IF DRUGS ARE REALLY TO BE BANNED, DEFINITIONS MATTER

Let me get
this straight:

Out of two Post stories for May 23: the U.S. House
of Representatives can't pass a flood-relief bill that will affect 35
states - and North Dakota a great deal (page 2A) - but they can
pass 420-1 a bill that Rep. Rob Portman titled ''The Drug-Free
Communities Act of 1997'' (page 4A).

Yeah, right, Honorable Rob and congressional colleagues. The
millennium has arrived and we'll have ''drug-free communities'' in
the USA.

You really think you're going to take away from Americans our
prescription drugs? No? Then there will be drugs in American
communities. Over-the-counter drugs, perhaps: our pain-killers,
antihistamines, stomach-settlers, and all those drugs the ads tell
us to buy, buy, buy and take, take, take? Not them either?
Recreational drugs, then?

Try getting beer away from that new Republican voter, Joe
Six-pack, or deprive your more traditional country-club
Republicans of their wine and
''spirituous liquors.'' Or cigars, cigarettes, or gourmet, high-power,
super-caffeinated coffee. Those are recreational drugs, and they
will be all over American communities for the next couple of
decades or a whole lot longer.

It should be no surprise that some 420 members of Congress are
convinced that they can define ''drug,'' whatever logic and nature
has to say.

Problem is that the American press and public are too ignorant,
apathetic, cowardly, hypocritical, illogical, and/or zonked on their
favorite drugs to insist that our public servants talk about ''illicit
drugs'' and ''licit drugs'' - and think of themselves as only public
servants and not masters of the universe and giver(s) of all
names.

We can't start talking intelligently about what drugs our
communities will be free of and which we will tolerate until we
start making the licit/illicit, legal/illegal distinction.
Meantime we get the Congress we deserve, who may seriously
believe that ethyl alcohol, acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin), caffeine,
clemastine fumarate (Tavist), and nicotine aren't drugs. Sure - and
Janet Reno is really Anastasia Romanoff, Empress of Russia.

RICHARD D. ERLICH

Oxford