High Society: How Substance Abuse Ravages America and What to Do About It
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.24 (924 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1586483358 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-03-21 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Califano, Jr. served as LBJ's domestic affairs chief and Jimmy Carter's secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, where he started the nation's first national anti-smoking campaign in 1978, calling cigarette smoking "Public Health Enemy Number One." In 1992 he founded The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, now recognized as the nation's top think/actio
Proposed solutions tend toward the general: more and better education, standardized professional training for therapists, eliminating tobacco and alcohol money from politics and "curbing availability and attractiveness." As a wonky primer to one culture warrior's approach to America's drug problem, this volume is informative, if familiar. From Publishers Weekly It's hard to argue with Califano's thesis, that substance abuse is a huge, expensive and often tragic problem in the U.S., particularly when it affects children; best known for declaring cigarettes "public health enemy number one" as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Califano is clearly passionate, well-meaning and unafraid to think big: "We must end our denial, stamp out the stigma, rethink our concept of crime and punishmentto confront this plagu
He takes on alcohol and tobacco interests that buy political protection with campaign contributions and seed a culture of substance abuse among our nation's children and teens. In High Society, Joseph Califano points out that a child who reaches twenty-one without smoking, using illegal drugs, or abusing alcohol is virtually certain never to do so—and chronicles the fearful cost in personal pain and public dollars of our nation's failure to act on this truth. Califano shows how substance abuse is the culprit in violent and property crime, soaring Medicare and Medicaid costs, family breakup, domestic
Jana Burson said Outstanding and extensively referenced. I can't rate this book high enough. The author has extensively documented his sources for the information contained in the book. I am familiar with many of his references and know he has cited them in context. At first I thought he was overstating many of the facts but upon further investigation I don't think he is. He makes essential points in several areas: futility of incarcerating drug users insteading of providing treatment, statistics about what. AT LAST clear thinking and a plan for substance abuse and addiction! Califano does a BRILLIANT job of describing the history of our country's substance abuse (from chewing tobacco to meth) and how we became a country of addicts. If we get nothing out of his book but one point it should be that our weakness is in spending the majority of our resources on TREATING substance abuse and addiction VERSUS PREVENTING it. As citizens we must insist that the government fund medical research to help us prevent us from becoming ad. One of the most stunningly ill-informed books I have ever read. Robert Beveridge Joseph A. Califano Jr., High Society: How Substance Abuse Ravages America and What to Do About It (PublicAffairs, 2007)As long as there have been humans, there have been doomsayers. These people see it as their job to ensure that everyone around them is terrified. Of course, it's tough to scare people with nothing, so these doomsayers need to find--or manufacture--a scapegoat, a straw man, something for us to be afraid of. Granted, some things we have