chemicals. But Ms. Model
believes alcohol is far and away the most likely drug replaced by  marijuana.
Both alcohol and  marijuana  were widely seen by users as "soft" recreational
drugs, in contrast to, say, cocaine, heroin or LSD.

    Marijuana  and alcohol use are both down; why, then, worry? Because the
level of teen-age alcohol abuse remains remarkably high.

   In 1991, some 30 percent of high school seniors reported having had five or
more drinks in a row sometime in the previous two weeks. The comparable figure
for college students (almost all of whom had to break the law to obtain alcohol
is 43 percent -- and there is no downward trend.

  To those who focus on the risk of accidental injury and other medical crises,
heavy drinking seems a more serious worry than marijuana.  Ms. Model found that
other factors equal, states decriminalizing  marijuana  reported lower overall
rates of drug- and alcohol-related emergencies.

   And while both substances have been implicated in auto accidents, Frank
Chaloupka, an economist at the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois,
believes that substitution toward  marijuana is, on balance, a life saver. In a
statistical analysis that parallels Ms. Model's, he found that states without
criminal sanctions against  marijuana  possession suffered fewer auto
fatalities.

   "If the choice is more  marijuana  use or more dead teen-agers," Mr. Reuter
concludes, "the choice is easy."

[end of article]

Maybe someone can post the two responses that were printed in the
op-ed column today (6/30): one from a former cop and one from a
liquor industry rep.

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RoN
v113mg59@ubvms

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The Oregonian
31-Mar-91

Demon Rum, Not Drugs, Major Evil on Campus
------------------------------------------

By Brooke A. Masters and Lisa Leff
   L.A. Times-Washington Post Service

   Say "Party" on most area college campuses, and rather than drugs,
most students think of alcohol--a Saturday night quest for a keg not
yet run dry.

   In spite of publicity surrounding the recent drug raid at the
University of Virginia, alcohol abuse, and related instances of
Vandalism, drunk driving and date rape, remains a far greater problem
than drugs on most campuses, students and administrators say.

   "Alcohol is an always has been the single largest problem we
confront in terms of students' behavioral issues ... The other drugs
are there, but the one that creates the most difficulties is alcohol,"
said Ken Bumgarner, dean for student services at George Mason
University.

   At Towson State University in Maryland, a study found that
alcohol--not drugs--was a factor in 98 percent of the cases where
students were brought up on conduct violations.  At Virginia Tech, 50
percent of 755 student judicial cases were alcohol-related, while only
three cases were drug-related, spokesman David Nutter said.

   Virginia's associate dean of students, Sybil R. Todd, who works
with victims for date rape, said alcohol has been involved "in every
instance" of date rape on campus.  "I don't know (of any date rapes
that) involved hallucinogens," she said.

   "There's almost no relationship between other drugs (besides
alcohol) and unwanted sex or property damage," said Randolph J.
Canterbury, of Virginia's institute for substance-abuse studies.
"When people smoke marijuana ... they don't become aggressive.  If
anything, they fall asleep."

   National surveys show illicit drug use among college students is at
its lowest level in 15 years, although marijuana, hallucinogens and
cocaine can still be found on area campuses.

   A 1990 survey found only 15 percent of college students reported
using any illegal drug in the past month down from 38 percent in 1980,
according to the University of Michigan's Institute for Social
Research.

   Three-quarters of college students reported monthly alcohol use in
1980, compared to four-fifths in 1980.

   Said George Washington University junior Matthew Howard, who keeps
a bottle of vodka beside his skin lotion:  "We party hard here.  Nine
out of 10 of my fraternity brothers could be classified (alcoholics)
the way AA defines alcoholics."

   A week after the University of Virginia, which netted some
marijuana, LSD and hallucinogenic mushrooms from three fraternity
houses, the party scene in Charlottesville seemed to have drifted back
to normal on a recent spring evening.

   Students--most of the carrying dripping plastic cups and beer
cans--wove their way up Rugby Road.  Some headed for the Phi Delta
Theta house, where the party theme was "Heaven and Hell"--hell being
shots in the basement, heaven being mixed drinks upstairs.

   Alcohol is readily available on campuses, purchased by underage
students carrying false identification or legally by older students
for younger ones.

   At fraternity parties and at many bars, students say those in
charge go through the motions of checking identification, but then turn
a blind eye.

   Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder demanded last week that university
authorities assert more control over behavior in fraternities.  And on
Friday.  Virginia President John T. Casteen III announced that the
university will require all fraternities and sororities to make
commitments in the areas of sexual assault, hazing and consumption of
alcohol by minors.

   Although alcohol is endemic across the spectrum of student life,
drug use tends to be acceptable in some crowds but taboo in others,
said counselors and students contacted during and informal survey of
area campuses.