Yesterday Today Tomorrow

Inseong J Kim: Hello, this is Inseong Kim from Yesterday Today Tomorrow. Our program ended last week with Dawn Ward, where she encouraged moms who had children with substance abuse. It was a very timely, needed message, especially during COVID, when the death rate of substance abuse skyrocketed.

Today's program is Yesterday Today Tomorrow. I want to go over some history, especially in the US, regarding how this historical trajectory for the future happened. I'm going to rely a lot on Claude of AI research. Please do your own homework and backcheck it, but I'm going to share the data as it is in the research.

I'll provide an overview of drug use trends in the United States from 1945 to the present. We go way back to that time because there were a lot of drugs used during the war for the soldiers as well. Afterward, we didn't know how to handle these issues with all the veterans. We go way back to that time and look at how it unfolded until today. That is about 80 years ago. It is aligned with the economic transition of the US from 1945 to today. Somehow, this drug substance abuse rate of growth also kind of lined up with that.

It's worth noting that systematic nationwide survey data on drug use didn't begin until the early 1970s. We are living in a maze; they didn't have data at all. We didn't know what was going on, and all the information was completely undisclosed to the public. SAMHSA and NSDUH started in 1971. Data from 1940 to 1960 is more fragmented and based on estimates, law enforcement records, and earlier small studies. We don't know exactly how it happened, but we can still research it from all the documents or books that we can read.

In the post-World War II era from 1945 to 1950, it's estimated that 750 million amphetamine tablets per year were being produced in the US. That was enough to supply a million people daily, a trend that grew through the 1950s and 60s. Drug use in this era was relatively contained, primarily involving opiates among certain populations. They were promoted as diet pills and mood elevators. I kind of understand that because it was right after World War II. It was probably very difficult for the whole population given what they were going through at that time. It was a world war after World War I, and even the wars today are affecting us. Can you imagine a world war where the war was everywhere, especially in Europe and in Asia?

By the late 1800s, opiate addiction had reached about 0.5% of the population. Roughly 300,000 drug addicts existed by the turn of the century, but strict federal enforcement through the mid-20th century kept visible use relatively low. It probably focused on those populations who had PTSD.

In the 1960s, despite the popular image of the decade being a heyday of drug use, surveys suggest it was still comparatively rare. In a 1969 Gallup poll, only 4% of American adults said they had tried marijuana. However, this decade saw marijuana, LSD, and heroin gain cultural prominence, particularly among the counterculture movement in urban areas. That's the 1960s; we all know about what happened in California with the hippies. More and more stories are coming out with historical data on the issues we listen to on a lot of podcasts today.

In the 1970s, the percentage of adults who had tried marijuana doubled between 1973 and 1977, growing from 12% to about 24%. Official data consistently shows the late 1970s as having some of the highest rates of illicit drug use of all time. Nixon declared drugs public enemy number one in 1971, created the DEA in 1973, and launched the formal War on Drugs. Between 1973 and 1977, 11 states decriminalized marijuana possession, reflecting a brief period of policy softening under President Carter.

The 1980s saw the crack epidemic and renewed crackdowns. We can see the generation that was affected during those times. The 80s saw the emergence of cocaine, particularly crack cocaine, as a major focus of concern. In 1986, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which established mandatory minimum prison sentences for certain drug offenses. Overall, illicit drug use began declining from the 70s peak, in part due to aggressive enforcement and campaigns like Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No." During that time in the 80s, we were saying no to drugs, so use was going down.

I am not trying to take a political stance, but there is something that we cannot deny. In the 1990s and 2000s, cocaine use increased in the 1980s and then leveled off at a high level in the 1990s, while marijuana use showed a marked decline from the late 70s peak. By 2002, about 8.3% of Americans aged 12 or older reported past-month illicit drug use. Meanwhile, the overprescribing of opioid painkillers in the late 1990s was quietly planting the seeds of the opioid crisis.

The 2010s saw the opioid epidemic. In 2013, past-month illicit drug use had risen to 9.4% of the population aged 12 and older. Between 2004 and 2016, teen drug use declined by 23.5%, but drug use among those aged 50 and older surged by 59%. From 2013 to 2019, deaths from synthetic opioids other than methadone increased by 1040%. A lot of the older generations were affected, which is likely because many cases happened in the hospital where patients were dosed with painkillers. That's the fact. If our audience goes back to study the history of what happened in Philadelphia, we can see the evidence of this opioid crisis starting in the hospital.

What we can see is that major patriotic cities were targeted. In historical observance, we have to understand why New York, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and California—those big states and cities—were targeted. We can get an idea that this is a systematic attack on this country.

In the 2020s, the fentanyl crisis continued. About 107,940 drug overdose deaths occurred in the US in 2022. Between 1999 and 2022, over 720,000 people died of an opioid overdose. In 2024, 58.3% of people aged 12 or older reported past-month use of tobacco, nicotine vaping, alcohol, or illicit drugs. There were more than 80,000 drug overdose deaths in the 12-month period ending in November 2024, a decline from the 2022 peak but still devastating. As of 2024, around 137 million Americans had used marijuana at some point in their lifetime, 42 million had used cocaine, and 30.9 million had used LSD.

