NO QUICK SOLUTIONS TO DRUG ABUSE

AFTER three decades of studying the history of drugs and drug policy in the
United States, I was impressed by the Clinton administration's recent
proposal for a 10-year drug strategy. Here, at last, comes recognition of
the need for a steady and consistent policy over an appropriate span of
time. A common fault in drug policy has been anticipating or promising
dramatic results within an unrealistically brief period.

When the speaker of the House rejected the strategy's goal as too drawn out
and defeatist, I wondered whether our drug policy could ever escape the
insistent, immediate demands of our political life.

Newt Gingrich feels that a 10-year strategy indicates pessimism and perhaps
lassitude in dealing with the drug problem. The Civil War, he says, ``took
just four years to save the Union and abolish slavery.''

A look at our first drug epidemic, which peaked between 1900 and World War
I, reminds us that the duration of a wave of drug abuse has been roughly a
half-century even in the face of severe penalties and popular condemnation.

To approach the drug problem as if it were the gasoline shortage of the
1970s is to misunderstand the nature of the problem. Reducing drug use
requires fundamental changes in the attitudes of millions of Americans, and
that shift in attitude is more gradual than we would wish.

When Mr. Gingrich praises the decline in drug use among young people from
1979 to 1992, he is talking about a decline that was just 1 or 2 percent a
year. Declines in drug use are gradual, at least when compared with the
heated promises we have heard for three decades about a quick elimination
of the problem. Thus a 10-year strategy is reasonable. An approach that
transcends more than two presidential terms even carries a hope that the
issue can be lifted out of partisan conflict.

Demanding quick solutions to the drug problem inevitably leads to
frustration because the decline rate is never as steep as promised. This
may lead to more severe penalties, the scapegoating of minorities and,
finally, discouragement.

Can we say anything positive about the congressional statement contained in
the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act that the United States should be drug-free by
1995? Such misperceptions of our experience with drugs create a sense of
failure, even though drug use generally has declined since 1980. Repeated,
hyped, short-term drug campaigns to end drug abuse are reminiscent of
cocaine use: Every time the same dose is taken the impact lessens, the
temptation to increase the dose escalates and, finally, you have burnout.

Gingrich's claim for the Civil War suggests he was not wearing his
historian's cap when he spoke. The Civil War marked the culmination of many
decades of an abolitionist campaign that gradually changed Americans'
attitude toward slavery. Altering perceptions is at the heart of such
principled efforts, and it cannot be done quickly.

This is the historical perspective we must bring to the campaign against
drug abuse, not simplistic references to short wars that supposedly ended
prolonged and embedded social evils.

David F. Musto is a professor of child psychiatry and the history of
medicine at Yale School of Medicine. He wrote this for the Washington Post.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski