Worst Epidemic in U.S. History? Opioid Crisis Now Leading Cause of Death for Americans Under 50

The Question Is Not Who Is Taking Drugs, But Who Isn’t

MAIL ON SUNDAY: It must be 35 years since I flung an old friend out of my tiny North London flat for bringing cannabis into my home. I was still pretty modishly Left-wing about most things in those days. But I felt (as I feel now) a special disgust against drugs.

How could it not be wrong to deliberately dim and dull your senses? If you don’t like the world as it is, then change it. Don’t numb yourself into apathy.

I have to say that when I told him to get out, I thought I was expressing a pretty conventional opinion. It only dawned on me later just how out of tune I was with the times.

Not that it’s a bad thing to be unfashionable. In fact it’s more or less a duty, if your mind is alive.

People have told me since – and they were only half-joking – that Harriet Harman and I were probably the only two people at the University of York in the early 1970s who didn’t smoke dope.

I know directly of several outwardly respectable figures who take drugs and let their children do the same. » | Peter Hitchens | Sunday, December 01, 2013

Prescription Drug Abuse On Rise in US
The UN is to release a report on the fight against illegal drugs like cocaine, hallucinogens and heroin on Thursday.

In the US, government surveys have found that hospital admissions for drug abuse have trippled in the past decade.

However, it is the abuse of prescription medication that has begun to cause more worry in the US.

Al Jazeera's Tom Ackerman reports from Virginia, USA.

Prescription Drugs Deaths Spike in US Town
Fatal overdoses of prescription drugs have overtaken car crashes as the leading cause of death in the small US town of Portsmouth, Ohio

The Dark Side of Martha's Vineyard
THE TELEGRAPH: Beneath its idyllic exterior, Martha's Vineyard – beloved holiday destination of America's well-heeled – is rife with depression, alcoholism, drug abuse and domestic violence.

President Barack Obama enjoying a bike ride with his family and friends while on vacation on Martha's Vineyard. Photo: The Telegraph
America's First Family will wave goodbye to Martha's Vineyard tomorrow after a week's holiday on an island whose name is rarely uttered without the epithet "idyllic".

As President Obama flies his family back home to Washington, they will rapidly be followed by an armada of private jets from the tiny local airport. After next weekend's Labour Day holiday, the exodus of billionaire businessmen, media tycoons and Hollywood stars who summer on the island will be complete. From Oprah Winfrey and Beyonce to Valerie Jarrett and the Clintons, they'll all be gone. In a matter of days, the island's population withers from 100,000 to just 15,000.

More than a few of the quitters must feel a twinge of jealousy for those lucky few left behind on the 23-mile island. They shouldn't. The reality of out-of-season – and that in holiday-starved America means any month outside July and August – is anything but a paradise for most of those left behind.

Martha's Vineyard's dark little secret is one of desperately high levels of depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence and even suicide attempts among a population that struggles to make ends meet in a billionaire's playground when the billionaires have all left.

The last time the island's social problems were publicly totted up – in 2005 - the number of cases of patients treated each year in hospital for alcohol or drug abuse had soared from almost 200 in 2002 to just over 750 three years later. The caseload of patients struggling with depression had grown from 40 in 2002 to 92 in 2005. Suicide attempts climbed almost tenfold, from three in 2002 to 29 in 2005.

Some local experts believe the situation has not got any better. "It's the shadow side of Martha's Vineyard – all the things you don't expect to exist on a luxury island," said Dr Gail Gordon, its former community services senior psychologist. "And it's the seasonal nature of the island that makes our social problems worse. Everyone works so hard over the summer and then there's this let down when all the others go." >>> Tom Leonard | Friday, August 28, 2009