FORMER OKLAHOMA STATE U. PROF. SET ON BRINGING DOWN AMERICA'S WAR ON DRUGS

STILLWATER, Okla. -- Ron Dubois isn't going to back down -- try to make
him, and you'll lose. He speaks slowly without pausing, and he wants people
to listen -- maybe they should.

At 75, he's been a father, a potter, an Oklahoma State University professor
and an ardent preacher. Now, he's in a knock-down, drag-out prize fight to
bring down America's mighty war on drugs.

Dubois, former professor of art, has been fighting ignorance about drug use
and the estimated $17 billion spent on it each year for numerous reasons.
But the prime reason for Dubois' strong belief against the war on drugs is
because a family member, whose identity Dubois did not want published, was
a heroin addict and suffered the harsh effects of the drug war.

"He had an opiate addiction, and that has nothing to do with being a bad
person," Dubois said. "He became involved in his early teens, and at that
time, we didn't know anything about drugs or drug addiction. We went
through a series of experiences with him getting in trouble with the law
and being given several felonies."

Since then, Dubois has been fighting against the war on drugs in
conjunction with members of the Drug Forum Policy of Oklahoma, an
organization Dubois co-founded, which he said is meant to "build a bridge
between the false notions of lawmakers and the public regarding addiction
based on medical and research knowledge."

Dubois said the underlying agenda of the war on drugs is to punish drug
addicts.

"Their thinking is that if we hurt people bad enough, they are going to
stop," he said.

He said that tactic is useless.

"Most kids that get into drugs do so because it is illegal -- it's the
forbidden fruit syndrome, and the government doesn't seem to realize that,"
he said.

Instead of spending vast amounts of money fighting a futile battle, Dubois
favors drug treatment and alternate methods of eradicating drug abuse.

"If marijuana were legalized and prescribed by a doctor, it seems to be
that the kind of crime and need to steal in order to satisfy the addiction
would be eliminated," he said.

Dubois is, to say the least, outspoken. Those who are unaware of his cause
will eventually hear his points and in some cases, begin believing in
fighting the war on drugs -- Deanna Homer is one such person.

"He's the reason I got involved in this," said Homer, retired OSU language
lab supervisor. "I didn't have any understanding of what was going on until
he started pointing out all of the injustices. And I thought, 'This is
terrible. We are losing our basic rights in the name of fighting drugs.' I
just had to jump in."

Homer has become an active member of the Drug Policy Forum of Oklahoma.

Dubois has been seen as many things to many people, but some critics might
say he is simply a "neo-hippy" out to guarantee the availability of choice
mind-altering substances. However, he said he has never used any type of
narcotic and does not advocate its use.

Dubois would much rather talk about the drug war's numerous failings than
about himself, but beyond his barrage of drug policy information, one finds
a man who has been on the front lines of World War II, traveled the world,
taught art at OSU for 26 years and ventured to exotic lands to document
rare art forms on the verge of extinction.

Other than the love for his four children and wife, Thora, who teaches
piano lessons in their home, Dubois said art is his passion. At one point
in his life, it spared him from certain death.

During the first of many WWII American battles in France, Dubois' 29th
Infantry Division came under fire and he was among the injured.

"It was a superficial wound, but it was enough to take me out of action,"
he said.

Before he returned to action, he was hired as a military artist. He said if
he hadn't received the position, he would, without question, be dead
because he later found out that his division was completely wiped out
during the war.

After the war, Dubois graduated from the University of California-Berkeley
with an art degree in 1953.

After graduation, he set out to continue his education in Paris, but along
the way, met his future wife, Thora.

"She had gone (to Paris) at the same time on another boat that happened to
have a few classmates from the university, so when I got to Paris, I looked
them up, and I met her," he said.

They returned to North America in 1954 to Thora's hometown, Winnipeg,
Canada. In 1960, Dubois came to OSU as an art professor.

"I stayed (at OSU) because I was doing what I wanted to do," he said. "I
enjoyed teaching and the students. I was involved in pottery, art history
and introduced the first African art course in the state. When I retired
nobody took it over."

He said he received a Fulbright scholarship in Nigeria as a result of the
pioneering class.

"After I retired (in 1986), I went to Nigeria and came back with all of
this incredible material on film that I'm still working on," he said. "The
easiest part of making a film is to shoot it. The hardest is the
post-production part."

Dubois edits the video in his attic and is working with Educational
Television Services with aid from a Ford Foundation grant.

His work may illuminate other cultures, but two of his loves are traveling
and learning about diverse religions.

Although a practicing Unitarian, Dubois said after extensive studies of
relatively unknown religions, he adopted an African religion's belief in
the deity of indeterminacy.

"It is always standing at the crossroads, and when you decide to take one
road, your life goes in one direction, and if you take another, it would
have gone another way," he said.

The road Dubois has traveled has been long and not without daunting
obstacles, but Dubois said he accepts the way his life turned out.

"I would like people to remember me as a person who opened my students'
eyes to vistas they wouldn't have seen otherwise," he said. "I also would
like them to know that I was not only a potter, but sort of a potter-priest
interested in making connections between pottery and all other disciplines
and fields of knowledge."