DRUG ABUSE--JUST WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78-00052R000100100013-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 13, 2001
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: September 1, 1971
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

Ms A 0 -?
~Vl
M A[
J t
t
rN D o for
O,Vdared
by J. Maurice Rogers, who has spent
century working in
mental health. Rogers,
whose Ph.D. Is in psy-
chology (Stanford, 1959),
is director of program de-
velopment and research
.
r".. '
I of the San Francisco
L ..w.i d % L...-....i Community Mental.
Health Services. As president of the California
State t'sychological Association he set up
the first special committee on social issues.
t to 16 ,1 meinbui of the American
Psychological Association's Presidential
Commission on Public Policy. Rogers bases
his concern about the misuse of psychoactive
drugs on the work of his colleague, Henry L.
Lennard, whom he describes as "the
individual who has done more research
than anyone on legal drug abuse." Lennard's
book, Mystification and Drug Misuse
(Jossey-Bass, 1971) Is a definitive
statement of the problem.
CIA-RDP78-00052R000100100013-3
bi The continuing and justified alarm
over illegal drug use by the young
has obscured an underlying problem
that is larger and even more threat-
ening to society. It is an epidemic of le-
gal drug abuse that is just what the
doctor ordered.
Depression, social inadequacy, anx-
iety, apathy, marital discord, children's
misbehavior, and other psychological
and social problems of living are now
being redefined as medical problems,
to be solved by physicians with pre-
scription pads. Psychiatrists as well as
physicians of every other specialty now
prescribe a wide variety of mood-alter-
ing drugs for patients with emotional.
motivational and learning problems,
and even the mildest psychological dis-
comforts.
Model. Physicians who overuse psy-
choactive drugs are wedded to an ob-
solete medical model of human
behavior-the concept that psy-
chological problems have medical
causes. This viewpoint widens the phy-
sician's jurisdiction by classifying more
and more persons as potential medical
patients, and it allows an earnest medi-
cal healer to respond to all who seek
his help.
The image of the physician as expert
and benign begins to evaporate when
we see physicians pushing psy-
choactive pills whose consequences
are not fully understood into patients
whose problems require human, not
chemical, solutions.
Ads. Doctors are strongly encour-
aged in their pill-for-every-problem
syndrome by drug manufacturers who
bombard them with advertisements in
psychiatric and medical journals:
Another woman? Three kids? No kids
at all? Wrinkles? You name it ... If she
is depressed, consider Pertofans.
And:
"SCHOOL, THE DARK, SEPARATION,
DENTAL VISITS, MONSTERS. THE EVERYDAY
ANXIETY OF CHILDREN SOMETIMES GETS
OUT OF HAND. A child can usually deal
with his anxieties. But sometimes the
anxieties overpower the child. Then
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16 %YCHouxiY TODAY, Septsmber 1971
 he needs your help. in-ay 1,i - drugs thxci there w?r? 0ers6ns in tWe 6 'U_f6r 'thiri,-vigorous, interesting or
chide Vistarll. "
And this advertisement, which shows
an attractive but worried-looking young
woman with an armful of books, and
describes the problems that face a new
college student:
"Exposure to now friends and other
influences may force her to re-evaluate
herself and her goals ... Her newly
stimulated intellectual curiosity may
make her more sensitive to and appre-
hensive about national and world con-
ditiori8. " The headline reads: "TO HELP
FREE HER OF EXCESSIVE ANXIETY . . .
LIBRIUM."
Such advertisements redefine nor.-
mat problems of living as medical prob-
lems to be solved by drugs. Most small
children, of course, are at some time
afraid of the dark or anxious about
school. A person may become de-
pressed after personal loss, upon fac-
Ing a new job, having to adjust to new
conditions, or upon experiencing llil-
potence in the face of Increasing social
turmoil. But the advocacy of drugs for
such problems is socially irresponsible.
Pitch. Drug companies depend or
this country's 180,000 physicians to
sell their prescription drugs. The doc-
tors must be reminded, cajoled, pam-
pered. The drug Industry spends over
three-quarter;, of a billion dollars each
year on advertising directed solely to
physicians-over $4,200 per physician
per year.
