Fighting the "War on Drugs"
Lamer, Jeremy
A Report from the Field unday morning in the capital city of a midwestern state. Four people sit at a table in the corner of a deserted hotel ballroom, sipping dreadful coffee and eating...
...We've gathered an enormous amount of data...
...LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT: The Senator wants to avoid related issues—they erode his base...
...My experience as a teacher tells me that a lot of children are beaten down, verbally as well as physically, punish themselves as adults, and believe all kinds of things about how weak they are and what they need...
...In the case of A.A., people choose to join a religious group...
...I call it "the democratization of the hipster...
...LIBERAL MANAGER: Does he really believe that crap...
...centers and programs do—and every one of them costs money...
...LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT: The Senator has stated we could do that by sending all users straight to prison...
...Trouble is, the American people have a belief that, alone among nations, we should pay no taxes...
...We're teaching the lessons we're paid to teach, and we're paid a helluva lot more than teachers...
...That's why we've gathered this blue-ribbon panel to bring back to Washington the first People's Plan to end drug abuse...
...The illegal traffic would be larger than ever...
...The whole point of illegal drugs is to overturn rationing...
...None of this "just say no" stuff—why do people say yes in the first place...
...Ideas, too, get turned into so many packages...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: There must be some other alternative...
...COMMISSIONER: Oh, I think it does...
...We've got to make a commitment to jobs, health, housing, and education...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: When you say drugs, do you mean all drugs—including, say, LSD, steroids, prescription painkillers...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: You see, here's a fine example of an individual not advocating alcohol or embracing alcoholism, but merely using it to cope...
...Success is looking cool on TV...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: Hey, aspirin makes your stomach bleed...
...By the time they hear it in school, it bores them...
...When I'm in my home state, I'm better off drunk at night...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: Sony, Ellen, it's still religious...
...SENATOR: Well, Ronald Reagan always said that God created America with a special blessing and destiny...
...equivalent of Original Sin...
...Now where the hell is my Drug Plan...
...LIBERAL MANAGER: But isn't addiction a pretty good working model for how people harm themselves...
...LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT: What happened to the seed money...
...Some people are addicted to video games, or watching TV...
...It won't help, but it won't hurt, either, and it will toss old Arthur some job-creation...
...The American Way is full of risks...
...Maybe all of us are addicts in some way...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: For the same reason they always have, in every class and culture going back before people wrote history...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: For some people, priests are a necessity...
...meeting and you'll see how severely they judge themselves...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: I must say, we got a great group of ex-addicts...
...We already have twice the jail population we had ten years ago...
...The genetic factor is the A.A...
...COMMISSIONER: For the urban black kid, this is a devastating fiction...
...COMMISSIONER: But if all habits are addiction, the word means nothing...
...COMMISSIONER: And you still wouldn't stop it...
...He wobbles majestically forward...
...COMMISSIONER: There's no connection...
...I don't think heavy metal is more ennobling or enabling than rap...
...That's his heartfelt feeling, by the way, and the public response has been terrific...
...No one can know that...
...You go to meetings for the rest of your life, and you define yourself in the terminology of a group doctrine...
...Some believe it, some don't...
...How about education...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: I did...
...LIBERAL MANAGER: It stunts your precious sense of individuality...
...You can buy the motorcycle image, the surfboard image, the skinhead image—wear them every day or put them in the closet for Saturday night...
...Surely we don't have to overhaul the entire school system just to convey the danger of drugs...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: Television does work...
...And let's face it, drugs are democratic...
...Something bothering you, take a pill...
...When people "recognize a higher power" in A.A., they're paying tribute to forces greater than themselves...
...Something still bothering you, you didn't take the right pill...
...How the hell else could I come back here Thursday through Monday twice a month, talk to ten coffee Matches, visit six clinics, give three speeches, sit through two fund-raising dinners, have private meetings with people who want to bully me, and stand on freezing train platforms shaking hands with commuters...
...We wanted radical change and we got products for radical "life-styles...
