On Being

Drug and Alcohol Addiction
Drug and alcohol addictions are major problems in our society as a whole but especially in the inner city. In addition to the generally increasing use of illicit drugs in the society and all the usual reasons why people succumb to addiction, there are special factors in the inner city.

• Drugs are ubiquitous and easily available, including especially the inexpensive and highly addicting crack cocaine.
• The social disorganization and consequent loss of parental control make adolescents particularly susceptible to peer pressure and rebellious against societal norms, creating a fertile environment for the development of addiction.
• The joblessness of the ghetto means that young adults have too much free time on their hands and too little structure to their day, so falling into addiction is easier. Middle-class adolescents, of course, "experiment" with drugs and alcohol, too, and lots of them become addicted, but
• middle-class kids who use "recreationally"21 are restrained from heavier use by the constraints of school and work, and
• more affluent people who become addicted generally have better access to addiction treatment programs than those from the ghetto.
• The hopelessness and despair of the ghetto lead to an intense desire to get out and the sense that one has little to lose. Intoxication provides an easy, affordable escape.
• As drug use becomes more and more common in the ghetto, social prohibitions relax. Children more often have people who are addicted for role models.

"Poor Motivation"
I put this last factor in quotes because it is not at all my experience that poor people are poorly motivated. Some of the hardest-working people I know are poor, scratching out a living for themselves and their family on several part- and full-time jobs at minimal wages. What is surprising is that they are not less motivated than they, in fact, seem to be. Given the average educational level, the few decent-paying jobs available, and all the other strikes against poor people, any realistic look at their future is pretty grim. High aspirations are usually punished by the reality of poor vocational options. Like most other people in our individualistic culture, poor people ultimately blame themselves for their lack of success and can easily lose self-confidence. The little public assistance that is available is administered in ways that make it difficult to transition back into the world of self-sufficiency.


Footnotes
²¹ It is more than coincidental, of course, that our language usage has middle-class kids "experimenting" with drugs and using them "recreationally;" there is no such mitigating language when black ghetto kids use drugs.