country take fatal overdoses, either by accident or design, boosting barbiturates into the lead over all other poisoning agents as a cause of death.

It is easy to take an overdose, partly because the drug itself befuddles the mind and confuses the judgment. Also, as the body develops a tolerance to barbiturates, it requires heavier and heavier doses to achieve the desired effect. This leads even the wellbalanced user into taking dangerously large amounts. For the less well-balanced and suicide-minded, the drug's easy availability is often a fatal temptation.

Barbiturate abuse can produce not only psychic but also physical dependence. When a heavy user of barbiturates suddenly stops taking them, he will suffer the agonies of withdrawal. (These can be much worse than withdrawal from narcotics, which is often extremely painful but only occasionally dangerous.) Unless the withdrawal is accomplished under proper medical supervision, it can result in convulsions and death.

pep pills

Amphetamines are stimulants. They offer the taker "pep," alertness, optimism, euphoria — an easy kind of chemical happiness. The first to come into prominence was Benzedrine ("bennies"), originally sold as an inhalant to relieve sinus and other nasal troubles. Since then, many more varieties have come to be known and widely used.

The amphetamines are regarded as less dangerous than other drugs because, except in very large amounts, they do not bring about physical dependence or withdrawal symptoms. So far as the physical effects are concerned, the user often can stop taking these drugs with no more difficulty than a few hours or days of mild depression and a strong desire to sleep (to make up for the sleep lost while the "pep pill" masked the need).

But these drugs still produce dependence in the psychological and emotional sense. The dependent user has little impulse to give up the pleasure of his habit. Also, he develops physical tolerance, requiring larger and larger amounts.

Individuals who feel they need chemical help to "keep going”— ranging from business executives and doctors to schoolboys and housewives have been known to take 25 pills at a time and

a hundred in a day. Furthermore, in not very large amounts these drugs, too, affect the judgment in potentially dangerous situations

as in the case of the New Jersey truckdriver whose store-bought "alertness" led to multiple deaths. And they can bring on mental aberrations, including terrifying hallucinations.

Because, like marijuana, the amphetamines have a "happy" appeal and no easily apparent physical ill effects, they are a special temptation to emotionally susceptible teen-agers.

other abused drugs

The "mind-changing" drugs were not until recently — except for marijuana - widely used by the general American public. But their popularity appears to be growing rapidly. Illegal, the hallucinogens have very few legitimate users. The only such use is by official researchers who hope to learn how to put the "mindshattering" capacities of the chemicals to work in helping the sick.

d-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is the most publicized of these chemicals. An extremely small dose can result in an experience usually described in extravagant and very varied terms: rapturous, mystical, and super-perceptive, as well as nightmarish and terrifying. The hallucinogens are completely unpredictable and uncontrollable, and therein lies their danger. Their effect may be exalting and mind-expanding (as their advocates claim) or tragically destructive, resulting in temporary or permanent insanity, even death.

At least one subject of a legitimate LSD experiment had to be committed to a mental hospital. For those who experiment on their own, the situation is much worse. Bellevue Hospital in New York City has recently seen an influx of deranged youngsters who obtained their dose illicitly. There is also an instance of a murder being committed by a man who was under the influence of LSD, which he obtained illegally.

Aside from these dire examples, the use of LSD has other undesirable effects. Investigators have found that many ambitious persons (such as lawyers, psychologists, and doctors) who experiment with the drug experience a change in social attitudes. As they become captivated by personal sensations they lose concern with productive work.

A graduate student in psychology has described one of his experiences with LSD in this way: "I took it at the seashore once. I just sat there looking at the waves. . . I could conjure up frightening things out of the waves . . . I could also create pleasant shapes - I created castles, then a huge fantastic city, then a large ballet company of performers all dancing in patterns . . . I could see it all simultaneously."

"Of all the drugs abused in this country today, LSD is the most dangerous," declared Dr. Donald B. Louria, chairman of the New York County Medical Society. One experience with it can produce permanent personality changes or prolonged psychological damage. Unlike those attracted to the other drugs, most LSD users are white, middle-class youngsters, many of them college students. In fact, recently, warning letters were sent to about 2,000 colleges and universities by Dr. James F. Goddard, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. Unless the use of such drugs is curbed on the campuses, he cautioned, “an untold number of our students may suffer permanent mental or physical injury."

