TIME TO LOWER THE BOOM ON OLDER DRUG USERS

If your image of a pot smoker is a 19-year-old college student, you're
out of date. Recent trends in drug use and overdose deaths have
researchers scratching their heads and rethinking their assumptions.
Aging baby boomers, the over-40 crowd who started using drugs in their
teens and never stopped, not only use more illicit drugs than
subsequent generations, they are dying from overdoses at record rates.

A recent report in the Los Angeles Times documented the surprising
trends. According to statistics compiled by federal and state health
officials, 3,691 people died of drug overdoses in California in 2003,
up 73 percent from 1990. The rate of deaths for younger users, those
15 to 39, was 8.5 per 100,000, showing a slight decline for the period
from 1990 to 2003. For people 40 and older, the rate was 17.3 per 100,000.

As people get older, their health deteriorates naturally. Older,
long-time, hard-core drug users are less healthy and especially
vulnerable. When older drug users try to stop but then fall off the
wagon, they are more likely to die than the younger users. In part
that's because the older drug users' metabolisms have slowed. The
higher potency of today's drugs also plays a part. More Californians
40 and older died from drug overdoses than from AIDS or homicide.
Heroin ranked first, cocaine second, as the drugs that led to
fatalities. If current trends hold, soon more boomers will die from
drugs than from car accidents.

The demographic changes for drug use have caught the prevention and
treatment community unprepared. Most programs are geared for the
young, not the Woodstock generation. New approaches are urgently needed.

"Just say no" obviously won't work with baby boomers. How about "stop
or die"?