OUR NATION HAS A DRUG PROBLEM

For me, like a lot of addicts before they get clean, denial was the
No. 1 weapon in my arsenal against seeking help.

Drug addict? I couldn't be a drug addict - addicts were the people who
live under bridges, beg on the streets and eat food that I threw away.

Looking back, it's almost comical how much I tried to convince myself
I didn't have a drug problem. Society seems to be the same way about
drugs.

I couldn't have been more wrong about my own problem. My addiction may
not have taken me places that it has other recovering addicts, but I
was a junkie just the same.

And for those people who deny there's a drug epidemic going on in our
society, I want to present a few statistics. All of these come from the
report ``State of Tennessee: Profile of Drug Indicators,'' released by
the Office of National Drug Control Policy in March of this year.
Consider the following:

In 1999, there were 15,283 drug abuse violation arrests in
Tennessee. In 2000, that number rose to 17,828, and in 2001, it rose
again to 21,579 arrests.

In 2000, 1.81 percent of all age groups in Tennessee reported using
cocaine in the past year, while almost 6 percent reported using an
illicit drug in the previous month. Also in 2000, 1.31 percent of all
age groups reported being dependent on illicit drugs, while almost
2.47 percent reported a dependence on alcohol.

In 2001, 5 percent of high school males admitted they currently use
cocaine, about double that of females. Almost 27 percent of high
school age males said they currently smoke marijuana, compared to 20.5
percent of high school age females. A total of 12.2 percent of high
school students admitted they had tried marijuana before they were
13.

Federal agencies seized 484.2 kilograms of cocaine in Tennessee in
2001, along with 41 kilograms of heroin, 218.4 kilograms of marijuana
and 29.5 kilograms of methamphetamine. When it comes to meth, the
report states that ``many manufacturers are attracted to the rural
nature and challenging terrain within Tennessee, which makes it much
more difficult for them to be apprehended Mexican criminal groups are
the primary wholesale distributors of methamphetamine. Local
independent Caucasian producers consume the majority of what they
produce although they distribute small amounts to family and
friends.'' The number of methamphetamine lab seizures rose from two in
1996 to 461 in 2001.

Drugs haven't done much for the health of Tennesseans, either. Of
the 784 new cases of HIV in Tennessee in 2000, 10 percent of that
number were due to needing sharing related to injecting drug use. Of
the 14,627 people admitted to substance abuse treatment facilities in
Tennessee in 2001, 29 percent were admitted for alcohol, 18.9 percent
for smoking cocaine, 12.1 percent for marijuana, 7.7 percent for
opiates and 2.2 percent for amphetamines. (Other drugs made up smaller
percentages.)

The report also states that ``many of the violent crimes in the state
are directly associated with the distribution and abuse of cocaine and
crack.'' Looking at the statistics, arrests for aggravated assault
grew from 5,600 in 1999 to 6,907 in 2000 to 8,087 in 2001; murders,
rapes and robberies were all up in 2001 as well. DUI arrests grew from
14,744 in 1999 to 18,628 in 2000 to 23,668 in 2001.

I'm not going to get into a political argument about the nature of the
war on drugs - it's my personal opinion it's a failure. But I don't
know what the alternative is. Legalization hasn't done much for
combating the problems of alcohol, as the DUI statistic seems to indicate.

If nothing else, such information is something we all need to be aware
of. Drug addiction isn't an isolated problem, something that happens
to poverty-stricken and homeless. It's in our homes, from the
high-income neighborhoods down to government-assisted housing. It's in
our schools. It's a part of our lives.

It's a war out there, and as a survivor who's been to the front lines,
I can tell you from personal experience: It's not getting any better,
and it's not going away.

Steve Wildsmith is a recovering addict and the Weekend editor for The
Daily Times. His entertainment column and stories appear every Friday
in the Weekend section.