VIEWING DRUG WAR FROM BOTH SIDES

All that time he was locking up people for using illegal drugs, Billy Lain
was himself addicted to a substance.

"I was a practicing alcoholic my entire career as a police officer," he
said.

That career spanned 20 years. Lain, despite his drinking, reached the rank
of lieutenant. For five years he served as a supervisor in the vice
division, but eventually the boozing got out of control. To make a long
story fit the space, Lain's career crashed, and he did a crime, did some
jail time, and even wound up homeless before finally managing to turn things
around.

Now Lain draws on his experience and knowledge in working with kids as a
licensed chemical-dependency counselor.

"I have seen the so-called `war on drugs' from every side," he said.

Lain decided to wade into the ongoing discussion and debate of our
criminal-justice system after reading on Sunday the views and comments from
Les Wilson, a middle-aged longtime user of illegal drugs.

`No Such Thing As Casual Use'

Wilson, whose field is computer science, graduated in 1971 from the
University of California at Berkeley. He said he has used or experimented
with many outlawed substances through the years but now limits his use to
marijuana. He said that much of the demand for illegal substances in the
U.S. comes from casual users who, like most casual users of alcohol, "do not
abuse them and suffer relatively few of the negative effects."

Lain does not agree: "I can tell you from personal experience, both as a
recovering substance abuser and a professional substance-abuse counselor,
there is no such thing as casual use of some of the drugs Mr. Wilson claims
to have used," he said.

Lain does not believe it is possible for anyone to perform creative work on
a technical project while smoking crack cocaine, as Wilson said he did while
working on a project that won him a big company award.

"Also," Lain said, "I can tell you without equivocation that a human cannot
inject a narcotic analgesic `for relaxation' very long or with any
regularity before they will find themselves riding that needle out of the
necessity driven by a terrible drug addiction."

Two men with opposing views -- one a drug user saying that not all people
who use illegal substances become addicts, the other a former alcohol abuser
now trying to help kids understand the horrors of addiction they risk by
experimenting with any drug.

Criminalizing A Disease

Most noteworthy, however, is the point on which they agree. That is "the
irresponsibility of attempting to win the so-called war on drugs by making
the chemicals illegal," Lain said. "My years in the police department were
spent putting people in jail. Like the typical law enforcement type, I was
sure `lock 'em up and throw away the key' was the sure-fire answer to the
drug problems."

However, he said it became apparent to him that "if locking them up was the
answer, surely we would be winning by now."

He opposes "making criminals of people who, in fact, are suffering from a
disease," and said that "almost nobody is deterred from drug use by the fact
that the substance they want to use is illegal to possess."

The vast sums being spent "fighting an unwinnable war" should more wisely be
invested in treatment and education and prevention programs, Lain said.

"Education and prevention works if it is done properly," he said, and on
this point he agrees with retired DEA agent John Morgan, who recently was
quoted here as saying that the expensive and controversial DARE program
should be scrapped.

"The police," said Lain, "should get out of the prevention and education
efforts and leave it to professionals, educated and trained and committed to
the task at hand, not simply doing a job so they can get off the street and
get a day shift with weekends off, like a lot of the DARE officers I have
known."