POLITICIANS AND MEDIA HYPE DRUG FEARS

Here's a rule in life: When things become political, they become messed up.
Here's another rule: When things become fodder for media, they get even worse.

As soon as a problem enters the political field for a solution, it is
subject to the petty whims, egos and pressures for which politics is best
known. Worse still, as soon as it hits the press, it is subject to the most
absurd sorts of story-hyping exaggeration imaginable -- terror and doom,
after all, are the best things to sell papers. This is doubly true when the
terror and doom involve drugs.

The little-remembered case of basketball player Len Bias and House Speaker
Tip O'Neill is a perfect example. A star player, drafted from the
University of Maryland in 1986 to shoot hoops with the Boston Celtics, Bias
was celebrating his good fortune with friends on June 18 that year. Late
into a night of partying, Bias began to feel ill and laid down to get some
rest -- as it turned out, a lot more rest than he anticipated. The medical
examiner chalked up Bias' death to the effects of cocaine.

Deemed a straight shooter and morally upstanding fellow, news of Bias'
passing sparked an uproar in Boston -- especially when his death was tied
to not just the passe drug of recreational choice, cocaine, but to what was
then the newest form of the drug: crack.

While the word "crack" doesn't ignite the same bonfire of fear in the
hearts and minds of America that it once did, the new crystalline and
smokeable form of cocaine -- much like freebase -- was hot fodder for news
at the time.

In her May 11, 1999, Salon.com feature on the history of America's crack
"epidemic," Maia Szalavitz chronicles just how far the media went in its
coverage of the drug's effects, inflating the danger of the cocaine
derivative to King Kong proportions. In 1986, the same year Bias died, Time
magazine called crack addiction the "issue of the year," while Newsweek
dubbed it the "most addictive drug known to man." U.S. News and World
Report actually deemed crack's effect to be similar to that of the medieval
plagues and called it "the number one problem we face." Just in the year
between October 1988 and October 1989, the Washington Post published over
1,500 stories related to crack cocaine, and President Ronald Reagan and
first lady Nancy proffered the notion that the drug was killing "a whole
generation of children."

With word of one-toke addiction and jarring stories like Bias' death set
alongside wild and doom-chanting press coverage, everybody was fearful of
the new scourge.

Everybody but Tip O'Neill, that is.

Where the average Joe saw little but trouble, Speaker of the House O'Neill,
the infamous Democrat representing Boston, saw opportunity.

The Democrats had long been seen as velvety soft when it came to drug
policy, and O'Neill saw Bias' death as a tool to shake that perception.
Reagan, you'll remember, ate the Democrats for lunch in 1984, and, as told
in Dan Baum's 1997 book, "Smoke and Mirrors," O'Neill considered new
Democrat-sponsored anti-drug legislation as a possible key to stemming the
tide of the Reagan Revolution.

"Immediately upon returning from the July 4 (1986) recess," recounts Baum,
"Tip O'Neill called an emergency meeting of the crime-related committee
chairmen. Write some g--damned legislation, he thundered. All anybody up in
Boston is talking about is Len Bias. The papers are screaming for blood.
... If we can do this fast enough, he said to the Democratic leadership
arrayed around him, we can take the issue away from the White House."

Wishful thinking, it turned out. In the end, Reagan still held title for
heavyweight drug warrior and O'Neill's Democrats had to wait another six
years till Bill Clinton in 1992 could seize the presidency. Before all was
over, however, O'Neill managed to pass, without holding congressional
hearings, the most draconian drug-control measures in American history and
slated a whopping $4 billion to fill the national drug-war coffers.

As evidenced by his earnest chat with the committee chairmen, O'Neill did
not drum up the anti-drug measures for the sake of workable policy or the
interest of public health -- but rather to win in a political game of
one-upmanship with Reagan and the Republicans. Unfortunately for O'Neill,
the Gipper-lead GOP managed to emerge from the battle looking still more
hard-nosed on dope than the Dems. Politically, Tip shot snake eyes, but not
before adding new teeth to the jaws of government -- sharp incisors to
takea bite out of drug crime.

