MR. BUSH, THE SILENCE ON YOUR DRUG USE ISN'T HELPFUL

I was surprised, but hardly shocked, to hear that President Bush all but
admitted to illicit drug use in a secretly taped conversation. I'm only
disappointed by the sleazy way the disclosure was disclosed and by the
president's reluctance to set the record straight.

Like many of the rest of us parents, he says he doesn't want to talk about
any of his alleged past drug use because he doesn't want other youngsters
to try it.

Unfortunately, experience shows, silence is a self-defeating way to
discourage kids from drug use.

And in Washington, where public ignorance feeds endless mischief, silence
can also lead to well-meaning but wrong-headed legislation.

In case you missed it, Bush suggests on tapes recorded before he became
president that he smoked marijuana in the past. He also dodged a question
on the tapes, whose authenticity the White House does not dispute, about
whether he had used cocaine.

The New York Times broke the story in a Page One report on Doug Wead, a
Christian activist who has published a book based in part on conversations
with Bush that Wead secretly recorded in 1998 and 1999. Wead has since
expressed regrets over releasing part of the conversations without Bush's
permission, a move that rivaled Linda Tripp's bugging of her chats with
Monica Lewinsky on the treachery scale. Wead announced that he is donating
the book's proceeds to charity. Ah, nothing concentrates your conscience
like having a nation of millions call you a sleazebag.

Fortunately for the president, the tapes' contents have done less damage to
Bush's reputation than to Wead's.

My disappointment comes with Bush's refusal, so far, to speak openly and
candidly about his past drug and alcohol use and how he recovered. He says
he does not want to answer the questions "Because I don't want some little
kid doing what I tried."

Take it from me, Mr. President, a lot of today's teenagers think you
"smoked and snorted," as one of my son's high school classmates put it,
anyway. Your silence does nothing to defuse their suspicions.

For the record, our president has never acknowledged using drugs, despite
repeated questions from nosy reporters during his days as Texas governor.
He has acknowledged a drinking problem that he appears to have kicked, to
his credit, through the wonder-working powers of his religious conversion.

His party-animal days involved nothing more than "just, you know, wild
behavior," he told Wead, although he did worry, apparently with
justification, that his opponents would revive allegations of cocaine use.

Bush's reputed "wild" days hardly make him unique among us, his fellow baby
boomers and post-boomers. Unfortunately, too few parents have a clue about
how to come clean with our own kids in ways that can help them to avoid our
mistakes -- and worse.

A national survey released by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America,
coincidentally a few days after disclosure of the Wead tapes, found that
the number of parents who report never talking with their children about
drugs actually has doubled in the past six years, from 6 percent in 1998 to
12 percent in 2004.

And while many of us parents say we've talked to our kids about drugs,
that's not what a lot of our kids are saying: 85 percent of the 1,205
surveyed parents said that they had talked to their children at least once
in the last 12 months about drugs, but only 30 percent of teenagers said
they've learned much about drug risks from their parents.

We need to share more straight talk, not silence, with our kids.

And more straight talk from the White House on down would help government
avoid doing greater harm, like the provision that Congress passed in 1998
that bars college students or applicants with a drug conviction from
receiving federal financial aid. If ever there was a case of throwing
obstacles in the way of young people who are trying to improve their lives,
regardless of past errors, this is it.

The provision's author, Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., says he intended the bill
to apply only to those convicted while they are students or loan
applicants, not to earlier convictions. He also has been trying to correct
that error with a new amendment, although the wheels of Congress have been
grinding slowly in that process.

In the meantime, we have a president who refuses to talk about his own drug
history, whatever it may be, and a Congress that continues to discriminate
against aspiring college students who are honest about their own past drug
use. That's nuts. We, the people, need to talk. Then Congress needs to act.
Leadership from the White House will help, Mr. President. Your silence will
not.