A TOKE ISN'T JUST A TOKEN THING

We live in a remarkably ambiguous world. For instance, there has been
no shortage of headlines and news concerning BALCO and
performance-enhancing drugs. We are determined to get to the bottom of
it, identify the perpetrators, discipline the guilty. As fans, we are
resolute in our conviction to protect the integrity of the games.

At the same time, Ricky Williams recently announced he was retiring
from football. He suggested he failed a drug test to instigate the
retirement. In sum, he basically would rather smoke pot and hang out
with Lenny Kravitz than make millions playing football.

Now, take a moment and think about that, especially if you are a
parent of a still impressionable and vulnerable teen-ager.

Williams shouldn't have to answer to anyone about his choice of
career, or his choice of music - although one might suggest he has not
truly experienced musical composition in its most righteous form until
he has listened to the lonesome warbling of one Bill "Big Mon" Monroe.

But some details of this development seem to be completely ignored.
First, there is the realization that, apparently, marijuana appears to
have impacted Williams' life in such a way that he prefers it to
fortune and fame. And second, there is the fact that ingesting,
possessing or selling marijuana is against the law, just like steroids.

Still, there has been no indignation about Williams' announcement, no
investigation, no fallout whatsoever. The response might be the same
if he announced he was retiring from football to devote his time to
assembling model airplanes.

Society seems more concerned with protecting sports and home run
records than it is in protecting children from getting the wrong
impression about substance abuse. That is an oversimplification,
probably overstated. But it needs to be.

"It's a huge problem," said Michael Mahon, a counselor with West
County Psychological Associates, who works with area schools and
troubled teens. "And it's only an analogy of what's going on in society."

Read the paper. Look at the statistics, the wasted lives, the
shattered families. Consider the disturbing numbers that no one wants
to think about. Our casual approach to things such as marijuana and
alcohol are contributing to an epidemic environment among kids.
According to the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse, the age of
drug awareness is now 13, or seventh grade. Twenty years ago, it was
16.

Twenty percent of eighth graders and 50 percent of 12th graders report
using marijuana. Studies show children and adolescents run a
significantly higher risk of addiction than adults. Similar studies
show marijuana causes severe damage to the body and can reduce IQ by
as much as 20 points.

Maybe you smoked a bone or two in your tie-dye days, maybe you think
it's no big deal. You should know better now. The average batch of
marijuana in the 1960s contained 0.2 percent delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol
(THC), its main mood-altering chemical. According to a Child Care
Services parenting handout, today's basic Mary Jane contains at least
5 percent THC, or 25 times the old concentration. That, along with
four hundred other assorted chemicals, adversely affects the brain,
lungs, heart, gonads (ovaries or testes) and immune system. In
preteens and young adolescents, heavy use of marijuana can impair
growth and development.

Everyone wants to nail the Olympic athletes or the ballplayers for
taking steroids. But the consequences for breaking the rules when it
comes to drug or alcohol abuse are relatively laughable, especially
within sports. Remember, that was Williams' third violation. And he is
already talking about allowing the smoke to clear long enough next
year to make a comeback with the Raiders.

"If it's a problem at the professional level, I assure you it is an
even larger problem at the high school level," Mahon said.

There are parents who actually believe supervising these activities at
parties in their home makes it OK, discourages their kids from doing
it elsewhere. Evidence paints a drastically different picture. For
kids, the permissive message comes through loud and clear.

A lot of people thought Rams defensive end Leonard Little got off easy
when his inebriated driving caused a fatality. They're wrong. Little
didn't get off easy. He got the same sentence you or I might have
gotten. In fact, you or I might have gotten a lesser punishment. Who
should be more ashamed of that state of affairs, Little or a culture
that puts such a cheap value on human life, that promotes an Animal
House attitude toward a deadly serious problem?

Kids are bombarded with these signs. If they watch a game on
television, they will see in the neighborhood of 35-40 beer
commercials. They will see young, beautiful, extremely hip people,
whose lives are being dramatically enhanced by the presence of beer.
There are no middle-aged mugs anywhere to be found.

If you've been to an NFL game, you know there were more lucid people
walking around Woodstock. A significant portion of the football crowd
spent the better part of the morning sitting in the parking lot
pounding beers before they started double-fisting at the concession
stand. Oh and by the way, a significant portion of that same crowd
will be driving home, perhaps with kids in the car.

"I'm not trying to shoot all of this down," Mahon said. "But we have
to decide as a society what we want to tolerate. It's destroying
people's lives. If that's what we want, OK. But let's be real about
it."

This column isn't a chat with the church lady, not by a long shot.
This is as much a self-evaluation as it is a sermon. This parent has
done his fair share of experimenting, made more bad choices than he
cares to remember. He continues to make mistakes.

But whether we want to admit it or not, whether we're comfortable or
not, things are out of whack. This relaxed environment is contributing
to the delinquency of our minors. It is not any one thing, it is all
of these things, all at once. And it is making it awfully hard for
kids to make the right choices in life.