Simply put, there are many more of these kinds of drugs available now, and they are far more widely prescribed than they were.
“We're seeing very sharp rises in the numbers [of prescription drug abusers] in all age groups,” he said.
Crystal meth (methamphetamine) use has surged, but this trend has very particular regional variances. Often considered the “poor man's cocaine,” crystal meth use is quite prevalent in the Southwest, Southern California, and in rural areas of the Midwest. Though the specific population dynamics surrounding this problem are not entirely understood, Dr. Anthony said he suspects that the economics of drug dealing play a role. “Wherever you have an entrenched cocaine market, you don't have much of a crystal meth market because of the violence between the cocaine and the meth mobs,” he said.
As in almost all areas of medicine, the genomics revolution has sent many substance abuse researchers deep into the molecular realm in search of specific genes that predispose individuals to drug dependence.
Though he believes that this effort is an important direction for research, Dr. Anthony underscored the need to place equal emphasis on the environmental determinants of addiction. “The dichotomy between 'enviromics' and genomics is in many ways a false dichotomy. It is not an either/or situation, so we need to take an and/both attitude,” he said. “Just as we map the genetic material, we ought to be mapping the environmental conditions and processes that shape drug involvement.
