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The impact of substance abuse

1995; BMJ; Volume: 4; Issue: Suppl 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1136/tc.4.suppl2.s19

1468-3318

Joseph A. Califano,

Substance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes

The new Democrats and the Newt Repub licans want to reform welfare, reduce crime, cut taxes, reshape Medicare, increase worker productivity and international competitive ness, house the homeless, and free state and federal budgets from the shackles of prison and Medicaid costs.The greatest obstacle to this proposed reinvention of America is abuse and addiction involving all substances: tobacco, alcohol, pills, and drugs.American leaders can soft-pedal the gravity of the addiction epidemic because so many individuals are content with their own self-denial.Yet, it is hard to find an American whom substance abuse has not touched directly.The anecdotal evidence is everywhere, even among society's most successful members; in the addiction to alcohol and pills of megastars like Elizabeth Taylor and Liza Minelli, in the death of Maryland college basketball star Len Bias from a cocaine overdose just as he was about to embark on a promising professional career, in the destructive cocaine and heroin dependence of Eugene Fodor, the first American to share top honours at the Tchaikovsky violin competition in Moscow, in the life threatening alcohol and drug addiction of Robin Williams, and the overdose death of Williams' friend, John Belushi, in Cy Young have touched many other members of that royal American family, including