After decades of scapegoating youth, and blaming teenagers for the entirety of our nation’s drug problem, someone in the mainstream media picks up the fact that adults are a hell of a lot more of a problem than anyone thought:

Californians age 40 and older are dying of drug overdoses at double the rate recorded in 1990, a little-noticed trend that upends the notion of hard-core drug use as primarily a young person’s peril.

Indeed, overdoses among baby boomers are driving an overall increase in drug deaths so dramatic that soon they may surpass automobile accidents as the state’s leading cause of nonnatural deaths.

In 2003, the latest year for which the state has figures, a record 3,691 drug users died, up 73% since 1990. The total surpassed deaths from firearms, homicides and AIDS.

Remarkably, the rate of deadly overdoses among younger users over that period has slightly declined, while the rate among those 40 and older has jumped from 8.6 to 17.3 per hundred thousand people.

The change has caught many prevention programs, which tend to be geared toward young people, off guard. Several drug abuse prevention officials and other experts said there was virtually no strategy in place to address the risk of overdose among older users.

“We have seen a massive, long-term trend toward more middle-age drug abuse that is leading to an unprecedented number of deaths,” said Michael Males, a sociology researcher at UC Santa Cruz. But “no one is doing anything about it. It has gotten almost no attention at the state, federal or local level.”

NYRA advisor, Mike Males, has been saying this for over a decade now, its great to see the LA Times finally pick up on it. I encourage everyone to read this article and to spread it around as widely as possible. If the LA Times link ever blinks out, its backed up on the NYRA Forums.

Now we wait and watch for all the enraged over 40 crowd writing angry letters to the LA Times for daring to question their behavior when “everyone knows youth are the real problem.” How dare the newspaper post facts and commentary that upend the fantasy of responsible adults! The nerve!

Despite the damning evidence of the article, I’m not going to hold my breath for an adult focused (and mandatory) DARE program. Or any major companies authorizing the police department to enter their factory or office with drug dogs. Or a high profile ONDCP campaign targeted against middle aged users.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 11th, 2005 at 1:56 pm and is filed under Youth Rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.