Harvard biologist: U.S. leads in misuse of drugs
HOT SPRINGS — A psychobiologist at Harvard Medical School delivered what she called a “semi-alarmist message” to attendees at the 11th annual Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention Summit at Hot Springs Convention Center on Wednesday morning.
Bertha K. Madras was the opening speaker for the single-day event that featured multiple options for attendees — clinical, criminal justice, education and prevention, counseling and recovery, and family.
“The United States currently has a major drug crisis, a drug crisis that was made in America, and hopefully, it will fade in America,” she said.
“But that’s all up to us. Thousands of years ago, people explored plants for food and serendipitously found that some plants are good as medicines. And so they began to market plants as medicines, as well as foods.”
When chemists began to learn what caused the medicinal properties of these plants, it came at “a very serious tradeoff,” Madras said.
“Cocaine was found in the coca leaf, and it was used as an anesthetic,” she said. “And then it became diverted at very high concentrations for recreational use.
The same with morphine and all morphine and opioid analogs, the same with amphetamines, which has been converted to methamphetamine and some of the other types of stimulants, as well as tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC from marijuana,” she said.
“So from these plants came medicines and then street drugs, and the street drugs are designed to circumvent the firewall that exists between using the drugs as medicine and using it in recreation.”
Madras touched on opioids, marijuana, and hallucinogens during her speech, but her primary topic was how marijuana is the next wave of deadly drugs in the U.S. She noted the opioid problem in this country is nearly five times the average of the next 30 countries that prescribe opioids at the highest levels.
“If you look at the 31 countries that are the highest subscribers and prescribers of opioids, the U.S. is by far number one, and all the others are much less, on average five times less than the U.S.,” she said.
“What caused this massive increase in opioids? Did we have more pain than other countries? No, we didn’t. Did we have more accidents, more construction problems that gave rise to bad kinetic pain and knee pain? No, we didn’t. So why did we get to this point in our history?” she asked.
“How bad is it? Well, the prevalence of opioid use disorder in the United States is the highest in the world by far, and the death rates in the United States are the highest in the world, compared to all the other, for example, European Union countries,” Madras said.
“These are the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — we have averaged over 100,000 deaths from all drugs, of which 75,000 are due to opioids. Every state in the Union saw an increase in overdose deaths, except for South Dakota and New Hampshire.”
She said the United States leads the world in cannabis usage among 16- to 19-year-olds.
“Once again, the United States has the dubious distinction of being number one with regard to a problem, and this is youth,” she said. “This is not over all age groups. Past-year marijuana use rose dramatically amongst 18- to 25-year-olds.”
Marijuana use can cause significant issues with the developing mind, Madras said.
“Children exposed to marijuana in youth have more psychotic-like experiences,” she said, referencing data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study.
“They have more internalizing and externalizing problems. They have reduced white matter and gray matter. They did have functional problems as they get older, and they have sleep problems. All of this comes from this long continuous study.”
Madras said hallucinogens are the next wave of drugs she projects to be misused.
“It’s the next wave of science and public policy, and what we find is that there are so many conditions in which current medications are not that adequate,” she said.
“And so some people have resurrected the hallucinogens that were popular in the 1950s and ’60s to try to address the public health burden on chronic brain disorders, treatment needs that are unmet or inadequate, and the indications are internalizing disorders, the disorders that plague people inside of the home.”
She said the information needs to be disseminated better than it has been thus far.
“We have to discuss and disseminate the hazards of drug use in adolescents, the hazards of very potent drugs, parental influence on offspring use, and remember above all that from the brain and from the brain only will arise our laughter, our joys, our sorrows, and from the brain and from the brain only arise our ability to administer justice, to develop laws, to develop medications, to develop rockets, to develop iPhones and computers and cars and every other wondrous advance that has made our lives so much easier,” she said.
“So I cannot say that we are waging war on drugs. We are essentially defending our mind. It is the repository of our humanity.”