CHILDREN AND DRUGS: UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM AND THE
SOLUTION
by Lawrence J. Chisholm, Ex:. Du. National Masonic Foundation for Children
When the National Masonic Foundation for Children was founded by the North
American Conference of Grand Masters in 1986, we asked ourselves what might be
our appropriate role in helping to reach a solution to the problem of drugs in
our nation. We, of course, recognized that no one had enough resources to tackle
the entire scope of the problem alone. We were surprised to discover, on
examination, that even at that late date there was not only no attempt at
coordinating a defined national effort, there was no understanding of what that
effort might look like, or what a rational solution might be ! We had to define
it for ourselves.
There are four elements to the solution of the problem of drug and alcohol
abuse among our children: Awareness, Treatment, Enforcement, and Prevention.
The reason we as a country have experienced such great frustration in dealing
with the problem, and have made such minuscule progress, is because the right
balance among these four elements, and the way in which they must work together,
is almost universally misunderstood. This misunderstanding has cost us billions,
with little to show for it.
Awareness programs, including everything from wall posters to TV specials,
are an absolutely necessary element to the solution. But there is a belief among
some in our society that pouring enough information on the problem will put out
the fire, that we can somehow talk this problem to death. This will not happen!
There is also considerable evidence that pursuing information programs--in
isolation--can produce the opposite result from what is intended! Let me take
space here for just one among many examples: One of the most popular antidrug
programs of the eighties (and still today among those who have not yet gotten
the word) was to put recovered addicts from the Hollywood and sports worlds in
front of classrooms of kids to tell their stories. The intent was obvious, the
results were not. While you and 1, as adults, hear the miracle of recovery in
those stories, a federal Department of Education study demonstrated more than
ten years ago that children are different from you and me. Kids hear "success"
and "drugs" as synonymous in these stories; they don't separate the message!
Further, those who think we are going to scare kids out of taking drugs are
blinding themselves to the obvious: children, and particularly at-risk children,
love horror stories and horror movies. This has been known for a long time-think
of the themes in our oldest fairy tales. There also is the famous example of the
antidrug commercial with the frying egg ("this is your brain on drugs"). A study
more than a year ago showed that the youth population targeted by that ad,
at-risk children, has an opposite reaction to what is hoped for, sometimes with
tragic results. Kids are different from adults, and our solutions must be
tailored to that difference if we're going to stop the addictive cycle in this
country.
There are other such examples that all lead to one conclusion: Information
programs alone actually can lead to harmful results if the total dynamic of the
solution is not understood. Information must be combined with specific actions
if the right results are to take place.
Treatment programs also are an absolutely necessary element to the solution
for any society that seeks to call itself humane. If someone who has fallen into
the pit of addiction can find the will to honestly ask for help, a helping hand
should be there. But treatment professionals themselves admit that the resources
aren't sufficient, and probably never will be, for treatment alone to catch up
to a problem of this scope. Or as succinctly put by a prevention professional
recently, "You don't win a war by treating the wounded."
Enforcement programs can keep the dam from bursting and buy time for we, the
people, to solve this agonizing social problem. But that isn't the way it's
happening. Many among our leadership, including specifically our political
leadership, insist on trying to solve social problems with enforcement programs.
Enforcement, by definition, is not designed or intended to, alone, solve social
problems. Enforcement officials can be, and have been, very articulate in trying
to point this out.
The idea that we can kill all the bad guys and leave the good guys standing
seems to have a flaw in it.
There also seems to be plentiful evidence that spending billions to try to
stop the flow of an endless array of addictive substances is a fool's game. One
among too many examples: Interdiction programs that aimed to destroy cocaine at
its source, the coca fields, have been popular throughout recent years. In the
early 90's military personnel spent hundreds of millions of dollars in one
operation to destroy the Colombian coca crop. They succeeded in destroying an
estimated 2 percent of that year's crop. Insects destroy 20 percent.
Prevention, working with children to stop the addictive cycle before it can
get started, is the only one of the four elements that holds hope for a
long-term, effective solution to the problem of addiction in our country. It is
also possibly the most misunderstood of the four elements. For example, as
indicated earlier, there is a great deal of confusion among many very
well-intended people that Awareness programs and Prevention programs are
synonymous. They are not.
Giving information does not mean that prevention is taking place. This
misunderstanding has led to a great deal of wasted time, money, and effort. And
to frustration.
One of the supreme ironies about drug addiction is that our citizens demand a
quick-fix to a problem that is itself a search for a quick-f x to problems.
We seldom discuss or examine our role because if we did we would begin to see
that we have met the enemy and it is us. Politicians, at least those who have
made an art of taxing the productive members of our society in order to buy
votes from the least productive, gravitate easily toward the demagoguery of
promising to devote more and more of our money to killing the bad guys, and this
continues in spite of failure after failure. It doesn't work because it directs
huge sums of money toward symptoms and leaves causes untouched. (And "causes" go
much, much deeper than jobs, or homelessness, or any of the other afflictions
that are put forth to pry money from the public treasury.)
Why are too many of our children putting this stuff in their bodies? They do
it because they are in pain and they become desperate to change the way they
feel. And we can say "just say no" until we are out of breath, but when a friend
of theirs says "try this" and they try it and the pain immediately goes away,
all the warnings about ruining their body and ruining their life are not as
powerful as that pain disappearing. Almost all their role models, adults and
peers, parents and personal friends, TV and movie stars, exemplify by their
behavior a quick-fix society (think of aspirin ads, for example). The power of
example will defeat rhetoric every time; Freemasonry teaches us that.
This problem did not develop overnight, or in the 1980s, or the '70s or '60s,
or even this century. It is not new. What is new is the way the barrier formerly
protecting our children our future--has dropped, and the way the problem has
reached into ever more segments of our daily life. What is new is that the
problem is demanding to be solved, or it will tear us apart.
The solution can thus be seen to be long-term--helping the youngest among us.
And the solution to this problem is not more jobs, or more money, or more
houses, but goes to the
very heart, the foundation, of any society--in recognizing that the role we
have accepted for millennia, the role of developing the brainpower of our youth,
is no longer by itself enough. We can no longer regard principles and ethics and
emotional values as theory or as simply old ideas moldering in dusty tomes.
We must look with fresh eyes at how and what we teach our children.
Of the four elements to the solution, only one, prevention, works to turn the
problem around. We repeat: Enforcement controls the problem while we solve the
problem; enforcement is not designed to solve social problems--or it would no
longer be, by definition, enforcement. Treatment must be available in a humane
society, but we can't win the war on drugs by treating the wounded. Information
programs are necessary to keep us informed, but expecting it to do more than
that can lead to exactly opposite results from what we want.
"Masonic Model" Student Assistance Training is the best prevention program
available. It is not a quick-fix. What recommends it most strongly is that,
unlike the foregoing approaches, it works! It ~systematically puts caring adults
together with children in pain. No one attending the training sessions has
failed to come away without the understanding that they have seen the principles
of the solution in action !
The solution exists. It is not a quick fix. It is long term. It only needs
increased support to begin turning this problem around--and the benefits of
pursuing this course go far beyond the subject of drugs and alcohol.
Our next Short Talk will discuss Freemasonry's role in helping our children
fight this problem.
6 7 The following list of Short Talk Bulletins also deal with the subject of
Children and Drugs.
5-87 Masons Care About Children 1-89 Drug and Alcohol Abuse: A Masonic
Response 5-92 Drug and Alcohol Abuse Problem: Lodges Can Help
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