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Drug use here to stay, therapist says By John M Leighty United Press International San Rafael, Calif. -- Jed Diamond, a substance-abuse counselor since the flower-child era of the 1960s, says it's a government "pipe dream" that drug use can ever be halted. What is needed, he said, are drug education and self-help programs to prevent substance abuse at the grass-roots level. "There's a difference between drug use and drug abuse; they're not the same thing," said Diamond, who runs the Center For Prospering Relationships. He knows that his opinions are not exatly mainstream, "If somebody used cocaine once a month, that's different than somebody using it once a day and having withdrawal sysmptoms along with difficluty at work and in relationships." His main concern, Diamond said, is not with what a partiuclar drug happens to be, but rather with the person's relationship to the drug. "What my belief is, which isn't commonly accepted but which comes from 22 years of working every day on the front line, is that there really are no good or bad drugs, per se, if they're looked at scientifically instead of through emotional glasses." Even the nicotine in cigarettes, which he called the most addictive substance known to mankind, doesn't affect everyone. A few people, he said, can smoke only one or two cigarettes a month without getting hooked. "We must also distinguish between abuse and illegal use," said Diamond. "Just because something is illegal, we can't make a blanket assumption that all use of it is abusive." "If we're saying 'let's say no' to drugs and aren't including alcohol, tobacco and caffeine, then we're not including the most abused drugs in the country." Rather than defining drugs as good or bad, Diamond said, his approach is to look at how honestly people relate to drugs, which have always been around and aren't about to disappear or be legislated away. "This kind of approach works because there's less opposition from users. But, it's the kind of approach that can't exist in a system that says any use of illegal drugs is bad and that the user should be locked up or put into treatment." The reality, said Diamond, is that drugs are here to stay, that new "designer drugs" are hitting the streets faster than they can be banned, and that marijuana is from two to 10 times stronger than it was only five years ago because of sophisticated growing methods. "There has been no time in human history when drugs were not available, and since 95 percent of the population is using mind-active drugs of some sort (including alcohol, tobacco, nicotine, sugar and prescription medications, by Diamond's definition) it's a pipe dream to think they're going to stop. "Because my position is neutral some people assume I'm in favor of drug taking," said Diamond. "But, that's not so. I'm only interested in teaching people to keep healthy." |