Page 2 - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, October 2, 1986


Inquiring
G Photographerby PETE ROSS

"Is drug use in our society increasing?"

IN BRIEF
COMPILED FROM ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORTS
Reagan lobbies Senate on
S. African sanction veto
WASHINGTON-President Reagan lobbied senators by
telephone yesterday in a final push to preserve his veto of sanctions::
aimed at pressuring the South African government to abandon the
system of apartheid.
The Senate is set to decide the issue today, with most vote counts
showing that Reagan lacks the margin he needs to prevent his veto
from being overridden, as it was in the House earlier this week.
Overriding a presidential veto requires two-thirds of senators
present and voting.
White House spokesman Larry Speakes said Reagan was,:
contacting senators by phone yesterday to seek their support.
Secretary of State George Shultz, asked whether th&
administration has the votes to sustain the veto, replied: "Well, 1
don't know. We're working on it."
S. African deaths spur strike
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-As many as 325,000 black
miners-more than half the workforce-stayed off the job yesterday:
in what union officials called a powerful display of worker strength
in South Africa's largest industry.
The one-day walkout, called to protest the 177 deaths in a Sept. 16"
fire at the Kinross Gold Mine, cost the mines an estimated $36
million, according to an academic monitoring group.
"This worker action is unparalleled in South African labor
history and demonstrates the importance of worker safety at the
work place," said Marcel Golding, spokesman for the 250,000-
member National Union of Mineworkers.
"The whole theme was that this was an accident which could have
been prevented," Golding said of the deadly fire, the nation's worst
gold mining accident.
Fumes from burning materials, including a polyurethane foah
used to line the tunnels but banned in American and British mines,
are suspected in the deaths of the 172 black and five miners.

Duncan MacDonald, LSA
senior: I don't think that
drug use in our society is
increasing. Much of the
publicity is more con -
cerned with political gains
than actually helping
reduce drug abuse.

Mike Zima, LSA fresh- Sara Dziepak, LSA senior: Michael Andes, alumnus: Pam Haddock, LSA
man: No, it's really not Yes, I think it is. I hear I imagine that it is senior: It seems like
increasing. The public more about it and drugs increasing and that the drugs like cocaine are
awareness has been in- seem to be more accessible. concern is increasing. It's being used more by people


creasing. People are con-
cerned with the detri -
mental mental effects
drugs can have on
individuals and society.

Crack and the whole drug
scene has become more
publicized.

a reflection of other
problems that need as
much attention, like people
not having meaningful
work or feeling isolated
within their own
community.

in the fast lane. It's cool in
some crowds. The hippie
image of drug use in the
'60s and '70s is gone.

Bill Paradise, Ann Arbor
resident : I would have no
idea. There used to be a lot
of pot smoking around
here, but it knocked off. I
can't even tell the smell of
it. Drugs have never been
a part of my life.

John Daller, Ann Arbor
resident: The young
people don't realize that the
wisdom of their wisdom is
not very wise. They are
trying drugs before they
have the option to not try.
The only solution is to
remove the desire.

Lori Weiss, LSA sopho- Tracy Warren,
more: Yes, I think it's senior: I think
increasing with all the because drugs bring
media influence about life and fast money.
drugs. Open any maga- can get rich quick.
zine, turn on any TV ones that are doing
station, it's all about selling are re

LSA
it is
a fast
You
The
g the
eally

Loren Schechter, LSA
freshman: I think drugs
are easier to obtain and
more socially acceptable
than a few years ago. And
with the penalties so
lenient, nobody cares if
they get caught.

drugs.

promoting the use.


Teenage suicide rate starts slow decline

BALTIMORE (AP)-The teen-
age suicide rate, which tripled
between 1950 and 1975 as drug and
alcohol abuse among young
people also soared, is starting to
decline and should decrease
gradually over the next five
years, a researcher said yester-
day.
"It's not a huge drop-off. It's
still about three times what it was
before (in the 1950s) but it looks
like it's starting to edge down,"
said Richard Wetzel, a clinical

psychologist at Washington
University in St. Louis.
WETZEL, who spoke at a news
briefing sponsored by the'
American Medical Association
and Johns Hopkins Medical
Institutions, cited a variety of
studies by him and others in
drawing his conclusions.
He said the current decline in
teen-age suicides might be due in
part to an equivalent decline
among young peoplesin drug and
alcohol abuse.


