FIRST, LET'S TEST YOU FOR DRUG USE

Drugs

As a former drug court judge in Franklin County, I would like to offer
several insights on the methamphetamine crisis in Missouri. First, the
problem with meth and other illegal drugs is much worse than most people
think. I firmly believe half the people in the country between 20 and 40
"use" illegal drugs. I have a definition for a "user": one who cannot pass
a hair test that can pick up any drug use within the preceding 90 days.

We need to take a national inventory of the American people. We need to
test a representative sample of our citizens to determine the scope of our
problem. A survey is not adequate. From drug court, we know only hair
testing will tell an accurate story. I have only anecdotal evidence to back
up my assertion that 50 percent of the young people use drugs. But I
believe the evidence is compelling.

In open court, I have had auto workers state that 80 percent of the people
on the night shift at a St. Louis auto plant use drugs.

I have had prison inmates tell me the trucking industry is rampant with
drug use. I know of situations where truckers are "randomly" checked for
drug use, but often only those drivers are checked who are known to be clean.

Last year I had a state university professor tell me he would never have
believed I could be right about the 50 percent, but his daughter had just
told him she thought 80 percent of the kids in her freshman dorm did drugs.

Many in mental health believe the 50 percent figure. A psychiatrist with
the state has become an expert on meth because so many patients he was
seeing had meth problems, not mental health problems.

Second, we need to keep our criminal penalties, but also look for ways to
change people's habits. We could never incarcerate the millions of people
who do drugs. But we could impact drug use by giving non-drug user
discounts the same way we give non-smoker discounts. What if the federal
government gave an income tax credit to all citizens who could prove they
maintained a drug-free lifestyle? Should those on welfare be allowed to
spend their money on drugs?

We should also demand that professional sports teams suspend for at least
one year all athletes who test positive for drugs one time and permanently
ban those caught a second time. This would truly send a message. We might
want to apply this same standard to doctors, attorneys, CPAs, engineers and
other professionals.

We had a recent case in Franklin County where a young couple was driving
their car when it was set on fire by a meth lab working in the trunk. The
couple did not realize the car was on fire and that their young son who was
strapped in an infant seat in the back of the car was being seriously
burned. Literally thousands of young couples like this around the state are
endangering their children.

I was told about another case where a young man on meth cut his forearm
with a power saw. The gash went to the bone and severed a ligament. The
young man attempted self-treatment by fishing for the end of the ligament
with a bent clothes hanger. His plan was to have his significant other
reattach the ligament with a needle and thread. This was all done without
anesthesia. Apparently meth is a great painkiller, but obviously it doesn't
do much for judgment.

I worry about these people as human beings. I worry about their impact on
society. Particularly disconcerting to me is that these very people who
cannot take care of themselves or their loved ones are eligible to serve on
a jury. That doesn't say much about our collective judgment as a society.

We must focus much more of our attention and resources on this problem. We
are told that state resources are in short supply. Would it be wiser to
spend $111.5 million on combating drug use or on attorneys who filed a
copycat lawsuit in the tobacco case?

While the problem is terribly serious, there is hope. Of the 23 years I
spent on the bench, the last 23 months as a drug court judge were the most
rewarding because I saw people change their lives. We need to take what we
learn in drug court and use these ideas throughout the justice system. But
we will never do that unless we are convinced of the seriousness of the
problem. Let's have that inventory.