The focus in the mass media on illegal drug abuse among the young has obscured an epidemic increase in the misuse of legal psychoactive drugs in America. The threat to society from the widespread use of mood-altering drugs—encouraged by the pharmaceutical industry and medical profession-is explored. The increasing tendency to define unpleasant human feelings and troublesome behavior as a “disease” to be corrected with drugs may serve to (1) diminish pressures to seek more fundamental approaches to the real sources of the drug user's distress, and (2) individualize and depoliticize complex social problems.
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