The Nation - News from Dec. 1, 1986

At least 60 commercial airline pilots have been treated for cocaine addiction during the last two years, according to a newspaper survey of 17 drug treatment clinics across the country. “Until very recently, we felt that drug use in the airline industry was almost non-existent,” Dr. Barton Pakull, the Federal Aviation Administration’s chief psychiatrist, said in an interview published in the Pittsburgh Press. “But in recent months, we’ve encountered too many indications that cocaine and marijuana use and abuse may, in fact, be a problem.” The number may be higher, the paper said, because many clinics surveyed refused to disclose the exact number of pilots treated.