Mike Males

Mike Males is a philosophy lecturer at the University of California at Santa Cruz and author of Framing Youth: 10 Myths About the Next Generation. In the following viewpoint, Males argues that substance abuse is a far greater problem for adults than it is for youths. For example, only seven of Chicago’s nine hundred drug overdose deaths in 1999 were adolescents. Males concludes that the focus on youth substance abuse has diverted attention from the larger problem of substance abuse among adults, resulting in the failure of America’s drug war.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. According to Males, how did the youths he interviewed in a Chicago correction center respond to the question of why so few youths die from drugs"
2. In Males’s view, what did...