Legalization

Thank you, Jennifer, for posting the ACLU's position paper "Against Drug Prohibition," and to the other members of the forum for their reactions. This is an important discussion.

I was surprised to see that the ACLU piece was dated 1995, which means that some of the information is out of date. Most notably, I think that the number of nonviolent drug offenders in prison has risen dramatically during the past decade.

There has been growing support for legalization of drugs across the political spectrum, from William Buckley and the National Review on the libertarian/conservative right to the George Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance on the left, during the past ten years. Unfortunately, passions run so high and opinions are so polarized that it's almost impossible to get representatives of the opposing points of view on the same stage to discuss the issue. Indeed, it was hailed as a great breakthrough when former drug czar Charles Bennett and Rep. Charles Rangel squared off against former Baltimore mayor Curt Smolke and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson at a CASA conference two years ago. Unfortunately that event, which was posted on the Web for a while, is no longer available. I do think that legalization is a point of view that could benefit from a lot of public debate and compromise.

I don't believe for a minute that nonviolent drug users should spend time in prison simply for using, particularly those who are addicted and need medical attention. I also strongly advocate for harm-reduction measures such as needle exchange and methadone maintenance, and for meeting abusers where they are at rather than trying to ram abstinence down their throats if they are not a threat to themselves or others. That said, I have problems with some advocates of legalization whose main concern seems to be to make the world safe for drug use. I think we need to discuss, for example, the differences between marijuana and crystal meth. Do we really want to sell crack or angel dust over the counter? Should teens really be allowed to drop E at will at raves in the woods? I also believe that many lives have been saved by mandated treatment of substance abusers, and many lives have been lost because we did not insist, as a society, that people in need get help for their illness. I wonder if the ACLU would support mandated treatment for the abuse of a substance that was legal? In addition, I think we need to do a better job of making drugs less attractive and available to teens. Finally, if drugs are legalized, that means that they can be advertised, according to every Supreme Court decision thus far rendered. Madison Ave. has already glorified "heroin chic" in fashion ads. Can you imagine what they'd do with heroin if it were a legal product? After covering the industry as an editor and writer for more than twenty years, I can.

On this subject, I saw what I thought was a particularly insidious Bacardi and Cola commercial on a Yankees broadcast the other day. I mentioned it yesterday to a friend who has two children who are still in grade school as an example of the type of alcoholic beverage advertising that turns my stomach. It's a tongue-in-cheek take on an air-headed babe desperately wanting two "wild and crazy guys" to remember her name, and it implies somehow that Bacardi and Cola "gets it done," whatever "it" is.

My friend said that he loved the commercial, and so did his two kids, the oldest of whom is in fifth grade. What he particularly liked is that it didn't make it seem like you "needed" the beverage to succeed like so many alcohol ads do. It's "just fun." The fact that ten-year olds are associating rum and Coke, which was certainly one of the first hard-liquor drinks I regularly imbibed as an underage drinker, with "fun" is precisely why I hate the ad. In fact, I can't remember the last time I saw an adult order a rum and Coke.

The beer, booze and wine industry gets apoplectic when you suggest that their products are as mind-altering as marijuana, or can do as much — or more — damage to the body than heroin. They are and they can. And I'd venture to say that alcohol has a far more adverse effect on more families in our society than either of these other two substances, perhaps because it is so widely accessible and is so thoroughly woven into the fabric of our culture that it supports whole other industries, such as college and professional sports and the media that carry them.

I think the War on Drugs is a sham on many levels. I don't believe prohibition works. But just as we learned lessons from that failed experiment in 20th century America, I think that any discussion of the legalization of other drugs needs to include a hard look at the state of alcohol marketing and the abuse of prescribed medications such as OxyContin and Pseudo-ephedrine today. And that, of course, is why the alcohol, pharmaceutical and media industries, with a deep and vast pool of resources and clout, will oppose any meaningful discussion of legalization (or de-criminalization) to their last drop of lobbying dollars.

That doesn't mean, however, that they are invincible. What we need to do is open the minds of a lot of well-meaning people whose only motive in supporting interdiction and incarceraton is protecting their kids, as my friend put it yesterday, from addicts like you and me whom they view as "predators" out to ensnare their children. Meanwhile, dad can't take his eyes off the "Coors Twins" who are young enough to be his daughters (or am I just speaking for myself?) . That, to my mind, is where the real ensnaring takes place.

