legal prescriptions for narcotic drugs. The prescriptions were written for as many as 200 tablets. In the past several weeks we have been flooded with these drugs.

Senator KENNEDY. Is this written by doctors?

Mr. OLZEWSKI. This is written by one doctor.

Senator KENNEDY. Has the medical association been notified?

Mr. OLZEWSKI. Yes, we have notified the medical association. We notified the authorities in the adjoining State. We are trying to institute some sort of action.

Senator KENNEDY. Does he prescribe it as part of a treatment program?

Mr. OLZEWSKI. Yes, it is part of a treatment program. However, we know that when you have someone who is addicted to using narcotics and you write a prescription for 200 tablets for these people, we definitely know that these tablets are being resold on the street again. Senator KENNEDY. We have a new law in Massachusetts, do we not, the Quinn law?

Mr. OLZEWSKI. Do you mean where the user comes before the bar of justice?

Senator KENNEDY. Yes.

Mr. OLZEWSKI. Yes. He has the option of going through a process for treatment.

However, speaking from my own experience, I find that I don't believe the state at Bridgewater is sufficient.

Senator KENNEDY. What is their record down there? Of course, it is pretty poor in any event, in terms of all fairness, for any of the hardened drugs. The rehabilitation rate for heroin, for example, is 5 percent of those who try.

It is extremely difficult in any event. Do you know what it is at Bridgewater?

Mr. OLZEWSKI. No, I couldn't tell you, Senator. I don't have the answer. I believe it is too short a period of time to get a true picture. I think it will take another year or so before we can get a true picture of the results of the treatment.

Senator KENNEDY. Of course, if there is no room, the users are still out on the street, are they not, if there is no available place for them? Mr. OLZEWSKI. Yes. There is a waiting list.

Senator KENNEDY. So they are still out on the street.

Mr. OLZEWSKI. They are out on the street, and we in law enforcement have really a tougher job when they are on the street, because these kids are still using them. If they can't afford, we know they resort to crime. While they are out on the street waiting to be admitted to these institutions the crime rate keeps rising and rising.

Senator KENNEDY. Dr. Dumont, what do you think are the elements of effective drug control?

STATEMENT OF DR. MATTHEW DUMONT, DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF DRUG REHABILITATION, MASSACHUSETTS DEPARTMENT OF MENTAL HEALTH

Dr. DUMONT. First, as a point of information, you referred to the State law as the Quinn law. It does not carry provisions for commitment to Bridgewater as an alternative to prosecution.

As a matter of fact, it is most likely that the consequences of the law would not be that. It is my responsibility in the Division of Mental Health to design, in fact, an array of alternative responses that are medically oriented and preventively and rehabilitatively oriented as against the traditional response.

These facilities are still in the early planning stage. So the State is not yet ready to deal with alternatives to the correctional response to drug-using people.

Along the lines of what we have in mind, very briefly, I am prepared to state that the medical and mental health professionals are almost as impoverished as the correctional professionals in coming up with reasonable responses.

The numbers are awesome. Some of the studies that have been started across the country and here in Massachusetts indicate that many graduate students, for example, are using heroin. And we have reason to believe that present figures are a gross understatement of what may be the realities. We are currently designing a statewide epidemiological study to get more accurate data. If we know anything, however, we know that it is peer group pressure that causes the young people to experiment with drugs.

From this point of view, it might logically be expected that it would be the peer group question that would get them off or maybe even to prevent them from going on further.

With this in mind, it is going to be a major objective and order to direction for the program of the Division of Drug Rehabilitation of the Department of Mental Health to allow for local community-based indigenous efforts of self-help types; ex-addict programs, very much like Marathon House; youth-dominated programs like Project PLACE; and others, which we feel increasingly may be the only way of dealing with the drug use problem of epidemic proportions.

Senator KENNEDY. Are you describing it as of epidemic proportions now?

Dr. DUMONT. I think you would have to say it is a matter of epidemic proportions right now.