These are the numbers that are out there for us to think about. Why is this a problem in our community? If we don't step out and look from the outside in, we don't know what's going on. We might say it's about personal choices or bad choices, but it's deeper than that. We have to really understand a different perspective on this drug issue from top to bottom and why we have these issues. The problem is money cannot be made out of thin air. When jobs were shifted from this country to different countries, the devastation was especially felt by the men in this country. It brought hopelessness, along with this pro-life issue that I've been preaching about. There are a lot of things in an underground cultural attack that we don't see as a cultural attack. Instead, we see ourselves as becoming corrupted. I'm not denying that part of it is true, but we have to step out and see what is causing these problems.

Illicit drug use peaked in the late 70s and declined through the 80s, but it's climbed again. The annual cost of drug abuse in the US is estimated at nearly 820 billion dollars, factoring in crime, healthcare, and lost productivity. It's almost one trillion dollars. Rather than encouraging people to be productive, innovative, and live a positive life creating more jobs, we're going in the opposite direction. Whatever the direction we want to go is opposed within the leadership, and that is a real problem. The real issue is that somehow the leadership was blackmailed against this America.

If we don't see it, we are going to be in trouble. It's a matter for us to not just wake up but to be educated and see the numbers and what they do to our society. As a fragmented society in this one-generational country that we're living in, if we don't have a concept of "us," it is only a matter of time before we are destroyed by other outside forces. Damage is already done in so many ways. We're holding it together, but once the economic crisis comes, it's going to get worse. We have to know before it's too late whether it's savable or not. We have to know and educate younger generations to understand what is really happening.

A truly alarming acceleration began around 2013 to 2014 when illicit fentanyl flooded the drug supply, and it spiked dramatically during COVID-19. It really increased the death rate from drug abuse during COVID. Why is that? Around 76,000 people died in the 12-month period ending in April 2025. It's just a devastating issue that we are dealing with.

For example, in South Korea while I was growing up, we didn't have drug issues on the street. Probably some celebrities had marijuana issues, and if that happened, we just watched the TV and saw them going to prison. That was about it; it was not on the street, at least as far as I was aware. I think we are targeted, especially here in America and also South Korea, which is divided by two different ideologies in the North and South. It has been heavily targeted for over 10 years through the roof of corruption here in America.

My program Yesterday Today Tomorrow is meant to educate our listeners to really study what's going on with drug issues and how we can prevent them. I heard many testimonies of people in the hospital being overdosed with painkillers. You can say no, too. It depends on the tolerance level; you don't have to accept every painkiller that they are providing you as legitimate. It all depends on how much you can tolerate the pain so you don't end up being addicted after surgery and depending on these substances.

As this drug abuse issue is growing, the rehab business is growing as well. Rather than building our country in a productive way of living, we're building a business in the wrong way and the wrong direction. As we observed over time, being recovered from drugs is not an easy way to go. It wastes so much of a lifetime to be recovered, and people still struggle. The best way is not to even introduce it, yet we have so many marijuana dispensaries everywhere. That's the start; that's the doorstep. Nobody is really speaking up about it, and if you're against it, you're seen as kind of weird. Some people say I'm like an antique with an old way of thinking, but we have to understand what it does to our society. It's not a recreation anymore. The issue is we don't have a mirror to see ourselves and how we are declining, not just economically but in a cultural sense. We are accepting these systematic transitions. One way to counter it is to step out of it, wake up from it, and educate people around us not to be a part of it.

The healthcare system created part of the problems. The opioid epidemic wasn't a grassroots phenomenon; it was seeded from the top. Pharmaceutical companies like Purdue Pharma aggressively marketed OxyContin as non-addictive. Doctors overprescribed it, and regulators were slow to intervene. It was purposely done. We all know all the fentanyl came from China, which tried to eliminate us, and it comes through South America. Hospitals are using fentanyl big time, even more than we should use it. By the time restrictions tightened, millions were dependent and turned to heroin and fentanyl. This is a case where the corporate profit motive, regulatory failure, and inadequate oversight created a catastrophic phenomenon. The system that was supposed to heal people addicted them instead.

I saw some cases where people were going through severe illness, but they said no to the opioids in the hospital because they were just being bombarded with painkillers. This is especially true for those who do not have spouses, overseers, or partners. For anyone who can oversee the patient, it gets worse. In this situation that we're in, we have to look after each other. That is the key. Look after each other, not just as a stranger. As we said, social media makes us all disconnected and dismantles society. We must step forward to seek out the people who need help. If I was able to do it, everybody can do it. It doesn't have to be a specialized person to help one person right next to you at work, a family member, or a church member. We all do it together to counter this issue affecting our society and boldly say no to the systemic failure in our society.

Thank you for listening to Yesterday Today Tomorrow. We'll be back next week. Thank you.