Illicit drug use declines in US teens, but increases in baby boomers
What do you call a generation of people who received free education, who grew up in the opulence of postwar America, who profited from America’s economic domination of the world, and elected to hoard all of the wealth and addle the three generations that follow them with crushing debt? You would call them the worst generation, of course. Discussions of their political and economic enslavement of the generations that followed them will come later. For now, let’s focus on this generation’s unabashed self-aggrandizement, which manifests itself in persistent drug abuse.
The results are from the most recent authoritative National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Two quotes from the article say it all.
David Murray, special assistant to the director for the Office of National Drug Control Policy said the findings were surprising from the baby boomers point of view, “Rarely have we seen a story like this where this is such an obvious contrast as one generation goes off stage right, and entering stage left is a generation that learned a lesson somehow and they’re doing something very different,” he said.
…the peak of drug use among youth in the United States occurred in the late 1970s. “And they brought it with them like baggage when they hit 50 and 60. So they have rates of use that are starting to stand out as persistent.
In other words, the generation that was telling my generation, the gen-Xers of the 80s, to “just say no” is still having problems saying no. This hypocrisy would have been excusable were it not for the fact that the baby boomers insist on extending it to the financial sector, as well. It was ok for them to get free education and good healthcare, but not for us. It was ok for them to build businesses, but not for us. It was ok for them to become media moguls, but not for us.
Thus, those of us who are aware of the grotesque malice of the baby boomers continue to fume as we toil to live in substandard housing, to drive on abominable roads, and to drink, to climb rocks and to play video games in order to numb our brains out of the bland misery to which baby boomers have reduced American life and culture. Those not sufficiently numbed and not utterly exhausted by the boring life attempt suicide, move to another country or get trapped into the inanity of the Iraqi “War”. Others maintain a blog. The vast majority, the vanquished, eat, get fat, and watch TV.
And, so reap the baby boomers what they sowed long ago. All too happily, while they drive their SUVs and implicitly encourage wars that feed the SUVs.
What a wonderful world…