CASA is The National Center On Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.
http://www.casacolumbia.org/
Related books:
High Society: How Substance Abuse Ravages America and What to Do About It
Women under the Influence
Not too long ago seatbelts were for sissies, AIDS was considered a death sentence for gays, and smokers lit up and turned to their neighbor and said, “Would you like a cigarette?” Today our attitudes on these issues are profoundly different.Not too long ago seatbelts were for sissies, AIDS was considered a death sentence for gays, and smokers lit up and turned to their neighbor and said, “Would you like a cigarette?”
Today our attitudes on these issues are profoundly different. We all buckle up. AIDS is seen as a serious illness rather than a social curse. Smokers uncomfortably ask, “Mind if I smoke?,” and most of us answer with a resounding “Yes!”
Why? Because we have fundamentally changed our attitudes and as a result taken actions that greatly improved the quality of life for millions of people.
Drug and alcohol abuse play a pervasive and pernicious role in our society. Drug addicts and alcoholics are stigmatized, treated as modern day lepers.
Substance abuse and addiction has touched most every family and neighborhood in America.
My years of public service coupled with the past 15 years heading CASA and my total immersion in this field, convince me that few Americans appreciate its complicity in just about every social problem our nation faces – and even fewer see it as a serious disease that we can do something about.
But the fact is, we have never really tried sensibly, creatively and aggressively to confront this disease across the board.
The time has come for fundamental change in our attitudes about substance abuse and addiction and a revolution in how to
deal with it.My new book, HIGH SOCIETY: How Substance Abuse Ravages America and What to Do About It, (to be published in early May) is my effort to inspire the will and show the way to fundamentally change how our people view and confront drug and alcohol abuse and addiction.
We cannot create a Garden of Eden utterly free of drug and alcohol abuse, but we can save millions of lives, untold heartache and billions of dollars by dramatically reducing this scourge.
All of us – politicians, parents and physicians, teachers and clergyman, cops, judges and lawyers, journalists and entertainers – must do our part to create the cultural revolution to sober up our High Society.
Joseph A. Califano, Jr.
From Message from the Chairman, CASA Inside Newsletter Winter 2007