While LSD is made synthetically, other hallucinogens are found in nature. Among them are marijuana and mescaline or peyote. Derived from a cactus that grows in the Southwest and in Mexico, mescaline or peyote is used legally in the religious practices of some Indian tribes; otherwise its use is illegal. Other plants having many of the same hallucinogenic properties are certain morning glory seeds and mushrooms. The drug made from the latter is called psilocybin.

Alcohol must be included in any list of abused drugs. Too many Americans use it dangerously. Too many are, or are becoming, dependent on it. Experts estimate that there are six million addicts to the drug alcohol in the United States. In addition, many millions of people use it to become intoxicated occasionally. No thoroughgoing program for meeting the drug abuse problem in America can overlook alcohol addiction.

Tranquilizers are non-narcotic, non-barbiturate sedatives that bring quiet to excited nerves and minds, sometimes without an inclination to sleep, sometimes with it. But they, too, are a blessing that can turn into an addictive curse. Recently, seven familiar tranquilizers or sedatives - meprobamate (Equanil and

Miltown), Placidyl, Noludar, Valmid, Librium, Doriden, and Valium — were named as addictive by the Committee on Alcoholism and Addiction of the American Medical Association. Excessive use of tranquilizers, too, can bring a person to a point similar to drunkenness, then stupor, even death, as many suicides have proved. Not all tranquilizers, however, produce dependence.

Airplane glue, gasoline, lighter fluid, and other products, including ether and paint thinner, are deliriants. They induce a "high" that tempts many who are emotionally susceptible. Of great concern is the fact that they are often discovered and adopted by youngsters who may then go on to other addictions if the practice does not destroy them first. The chemicals ingested by sniffing acetate glue, for example, can do damage to the liver. The confusion of mind caused by the deliriants can end in coma and death.

WHO ARE THE DRUG ABUSERS...

Narcotic addicts. The view of the "dope fiend" as someone who is bent on murder, mayhem, or rape under the influence of drugs is not a realistic one. The fact is that most narcotic abusers are more content to sit still and dream. Some prefer to take and enjoy their drug in solitude, others in groups, and still others alternate between the two.

Unreal, too, is the lurid picture of wild sex orgies as characteristic of narcotics parties. Narcotics suppress the sex impulse, as they do much else that is normal in the user. Crimes of violence are quite rare among narcotic abusers, although a great many such persons come into conflict with the law on other scores chiefly stealing, forgery, prostitution, and the like, undertaken to obtain money for drugs.

There is a mistaken notion that addicts can be recognized easily by their peculiar behavior and facial expression. Actually, it is difficult even for medical experts to tell an addict without extensive examination. It is also widely believed that narcotic addicts have an urge to make new addicts on the basis that "misery loves company." It is true that addiction is spread by addicts- that's what makes it a highly dangerous social contagion - but the manner of spread is usually casual and irresponsible, rather than purposeful.

However, many addicts become "pushers" of drugs, usually in a small way, to gain money to support their own habit.

No economic or social class is immune to narcotic addiction. Addicts passing through our hospitals and prisons come from every conceivable occupational, educational, religious, and socioeconomic group. Many wealthy addicts escape detection throughout life because they can pay others to take the risks of obtaining their drugs. Many professionals (especially physicians, nurses, and druggists) can hide their addiction indefinitely because of relatively easy access to a supply. One medical observer has bitterly criticized the tendency to "call addiction a disease when applied to the wealthy and a vice when applied to the poor."

the teen-agers

True enough, much of the spread of addiction to narcotics, particularly among teen-agers, takes place in the slum areas of large cities. There the monotonous, trapped life many lead stirs them to seek escape of any kind, whether or not it is antisocial.

The number of the poor and otherwise deprived among teenage addicts is highly disproportionate to their number in the general population. One factor, so far as Negro children are concerned, may be the acceptance of marijuana smoking among jazz musicians and other entertainers whom they admire. More important by far, however, are the factors of the slum environment, the ghettoed life of most Negro communities, the restricted opportunities for Negro children (and adults), the pent-up resentments against deprivation of civil rights, and the intensified sense