The data would suggest that we can anticipate larger numbers of people in the near future, and children at increasingly earlier ages resorting to more and more dangerous drugs.

I think we are facing a tidal wave of drug use which is going to force us, really, to examine the situation as a sociological phenomenon and not in terms of the walking wounded on one hand or criminals on the other.

Senator KENNEDY. Where does Massachusetts rate or rank in terms of other States, in relationship to what we are doing?

Dr. DUMONT. It is a little early to say with any definiteness. I think from the little data we have we would probably be right in the mainstream of drug use for, certainly, a Northeastern metropolitan area. Senator KENNEDY. What kind of balance and priority do you place in terms of rehabilitation, in terms of law enforcement, in terms of additional research on these drugs?

Dr. DUMONT. A priority figure that might reflect it in dollars and cents I cannot give, but I would be inclined to state that in terms of dealing with drug users and at certain levels drug peddlers, because at certain levels the distinction is very soft and arbitrary, there should

be a minimum response from the correctional facilities, the police and the courts, if any response at all.

What I am suggesting is that the issue of drug use should be conceived of in medical and sociological terms, and drug sales in terms of the kind of informal, one-to-one, non-syndicated, noncriminalized distribution, which we know to be the case in marihuana and which we suspect in certain levels of heroin distribution.

My feeling is that the priorities of law enforcement agencies and courts should be reordered to be concerned almost exclusively with the larger distribution.

There is a peculiar paradox in the bill presented to Congress by Senator Dodd in that in the expression of concern about drug distribution there is the "no knock" provision.

The paradox is that the "no knock" provision could be geared to be useful only for users and not for distributors. If you are not on marihuana or any other drug that could be flushed down the toilet bowl by the time the police can get in, it would really be so small that it wouldn't have relevance to a distribution source but only relevance to

a user.

In that regard, it is a provision in the bill that goes against everything we know about how to respond to drug use in society.

In terms of education and rehabilitation, I would state a number of things. As far as rehabilitation is concerned, it is very important to keep in mind that while all the noise and political concerns about drug use not all, but a large part of it-is directed towards suburban and middle-class populations, it continues to be the black community and the black ghetto that has been devastated most extensively by drugs.

I would state without equivocation that there is no point in taking the black man in such a community off drugs unless you can guarantee him a job. To return to a situation of chronic unemployment after removing him from addictive drugs is to guarantee him that he is going to go back on them.

There is no point in doing anything of a treatment or rehabilitation effort unless you can build into it vocational and rehabilitation meaningfully.

As far as education is concerned, I am prepared to state this is an across-the-board issue. My own point is that the schools are as impoverished as the health professionals and correctional professionals.

I don't believe the schools themselves have enough credibility among the young to be able to teach them anything about drugs. They haven't done a conspicuously successful job to teach them anything about anything, as far as I am concerned.

It is parental pressure that is the most important influence on the

young.

I am inclined to think that education should be local and indigenous, youth-oriented kinds of activities, with we adults playing a background role of technical assistance and resource work.

Senator KENNEDY. Mr. Callahan?

Mr. CALLAHAN. I don't want to get too involved with a big dispute about "no knock" or the other things because I am not really qualified to comment on the proposed legislation in Washington, with which I am not too conversant.

I would agree that it would be difficult to get rid of 240 kilograms of marihuana in a bathroom, but it would be very easy to get rid of a quarter of a million dollars worth of heroin down the toilet in the matter of a few seconds.

This is one controversial point of the piece of legislation. We have in the past lost drugs because of difficulty in entering premises. As I say, I would just as soon not get into any lengthy dissertation about one small part a fairly expansive piece of legislation.

Senator KENNEDY. Maybe we could go to our youth panel, Jackie, Gary, Aram, and Jennifer.

You have heard some of the comments that have been made this morning. It will give you some idea of some of the things we are interested in.

I don't know whether you have any reactions to any of these comments. If you would like to say a word, you may.

