Drugs, Covering Treatment Programs, by Michael Massing

November/December 1998 | Contents

Reporting

by Michael Massing
Massing, a contributing editor to CJR, is the author of The Fix, a book about America's drug problem, published in October by Simon & Schuster

When it comes to press coverage of the drug issue, the main action is in Mexico. American correspondents there pore over financial records, examine court documents, and interview officials to chronicle the pernicious effects drug trafficking has had on that country's political system. Meticulously researched, lushly documented, and numbingly detailed, these stories resemble the exposes of municipal malfeasance that were popular during the heyday of investigative journalism in the 1970s.

A typically knotty lead in The New York Times: "The longtime private secretary to a patriarch of Mexico's governing party has told American authorities about a series of dealings between narcotics traffickers and high-ranking political leaders, including members of the family of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari." Last November, The Washington Post ran a five-part, 17,000-word series on drug trafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border and the violence and corruption it has spawned.

At a time when so many news organizations are cutting back foreign coverage, such a commitment of resources seems admirable, and the Times, for one, was rewarded this year with a Pulitzer Prize. Yet, in the rush to recount events in Tijuana and Juarez, the press has been neglecting another, more important front in the drug war -- the battle at home.

In the U.S., the press favors two types of drug stories: teenage drug use (teen drug crisis, headlined the New York Post, August 21, 1996) and well-to-do junkies (heroin's hold on hollywood, Entertainment Weekly cover story, August 9, 1996). Or both (heroin alert: rockers, models, and the new drug crisis: are teens at risk? Newsweek cover story, August 26, 1996).

In reality, middle-class heroin addiction is neither new nor particularly widespread. And the rise of teen drug use in recent years is confined mostly to marijuana. National surveys affirm that America's drug problem consists mainly of a hard core of users who are disproportionately poor, unemployed, and black or Hispanic. There are about 3.6 million hard-core users, according to the federal government, and they consume an estimated 75 percent of the heroin and cocaine used in the United States. They also account for most of the crime, child abuse, overdose deaths, and other terrible consequences of drug use.

To the extent that these users surface in the media, it is usually in stories about street sweeps, prison overcrowding, or child welfare. What's missing is any sustained coverage of the really significant stories -- the effectiveness of treatment in reducing addicts' dependence, and the difficulty they have in getting it.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy says that the U.S. treatment system has enough capacity to help only half of those 3.6 million hard-core users. This is not by accident. For the last twenty years, drug treatment has been systematically underfunded at all levels of government. The result: long waiting lists for treatment in cities around the country. In New York state alone, an estimated 100,000 people who want treatment are unable to get it in any given year. Where are the news stories?

part 1 - Drugs: Missing the Big Story
part 2 - Part of the problem...
part 3 - two thirds of the federal drug budget...