Part 1

Drug Addiction On The Rise Worldwide

ALL over the world drug abuse has “now reached pandemic proportions and continues to increase,” according to a United Nations report. Take heroin, for example—

□ In Britain the number of known heroin addicts increased by nearly one fifth from 1978 to 1979, and the proportion of woman addicts continues to increase. Seizures of heroin nearly doubled in a year.

□ In Mexico there are some 630,000 drug addicts, according to rehabilitation experts. “Seven percent of all drug users in Mexico depend on heroin, an alarming sign,” notes one authority.

□ In Burma, where heroin was often grown but rarely used at home in the past, things have changed. There are now an estimated 30,000 Burmese heroin addicts, and the government is concerned.

□ In the Federal Republic of Germany drug-overdose deaths have been increasing very rapidly during the last decade. In fact, the country now has a per capita drug death toll six times as high as the United States. “There has not been a day since March of 1974 when heroin has not been in ample supply in the city,” says a West Berlin antidrug official.

□ In the United States heroin addiction is rising rapidly after declining during the 1970’s (due to diminished supplies of heroin at the time). In New York city heroin prices are lower and drug-related deaths are higher than they were a few years ago. “The habit I was supporting at $200 a day four years ago cost me only $100 a day the second time around,” admits one addict who was “cured” of his addiction in 1977 but started up again in 1980. Drug-related deaths in New York city rose 77 percent from 1978 to 1979.

But heroin is only the tip of the addiction iceberg. Plastic surgeons in New York and Los Angeles are doing a brisk business, repairing the noses of people who develop dime-size holes between their nostrils from snorting cocaine. “The dangerous thing is that the deterioration of the area usually goes unnoticed until it’s too late,” warns one surgeon, adding, “the largest hole I’ve seen was an oval of about three-quarters of an inch in length.”

New drugs like PCP (called “angel dust”), much cheaper than cocaine, are tuning up all over the United States. PCP, a very unpredictable drug, can cause symptoms “indistinguishable from catatonic schizophrenia,” according to doctors. Los Angeles police report three cases of PCP users who have snapped handcuffs while on the drug. The effects of PCP do not seem to wear off completely for long periods of time, if at all, because the body stores PCP instead of excreting it.

Yet there is more, much more, to modern drug addiction than heroin, PCP, cocaine, or other “street drugs.” A new generation of outwardly respectable drug addicts is emerging in many developed countries. Do you know any of them?