Today I read an article from the
March, 1958 issue of “Ladies’ Home Journal”. The piece was about drug addiction
in America’s youth and I was curious to see how this would be different from
today’s opinions and stories. The article also contained one personal account
from a young Hispanic boy living in New York city who was addicted to heroine.
The article starts off by
explaining that drug addiction in teens is a fairly new principle. It seems
that typical drug abusers used to be adults in the latter parts of their lives.
The article makes a point that drugs are a “big-city problem” and that most
teen users come from poor neighborhoods, however that doesn’t mean that all
youth in poor neighborhoods use drugs. An interesting point that the piece
makes is that drug abusers aren’t usually related to gangs, which we would now,
and maybe even then say isn’t true. Especially given the drug manufacturing and
trafficking nature of many gangs. At any rate the article suggested that teens
in gangs who abused drugs would often lose favor of the elder members, or even
lose leadership positions because of their addiction. Back in the good old days
when gangs had values and morals, or not. Overall the article seems to point
out the problem, but then try and suggest that it isn’t really that big of a
deal.
The more personal story is that of
a teenage boy named Manuel who is growing up in the various neighborhoods of
New York city when he becomes addicted to first marijuana, and then heroine. It
all starts when he is smoking pot in the club with his friends and cousins who
are all in a gang together. This quickly escalates to using heroine and then
eventually cutting it with sugar and redistributing it to fund his habit. After
being put in rehab for the first time Manuel realizes that he has a problem and
wants to stop using and marry his girlfriend. Unfortunately, like so many
addicts he is back on heroine weeks after he leaves rehab. He will ultimately
battle with his addiction for several years and revisit rehab many times as
well as be arrested for selling to an officer. The article never concludes what
happens to Manuel in the end, but one certainly hopes he has learned his lesson
and comes clean. Hopefully all of this has been a coming of age for Manuel and
he is now ready to face the world as an adult.
It’s interesting taking a step back
in time and reading something from over half a century ago. The writing style,
the word choice, and the overall content is very different from publications
today. There were several instances in which I laughed because they had to
explain to readers that “down means
ready for anything” or when Manuel talks about buying diddybop clothes, which I
still have no idea what that means. Its weird to imagine what an entire world
of this would be like, but that probably explains a lot about why my parents
are so strange.
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