DRUG ABUSE DEBATE: LEGALIZATION, MEDICATION OR THERAPY?

On a wall at Beit T'Shuvah's sanctuary there are plaques with the
names of those connected with Beit T'Shuvah who have passed away. One
of those names is that of Josh Lowenthal, a former resident who died
on June 11, 1995.

The Jewish Journal recently ran a story about "One-Way Ticket," Rita
Lowenthal's memoir about her son, Josh, who was addicted to heroin
from the age of 13 until his death from a self-administered overdose
25 years later. Lowenthal's moving account of her son's life
punctures the myth that addiction can't happen to Jews. It can, and it does.

Another myth that Lowenthal would like to puncture is that if addicts
only had enough willpower, they could kick the habit -- that only
weak-willed people can't pull themselves out of the addiction abyss.

A recent Newsweek cover story is called, "The Hunt for an Addiction
Vaccine." The article says that science views addiction not as a
failure of willpower, but as a "chronic, relapsing brain disorder to
be managed with all the tools at medicine's disposal," and that the
National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA) is developing and testing
compounds that could prevent or treat addiction.

NIDA scientists have concluded that there are three kinds of
self-control: putting off present gratification for a later reward,
processing sufficient information before making a decision and being
able to change responses that have become automatic.

It should come as no surprise that addicts score poorly in all these
categories. In other words, addicts' brains are wired to opt for
immediate rewards, to leap before they look, and to keep repeating
accustomed behavior in a rote manner. The medicines in development
would change the addict's responses in all three areas.

Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy
Alliance, has a different focus: He objects to what he calls the
massive failure of the global war on drugs. Like a growing number of
responsible voices, Nadelmann argues for drug legalization, or at
least decriminalization.

In a recent article in Foreign Policy magazine, Nadelmann makes the
case that the war on drugs cannot be won -- he cites "mountains of
evidence documenting its moral and ideological bankruptcy." He writes
that U.S. administrations have let rhetoric and ideology drive
policy, and that in countries that have adopted a different way of
dealing with drugs and addicts -- Britain, Canada, Germany, the
Netherlands and Switzerland -- the result has been "a reduction in
drug-related harms without increasing drug use."

When asked about this, Beit T'Shuvah staff and residents uniformly
say that legalization and pharmacological addiction treatments are
beside the point. Their attitude is that addiction -- defined in
their Web site as the "obsessive pursuit of drugs, alcohol, food,
sex, money, property and/or prestige" -- is not about drugs, it's
about the issues that lead to drug use, issues that also lead to
other self-destructive behavior.

One long-time Beit T'Shuvah resident, a middle-age man with an MBA
and a background in the entertainment industry, said that "you can
solve your drug problem and still not be any closer to an effective
life. The point is to find out what the problems underneath are: not
living your life effectively, not living it with truth. The problem
is not the drugs.

"You can legalize drugs, you can find chemical ways of neutralizing
the effects of drugs, but the end result will be the same: the root
problem will still be there, and the person who has that problem will
suffer in a different way. If it's not drug addiction, if it's not
incarceration, it'll be family dysfunction or abuse or other issues.
These are all manifestations of a deeper problem, just as drug
addiction or alcoholism is a manifestation of a deeper problem. And
it's that deeper problem that has to be treated."

Lowenthal agrees that addiction's deeper problems should be
addressed: "Anyone who has been shamed and punished for addiction
needs understanding and support." But she points out that the
situation with illegal drugs, as opposed to alcohol or prescription
drugs, makes users subject to the law: Her son was in and out of San
Quentin and other prisons because he stole in order to maintain his
addiction. "Try getting a student loan, a job, or sympathetic in-laws
after serving time in prison," Lowenthal says.

If her son had lived in a society where heroin use is not a crime and
where it's cheaply available, then he probably wouldn't have stolen,
she believes. He probably wouldn't have gone to prison over and over,
and he might not have chosen to take his own life at the age of 38.