...For them, its a necessity...
...At the table are the state COMMISSIONER of education, a black Ph.D., a political veteran with few illusions...
...LIBERAL MANAGER: Is God responsible for all this greed and ignorance...
...I initiated the whole concept of industrial pollution credits...
...Jimmy, there's no such thing as a Drug Plan...
...LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT: The Senator won't be here this morning...
...LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT: That doesn't explain ten-year-old drug runners, billions of profit to gangsters, assault, theft, and drive-by shooting...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: What's wrong with that...
...He'll go to a clinic, or obtain a regular prescription...
...Antihistamines dry out the prostate...
...But people who are maintained on Methadone are addicted, and some want more than their allowance...
...But they start making distinctions about what they can or can't control, rather than respond to everything by getting drunk...
...If not, you remain in a position of limiting drugs to protect people from themselves...
...Some of them don't even use the word God...
...LIBERAL MANAGER: The funding went to research in the field...
...Don't some alcoholics get that way by the same process that people get hooked on other drugs...
...Methadone, for example, is used at clinics because it blocks the effects of heroin without producing the same kind of high...
...LIBERAL MANAGER: I bet they'll take the funds from Medicare and schools...
...Rationing, by the way, implies the same idea...
...The committee adjourns in time to go home and watch the Super Bowl...
...I don't find addiction a useful metaphor...
...SENATOR: Okay, here it is...
...There's even a new group for alcoholics who are atheists and agnostics...
...Some people are addicted to fighting and war...
...The cliché is that it's been tried, but it hasn't...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: Sorry, I disagree about A.A...
...I'm going with a beefed-up federal police force and doubling the border patrol...
...you still have to submit to the group in exchange for what they call fellowship...
...LIBERAL MANAGER: Well, if you believe in choice, why not make drugs legal...
...And now you tell me the plan doesn't exist...
...LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT: Let's put it this way...
...Drugs don't lead to social breakdown, it's the other way round...
...Let people choose—at least have a minimal ration—then they could function without the agony of withdrawal or the threat of overdose...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: You'd have to put up a lot more cash than double...
...LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT: Well then, why doesn't television work...
...We could show the way right here in this state...
...He planned to study it on the flight back and release it in two weeks at our press conference with re-habbed addicts...
...If you buy the right things, your life is a fantasy trip...
...There are thousands of people in this city who would be dead or in the gutter without A.A...
...I don't judge them—sit in on one A.A...
...To watch TV or have sex every night is not necessarily...
...LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT: The Senator is a liberal, but he has his qualms about taking away the right to bear arms...
...Unseen by anyone, the Senator has entered...
...We've got to train and re-train our work force...
...LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT: Let's take this in sequence...
...LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT: We have to lay out steps we can take to motivate people, bring them into the mainstream...
...and lithium or antidepressants—used by many of the most famous maniacs in show business—and they work, too...
...LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT: Let's review where we're at...
...Use of drugs takes up the slack between social pressures and an individual's desire for release...
...Maybe we should come down hard on the media...
...COMMISSIONER: Hard drugs take choice away...
...We just can't get together on the answers...
...They only thing we can do is take away the market...
...COMMISSIONER: Every kid hears in school that crack and smack and so on can ruin your life...
...There would be more assault and robbery, not less...
...244 • DISSENT...
...COMMISSIONER: What's wrong with fellowship...
...The phone rings...
...We put money into the dealers' SPRING • 1991 • 241 War on Drugs pockets every time we close a health facility—or even when we outlaw advice on birth control...
...LIBERAL MANAGER: Then what difference does it make...
...Pour me some coffee, Larry, I've got a killer of a headache...
...He has a chance to cosponsor a bill to double crop substitution in Columbia and Peru...
...LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT: I mean drug education...
...I can't answer the senator's question...
...Of course you're referring to hard drug use among the lower classes, not fraternity kids, housewives, or executives...
...The figure of the rebel, for example, has no political content, no commitments...
