Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Quite possibly more print has been devoted to teen drug use in the past 20 years than any other single social problem. This present volume was collected by a social worker and a researcher who are interested less in the broad societal scope of drug use than in the impact of drug use on the individual and the family. Accordingly, the essays cover understanding teen drug use, getting busted, and dealing; services for teen drug abusers; and what parents can do about drug abuse in their adolescent children. The essays treat that middle ground between concern with abstract patterns of drug use and nuts-and-bolts advice; they are timely, clearly written, and sprinkled with examples from real human predicaments to evoke empathy. The last quality, however, has an inherent limitation. Teen drug use is ever changing. Many of the slang terms in the book are already outmoded; and prices for residential treatment centers had already ballooned while the book was in production. The work is in fact an ethnography of teen drug use in the mid-1980s, except where the authors tie their observations to more general theoretical principles. This collection would seem most valuable for the individual or family therapist in training, though parents and educators could also profit from reading it. Each article contains a bibliography, and a general index is included. Appropriate for community college, undergraduate, and public libraries.-E.J. Green, Prince George's Community College