I might ask your reactions as to whether you feel the law enforcement is flexible enough in terms of some of the kids that are using drugs. What about it, Jackie?

STATEMENT OF MRS. JACKIE KENNER, MARATHON HOUSE,

BOSTON, MASS.

Mrs. KENNER. I don't think that the law in its flexibility really has very much to do with the addict is going to do, especially in the case of a person who has already become addicted.

Making laws any less forceful than they are, I mean being more lenient, or enforcing the law, as far as I am concerned, really isn't going to make much difference.

The person that is addicted to something like heroin really isn't thinking about how much time he is going to get if he is arrested during his addict, unless it is at a time that he is going to buy drugs and he is very aware of whether or not the police are around, something of this nature.

But I really don't think that changing the laws and making them any more flexible or doing anything of that sort is going to change the attitude of the person involved with drugs.

Senator KENNEDY. What about the rest of the members of the panel? Why do you think that most of the young people become involved in the use of drugs?

STATEMENT OF GARY BLACKSTON, MARATHON HOUSE, BOSTON, MASS.

Mr. BLACKSTONE. I think the biggest reason as to why they use drugs, and especially now with a lot of kids in high school, is not so much the group pressure, from my personal experience, anyhow.

I started using drugs when I was 14. It was more of a thing where people were naturally suggesting it would be nice to get high and so on. But it was a thing where I couldn't deal with the feelings, say, of being rejected.

When I used to see four or five of my friends going out and boiling grass or drinking cough syrup with their girl friends, to me this looked exciting.

Then maybe I would get hold of some type of literature on drugs, like this, and to me it was very exciting. It looked very glamorous to me. It was something that a lot of pictures that I used to see would make very attractive to me.

Naturally, I was very immature as far as dealing with my family, but on the whole, it was very exciting.

Right now, I think what is happening is that you have a lot of kids that are in junior high school and high school where their friends are smoking pot, for example. It is not a thing where kids are forcing children to go to smoke pot or to use drugs in general.

It is a thing where people are having trouble dealing with their feelings and just saying, "No, I don't want to do this."

This doctor over here made a very good statement before, something I agree with, as far as this thing of teachers not teaching properly and everything.

I guess as far as scholastics and so on, they are doing a fairly good job.

But I do agree with you as far as not teaching kids any type of character or sensible values. I think this is something very detrimental to kids. In fact, in Marathon House, we are doing a survey in New Hampshire on a lot of high schools, and so on.

It seems teachers are very concerned with teaching the kid history, English and so on, which is easy. A teacher isn't getting personally involved here, so it is not really too threatening.

But as far as coming off their pedestal and putting their teacher label on a shelf-even parents, for example, are kind of hung up in this-and coming to a personal level with kids and getting involved, they are not doing this because I guess it is kind of threatening.

When I was in junior high school, I can remember being very uptight because maybe I saw someone undressing in the gymnasium, I saw another guy undressing, and I happened to be checking him out, a very normal feeling. It isn't like I wasn't normal. It was a thing where, to me, I got very, say, messed up behind just feelings like this. I could have gone to my father. It was a thing that my father never related to me about feelings. He was kind of on his pedestal, also.

It was a thing where I was very afraid, because I was thinking, "How will you look at me if I express this?" It was a thing where I didn't have the heart to get down and do something about this. It is like a lot of kids now being very inhibited, as far as not really having any people to go to, such as parents.

I think we can start all the rehabilitation programs we want, but to me it is not so much of just a drug problem, it is like the doctor was saying before. It is a people problem. People have to start learning how to deal with their feelings.

If we stopped the inflow of drugs, we would just take something else. Obviously, that is just part of the problem.

STATEMENT OF ARAM SHILLER, PROJECT PLACE, BOSTON, MASS.

Mr. SHILLER. I have the feeling that we are unanimous in the way we feel about the problem. About how we get into drugs, drugs were there before it became a youth drug culture. For kids, many times the first experience, of course, is alcohol, which is one of the most addicting and one of the most dangerous.