Prevention

Is there a disparity between what you can observe and what the patient reports?

The busier the doc, the easier to manipulate. And there’s continuing downward pressure from practice managers to see more patients in less time.

And now there’s the emergence of ‘tip sites’ on the Internet, dedicated to turning the reader into a better-prepared, more successful drug-seeker.

Imagine a student sitting in the school auditorium listening to a teacher or police officer insist that cannabis makes you less intelligent. Meanwhile, he knows that the kid in front of him, an honor student, smokes pot every weekend.

Kids like to bring up the fact that alcohol kills many times more Americans than marijuana (or heroin, or cocaine). So why are those drugs illegal, their use subject to harsh punishment, when alcohol isn’t?

This is the first data-driven study which shows that teacher support is associated with lower levels of early alcohol use.

For these and other common procedures referred to in the study, we might not even know what the doctor prescribes Mom or Dad afterward.

If estimates are correct that a typical offender has driven under the influence between 60 and 100 times prior to first arrest, it’s clear the actual problem is far, far greater than arrests alone can document.

Public perceptions of how we should and shouldn’t treat offenders often result in less than optimal solutions both for the addict/alcoholic and for the victims and the larger society that must pay.