C.E.P.T.A.
The CAMPAIGN for EFFECTIVE PREVENTION and TREATMENT of ADDICTION.
5e. THE EASY WAYS INTO THE DRUG TRAP
AND THE BARRIERS TO ESCAPING
"Gateways" and Exits
a CEPTA
report
For years we have been fed the idea that "pot" (marihuana / cannabis, etc.) is an OK "soft" drug which, if it has a disadvantage, it is that it serves as an introduction or gateway to "hard" drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, etc.
Like all good propaganda, this particular story is based on a degree of truth, insofar as some cannabis users do migrate to, or also start to use, other drugs. But not to the degree generally believed. In fact, the cannabis "gateway" to other drugs is not as often used as other gateways for the simple reason that - contrary to the PR from the "legalise cannabis" lobby - cannabis today is as hard a drug as any other.
THC is the active part of cannabis, and the amount of THC in what we called "pot" in the 1960's, was only ½ of one percent. Today it averages 5% - TEN TIMES MORE POWERFUL, and in "skunk" or "nederweed" (the up-market genetically engineered cannabis types commonly available on the streets today) there can be from 9% to 27%, making some supplies over 50 times stronger than the 1960s pot !
So this is a very different drug from the one which fuelled the hippie generation, and the truth is that, whilst cannabis has long been regarded as a "youth" drug, a sort of starter, a kind of mild alternative to alcohol and as a "soft" drug rather than something harder, it is today not only by far the most commonly used illegal drug, but, contrary to earlier claims, today's beefed up cannabis is unquestionably physically damaging in many ways and definitely very addictive - dependency arising from mental need for the drug's effect.
So it doesn't really make sense for a regular cannabis user to start paying out a lot more money for another "hard drug" like heroin, cocaine and crack, etc., when it is easier and cheaper to stick with cannabis.
In fact with cannabis by very far the most commonly used illegal drug, the question which should be asked is: "What is the gateway to cannabis usage, and, if cannabis is only a minor gateway to other drugs, what are the other drug gateways?"
Cannabis, like many legal and illegal drugs, is an intoxicant, and by far the largest provider of intoxicants to our society is the alcoholic drinks industry. It should therefore not be surprising that the increasing incidence of cannabis usage amongst teenagers is paralleled by increasing alcohol consumption.
In fact when one questions the 13 to 17 years old age group regarding the first time they used cannabis, one finds that, in a majority of cases at the time they first decided to take a few trial "puffs" or "draws", they had already had "a drink". The same usually applies to their second attempt, and we should not lose sight of the fact that a great deal of drug-pushing takes place in the car-parks, toilets and bars of all types of licensed premises (hotels, clubs, restaurants and pubs) as well as at friends' parties where everyone is well primed with the products of the off-licence.
So gateway number one for initial entry of our youth to cannabis, and in fact to all types of drugs, is our original and traditionally established "demon drink".
This is not difficult to understand when one considers the rather relaxed attitudes of parents and other family, fellow workers, employers, doctors, teachers, shop-keepers and even police and priests, etc., to alcohol and its effects. Habitual alcohol drinkers are still the largest, still escalating and increasingly accepted drug users we have all known about and joked about for centuries. And drink has never been so widely and easily available or sold with so high an alcohol content as it is today !
It is the highly developed intoxicant leisure market - spawned by the drinks trade - which has created our easy acceptance of personal irresponsibility, drunkenly humorous disregard for the safety of others, hysterically "amusing" lack of physical co-ordination plus emotional outbursts, drunken attacks on persons and property and the need for major policing of publicans' customers - all at taxpayers expense !
Its main effects are to reduce responsibility levels and to impair physical mental and personal judgement, as a result of which individuals make out-of-character decisions and take actions they would never normally even contemplate if they were not under the influence of the alcohol.
But there is another, equally prevalent but less obvious factor which pre-disposes our citizens to the usage of drugs.
It is the pharmaceutically developed bio-chemical marketplace in which today we all live that has generated our easy acceptance of pills, capsules, tablets, injections, dosages and sprays, etc. And it is the ethical drug companies' development of their ever 'helpful' and friendly bio-chemical marketplace which has done so much to permit the similar products of the drug barons a familiarity and acceptability which belies their danger and illegal nature.
As with all products, to fully exploit their marketing, it is necessary for the purveyors to take account of those activities which influence both supply and demand. But, in respect of illicit drugs, attention has been paid by the drug barons only to supply - with a near total neglect of demand.
This is not only because they believe that the very nature of addictive substances takes care of the demand factor without need of promotion, BUT MAINLY because their pharmaceutical competitors have already "educated" the market into capsule and pill popping, injecting, rubbing-in, inhaling and drinking a whole range of chemical products in the promoted pretence that these are a necessary part of everyday life !
Easy market acceptance of illicit drugs is understandable when one keeps in mind that drugs appear to come from the same stable as medicines and are presented to the market clientele in the same familiar tablet, capsule, powder and liquid forms as many medicines. “And drugs, like medicines, are the things which make us feel better - they do us good - don't they ?”
Some of the "ethical" drug
manufacturing conglomerates have annual budgets greater than those of many
small countries. With well over 200 manufacturers in the
Nearly three billion pounds per annum, or approaching £50 per person per year, is spent on pharmaceutical drugs - more than double that which is spent on the whole of the General Practitioner services, and these figures start to give some idea of the size of the bio-chemical marketplace, the power of its suppliers and its importance to their income and their profits.
We therefore have a massive licensed alcoholic trade and an enormous legal pharmaceutical industry both of which are pre-disposing the whole of our society to the products of the drug barons. And this pre-disposition is a major factor in the ability of the drug barons to develop DEMAND for their products - just on the basis of habit and dependency alone, with no need for promotion and advertising.
These then are two of the gateways for the easy entry of illicit drugs into our society - licensed alcohol and prescription drugs - and these are the thin end of the wedge which opens the market up for the illicits to enter.
And it is obvious that they would do so - because alcohol and the pharmaceuticals are themselves drugs and the illicits are just an extension of the drugs marketplace already created and developed by the alcoholic and chemical giants.
In addition to alcohol and its well known effects, there is the now major group of semi-hypnotised citizens habitually using tranquillisers, methadone, Prozac, Ritalin and a whole range of other prescribed addictive medical and psychiatric drugs, most of which citizens go mainly unrecognised as drug "users" outside their own families. Increasingly regarded by many as "unsafe", some 30% of the drugs dispensed under the N.H.S. at a cost to taxpayers of over £1 billion per year, are self-perpetuating in their usage because of their hypnotic side-effects and creation of dependency.
Any other stories about a "variety of gateways" whereby individuals are said to enter the drugs marketplace are nothing more than a reflection of the massive lobbying and propaganda output from those same alcoholic and chemical giants.
Obviously the alcoholic drinks
industry and the pharmaceutical drugs manufacturers do not want to see their
highly sophisticated and profitable products labelled as overwhelmingly being
the main gateways for entrance by our youth into the
Prevention and Abstinence
Of all the youngsters today leaving school, college or university to enter full-time employment for the first time, 40% will be lifetime abstainers and 15% will have experimented with drugs and then stopped. The remaining 45% will still be indulging in habitual or irregular usage of one or more substances to a greater or lesser degree, 35 of the 45%, sufficiently addicted to impair their work or study performance.
In other words, whilst 65% of the population currently moving from their teens and 20s into their 20s and 30s will be basically unaffected by the drug scene, a hard-core 35% will be having trouble and, nearly inevitably, be causing trouble for others - at home, at work, at play - in private and in public. And if each one of them seriously affects the life of only one non-user, then we have 70% of the population disadvantaged by drugs.
Those non-users affected are, in the majority of cases, their family, their colleagues, their employers and their friends - most of whom would like to see the users helped - and the establishment and the public at large would also like to see them "effectively handled".
The Real Cure Is Prevention
That "prevention is the best cure" is something we have all normally learned at some time in our lives, and, because of the addictive and hypnotic nature of a majority of drugs (both legal and illegal) prevention in respect of drugs is probably more needed and wanted than in relation to any other subject.
This obviously means good education and truthful and complete information about drugs and alcohol at school, at work and in other benevolently regulated environments - including the family. And there is adequate evidence to show that good preventative practices are contributing to the preservation and maintenance of the 55% of the population who will essentially abstain from drugs for life.
However, it is also clear that drugs education methods based on fear, threats and "aversion" methods can create a reverse effect by rendering youngsters curious about why anyone would want to use drugs if drugs were so obviously as bad as painted by "psycho-babblers" and other "authorities". And the old proverb tells us that "it was curiosity which killed the cat".
But, important as it is, there is much more to prevention than education.
