THE POT THICKENS IN LIBRARY RUCKUS

Even controversies that have the weight of a helium isotope -- such as the
one I'm about to launch into -- sometimes deserve airing. It's important to
know what issues disturb the souls of our fellow citizens. And, in those
cases, to figure out what the rest of us can do to help them find something
else to complain about.

The flap of the moment revolves around a scheduled appearance April 15-16
at the Newport Beach Central Library by author and Atlantic Monthly
correspondent Eric Schlosser. He's scheduled to talk about his bestseller,
"Fast Food Nation," described as chronicling everything you may or may not
want to know about the fast-food industry that helped shape (my own pun)
modern American culture.

Schlosser's talks on the 15th and 16th are $55 affairs for adults willing
to pay to hear him and get dinner and wine. However, in keeping with the
tradition of the Distinguished Speakers Lecture Series, Schlosser will
meet, between those appearances, with local high school students. He'll
talk about his book and take questions.

This is where our plot thickens. Or, if you will, thins.

Adam Probolsky, an Orange County pollster and political consultant,
discovered that Schlosser also wrote "Reefer Madness," a book that, among
other things, decries the criminalization of marijuana as part of the
larger war on drugs. He notified other parents and school officials, and
their unease built into what Probolsky calls "a swirl out there" because
Schlosser is being described as a "mentor" at the Saturday morning session.

"It's not that he's evil or that he should be silenced," he says. "The main
thrust is that he shouldn't be mentoring kids." Probolsky says his concern
is that, even if the marijuana issue doesn't come up, the teens might be
impressed with him and then go home and research him on the Internet.

That's where, Probolsky says, they'll probably discover his thoughts on
marijuana. Among those thoughts, he says in citing a Schlosser excerpt from
an interview, is that Schlosser said he'd rather have his kids smoke pot
than down hard liquor. As a designated "mentor," Probolsky argues, it sends
a mixed message to teens who are told to avoid pot at all costs.

For a moment, I gave Probolsky his due. In the abstract, maybe it's worth
talking about.

But that's the problem. It's all abstraction. The "controversy" goes poof
like a puff of pot smoke.

I don't buy for a second that the kind of kids who come to a library on a
Saturday morning would be intellectually overwhelmed by talk about
marijuana decriminalization.

Today's kids know all they need to know about pot. But that's not really
the point; the point is that even noted conservatives William F. Buckley
and former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz have lamented the war
on drugs as a failure. In so many words, they've said the same things as
Schlosser.

Would anyone question their spending an hour with teens?

And, by the way: Schlosser says he's not pro-pot in the first place. By
phone from his home in Northern California, he says, "I don't want to
encourage anyone to smoke pot. I have two kids. I don't want them to smoke
pot. I have no problem being harshly criticized for my views, but it would
really be helpful if people knew what those views were."

I'm not here to argue pot laws or what Schlosser has or hasn't said.
Probolsky says the issue remains "totally alive," even if no one is quite
sure what to do about it.

What should be done is to remember that ideas shouldn't scare us. Ideas
shouldn't prompt parents or, especially, school officials to be putting
even minor heat on public libraries for the speakers they recruit. That
notion is 10 times more threatening than anything Schlosser -- an
accomplished writer whom students ought to be exposed to -- might say in an
hour with them.