...LIBERAL MANAGER: But drugs will change your personality, break up your marriage, alienate your children...
...Better than dog-eat-dog greed...
...We don't have an official religion in this country, so people are always latching on to far-out substitutes...
...the LIBERAL MANAGER, a woman who heads a local health organization called the Coalition of Urban Neighborhoods...
...or the drug groups based on it...
...We've locked away three times as many black people per thousand as South Africa...
...The Senator turns his back to confer with an S&L executive, as his Assistant listens carefully on the extension...
...The senator could help us simply by coming out for more drug programs based on the twelve-step program...
...COMMISSIONER: It's happening—but the lower you get on the social scale, the less chance you have of getting people to meetings...
...And I see our friend Herb doesn't really trust people to make choices...
...You can get away with a lot worse things than drugs in this society...
...There's a genetic factor, shared for instance by a great number of American Indians...
...works, by the way, and it doesn't cost anything except the rental of a meeting place...
...LIBERAL MANAGER: Why, Herb...
...I don't know why...
...Perfect...
...There's no one with less individuality than a drunk...
...Look...
...SENATOR: Too bad you're the only one talking about it...
...And what they learn in prison makes them more hardened criminals...
...It seems the appeal of death cuts across all classes...
...A rich person won't likely end up in the street...
...LIBERAL MANAGER: You don't know that, Arthur...
...Even if we sent the military and occupied those countries—which we couldn't—the coca plant would be grown elsewhere...
...COMMISSIONER: If you're lucky...
...COMMISSIONER: My friend, you are insensitive to human pain...
...We have educational conferences where governors "set standards...
...Otherwise what are we talking about today...
...But I disagree that rich people take the same risks...
...The payback is, we get to choose...
...I'm the Senator for the environment...
...There's a big distribution system waiting to pounce on marginal styles and merchandise them...
...If he said otherwise, he'd be replaced by someone who does believe it...
...Different strokes for different folks...
...The Senator wants to open with a definitive statement on the "why" of this drug blight...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: Hey, Larry, they know it already—from watching the tube...
...Oh, what you do for me, Toyota...
...That's always a winner...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: Why couldn't she just enjoy sex when she wanted to...
...SENATOR: Last time I heard it was when we were thinking there'd be a peace dividend...
...They are trying to replace bad habits with good ones, and SPRING • 1991 • 243 War on Drugs they're very frightened that all habits may be bad, and they need fellowship, as we all do...
...And don't doubt it, people do all kinds of drugs without addiction, even hard drugs—to say nothing of grass—which I find indispensable for sex with someone I hardly know...
...This is productive investment I'm talking about...
...LIBERAL MANAGER: Native Americans...
...LIBERAL MANAGER: And all these violent drug dealers and users can so easily get hold of guns...
...The easiest connection is on the corner...
...In a way, this is good, because it allows for individual mobility...
...Why did your uncle fall in front of the subway train loaded on barbiturates...
...So Methadone is sold on the black market, even though it's not euphoric for most people—you can imagine how many more people would try to buy extra cocaine or heroin to get really high...
...Four people sit at a table in the corner of a deserted hotel ballroom, sipping dreadful coffee and eating scrambled eggs and sweet rolls...
...COMMISSIONER...
...My little sister lived a life of pure chaos till she jointed a group of recovering sex addicts...
...Get the right sneakers, you fly...
...And why is it an African-American mayor gets hunted down and trapped for use of cocaine, when I know five senators who use it...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: I believe in a marketplace of maximum choice...
...People don't like feeling helpless...
...There are no more law enforcement costs and we even take in tax revenues, as we do with liquor...
...But no, I don't especially trust people in 242 • DISSENT War on Drugs general to make good choices...
...COMMISSIONER: Longer...
...You're referring now to the nature of America...
...But in the core urban areas, the so-called "social pressures" are very obvious...
...He's pro-aid to Catholic schools, pro-God in the Pledge of Allegiance, and he is not about to say that religion is an addiction...
