Author: Ed Gogek

There’s a great article in today’s Arizona Republic about a really good program to divert drug abusers from prison into treatment. According to CASA Columbia, two-thirds of everyone in prison has a substance abuse problem, so treatment could go a long way toward ending mass...

Pot-smokers often claim marijuana makes them more creative, but one thing we know about drug abusers is that they rationalize their drug use. It usually has no redeeming features; they just think it does. There’s research showing pot doesn’t boost creativity, but there’s an even...

Look up the 2013 UNICEF report Child well-being in rich countries, and go to page 25 where a graph ranks all 29 countries according to rates of adolescent marijuana use. Then do an internet search of “marijuana tourist destinations.” These are countries marijuana users love to...

  When I work with substance abusing patients, I operate under the belief that every substance abuser is happier clean and sober, and none of their rationalizations about why they should drink or use drugs are accurate. It’s just their disease speaking. In the book...

According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, almost everyone who smokes marijuana starts as a teenager. Most start before age 18 and a quarter start before age 16. We know what makes teen use go up and down. Teen use is more likely...