Drinking Up, Lighting Up

CBS News- New York

May 28, 2002

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People told it was safe to return to their homes and businesses in lower Manhattan worried about how they would ever clean up the dust from the disaster - and whether the air down there was really safe to breathe.

So it might come as no surprise to some to hear of the results of a new study, which says residents of Manhattan drank more alcohol and smoked more cigarettes and marijuana after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Researchers at the New York Academy of Medicine surveyed nearly 1,000 Manhattan residents in the two months after the World Trade Center disaster. A quarter of respondents said they drank more than usual in the five to eight weeks after the attack.

Nearly 10 percent said they had been smoking more cigarettes and more than 3 percent said they had been smoking more marijuana, according to a report to appear in the June edition of the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Post-traumatic stress disorder and depression were more common among those who said their smoking and drinking increased after the attack. Thirty-six percent of those who smoked more marijuana also reported stress disorder symptoms such as sleeplessness and nightmares.

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