Reducing the amount of alcohol sloshing around in our communities would be a big help. N.B. Not necessarily the amount of drink - but rather the quantity of alcohol IN the drinks. If the government goes forward with its plans to lower the standard for the breathalyser closer to the alcohol level to be found in one pint of beer, then, if the publicans don't want to lose sales and the exchequer doesn't want to lose tax revenue, the brewers are going to have to start producing beer with an average strength of 2% - 2.5% by volume instead of the current average of 5%.
And doing something similar with the alcoholic strengths of wines and spirits would obviously also help to cut alcohol consumption by anything from 35% to 50%, and so similarly cut the crime, fights, vandalism, broken marriages, ruined careers, deaths and expensive and time wasting policing caused by alcohol.
But, just as important, we would be starting to close a major youth gateway to other forms of drug usage.
Middle-aged and older members of the community are more likely to be hooked on tranquillisers, sleeping pills, sedatives and a very wide range of anxiolytics and hypnotic medical drugs, which comprise nearly one-third of the U.K's total annual drugs bill of £3 billion.
No one is suggesting that we should take away essential medication from old ladies, young children or anyone else, but a highly workable step is for government to stop feeding unsafe drugs to the British populace.
At one stroke, we would not only cut the massive amount of unsafe substances flooding into the market, but at the same time would save billions of taxpayers pounds which could then be spent on cleaning up the existing situation in terms of rehabilitating the present drug dependent population, plus, more strongly tackling the drug barons and their illegal activities.
It is well recognised that the prescription drugs pipeline from chemical factory to bathroom cabinet leaks like a sieve into the illicit "street drugs" supply-line, and the greater the quantity of such legal substances, the greater the opportunity for criminal diversion of supplies and for misuse and abuse!
Yet right now the bulk of the HUGE QUANTITY of toxic drugs, hypnotics, hallucinatory, disorientating and otherwise unsafe habit-forming and addictive "medicines" is paid for by the British taxpayer via the NHS.
So, in addition to reducing the strength of alcoholic beverages, further massive and effective prevention is possible by cutting our annual pharmaceutical drugs bill from £3 billion to £2 billion, with those unsafe drugs which have the wild side-effects and the highest dependency factors being crossed off NHS prescription lists.
Relief
Much is said about "advice", intervention", "therapy", "treatment", "harm reduction", "maintenance", "group counselling" and a number of other rather imprecise activities claiming to provide "relief" - which most often turn out to be merely supposed or hope of relief for the society, rather than for the individual drug-user.
As a result, most of these activities in no way serve as "exits" from the drug usage scene, and they are in fact seen as part of "the revolving-door syndrome" of relief - relapse - relief - relapse and more relief, etc.
Provision of "relief" is in fact that group of activities which have brought drug rehabilitation into near disrepute, and generated the misleading idea that curing individuals of drug (and / or alcohol) addiction is "not really possible".
Nothing could be further from the truth, and a full genuine cure based on comfortable and relaxed abstinence for life is the only real exit from the drug usage scene for a dependent individual.
THE Real Exit:
Once an individual has been hooked on drugs (legal, illegal, prescribed, licensed or smuggled), the only real way out of his or her dependency - whether it be a regular habit or full addiction - is via a truly effective cure. Which means achieving either: i) Total abstinence for life, and / or, ii) Full power of choice over the substance.
However, a lifetime is obviously an impossible period over which to attempt to test a particular cure, as a result of which the following very practical definition is used:
A SUCCESSFUL CURE IS: a former addict who has not used his (or her) original addictive substance(s) for at least 12 months, who has not replaced such earlier usage with another addictive substance, who is now taking responsibility for his (or her) own life and who no longer needs the support of further rehabilitation.
Other definitions fall short of this. In fact many rehabilitation centres or systems fall short of actually stating a definition. But from the addict's and from the society's point of view, any definition, centre or system which falls short of this is just not worth wasting time, effort or money on.
In fact any definition less precise or less comprehensive becomes less easy to measure - a situation with which some so-called rehabilitation centres apparently feel more comfortable, as they consider “habit management” for life a better goal than a cure – mainly because a) they cannot cure, and, b) because curing cuts off their supply of profitable habit management customers!
Levels of performance vary from system to system and from centre to centre. Some claim success in respect of 30% of the entrants completing the course; some less; others much more. However, only a tiny few base their claims on a cure definition as stringent as that given above. Many clinics even consider a withdrawn addict - still with them in residential care - to be "completed" if he has not had any of his original addictive substance during the whole of his 6 to 8 week stay at the clinic !