...Meanwhile we have 42 pupils to a class, and we pay teachers less than janitors...
...That's why so many alcoholics turn to Alcoholics Anonymous...
...LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT: Wait a minute, the Senator is pro-priest...
...SENATOR: Damn right I use it to cope...
...COMMISSIONER: We find we don't agree...
...And cut out the profit for dealers...
...It won't work, and if you try to make it work, you're into enforcement again...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: Why is it the genetic factor is practically an article of faith in A.A...
...We eliminate the necessity to steal...
...We hoped the Senator could give us some guidelines...
...Not much has changed since the Kerner Commission Report in 1968, which said we have two nations in this country—rich and poor, white and black...
...I learned that in the sixties...
...And if you don't believe twelve-step programs are religions, just flick on the PBS channel and watch John Bradshaw or some other twelve-step preacher rant at his audience like an evangelical, with an answer to every human problem, and an insistence that God created man in the model of addiction...
...But he asked me to convey to you how important your report is...
...tranquilizers—which I wouldn't step on a plane without...
...Every time he comes here, the Senator appears at schools and centers .. . LIBERAL MANAGER: Pep talks don't stop drug use...
...I'd rather take those risks...
...LIBERAL MANAGER: Still, there's a lot of black stars now, and black rap groups get tremendous exposure on cable TV...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: Senator, I believe you're seriously hung over...
...COMMISSIONER: Are you implying we kept it for ourselves...
...They get the message as soon as they can talk...
...I see it as another choice people make, like having two martinis before dinner every night...
...Why can't we take away at least their assault rifles...
...But to eliminate drugs, we'd have to create schools that would make up for the rest of society—and even that would be ineffective unless graduates had access to good jobs...
...and a HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER in beard, tie, and Italian suit, who was a roving Maoist in the sixties but has since become a successful television producer and film consultant to the Senator...
...Why not stop cocaine at its source...
...SENATOR: I'll tell you what difference it makes...
...If you don't see a role for yourself in the dominant culture, you can always sell or use drugs...
...What have we got here that the Senator can use...
...How do you make connections with the world if you're not a star athlete or entertainer...
...I'm the Senator for children, and I've introduced landmark legislation defining standards for the healthy child...
...LIBERAL MANAGER: Oh, that's silly...
...But most alcoholics by nature are addicts...
...In this country, thousands of patent medicines contained opium derivatives up till World War I. The original Coca-Cola contained a tiny dose of cocaine...
...And a white president can conspire with a white attorney general and a marine colonel to break the law and ignore the Constitution, lie about it, and have the newspapers afraid to call him a liar...
...We've got to give people more ways of respecting themselves and doing useful work...
...A lot of white kids want their own version of the same experience...
...All I know is that addiction groups help...
...COMMISSIONER: If you've been in the street for awhile, you've got to agree...
...Believe me, we have hard drug use in every neighborhood Families fall apart everywhere, and a lot of individuals fall through the cracks...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: Naturally...
...Why does America have to have ten times the shooting death rate that other Western countries have...
...They are there because the SENATOR has flown back from Washington—and his LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT has called a meeting of the committee of local consultants hired to work out a drug program that would attract national attention and help the Senator raise money in other states...
...LIBERAL MANAGER: With side effects...
...SENATOR: Arthur, you've been saying that same thing for twenty years...
...There's a question of law enforcement here, and a question of teaching moral values...
...You pay a big price identifying yourself as an out-of-control addict...
...Prisons may be our only effective schools...
...LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT: This is driving me nuts...
...In addition to his sponsorship of the mobile clinic, the Senator has taken a strong stance on death to dealers...
...SENATOR: That's what I'm paid to do .. . LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT: Make the tough calls...
...And if you think the Senate is easy these days, or if a liberal Democrat gets the benefit of party leadership...
...SENATOR: I believe you're right...
...COMMISSIONER: What prisons, where...
...HIPPIE PHILOSOPHER: That's what I mean by American religion...
Vol. 38 • April 1991 • No. 2
