ACCIDENTS HAPPEN DEBUNKING THE ECSTASY EPIDEMIC

First of all, let me start by saying that the death of 16-year-old Brittney
Chambers last week was a tragic accident and I sympathize with her family
and friends.

But as tragic as it was, Brittney's death was still an accident and nothing
more. On her 16th birthday at a party in her own home, Brittney decided to
take a hit of Ecstasy. For whatever reason-God, genetics, bad luck,
whatever you want to call it-Brittney Chambers had a reaction to the drug,
slipped into a coma, and died four days later.

That's what happened, and that's all that needs to happen.

Unfortunately, the "accident" concept no longer seems to be a viable
explanation for anything bad that occurs in our society.

These days, when something goes wrong, it's instantly deemed part of a
trend, the first evidence of some previously invisible epidemic that is
threatening to wipe our species from the planet if we don't do something
fast. Most times that "something" involves politicians creating new laws or
harsher sentences. It's as if we believe that by blaming and punishing
someone when accidents occur we can transform such incidents into something
less random, more manageable and less likely to strike ourselves or our
loved ones.

The media is certainly complicit if not directly to blame for this sense
that everything is a part of some larger conspiracy to which blame can and
should be attached.

A college student gets raped and murdered in Costa Rica and we run the
headline "Are U.S. Exchange Students Safe?" Never mind that the statistics
tell us they are safer than students here at home. People used to get
pissed off while driving their cars, but now they make the news as the
latest example of a social plague we call "road rage." So it should come as
no surprise that when a young girl dies from a fluke reaction to an illegal
drug, it gets billed as the tip of an Ecstasy iceberg that is threatening
to destroy our nation's youth.

The idea of personal responsibility has been replaced by a theory that
everything happens as a result of someone else's actions.

People use to go to bars and get drunk, and when they broke the law, they
got arrested.

End of story.

But now we file charges against the waitress who served the drinks, the
bartender who poured them and the owner of the establishment. There was a
time when the person who actually shot somebody with a gun was held solely
responsible. Now we sometimes arrest the person who sold, gave or loaned
the shooter the gun, even if he didn't know how it would be used. We file
charges against anyone who knew that the bad guy had a gun and didn't stop
him. We even file suit against the company that manufactured the damned
gun. Nobody hates guns as much as I do, but what's next? Do we give the guy
on the assembly line that polishes trigger mechanisms three to five for
showing up at work?

Which brings me back to Brittney's case. Let's put it into perspective. A
16-year-old girl did something stupid, which means she was a pretty normal
kid. She and her friends were experimenting with drugs.

And before you put your hand over your mouth and feign a gasp, think back
real hard, because unless you're over 70, a real nerd, or spent your
teenage years living in a bubble, you probably did the same thing once upon
a time. In the big picture, little has changed over the years except the
names of our youthful experiments. What we called MDA has become known as
Ecstasy. True, it is in greater demand now than back then, but that's
attributable to its status as the new drug du jour.

As trendy drugs go, Ecstasy is actually one of the safest to come along in
a while.

Far fewer people are dying from Ecstasy than was the case with crack,
heroin, acid, meth or even cocaine.

So is Ecstasy an epidemic?

It's certainly the most popular drug among teenagers these days, but wait
five minutes and something new will come along.

Like fashion trends, such drugs come and go and there really isn't a hell
of a lot we can do about it. If we have learned anything from the war on
drugs, it's that our kids are the same as we were. They don't listen.

After spending billions of dollars and putting millions of people behind
bars, just as many kids are experimenting with drugs now as ever before.

I'm not condoning their actions in any way and God knows I hope my son is a
nerd lest I have to put him in a bubble, but kids will be kids when it
comes to experimenting, and accidents will continue to happen.

It's a sad reality that makes what we do next in the Brittney Chambers case
that much more important.

The police have arrested six people in connection with Brittney's death:
four juveniles, an 18-year-old girl named Rebecca Sheffield and her
20-year-old boyfriend Travis Schuerger. So what should we do with these six
young people?

Should we destroy six more lives under the guise of "sending a message"
about the dangers of Ecstasy, a message that every study ever conducted
tells us will not accomplish a single thing?

In the case of the four juveniles, do we take these kids who were just
trying to have fun at a birthday party-granted in a stupid fashion-away
from their families and put them behind bars? Will our children be safer
because these kids are sitting in a juvenile, or heaven forbid, adult
criminal justice system where they will, without question, become mentally
scarred for the rest of their lives?

And what should we do about young Sheffield and Schuerger if they are
convicted? Do we punish them for dispensing four hits of Ecstasy, or do we
really punish them for Brittney's death?

Since the Ecstasy was sold on school property, the two are facing up to 24
years in prison.

The reality is that had Brittney not died, the maximum sentence wouldn't
even be a consideration.

Will spending $1.5 million of our tax dollars to guarantee that Rebecca and
Travis are systematically beaten, raped and otherwise physically and
mentally tortured for a couple of decades before being released back into
our midst really serve some greater good? Heaven forbid we spend $10,000 to
at least try and get them help through counseling, rehab, boot camp or any
of the other programs that have actually been proven to rehabilitate young
offenders such as these two.

But the truth is, these more effective, more cost efficient alternatives to
prison wouldn't serve the real purpose here. The real purpose here is that
somebody has to be punished for the fact that Brittney decided to swallow
that pill and died, because if no one is punished, it means that no one is
to blame.

And if no one is to blame, it means that accidents really do happen.

And if accidents happen, it means that we might just wake up tomorrow, go
to work, not do anything wrong, and yet, something terrible could still
happen to us. It would mean that we are not in control-and that's a scary
proposition for most of us.

Brittney Chamber's death was a tragic accident.

Causing six more lives to be destroyed will not bring her back or prevent
anyone else from dying. Whatever happens to those few whose hands touched
the tiny pill before Brittney chose to swallow it, one thing is for sure:
it won't be an accident.