Drug Addiction (1951)


 

Drug Addiction (1951) – This 50s Encyclopedia Britannica anti-drug film is about as campy as I’ve ever seen EB get. It tells the story of Marty, a nice, clean-cut 50s teen who succumbs to peer pressure and tries reefers. Before you know it, he’s a junkie mainlining heroin, and then experiences the inevitable downward spiral of losing his part-time job at the grocery store, worrying his parents, getting snubbed by all the other clean-cut teens, turning to shoplifting and thievery to support his habit, and finally becoming a drug pusher. (You know who the street pushers are because they’re the ones wearing turtlenecks, like all street pushers, amirite?) Eventually he gets arrested for all of this and, after his mother tearfully tells the judge that he’s a “good boy,” gets court-ordered into substance abuse treatment. But after he gets out of rehab, all the nice teens still shun him and he has to contend with pressure from his old junkie pals to start using again. This well-worn story is told in an incredibly dorky and hyperbolic fashion–highlights include Marty’s friends getting sick when they first smoke marijuana (Marty also feels sick but hides it–the sign of a true addict-in-the-making), Marty and his friends drinking Pepsi from broken bottles while in a hopped-up state, Marty’s mother trying to talk to her surly son about her worries about him, and the post-rehab Marty trying to resist the pressure of his old junkie pal, Duke, to start using again. As in all drug films, the marijuana

 

Activists work to break down drug, HIV stigma

Filed under: drug abuse treatment association inc

BEIRUT: Drug addiction and HIV infections are on the rise in Lebanon and the Middle East and aid officials say more needs to be done to break down religious and cultural resistance to recognizing, treating and preventing drug use and the spread of …
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Prescription Drug Abuse & Pregnancy

Filed under: drug abuse treatment association inc

A decrease in prescription drug overdose death by 6.3% in 2011. A number that dropped from a little more than 2,700 to about 2,500 deaths. Doug Leonardo, Florida Substance Abuse Treatment, added, "physicians and nurses in those offices now tell us they …
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