The drug companies hold that their
advertising is beneficial because it
helps doctors learn about new drugs
and new uses for old drugs. But many
of the drug advertisements are grossly
irresponsible, especially those that
push psychoactive drugs-sedatives,
sleeping pills, tranquilizers, energizers
and mood-elevators. They are Irre-
sponsible because they make broad,
unsupportable claims of benefit and
applicability. They are irresponsible be-
cause they expand drug usage into
areas that call for human coping, not
escape via drugs. They are Irrespon-
sible because they cajole the physician
toward the notion of better psy-
chological living through chemistry.
Last year there were more pre-
scriptions written for psychoactive
country-and this does not include pre-
scriptions in hospitals and clinics.
Role. It is clearly in the financial inter-
est of the drug industry to maintain
large numbers of persons on drugs just
as it is in the interest of the medical pro-
fession to define more and more hu-
man problems as medical. it is
especially important for the drug in-
dustry to recruit new groups to drug
use aivd to find new uses for its prod-
ucts. Flattered and seduced with
bountiful free samples from the phar-
macological Industry, the physician In-
creasirlgly assumes, with legal
sanction, a role analogous to that of the
pusher.
Many young people turn to dan-
gerous illegal drugs to relieve unpleas-
ant psyGhologicai states and to escape
'The image of the physician
as expert and benign begins
to evaporate when we see
physicians pushing
psychoactive pills whose
consequences are not lolly
understood Into patients
whose problems require
human, not chemical,
solutions."
from personal conflicts and problems.
When the young seek these goals with
drugs bought from a at'reet pusher we
are greatly distressed. It Is ironic that
the same purposes are accepted as
valid and desirable when such drugs
are prescribed by physicians.
Stay. Because psychoactive drugs
tend to produce a psychological de-
pendence, people often continue to
use a drug after it has served Its imme-
diate purpose because they are uneasy
about giving it up and relying on their
own resources. A club leader may take
prescribed tranquilizers because the
thought of giving a speech without
them makes her anxious. A truck driver
who has combated fatigue with pre-
scribed amphetamines may come to
expect himself to be tired when he
drives without them.
Women use psychoactive drugs
twice as often as men do. Many seek
prescriptions for these drugs because
they are lonely, anxious, dissatisfied or
unhappy; because they are not as pop-
beautiful as they have been led to be-
lieve they should be.
Among the most widely prescribed
psychoactive drugs are the tranquil-
izers. These chemicals originally were
developed for chronically disturbed
psychotic patients. But every year they
are used more and more in the normal
lite-sphere for personal and social
problems that physicians and the drug
industry have converted into medical
problems. When someone dies, for ex-
ample, it is not uncommon for a physi-
cian to prescribe tranquilizers for the
next of kin. The drugged family is then
denied the opportunity to resolve a vital
human experience.
Quiet. Nursing homes often use tran-
quilizers excessively to quiet elderly
patients. Nelson H. Cruikshank, presi-
dent of the National Council of Senior
Citizens, has asked Congress to in-
vestigate this forced pacification pro-
gram. Many doctors, says Cruikshank,
"give blanket instructions to nursing-
home staffs for use of tranquilizer
drugs on patients who do not need
them. Exclusive use of tranquilizers
can quickly reduce an ambulatory
patient to a zombie, confining the
patient to a chair or bed, causing the
patient's muscles to atrophy from in-
action, and causing generai health to
deteriorate quickly."
One ad that appeared in medical
journals shows a smiling, elderly
woman sitting in a wheelchair, playing
cards with other old persons, "SHE IS
GOING STEADY WITH HER PHENOTHIAZINE
TRANQUILIZER," says the headline. The
ad obviously implies that phenothia-
zine will prorrrote sociability. But re-
search, ignored by this ad, shows that
one of the undesirable side effects of
these drugs is that they reduce one's
desire and ability to interact with other
people.