Grand Central Terminal

Lower Level, Grand Central Terminal

It seems wrong.
He follows me into the men's room
and unzips.
I glare at the cracked blue capillaries
in the ghostly porcelian
standing like an open coffin
before my boy's eyes.
Grand Central Terminal
is a patrician,
rank and seedy;
the Yankees fly in airplanes now.
There is no one else here.
I garble "no" to a question
I never really hear
and run,
fear
transporting me up the ramp,
past the bookstall that sells
The Evergreen Review,
to the street.
I suck in
the air of survival.
I tell no one.
I should not have been there.
II.
9/11 is raw.
Automatic weapons jut above backpacks;
fatigues weave through suits
dancing the waltz of Return to Normalcy.
I don't think I've ever noticed
the police desk outside the restrooms.
The food court is waking up.
Curry and pastry
tantalize my empty stomach;
clinks and sizzling and spatulas
sound in my sleepless ears.
I am conflicted.
My sphincter pulses.
I'm scared.
Should I file a report?
Should I leave a picture?
Is Carrick really missing
if she's where she thinks
she wants to be?
What if they find a body
and don't know
to whom it belongs?
III.
Down ten milligrams of methadone
as she starts to withdraw,
Carrick sweats on the platform
as we wait for the 5:58.
We will meet Deirdre in front
of the New York Public Library.
Four years have passed.
We are intact.
Carrick hands me her iPod
to listen to "All of Me"
performed by a throwback band
she has befriended in Central Park.
She is sharing her music again.
A strap on Carrick's bodice rips
as she scratches her back,
and gives me that goofy look.
At the terminal,
we buy thread
and a needle
at Rite Aid,
and unconsciously set up shop
ten yards from the police desk,
which is just outside the rest rooms.
I am not aware of soldiers.
I jab at the strap
and pull the thread through
the fabric
in jagged loops.
It occurs to me
that this space is sacred.
It contains multitudes.
We hear Harold Bloom
propound on Walt Whitman's
autoerotic tendencies
before two stentorian voices
devoid of New York
make Leaves of Grass sound
like drawing-room poetry.
We laugh and chide
on the bus ride to Deirdre's car.
No one wants to hear me propound.
Deirdre stifles her cough;
Carrick wants an East Side penthouse
and a mansion on North Broadway in Yonkers
where she will let graffiti artists tag her stone walls
with flowers.
I reflect on Whitman and
am reminded of our epitaphs —
or mine, at least —
If you want us again, look for us under your boot-soles,
and that's just fine and dandy,
as Pop would say.

"You're a Hypocrite"

"I thought you'd understand, dad."

"Why?"

"Because when you were a teenager, you went to the woods, too."

"Well, yes, I do understand. And that's why you can't go to the woods."

"You're a hypocrite."

To riff on the line Stan Mack used to use for his Real Life Funnies strip in the Village Voice, all dialogue is guaranteed to have been engaged an hour or so ago with my 16-year-old son, Duncan.

It was a first-game-of-the-football-season-there's-probably-a-party-tonight ritual going on all over America. In my dreams, at least. I wonder how many parents are actually not only asking their kids where they are going at night but also calling their bluff when they appear to by lying? And if they catch them in their lies, how many are serving up consequences?

If you listen to Duncan, absolutely no one.

"You're the only parents who feels this way," he told me. "You're going up against all of Hastings."

I'd already made it clear that although he thinks that everyone is drinking in the woods, or at unsupervised house parties, he's just not looking for the kids who don't. It seemed fruitless to make the point that we aren't the only parents who feel that drinking shouldn't be a required course for high school. Or middle school, for that matter.

In our case, we've made it clear that if Duncan drinks, or evens hangs out at a keg or an unsupervised house party, he's not going to be driving an automobile any time soon. The lure of the culture of the keg is so strong, however, that I'm not sure that this threat will be enough to stop him from talking the risk.

Our conversation in the car this afternoon was right out of the textbook of kids pushing the limits as far as they can because that's their job.

"I don't drink myself."

"I go to take care of my friends in case they drink too much."

"It's the only way to socialize. There's nothing else to do."

"What you're telling me is that you don't trust any of my friends."

I was driving Duncan to the American Legion Hall in Harrison, where he has a performance of Macbeth tonight. As we were pulling up, I asked him why he hadn't responded to our offer to bring a couple of his friends to see him on stage. None of them had been to the shows in Untermeyer Park earlier this summer.

"Because I want them to have fun, dad," he said. "It's Saturday night."

That pretty much sums up where the whole conversation was coming from, and going. Sadly, so many teen relationships are built on the tenuous foundation of being one of the gang, rather than on a mutual respect for each others' interests and endeavors.

Culturally, teens mimic adults, of course. And when adults get together en masse, they do drugs — illegal and legal. All I'd need to do to confirm that is to turn on a sporting event. As soon as there's a commercial, you can be sure they'll be a group of (young) adults getting ready to "socialize" with a bottle of whatever.

The Journal of Public Health Policy last week released a series of papers that deal with alcohol marketing and youth from a public health standpoint. If you read no others, take a look at the editors' introduction and former FDA chairman David Kessler's commentary. All of the articles will remain online for free until February.

Here are the opening paragraphs of the introduction:

If you've tooled around Elephant on Main Street, you've seen similar information. But we've got a long way to go before most people understand how serious a threat alcohol is to their children.

