Steve Blow: LET'S DISH STRAIGHT TALK ABOUT DRUGS

Two responses stood out after the recent column on Belita Nelson.

She's the Plano woman who started the Starfish Foundation to fight drug
abuse - her own son's and that of every other mother's child.

A fellow in Grapevine sent a letter calling the column "another example of
our society's misplaced attention."

"Is there anyone over 10 years of age who doesn't know that drugs are
harmful and that injecting heroin into your veins will probably kill you?"
Tom Wilson asked.

"Why do we continue to wring our hands and waste our tears over these kids
who willfully engage in this behavior and then, SURPRISE!, suffer the
consequences of their own actions?

"Teenagers who stick a needle in their arm deserve nothing more than our
scorn and revulsion. They have made their own bed! Let them sleep in it."

Part of me wants to agree with Mr. Wilson. How dumb do you have to be to
use drugs after all that we know about them?

But then another part of me answers: About as dumb as most kids are at one
time or another.

How it starts

And I'm afraid that Mr. Wilson's letter only deepens the ignorance in one
important regard: No one starts heroin with a needle these days.

If heroin were only found in grimy, back-alley shooting galleries, surely
few kids would sink to that level of stupidity.

But the new face of heroin is usually another kid's - a friendly face at a
weekend party, offering a doctored cigarette or a bit of plain-looking
powder with the innocuous words, "Hey, try this."

And it's never, ever called heroin.

"Chiva" was the name going around a while back. New names pop up all the time.

Dallas filmmakers Allen Mondell and Cynthia Salzman Mondell heard more than
30 different names for heroin as they completed an educational video on the
subject.

"It's so scary what heroin is doing now," Ms. Mondell said. "Kids can go to
a party and smoke it or snort it, and before they know it, they are addicted.

"Or dead," she added.

Their film debuted the other night at a drug-recovery center in town.
"After the film," Allen said, "a young woman stood up and said that she got
addicted to heroin without ever knowing that she was using heroin. And I'm
sure she was telling the truth."

'Reality-based' approach

There is one theory of drug education at www.lindesmith.org that says we've
got to move beyond the old "Just Say No" approach to drugs.

Clearly, many kids are going to say yes. And right now, they seem as happy
to say yes to one drug as another.

Under a "reality-based" approach to drug education, abstinence would be
stressed. But at the same time, the relative safety of some drugs compared
with others would be taught.

In other words, if marijuana and heroin are treated the same in drug
education, we shouldn't be surprised if kids use them the same.

As I said, two responses to the previous column stood out. The second one
was a cryptic call from a woman who wanted to know how Ms. Nelson knew
about three recent drug overdose deaths.

"One of those was a family member," the caller said. "And all information
about that was supposed to be strictly sealed. We wanted nothing revealed.
This was a terrible tragedy involving a one-time incident, not some regular
drug user."

My heart went out to her. But I was distressed, too.

Look, I don't know the best approach for protecting our kids from drugs.
Part of me agrees with the letter-writer, Mr. Wilson: If you're stupid
enough to try anything, you deserve anything you get.

Part of me agrees with the reality-based approach. We know some kids are
going to be stupid. We should help them be less stupid about the drugs they
choose.

One thing I know for sure: Secrecy won't help anything.

Refusing to talk openly and honestly about drugs is part of what got us
here. Rick D. Day

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more
doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a
new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the
preservation of the old institutions and merely the lukewarm defenders in
those who would gain by the new ones. - Machiavelli