Calm. It is obviously very profitable to
a drug company to hold exclusive
rights to the only drug on the market for
a certain disorder. Sales of the drug will
increase if there is an epidemic of that
disorder, or if the disorder comes to be
defined so vaguely that more and more
human problems can be seen as symp-
toms of it. There are drugs for "simple
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nervous tension,.' "worry "anxiety,", an outside agent. And you can't arbi-
",lack of energy"--maladies that a!e de. I trarily assume that as an adolescent he
fined so broadly that everyone can rec- will give up this paltorn." Such a drug
ognize some of the symptoms in i program, Dernburg believes, "would
4italin and other drugs that normally
function as stimulants (Dexedrine, -rof-
ranil) have been found to have a para-
doxical effect on certain children who
aauffer from the childhood disorder
called minimal brain dysfunction. Such
children are described as overactive,
6ostructive, hostile and unmanage-
able. With daily doses of stimumnt
drugs they allegedly cairn down, be-
come more sociable, ano increase their
attention span. Unfortunately, tree
Symptoms of minimal bs ein dysfunction
are so vague they border or the normal
hyperactivity of children. An alarming
n+.criber of children nave been given
these drugs without the neurological
and psychological examinations that
are r ecosaary for a diagnosis of min-
imal brain dysfunction. Exuberant chil-
siren may have Ritalin prescribed
primarily because parents want to quiet
them down, or because teachers report
that they are fidgety and inattentive in
the classroom, In Omaha, Nebraska
school officials recently discovered
{ that between five and 10 per cent of
the grade-school children in that city
were being given medically prescribed
I amphetamines to rnooity their class-
room hyperactivity or inattention.
Caution. The Food and Drug Admin-
istration has warned that these drugs
are physiologically addictive and must
be used with extreme caution. Despite
this, their use under medical auspices
expands alarmingly. About 250,000
children now take Ritalin daily: CiBA
Pharmaceutical Company reportedly
sold 10 million dollars' worth last year.
Dr. Leon Wanerman of the Mount
Zion Hospital and Medical Center in
San Francisco asserts that "the deci-
sion to place a child on medication Is
too often made without careful study
But if you put a child of seven on
drugs for a protracted period of time,
what are you telling a child about drugs
and how they make you feel better?"
Dr. Ernest Dernburg, also of Mount
Zion, feels that such practices imply to
the child "that he doesn't have the ca-
i pability to get people to like him without
uttimateiy prevent the child from devel-
oping his own abilities to deal with his
feelings."
iedlets. Physicians after decades of
considering the heroin addict untreat-
able are now advocating treatment of
this addiction by another drug, meth-
ado::?ne, which is equally addictive. The
advantages claimed foi methadone are
that it does not disrupt normal function-
mg as much as horoin, that it can be
c:ycrlbed legally, and that it will re-
duce carne But this treatment is a
qur stioriable exchange for the dis-
order--vvii:hdr,vtal from methadone is
as severe as withdrawal from heroin
and them is a questionable assumption
"Exuberant children may have
Rita 1/n prescribed primarily
because parents went to
quiet thein down, or because
feathers report that they" are
fidgety and inattentive in the,
classroom. "
that the antisocial behavior pattern of a
heroin user will vanish once he is ad-
dicted to a legal narcotic.
The advocacy of methadone therapy
for heroin addiction gives us a vivid
dejia vu experience: heroin Itself was
originally introduced by physicians as a
cure for opium addiction. Similarly, co-
caine was introduced to the European
medical community as a cure for opium
addiction (arid for other things, in-
ciuding depression, digestive dis-
orders, typhoid fever and alcoholism)
in an essay by the then-young Vien-
nese physician, Sigmund Freud.
Opium itself was once recommended
in a medical jouoiai as a sound treat-
ment for alcoholism. In a Cincinnati
Lancet Clinic article in 1889, Dr. J. R.
black prese?ted his thesis in terms re-
nmarkabiy sire lat to those now used to
promote methadone:
' O ium is iess inimical to a healthy,
life than alcohol. It calms in pace of ex-
citing the baser passions, and hence is
loss rroductive of acts of violence and
c Continued on page 24)
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