REEFER GLADNESS

Drug Users In The Next Office And Atop The Corporate Ladder

The case of Ed Rosenthal, the East Bay medical marijuana grower who escaped
a heavy federal jail sentence earlier this month, suggests one rationale
for legalizing pot: It comforts the sick and dying. The case of corporate
tycoon Peter B. Lewis suggests another -- one that involves many more people.

Lewis, who stepped down in 2001 after 36 years as CEO of Progressive
Insurance, is widely admired as a hard-driving, innovative executive who
transformed his company from a tiny player into the nation's third-largest
auto insurer -- "a prodigiously growing, solidly successful stock market
standout," as Fortune magazine put it. Originally specializing in coverage
for high-risk drivers, an area where it quickly became a leader,
Progressive later moved into other types of auto insurance, making a name
for itself through direct sales, candid price comparisons, and fast claims
service. Between 1990 and 1999, the company had compounded growth of more
than 23 percent, compared to an industry average of less than 5 percent.
Progressive was the first insurer with a Web site and the first to sell
policies online, pioneering forays that paid off dramatically. Its revenues
jumped from $3.5 billion in 1996 to $9.3 billion in 2002.

Lewis, the man who accomplished all this, remains Progressive's chairman
and owns more than a tenth of the company's shares, making him a
billionaire. Observers call him a perfectionist, "an extraordinary
businessman," and "an absolutist about untiring effort." They also call him
"a functioning pothead."

Although he declined to comment on the question while he was CEO, friends
said Lewis was a regular marijuana smoker. In 2000, these reports were
confirmed in a very public way: Lewis was arrested for marijuana and
hashish possession at the Auckland, New Zealand, airport. The authorities
released him after he made a donation to a local drug rehabilitation
center. The next year, when he was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal
about his financial support for drug policy reform, he observed, "My
personal experience lets me understand and have a view of the relative
effects of some of these substances. "

With his remarkable record of achievement, Lewis does not quite fit the
pothead stereotype promoted in taxpayer-funded public service
announcements: the lazy, stupid loser who can't get it together.

A knowledge engineer in his early 30s who smokes marijuana about once a
week summed up the official message this way: "Pot will destroy your life,
and you'll end up sitting in a room, not caring about anything, watching
TV, unemployed and broke."

Most marijuana users do not become billionaires, of course, but neither do
most of them lead empty, unproductive lives. As misleading as it may be to
hold Peter Lewis' career up as an example of what marijuana can do, it is
equally misleading to cite users who never amount to anything as evidence
of the drug's effects. The typical pot smoker lies somewhere between these
two extremes.

Yet it's the failures who spring to mind when people think about marijuana,
mainly because they're conspicuous. They call attention to themselves
through excessive, ostentatious indulgence that gets them into trouble at
school and work. Responsible users, by contrast, have something to lose and
therefore tend to be circumspect.

As a pot-smoking MBA in his mid-30s put it, "If I had to staple it to my
resume, I wouldn't get any jobs." Others worry about losing professional
licenses or about negative reactions from relatives or acquaintances. The
upshot is that the most noticeable pot smokers, who tend to be the most
dysfunctional, are the ones who come to represent the whole class in the
public mind. Well-adjusted, high-achieving pot smokers tend to keep their
drug use private, so they're not even recognized as marijuana users --
unless, like Peter Lewis, they happen to get arrested.

More generally, people who use illegal drugs in a controlled, inconspicuous
way are not inclined to stand up and announce the fact. Prohibition renders
them invisible, because they fear the legal, social and economic
consequences of speaking up. The illegal drug users who register with the
general public are the ones who get into trouble or make a nuisance of
themselves.

We see the drug users who get hauled away by the police, who nod off in
doorways and on park benches, who beg on the street or break into cars. We
do not see the drug users who hold down a job, pay the rent or the
mortgage, and support a family. In the absence of evidence to the contrary,
people naturally assume that most illegal drug users are like the ones they
notice, who are apt to be the least discreet and the most anti-social. This
is like assuming that the wino passed out in the gutter is a typical drinker.

In my book, "Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use," I try to correct this
kind of misperception by describing people who lead responsible,
productive, fulfilling lives despite their politically incorrect choice of
intoxicants. These people include:

- -- A pioneering software designer in his 50s who smoked marijuana nearly
every day for about 15 years, generally taking a puff or two in the evening
while reading the paper or drinking a glass of wine.

- -- A neuroscientist in his late 20s who uses LSD and other psychedelics to
gain self-insight and take stock of his life.

- -- A retired professor who calls MDMA (a.k.a. ecstasy) "wonderful" for
achieving "a kind of spiritual intimacy, a loving relationship, an openness
to dialogue that nothing else can quite match."

- -- A marketing specialist in her 20s who used to crush and snort Ritalin in
college "when I had a lot of reading to do, I had slacked off on my schoolwork,

and I had a big final coming up."

