Drug Rehab Largely Ignored in Media as a Weapon to Handle Addiction

Every day of the week there are at least a dozen stories in newspapers and on TV across the country and around the world decrying local substance abuse and alcohol or drug addiction problems. They are usually about a particular drug or alcohol concoction, street drugs or prescription drugs, and may concern teenagers, a local high school or grade school, an ethnic minority, pregnant women, the elderly, a local celebrity, street gangs, even the population at large – the combinations of who is using what or addicted to what or selling what or dying from what seem endless. But there is a common denominator among nearly all of these troubling stories: they rarely feature the importance of alcohol and drug rehab in dealing with rampant addiction.

Today, for example, there were stories about anti-depressants and painkillers from a North Carolina university, tougher alcohol laws in New Zealand, an alcohol ban on San Diego beaches, a Reno, NV series on the dangers of energy drinks laced with alcohol, a New England high school's crack-down on student alcohol and drug use, and a North Carolina county's new war on local drug pushers. There were similar stories from South Africa, Pakistan, Canada, India, Australia, Bulgaria and the UK.

After lengthy descriptions of the spread of drug addiction or the need to stiffen law enforcement or the horrendous amount of binge drinking at US colleges and universities, a few stories might mention that someone entered drug rehab. But none of them feature drug rehab for what it is: The only tool we have to help people suffering from habitual substance abuse and alcohol or drug addiction.

Americans comprise only four percent of the world's population, but 20 million of us consume two thirds of the world's illegal drugs. More than 2.6 million teenagers abuse illegal drugs. More than 16 million Americans abuse prescription drugs, and the number of alcohol abusers and addicts is holding steady at about 16 to 20 million.

These kinds of statistics, and daily news stories about alcohol and drug addiction, are proof that substances are still plentiful, and abuse isn’t letting up. New drug rehab facilities are announced now and then, but their numbers are almost impossible to find. The media favors drug smuggling, drug-related crime, drug arrests, drug addiction and drug deaths, to reports on a successful drug rehab program somewhere.

Another issue which will soon make headlines if nothing is done about it are the numbers of kids experimenting with drugs and alcohol today. According to media reports on government, academic and United Nations studies, kids are starting to abuse drugs and alcohol at younger ages around the world. Teens who abuse controlled prescription drugs are twice as likely to use alcohol, five times likelier to use marijuana, 12 times likelier to use heroin, 15 times likelier to use Ecstasy and 21 times likelier to use cocaine, compared to teens who do not abuse such drugs.

This presents a new set of problems. There are few alcohol or drug rehab centers specifically for kids, and adult facilities are not equipped to deal with them at all. There's a growing interest among treatment professionals in drug rehab specialization for kids, but precious little research on which to base drug rehab treatment. It's mostly a learn-as-you-go field of endeavor. Ideas are being proposed, but there’s no standardized approach yet.

Meanwhile, street kids keep puffing on weed and snorting meth and crack, while the more genteel mini-suburbanites, who of course also smoke weed, continue to snort esoteric and extremely dangerous heroin mixtures or prescription drugs stolen from a friend’s medicine cabinet, and arrive dead or near death in ever great numbers at local hospital emergency rooms.

Alcohol and drug addiction and abuse is a raging epidemic, and it's not receiving the medical attention and drug rehab services it should get. If 20 or 30 million Americans – the same number as drug and alcohol addicts – came down with avian flue or some other pandemic, we'd have everyone from the CDC to FEMA to the Army trying to deal with it.

Not so for addiction and drug rehab. There aren't enough in-patient drug rehab facilities to treat even a fraction of the alcohol and drug addicts in this country. Yet most of the media ignores the treatment story in favor of the crime and abuse story.

Maybe if the national media – TV network news, major dailies and magazines – really went to town on this for a few weeks, the public might take notice and start hollering for their elected representatives to do something about it. Because every American whose life has been ripped away and ruined by alcohol and drugs deserves a successful drug rehab program.

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