FEATURE: CLOUDED VISION

by Mike Parker by Mike Parker"And once I even went to have a look where they hang out in a big way, out in the delivery bay behind the now-closed Donut Hut, the delivery bay grotto out back with a floor spongy with pigeon shit, chewing gum, cigarette ashes, and throat oysters -- dank and sunless. I went to visit this place once when all the druggies were away, having their druggy lives downtown doing their druggy things: yelling at parked cars and having conversations with amber lights. I visited this place and I was confused: confused and attracted.Who do these people think they are? How can they not care about the future or hot running water or clean sheets or cable TV? These people. And on the walls down at the delivery bay, do you know what they had written? Written in letters several hands high, letters built of IV needles attached to the cement with soiled bandages and wads of chewing gum? They had written the words WE LIKE IT."by Mike Parker"And once I even went to have a look where they hang out in a big way, out in the delivery bay behind the now-closed Donut Hut, the delivery bay grotto out back with a floor spongy with pigeon shit, chewing gum, cigarette ashes, and throat oysters -- dank and sunless. I went to visit this place once when all the druggies were away, having their druggy lives downtown doing their druggy things: yelling at parked cars and having conversations with amber lights. I visited this place and I was confused: confused and attracted.Who do these people think they are? How can they not care about the future or hot running water or clean sheets or cable TV? These people. And on the walls down at the delivery bay, do you know what they had written? Written in letters several hands high, letters built of IV needles attached to the cement with soiled bandages and wads of chewing gum? They had written the words WE LIKE IT."Douglas Coupland , Shampoo Planet by Mike Parker"And once I even went to have a look where they hang out in a big way, out in the delivery bay behind the now-closed Donut Hut, the delivery bay grotto out back with a floor spongy with pigeon shit, chewing gum, cigarette ashes, and throat oysters -- dank and sunless. I went to visit this place once when all the druggies were away, having their druggy lives downtown doing their druggy things: yelling at parked cars and having conversations with amber lights. I visited this place and I was confused: confused and attracted.Who do these people think they are? How can they not care about the future or hot running water or clean sheets or cable TV? These people. And on the walls down at the delivery bay, do you know what they had written? Written in letters several hands high, letters built of IV needles attached to the cement with soiled bandages and wads of chewing gum? They had written the words WE LIKE IT."Douglas Coupland , Shampoo PlanetDouglas Coupland (and according to on-the-cover hype, "nobody has a better finger on the pulse of the twenty-something generation,") wryly points out that, despite Uncle Sam's stance, a drug-defined existence may be as valid a choice as any other. Current drug policy assumes that America has a vested interest in opposing drug abuse. Coupland's futuristic vision suggests that many people might be happier if, as Timothy Leary once suggested, the government dispensed drugs rather than interdict them. There is an obvious fallacy in this proposal: even Shampoo Planet's druggies are not independent. Whether or not they forsake running water or cable TV, they are subcultural leaches, hopelessly dependent upon an infrastructure built and maintained by mainstream society for everything from the methadone and food they are given to the hypodermic needles they use. However, most drug users are not part of this subculture of hardcore abusers. The National Institute on Drug Abuse's (NIDA) annual household survey revealed that in 1992, during a given month, 11.4 million American's used an illicit drug. This indulgence does not mean that majority of these respondents are unproductive, unemployable dead weight. Still, no one can disagree that even moderate drug use decreases productivity. As violence associated with the black market for narcotics skyrockets, law enforcement costs shackle governmental budgets, and drugs continue to be prevalent in every strata of our society, our national drug-enforcement policies have come under debate from the highest levels. The arguments for ameliorating the problem are tedious. Each solution is joined by countering sets of logic and principle. But the fact is, the country is reluctantly re-acknowledging that drugs have become a messy part of daily life. Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused brazenly advised viewers to "see it with a bud" (read: smoke pot before you come!). Cypress Hill and the much talked about rap community have gone platinum taking "Hits from the Bong." Call it moral laxity, call it reaction to conservatism, the truth is: drugs are a tolerated element of the American pop culture. National leaders, the editorial board of the straight-laced Economist, and most notably, Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, have questioned current drug strategy. This strategy costs the federal government over $15 billion per year. State and local governments add their own funds, too. Yet the results of NIDA's survey reveal that drug use is far from eradicated. In a recent speech before the National Association on Drug Abuse Problems, Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke reiterated his proposal to radically change drug policy. He began by asking three questions: "Have we won the war on drugs? Are we winning the war on drugs? Will doing more of the same allow us to win in the future?" Schmoke's questions are rhetorical, designed to evoke a trilogy of "no's." However, the status quo cannot be as easily dismissed as he suggests. Current anti-drug strategies have been robustly funded since Ronald Reagan's first term. Roughly 70 percent of the budget goes to law enforcement and 30 percent to counseling and education. All of these programs demand abstinence and scorn even "responsible" use. The results have been telling: according to NIDA, in 1979, 24.3 million Americans reported having used illegal drugs in the past month. In 1988, 14.5 million responded affirmatively to the same question. To Schmoke's credit, NIDA's own statistics show that drug use has not declined in the past four years. In fact, the most recent survey results indicate that between 1992 and 1993, drug use by high school seniors increased by four percent. While most people still seem to know what "Hits from the Bong" implies, our zero-tolerance policies have prevented many communities from comfortably discussing programs like needle exchanges – which are designed to slow the spread of HIV. In addition, abstinence-oriented educational programs tend to overstate the horrors of drug use (and underage drinking). When inculcated students experiment, or see their friends experimenting with drugs, their first experiences are not necessarily negative and they lose faith in their education. "You can't portray something as being horrible if the initial experience is not," remarks Dr. Tate Thigpen, former President of Optimist International, a 160,000 member community service organization that runs centers on drug-use prevention and co-sponsored the "Just say no" campaign. However, Thigpen laments that because most volunteers lack extensive medical backgrounds, "what is being used in a lot of the clubs is sort of classic 'Just say no' and some of that, in my opinion, is not totally accurate." owever, Bill Current of The American Council for Drug Education (ACDE) has no reservations about zero-tolerance. He argues that "it is better to risk a little disillusionment if kids experiment than to risk encouraging them to experiment through mixed messages." While Current's argument is logically sound, the high rate of experimentation still present among youth (according to NIDA, a survey administered in 1993 revealed that 54.2 percent of high school seniors had tried an illicit drug in the past year) would seem to invalidate it. When education fails, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Neal is in charge of enforcing drug laws. And he says it's working. "I think you have to examine it on a case by case basis. Certainly in some communities where there have been a level of drug dealing, we have gone in and made arrests and removed those people from dealing drugs in that respective community," he explains. "And that's a win as far as those neighbors are concerned because we've impacted on the quality of life in that particular community." In 1993, Neal's force made 7,397 arrests for drug sales, and 2,491 for possession. His job is far from simple. With billions of dollars at stake, those associated with the drug trade are willing to defy laws and kill competitors to protect profits. Thigpen suggests that greater penalties and stricter enforcement will ultimately discourage traffickers. However, the issue may not be that simple. If we could overcome the laws of supply and demand, our current judicial system could not handle the growing number of drug-related cases that clog the courts and ultimately flood prisons. Despite the similarly astronomical costs associated with it, global interdiction curbs the flow of drugs even less than local efforts. The New York Times reported last week that America seizes less than five percent of all cocaine shipments. Given America's current financial straits, it is hard to imagine spending our way out of a drug crisis. Schmoke, consequently, proposes decriminalizing drugs. To him, strict enforcement ultimately encourages a bloodier breed of trafficking. This perspective is echoed internationally."The struggle against drug trafficking has failed. Obviously. For a simple reason: because they are trying to shoot down with bullets the law of supply and demand." explained Patricia Lara, President of Cambio 16 Colombia, one of Columbia's two major news weeklies, in a recent editorial. Columbia's Prosecutor General, Gustavo de Greiff elaborated in a recent New York Times interview: "A kilo of cocaine costs $50 in the trafficking countries and is sold