The day before these papers came out, I met a village trustte at the supermarket. He talked about an article that ran about our family in the local newspaper after Saving Carrick aired. Then he asked the question on the minds of village elders everywhere.

"Do you think we have a serious drug problem here?"

"Yes, I do," I responded. "I know that the police say that the incidents are down in the woods, but I think that kids are just drinking elsewhere, and that it's as bad as it has been."

"I don't mean drinking,' he said. "I mean drugs like heroin and meth. And pot, though not so much. But cocaine."

So I gave my little speech about alcohol being just as much a drug as the other substances, as well as being just as potentially lethal — and more dangerous to most of "our" kids because it was much more prevalent.

"I really don't think we have a serious heroin or meth or cocaine problem here," I said. "But alcohol use is rampant."

I don't know if I convinced him, although he did allow that binge drinking seemed to be much worse nowadays than when we were kids. Most people who say that follow up with the argument that the drinking age should be reduced to 18, as it was when we was growing up. The premise is that college-age kids would not binge drink if they could take a glass of Chablis whenever they wanted to chill and discuss Kant. He didn't make that argument, which is good. I 'm doing my damnedest to keep my equilibrium when talking to people who just don't have a clue.

Of course, if you listen to Duncan, I'm the most clueless man in the New York metropolitan region.

I'm listening to him. But I'm not buying.

"Dealing with Dealers"

Randy Cohen, who writes "The Ethicist" column for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, responded last week to a readed who asked:

Ask yourself how you'd answer, then read Cohen's response (I'm linking to the Houston Chronicle's version of the column hoping that it does not, like the Times, require registration and payment after a week).

Then let us know what you think, and if Cohen's response had any impact on where you now stand.

Phase III

Why are there so many impediments in the way of people who want to kick their habits.

A very close friend of ours is incommunicado in a detox this morning, trying to kick methadone. Because methadone maintenance programs, at least in New York, are geared more toward control more than in reaching the addicts where they're at, our friend has been buying his doses on the street. This is not only expensive, it's risky. He was already busted once by overzealous undercover cops who must have fantasized that they were breaking up a massive drug cartel. He was lucky enough to get off with a fine and a day in a (pathetic) drug-education program, but he's tired of looking over his shoulder. I only hope that he's able to able to stay clean; it will be the fourth methadone detox he's gone through over 15 years.

Deirdre and Carrick take a train to Washington D.C. this evening to appear tomorrow at a press conference where the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration will release the annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health survey. The annual survey tracks the number of persons who are abusing illegal drugs, pharmaceuticals, alcohol and tobacco in the U.S.

"The release of the 2004 survey is the highlight of the annual National Alcohol & Drug Addiction Recovery Month press conference that ushers in a month long observance lauding the gains made by those in recovery from alcohol and drug abuse, as well as treatment providers," the SAMSHA press release says.

Carrick is one of those success stories. But she and Deirdre are not travelling to D.C. to crow about her. They intend to make the point that there would be many more success stories if we had a coherent and compassionate drug policy. As it stands, it seems we'd rather spend money on locking people up in jails than treating their disease.

Phase I of our campaign was filming "Saving Carrick." It reached millions on July 29, and we hope that it will encourage other people to speak out publically about addiction and recovery .

Phase II of our campaign was The Elephant on Main Street website, which we launched to flesh out the story that Dateline told and to provide a platform for everyone to talk about the issues "Saving Carrick" raises. We have been deeply touched by the stories of others on this site, and believe that the quality of the posts bodes well for building it into a dynamic force for both support and advocacy. I've not been able to develop narrative section of Elephant as well or as quickly as I'd intended, but hope to start spending an hour or two on it daily as soon as I catch up with work.

Phase III is getting out and spreading the word, meeting by meeting, press conference by press conference. Last week we were invited to deliver the keynote address at the Carolinas Conference on Addiction and Recovery in Chapel Hill, NC, on October 5. The theme of this year is "Addiction: A Family Disease," and we're trying our best to get as many of the family there as we can, work and school schedules permitting.

We've got huge shoes to fill. The original keynote speaker, the Rev. Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco, had to bow out for personal reasons. He's a man after our own hearts.

"The mid-1980s saw the emergence of "Crack" - cheap cocaine sold at $1-$2 a hit. Rev. Williams' son and daughter were claimed for a time by the drug," according to a profile on the PBS website. "But instead of calling for more police or street vigilantism, Williams led marches. He set up a microphone for drug dealers and drug users to tell their stories. He invited those affected to join with his congregation.

"All of those gathered stood up together," he said. "The Glide staff, black community leaders, addicts, prostitutes, and grandmothers - poor, wealthy, illiterate and educated - we told our stories of recovery. We told our stories of faith and our stories of resistance."

The only way to blast through the impediment, we believe, is by telling our stories. If enough of us do so, all of our individual tales will meld into a defeaning roar.