From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Studies Show Drug Users Defy Stereotypes
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Distribution: na
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1992 02:13:34 GMT

/** pacnews.sample: 177.0 **/
** Topic: Drug Users Sterotypes **
** Written 11:11 am  Aug 26, 1992 by pacificnews in cdp:pacnews.sample **
From: Pacific News Service <pacificnews>
Subject: Drug Users Sterotypes

/* Written 12:24 pm  Aug 25, 1992 by pacificnews in cdp:pacnews.storie */
/* ---------- "Drug Users Sterotypes" ---------- */

COPYRIGHT PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE
450 Mission Street,  Room 506
San Francisco, CA 94105
415-243-4364
NEWS REPORT -- 955 WORDS

DRUG USERS DEFY STEREOTYPES -- HIGH RISK TAKERS VS. LOW 
RISK TAKERS

EDITOR'S NOTE:  A growing body of research describes a very different 
profile of drug takers than the stereotype.  Not only are drug users most 
apt to be the most inquisitive, talented people in the class or work place 
who earn higher wages than non-drug takers.  They are also high risk 
takers with an innate sense of adventure.  The new findings have vital 
implications for fighting drug abuse.  PNS correspondent Frank 
Browning, co-author of The American Way of Crime, reports for 
National Public Radio and a number of national magazines.

BY FRANK BROWNING, PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE 

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Usually the scenario runs like this:  Drugs lead 
to addiction.  Addiction leads to desperation.  Desperation leads to 
crime.  People who use drugs are doomed to fail in life and in work.  
That's the anti-drug pitch on most TV and billboard campaigns.

A growing number of drug abuse experts, however, say these messages 
don't work because they're not true.  And at least one researcher argues 
that effective drug abuse prevention depends on revamping our 
stereotype of addicts. 

Most startling is the relationship between drugs and wages.  Young 
cocaine and marijuana users actually earn higher salaries than non-
users, according to a long-term study conducted by the National Bureau 
of Economic Research in New York.

Economist Robert Koestner compared the drug use habits and wages of 
5,000 young adults nationwide.

"We would expect that the person who uses marijuana or cocaine 
would have a lower wage," Koestner said.  "The findings indicate the 
opposite -- individuals who use drugs have higher wages than 
individuals who don't, and that effect was found in 1984 when they 
were 23 and again in '89 when their average age was 27 years old."

People who earn more money -- lawyers, accountants, t.v. producers -- 
can of course afford more drugs than can low wage earners like bus 
drivers and fast food clerks.  But Koestner was careful only to compare 
people with similar backgrounds and educational levels. 

Koestner also expected to find that drug users would drop out of the 
workforce quicker than drug free-employees -- and that also turned out 
not to be true.  Overall, he found no difference in the drop-out rates 
between the two groups.

None of this surprises long time drug counselor Daryl Inabe who runs 
the drug detox program at San Francisco's famed Haight-Ashbury Free 
clinic and teaches pharmacology at the University of California medical 
school in San Francisco.

Inabe says too many anti-drug campaigns rely on a fundamental 
misperception about who uses drugs in America.

"The picture that's often portrayed of drug abusers on TV and 
magazines," he says, "is of a ghetto-bred, barrio-bred, Chinatown-bred 
person who's poor, desperate -- somebody who's down and out.  But 
this picture doesn't hold true...Once we get them into recovery, we find 
that they're part of the most productive force in our society."

Inabe says that even in ethnic terms, there are many misperceptions 
about who uses drugs.  He cites a recent Gallup survey of illicit drug 
use in California which found that 24 percent of white Anglos had 
used drugs, 23 percent of Hispanics had, 22 percent of Asians had, but 
only 16 percent of African Americans had.  

Both Inabe and Koestner are quick to say that they do not believe drug 
use itself leads to higher wages or job success.  Koestner suspects that 
there is some hidden factor, which his economic research does not 
reveal, that leads both to career ambition and to use of drugs.

"I think it isn't the drugs that are causing them to earn more money," 
said Lewis Donohew, a communications researcher at the University of 
Kentucky who has studied drug and alcohol abuse among teenagers.  
"There's something in the basic personality of the individual that 
causes the same person who gets ahead in the workforce and is more of 
a risk taker, is more daring, to also be the kind of person who would be 
more susceptible to use drugs."

Donohew says his team at Kentucky has found that kind of connection 
among junior high and high school students.  He doesn't talk about 
drug users and non-drug users but about "high sensation seekers" and 
"low-sensation seekers."

High sensation seekers are people who continuously seek out physical, 
emotional and mental stimulation, people for whom travel, action, 
change of scenery are almost necessities.

"We have found among teenagers that people who are high on 
sensation seeking are three to seven times more likely to report having 
used drugs in the last 30 days. "

Donohew says that this drive toward high sensation activity and the 
love of novelty is a fundamental personality characteristic -- one which 
he has come to believe has a biological base.  "We have some research 
indicating that these high sensation seekers live a far more active 
lifestyle, are much more engaged in political campaigns, are much 
bigger users of information, and generally have very different kinds of 
lives than low sensation seekers."

Donohew argues that his findings -- which are funded by the National 
Institute on Drug Abuse and the Office of Substance Abuse Prevention 
-- have vital implications for fighting drug abuse.  Any effective drug 
prevention, he says, must distinguish between these high risk takers 
and low risk takers.

His project is producing a series of television advertisements that 
incorporates "heavy metal" action music, MTV-style quick-cut editing 
of hang-gliding, bungee-cord jumping, disco-dancing, skydiving, 
rafting, skiing and other high-sensation activities, fading up to a final 
message:  "What do all these people have in common?  They don't use 
drugs."

As the ad ends a local hot line phone number is flashed on the screen.

When the ad ran last spring in Lexington, counselors were swamped 
with calls -- double the number such spots usually generate.  And 
businesses and recreational facilities mentioned in the spot had a sharp 
upsurge in patronage.

Donohew's approach to drug abuse prevention is the opposite of the 
fried-egg anti-drug ads and Just Say No messages that have dominated 
the federal campaigns.  

Instead of repressing the impulse to take risks and seek out novelty, 
Donohew argues that effective drug use prevention must acknowledge 
what counselors like Daryl Inabe and economists like Robert Koestner 
are finding, that drug users are most often the most inquisitive, 
talented people in the class or work place.

A campaign that works must address that innate sense of adventure 
and propose stimulating alternatives to drugs.

(08251992)      **** END ****    COPYRIGHT PNS

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