MEDICAL CONSEQUENCES OF RECREATIONAL DRUG USE

Stanton Peele ("Drug Use and the Candidates," Dec. 31) writes that
"subtracting the approximately 20 million current drug users from the
110 million plus people who once used, almost 100 million Americans
have left drugs behind."

Mr. Peele's math is as poor as his approach to preventing adolescent
substance abuse. Dismissing educational programs that present
individuals ruined by drugs, he would let our naturally risk-taking
teens be risk-taking teens, just so long as they feel good about
themselves and "develop skills," whatever that means.

What Mr. Peele overlooks is that even a single episode of drug use can
have serious adverse health consequences, not to mention legal ones.
The risk increases with each episode. Claiming that the vast majority
of drug users "have left drugs behind" ignores the physical, emotional
and financial toll drugs may have taken on them and their families at
one time or another.

I wonder if Mr. Peele would back off urging adolescents not to take up
cigarettes, since most smokers eventually quit, one way or the other.

Alan Blum, M.D.

Director

The University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and
Society

Tuscaloosa, Ala.