Stoked by media hype, O'Neill took up the anti-drug banner for the purpose
of garnering voter support, and drug policy became a pawn in a political
game, moved and directed to suit temporary political ends -- not actually
deal with drugs.

Not that this is anything new.

In the late 1800s, cocaine was viewed as a wonder drug. After chomping on
the occasional coca leaf, Freud called it a "magical substance." He even
thought of using it to wean opium addicts from their habit. Cocaine could
be found lacing elixirs, cordials, even cigarettes, and was in wide use
throughout American society. Parke, Davis and Co. marketed cocaine in 15
different forms -- many of which were sold solely for recreational purposes.

"Cocaine: The First Epidemic," an entry in the Time-Life book, "Mysteries
of the Human Body," contains many facts about dope your high-school history
teachers probably failed to bring to your attention. A wine-and-cocaine
beverage from France, for instance, a coca liqueur, was said to have been
invented by Thomas Edison, adored by Pope Leo XIII, and apparently
possessed, according to those who consumed it, the ability to fortify and
refresh the body and brain and restore health and vitality.

Starting with Coca-Cola, soda companies began manufacturing beverages
containing cocaine. Besides Coke, Some of the original cocaine drinks were
"Nerv-Ola," "Wise-Ola" and the aptly named "Dope."

Cocaine, it was thought, could cure anything: headaches, asthma,
indigestion, the blues. One such medicine marketed by Lloyd Manufacturing
Co. was dubbed, "Cocaine Toothache Drops" and boasted an "Instantaneous
Cure!" Price: 15 cents. The ad -- a copy of which I keep at my desk --
would drive present-day anti-Joe Camel types into frothy-mouthed fits of
apoplexy. Featuring two young children building a toy house with miniature
logs, the ad notes that the wonder medication is "for sale by all
druggists." What? Without a prescription. Over-the-counter cocaine. For
younkers to buy! 'Fraid so.

But, ever-striving for an attention-grabbing headline, by 1886, newspapers
began circulating stories harping on cocaine's addictiveness. Like the
racist tinge to the mid-1980s crack fears, blacks who used the drug were
soon labeled "cocaine fiends" and worry soon spread in the South that,
doped out of their gourds on cocaine, "cocainized Negroes" would run
rampant through the countryside, harming the innocent and possibly looting
chicken coops.

In 1914 -- despite no constitutional provision for such action -- Congress
stepped in with the Harrison Act and brought the sale and distribution of
cocaine under federal control.

As it happens, the 19th century cocaine "epidemic" was just like the crack
"epidemic" in that it was basically a non-problem until the politicians and
media got a hold of it. Sociologist Craig Reinarman, author of "Crack in
America," as cited in Szalavitz's Salon.com story, pins blame for the crack
scare on the press. "At a minimum," he says, "the media accelerated its
spread."

"There is no major corporation which could have afforded the coverage and
exposure that crack got for free," says Reinarman. So, why did the press
pump crack mania with the vigor it did? Simple: It sold papers and boosted
ratings. One CBS News feature on crack garnered the best ratings of any
news show for the previous half-decade.

Further, the resultant public fear -- good old-fashioned moral panic in
Reinarman's judgment -- played directly into the hands of politicians
looking for issues on which to build their respective crime-fighting
legacies. "When it came to crack," writes Szalavitz, "the media escalated
the panic and propelled a political arms race, in which Democrats and
Republicans fought to outdo each other as anti-drug crusaders."

Just like most arms races, the drug war has continued with each side
forever upping the ante. Nixon was tough, but O'Neill and Reagan were
tougher, George Bush tougher still, and, despite that non-inhalant
marijuana record, Bill Clinton's administration has tightened the
thumbscrews even more.

So, now, with a new administration on the horizon and the present anti-drug
course being an obvious failure, the question is how tough does it have to
get before we say "enough"?