- -- A factory production manager in his 50s who snorted cocaine around 100
times at parties and found that "it gave a very pleasant high," helped him
think, and made him more talkative.

- -- A horticulturist in his 40s who takes morphine pills at the end of the
week as a way of unwinding and relieving the aches and pains from the hard
manual labor required by his landscaping business.

- -- A social worker in her 50s who uses heroin from time to time as a
complement to rest and relaxation.

Survey data indicate that people like these are far more typical of illegal
drug users than are the aimless potheads, thieving junkies and murderous
speed freaks who populate anti-drug ads, TV shows and movies. Only a small
minority of people who take illegal drugs are heavy users. This is true not
only of marijuana but of such reputedly powerful substances as cocaine,
methamphetamine and heroin.

Surveys that ask about drug-related problems -- for example, financial
strain, impaired health, difficulty using the drug in moderation, trouble
at work or home -- likewise find that, as with alcohol, only a small
minority of users have habits that seriously disrupt their lives.

According to the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (the very
name of which reflects the government's refusal to acknowledge the
distinction between use and abuse), something like 94 million Americans,
more than two-fifths of the population over age 12, have used illegal
drugs. More than 12 percent -- 28 million or so -- have used them in the
last year.

Marijuana is by far the most popular prohibited intoxicant, consumed by
three-quarters of illegal drug users in the last year, compared to less
than 2 percent who took heroin.

Around 12 percent of the people who use marijuana in a given year, and
about 3 percent of those who have ever tried it, report smoking it on 300
or more days in the previous year. Even this level of use does not
necessarily signify a problem, since daily users include people who smoke a
little marijuana in the evening, in much the same way as others might enjoy
a beer or a cocktail, as well as people who are stoned all the time.

Of the 28 million Americans who have used cocaine, only about 1.7 million,
or 6 percent, have used it in the last month. For crack, said to be more
addictive than cocaine powder, the percentage is about the same. In a 1993
survey of young adults, only 7 percent of past-month cocaine users were
taking the drug every day. The picture is similar for users of
prescription-type stimulants generally and methamphetamine in particular:
Only a small percentage have used them in the last month, and only a small
percentage of past-month users take them every day.

Likewise, the vast majority of heroin users could not reasonably be
described as addicts. The household survey indicates that about 3 million
Americans have used heroin, 15 percent of them in the last year and 4
percent in the last month. These numbers suggest that the vast majority of
heroin users either never become addicted or, if they do, manage to give
the drug up.

A 2002 survey of high school seniors found that 1 percent had used heroin
in the previous year, while 0.1 percent had used it on 20 or more days in
the previous month. That finding jibes with a 1976 study by the drug
researchers Leon G. Hunt and Carl D. Chambers, who estimated there were 3
or 4 million heroin users in the United States, perhaps 10 percent of them
addicts.

During the last few decades, researchers such as Norman Zinberg at Harvard
and Craig Reinarman at UC Santa Cruz have investigated how people manage to
use drugs in a controlled way. Zinberg emphasized the importance of "set
and setting" -- the user's personality, expectations and emotional state,
coupled with the physical, social and cultural environment -- in shaping a
drug's perceived effects. He drew attention to rules about how, when, where
and with whom drugs are used. Reinarman and his colleagues found that "a
stake in conventional life" -- work and relationships that the user does
not want to jeopardize -- helps keep drug consumption under control.

My conversations with controlled drug users confirmed these insights. They
generally follow rules that limit their drug use to certain occasions or
circumstances: never at work, only at the end of the week, never when
depressed, only with friends, and so on. They use drugs for particular
purposes. To relax, to socialize, to promote creativity or self-insight, to
boost concentration or ward off sleep, to enhance music, movies, food, sex
or a walk in the park. They do not use drugs constantly for the same reason
most drinkers do not choose to be drunk constantly: They have other things
to do. Without much trouble, they manage to balance drug use with other
activities they value and enjoy.

The fact that responsible drug use is not only possible but typical has
important implications for the drug policy debate. Honest supporters of the
drug laws have to acknowledge that the case for prohibition rests on a
morally questionable premise: that it's acceptable to punish one group of
people for the sins of another -- in this case, that the majority of drug
users, who do not harm others or even themselves, should suffer because of
a minority's failure to exercise self-control. The drug laws can be
defended only in the way that alcohol prohibition might have been defended
by someone who acknowledged that the typical drinker was not an alcoholic:
by claiming that the burden imposed on the innocent majority is justified
by the harm that a minority would otherwise cause to themselves and others.

Such a policy will strike many people as fundamentally unjust. Certainly it
seemed that way to Clarence Darrow. "Prohibition," the renowned attorney
remarked, "is an outrageous and senseless invasion of the personal liberty
of millions of intelligent and temperate persons who see nothing dangerous
or immoral in the moderate consumption of alcoholic beverages."

Temperate users of other drugs have at least as much cause to be outraged.