If he was on alcohol for example, he might then be discharged on daily prescribed disulfiram or citrated calcium carbimide. These lead to the accumulation of acetaldehyde in the body which, when alcohol is taken, precipitate a variety of extremely unpleasant reactions thus, it is hoped, developing an "aversion" to the alcohol.
However, also used are chlormethiazole and benzodiazepines. These are amongst the most common classes of drugs used as hypnotics and / or anxiolytics, and both are known to lead to as much dependency as alcohol. Hardly a cure, and probably why the main claim of so many clinics is to have 'relieved' the condition! (If he were on illicit heroin, prescribed methadone would normally be substituted for the heroin - thus continuing the individual as a 'legal' but hard-core drug addict). This is like saying “we got him off the whisky, and his prescribed vodka doesn’t even make his breath smell”.
Some systems offer a "continuing cure" whereby, after some weeks of residential or daytime therapy, the individual is sent home and back to work as a sort of out-patient returning for a regular topping up of his ability to confront his particular addictive substance. Across many centres one finds a diversity of "12 Steps" systems in a variety of adapted forms depending largely on the background and experience of the senior executive.
Many are slanted psychiatrically but others are closer to the original successful fellowship basis. As a result, success varies from "good" to "must try harder", or from 35% to 5%, or even less.
Obviously however, that is just not good enough for the sort of nation-wide coverage this country currently needs.
An economically acceptable programme must be financially viable in all respects and - based squarely on the cure definition above - a rehabilitation programme which knows what it is doing should consistently deliver at least twice as many successes as it does failures. Furthermore, even its "incompletes", once they have returned to home and work, should have been sufficiently progressed for at least a third and normally half of them to come to their senses and return to the centre to complete their programme.
Residential programmes claiming to achieve a permanent result in less than two months can usually be counted on to be a near complete waste of time and money. On the other hand, any programme giving out duration estimates in excess of 35 weeks (8 months) may well be struggling to come up with any decent result at all, other than providing compassionate room, board and comfort to an afflicted being.
The time needed to achieve a cure varies considerably from one individual to another, depending on size, weight, sex, age, general condition, what substance(s) was being used, for how long and in what dosages. Differing psychological conditions from introvert to extrovert and from optimist to pessimist, also have a bearing, so do individual beliefs and views on life, and also different personal habit patterns in relation to diet and exercise, etc. A completion is therefore NOT the result of a specific period of time spent on a programme, but is a set of specific achievements reached, in their own time, by each individual resident.
For a non-profit organisation - but one determined to keep its own head financially above water - there must of course each week be sufficient residents on the programme to fully cover the local fixed and variable costs. As a result the minimum average charge it must make over an average 22 week term with some 30 residents always on the programme is around £97.40 per person per day.
This is the average charge-out sum. In fact the actual weekly costs in the early part of any individual's programme are usually much higher than in the later weeks, so that the charges they must collect reflect an overall average.
Over the full term, the average minimum cost per week for each student is around £682.00. This is about the same as for half-board at a very modest hotel, and reflects the fact that at not-for-profit centres the training they receive in order to treat themselves is essentially free, and that their fees actually only cover food accommodation and study materials, etc.
Within that £682.00 per week cost, a centre provides a tremendous number of services extra to the bedroom and bathroom facilities and the food provided by a hotel. Hotels also charge extra for other items which a centre includes.
There are not only three meals every day, but also tea, coffee, fresh milk, fruit juices and mineral water, etc., as necessary during the day and night. Then there is 24 hour supervision by trained personnel plus attendance (but not treatment) by local medical practitioners. An effective programme also includes doses of natural vitamins and internal body cleansing oils, a daily sauna regime, one-on-one guidance, therapeutic training in how to achieve and in achieving a cure themselves, specialised physical exercise, educational up-dating and rehabilitation of personal responsibility and ethics.
Obviously it is very appropriate to compare these sums with the costs of detaining a prisoner - which is much more expensive.
So-called ‘harm reduction’ and ‘habit management’ are not exits from addiction. They are in fact disguised psycho-pharmaceutical cul-de-sacs in which addicts are trapped for life in order to consume prescription drugs paid for by the British taxpayers – because the psych-pharms know that the addicts themselves are not capable of paying for their supplies.
© Copyright C.E..P.T.A. and E. Kenneth Eckersley, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 & 2005. All World Rights Reserved
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