in the consuming countries for $5,000 to $10,000, and so there always will be someone ready to run the risk of the illegitimate business." hile Neal enforces the laws as they're written, he's stuck in the grip of unamenable regulations. And that's why the answer to each of Schmoke's three questions is no. We have not won the war on drugs. We are no longer winning it. And continuing our current strategies will not allow us to win in the future. Schmoke's decriminalization proposal refocuses drug prevention on the medical community, rather than on law enforcement agencies. In an essay published in the American Oxonian, Schmoke explained that under this policy, "criminal penalties for drug use would be removed and health professionals would be allowed to use currently illegal drugs, or substitutes, as part of an overall treatment program for addicts?Drugs would not be dispensed to non-users, and it would be up to a health professional to determine whether a person requesting maintenance is an addict." Current takes immediate issue with Schmoke's proposal, calling medicalization a "smoke-screen for the pro-legalization movement. He says drug use will increase, and consequently, so will crime. "Even though the drugs themselves have been made legal, the criminal acts that are committed in many cases by drug users so that they have the money to buy drugs are going to continue to be committed," argues Current. "If you're going to legalize drugs to cut crime then you're going to have to also legalize theft and robbery and murder if you want to cut crime associated with drug use, because those things aren't going to down, they're going to go up." However, according to Trachtenberg, the criminal "drug-seeking" behavior Current describes is the one aspect of drug abuse that clinicians have consistently been able to treat. In addition, Schmoke's plan actually allows for a more effective strategy of reducing this behavior -- supplying addicts with drugs if they submit to a gradual treatment program. Currently, methadone is prescribed in this manner for heroin addicts. Providing addicts with a source of narcotics presents a moral dilemma. At first, it may appear the question is, "should our tax dollars be spent on drugs?" However, sheer pragmatism dictates that crime would be reduced by supplying an addict with cheaply produced drugs to keep them docile, preventing the drug-seeking behavior that Current described. The true injustice might be done to the addict, who might well die from the long term health problems associated with highly addictive narcotics. Such Machiavellian means seem outlandish upon examination. Addicts may also desire more drugs than clinicians are willing to prescribe. And this, Neal suggests is where Schmoke's model breaks down: "If there's some mechanism that's set up where an addict either has a voucher and he or she can go to the store and buy some quantity of narcotics, then I think that the black market is still going to be there because of the fact that once the addict has exhausted that then the addict will be out looking for additional ways in which to purchase drugs." However, it would seem that with well-funded and realistic treatment accompanying a maintenance program, the need for a black market would be minimized. Finally, most foes of decriminalization argue that a change in drug policy will lead to a dramatic increase in abuse. They point to the extraordinarily high levels of use of alcohol and nicotine by teens as evidence. Schmoke notes in his essay that we now mistakenly "promote alcohol as a social good?with the alcohol beverage industry spending billions of advertising dollars." Schmoke is no promoter of substance abuse. His plan calls for strict laws curtailing narcotics advertising, coupled with increased spending on health education. And a slight increase in casual drug use may be a small price to pay to free our society from a violent drug trade. A realistic assessment of drugs reveals that to the casual user, narcotics mat not be as harmful as they are often made out to be. "I think the larger questions concern people who use drugs, but yet work and are productive and do not abuse their spouses or their children -- is that a public health problem? Is that an issue that the government should be concerned about?" Trachtenberg muses. "It gets to a point that other than the fact that those people are fueling the underground economy for drugs by purchasing, in those cases it may very well be a victimless crime, assuming they're not driving while they're intoxicated or operating heavy machinery." Many participating in drug policy discussions are unwilling to be as morally detached as Trachtenberg. For them, the debate is not only fought in the name of pragmatism, but also under the auspices of ever-evolving ethics. Yet until these moral concerns cease to limit open discussion of potential alternatives, we will be stuck in this sorry state of affairs. Mike Parker is a smooth-talking College sophomore from Washington, D.C. and he has some real trouble with deadlines. He translated this story from his native Portuguese, so kindly forgive any leaps of logic.