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Drugs

Who knows what years of Ritalin will do to a given child? Who knows how a given teen will react to Prozac - or to its withdrawal?

Drugs of all sorts can impair thought and judgment, and countless teens have access to these drugs - whether they are pharmaceuticals, or alcohol, or illicit substances such as marijuana, crack, acid, crystal meth, ecstacy and steroids. Drugs are everywhere and kids are taking them.

At first it may seem irresponsible to lump in pharmaceuticals with illegal street drugs. But what is a drug anyway? Coming up with a standard definition is not always so easy.

Caffeine is a drug, but who really notices the effects of chocolate, tea or a soft drink? Nicotine is a drug - and one that kids in most places aren't supposed to be using - but few smoking kids are getting busted for it.

Some people think herbs act as drugs, altering moods and health. Ginseng is selling madly in retail outlets while marijuana is passed underneath tables and behind trenchcoats in tin foil and plastic bags.

There are drugs you get from doctors and pharmacists, which have corporate inventors and nation-wide distributors and the backing of major research in costly laboratories.

But no one can tell you for certain what substance X or substance Y will do to person Z.

They once gave thalidomide to pregnant women to ease the discomfort. But, of course, that was then. These days, we are more careful and the FDA is more cautious. But who can be sure? Will the impotence drug kill? Will the AIDS medication do more harm than good? Will the anti-cancer agent have fatal side-effects?

Let's not snub our noses at solid scientific research. It works, and we have so many wonderful compounds helping so many grateful people that it would be asinine to suggest we've moved down the wrong path. Certainly, scientists will concede they use statistics, and there are always anomalies, and sometimes models are wrong and everything needs rejigging. But that is the way science is.

The problem arises when The Companies treat their work as dogma and anomalies as tribulations and sceptics as heretics. The Companies and Science do not know what effect substance A will have on person B. They can predict with a certain degree of confidence - but they do not know. And sometimes they know less than they think and say they do.

Is it possible that "Safe Drug A" is not so safe to person B? The evidence tells us that's very unlikely. But it's also very unlikely that your home will be hit by an airplane, though it happens. If things were cut and dry and readily apparent, scientists wouldn't need statistics. But there are indeed anomalies, and gradations of change, and degrees of success - and person B may be one of the casualties.

Generations of kids have proclaimed to the world that marijuana is perfectly safe. But they must admit there are some for whom the drug has profoundly disastrous consequences. There are LSD-trippers who have leaped to their deaths, or ended their trips in insane asylums. And how many reformed alcoholics fear to touch another drop of drink?

When we know for certain that a kid had drugs in his system, we have to ask what the effects of those drugs could have been for him as an individual. And when matters of sanity and responsibility are at issue, we must consider the full range of those possibilities.

If drug A seldom ever causes symptom B, that is not to say it is not the cause of symptom B in a given circumstance.

There may be a 0.00001% probability that A can cause B - but if A definitely causes B in a given circumstance despite the odds of it happening to people generally, then it does so with 100% certainty nonetheless in this given case.

There may be the tiniest probability that I will be killed by a silver bullet. But if it turns out that I am killed by a silver bullet, then citing the odds can in no way change that fact.

Many drugs are not fully understood, despite the approvals they have received from eminent scientists and reputable research laboratories. We learn as we go, and young drugs are especially vulnerable to revised findings. So, who can say it has not caused harm in a given individual at a given time?

It is necessary for companies to be adamant in the face of such suggestions for the sake of saving face and shoring up the stocks and sustaining the support of the officials. But their assuredness must not be taken as a sign of the absolute truth of what they are saying, because science is not supposed to be interested in proclaiming absolutes. So put the denials in perspective.

When a substance is known to be psychoactive, and when we are focusing on the etiology of behaviour, it would be reckless to dismiss out-of-hand the possibility that there is a causal or facilitative connection between taking the substance and behaving in a certain way. When lives are on the line, such recklessness is intolerable.

Most people have first-hand knowledge that drugs can impair judgment. Alcohol, certain pain medications, street drugs, certain cold medications and many other substances can impair judgment profoundly in certain circumstances or certain doses. The withdrawal of substances to which one is addicted - alcohol, nicotine and certain pain medications - can also impair judgment. Why is it such a stretch to say another psychoactive substance may have done the same in a particular individual?

Complicating matters is that the individual is very young, undergoing hormonal changes, and - who knows? - perhaps experimenting with other substances at the same time.

Do not dismiss the possibility that the drug helped impair the person's judgment in such a way and to such a degree that the person was capable of acting out of character in an extreme way. Most people who go to bars and see the fights that break out know all too well that substances can very well lead to behaviors that the person doing them would otherwise find unacceptably extreme.

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Sound file - "Perfect Drug" by Nine Inch Nails. Sequencer unknown.