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"I think that's happening, but
that's: speculation," he said.
WETZEL said studies have
shown that the sharpest rise in
teen-age suicides, which occurred
between 1965 and about 1979, was
paralleled by a dramatic rise in
drug abuse among the young.
Studies in California also have
found that suicides are more
likely in counties with higher
levels of drug and alcohol abuse,
he said.
A recent study in San Diego of
133 suicide victims under 30
showed that 53 percent of the vic-
tims abused drugs or alcohol-
which was three times the drug
and alcohol abuse rate among the
overall population, Wetzel said.
"THESE were primarily
people who started off very young
with drug abuse," Wetzel said.
Some of the studies Wetzel
examined refute the widely held
view that suicide rates remain
constant for a given population as
it ages.
The newer studies have
convinced Wetzel that external
factors can influence a popula-
tion's suicide rates, he said.
Using these new studies, Wetzel
has made a mathematical
prediction that the rates should go
down by a total of about 7 percent
over the next five years.
THE prediction is based on
what is called an auto-regression
model, in which statistics from
past years are analyzed mathe-
matically to determine future

trends. The statistics come from
federal surveys of causes of
death.
Wetzel also noted other trends
in white American men, who are
responsible for 71 percent of the
suicide in the United States.
The suicide rate has declined
in white men over 40 since 1933. It
has risen in those under 30. And
for men in their 30s, the rate
declined until about 1965 and then
began to rise.
"INSTEAD of a phenomenon
affecting just teen-agers, we have
a phenomenon affecting all the
white males in the country under
30 or 40, he said.
It has long been known that
suicide risk is related to age, but
until the mid-1960s, statistics
showed that the likelihood a man
would commit suicide increased
as he got older.
That changed around' 1965,
Wetzel said, as teen-age and
young adult suicide rates rose,
and suicide rates among older
adults declined.
Mental illnesses-specifically,
depression and psychosis-have
also been identified as risk
factors for suicide, Wetzel said.
The San Diego study of suicide
victims under 30 found that 39
percent had some form of
depression and 12 percent were
psychotic, Wetzel said. Only one-
third of these victims were under
any kind of treatment during the
last year of their lives, he said.

New fiscal year's beginning
brings trouble for Medicaid
LANSING-There were no hats, noisemakers, televised bowl,
games or "Auld Lang Syne." New Year's Day passed without'-r'
celebration yesterday as Michigan began the 1986-87 budget year'
with several new programs and some uncertainty over Medicaid
spending.
Medicaid is the only part of this year's state budget that isn't set.
Gov. James Blanchard has vetoed the Medicaid portion of the
Department of Social Services spending plan because the
Legislature fashioned the budget bill in a way that forbade the stat<
from paying for poor women's abortions.
The governor andthe anti-abortiontlawmakers failed to resolve
the impasse, so the Legislature put off action on a 1 2-month
Medicaid budget until after next month's elections. A stop-gap
manuever guaranteed the Medicaid program enough money to pay
for medical services for the poor and disabled through the middle of
November.
Lon shoremen walk off job
NEW ORK (AP)-About 30,000 dockworkers struck 11 ports
from Maine to Virginia yesterday, forcing office workers to help
unload cruise liners in New York and sparking vandalism at n
New Jersey cargo center where five people were injured.
The walkout began after the expiration of a three-year contract.
At issue was a demand by some ports for a'two-tier wage system.
"I hope it will be over tomorrow," said Thomas Gleason, president
of the International Longshoremen's Association. "I don't like ti
see a strike."
Gleason said he was scheduled to meet today in Arlington, Va.,
with the Council of North American Shipping Associations,
representing Hampton Roads, Va., Baltimore, Philadelphia and
Providence, R.I.
Greg Storey, spokesman for the New York Shipping Association,
representing the ports of New York and Boston, said no talks were
planned with his group.;
U.S. to dro fuel standards
WASHINGTON-The ansportation Department plans to ease
the fuel economy standard for 1987 and 1988 model passenger cars,
allowing General Motors Corp. to avoid paying millions of dollars
in fines, administration sources said yesterday.
Department spokesmen said they could not comment on the
expected ruling on future fuel economy standards, but said a
decision is expected to be announced soon.
General Motors had campaigned vigorously to have the fuel
economy requirements for 1987 and 1988 car models reduced so that,
it could accumulate credits that would allow the automaker to avoid'
paying penalties as a result of its failure to meet economy standards
for the 1985 model year.
The company incurred about $385 million in penalties because it
could not meet a fleet-wide standard for 1985 of 27.5 miles per
gallon.
The government set a legal standard of 27.5-miles-per-gallon
fuel efficiency on all a manufacturer's models beginning with
1985.
Vol. XCVII-No. 21
The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967 X) is published Monday
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U'

10

IW

What is transcendentalism? What's the plot of
Melville's Omoo? Who wrote 42ndParallel?
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Curriculum Committee

(Continued from Page 1)
curriculum committee, the
committee on Tuesday discussed
what a "credit hour" should
signify.
WHILE the students have not
missed any major votes, Lindner
said, "There was a point this last
week when we could have used a
student, or two, or three."
There are no set rules among
departments for setting credit
hours and, said Lindner, "There
doesn't seem to be much of a sense
in the college about whether the
present system works well." He
said a number of ideas were
raised, including whether credit
hours should be Given for class

conceivable change, however,
would be to expect students to take
four courses per semester, rather
than the current practice of
totalling a students' credit hours
to determine their course load.
The committee last week
examined the college's foreign
language requirement. Last
spring, the Committee of Foreign
Language Studies recommended
that the college no longer allow
four years of high school
language study to satisfy its
language requirement,
according to Jack Meiland, the
other co-chairman of the
Curriculum Committee.

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