AMERICA'S MOST PERVASIVE DRUG PROBLEM IS THE DRUG THAT PRETENDS IT ISN'T

Spring break in Jamaica, and the patios of the waterfront bars are so packed
that it seems the crowds of students must go tumbling into the aquamarine
sea, still clutching their glasses.

Even at the airport one drunken young man with a peeling nose argues with a
flight attendant about whether he can bring his Red Stripe, kept cold in an
insulated sleeve, aboard the plane heading home.

The giggle about Jamaica for American visitors has always been the
availability of ganja; half the T-shirts in the souvenir shops have slogans
about smoking grass.

But the students thronging the streets of Montego Bay seem more comfortable
with their habitual drug of choice: alcohol.

Whoops! Sorry! Not supposed to call alcohol a drug. Some of the people who
lead anti-drug organizations don't like it because they fear it dilutes the
message about the "real" drugs: heroin, cocaine and marijuana. Parents are
offended by it. As they try to figure out which vodka bottle came from their
party and which from their teen-ager's, they sigh and say, "Well, at least
it's not drugs." And naturally the lobbyists for the industry hate it.
They're power guys, these guys: The wine guy is George W's brother-in-law;
the beer guy meets regularly with House Majority Whip Tom DeLay. When you
lump a cocktail in with a joint, it makes them crazy.

And it's true: Booze and beer are not the same as illegal drugs. They're
worse.

A policy-research group called Drug Strategies has produced a report that
calls alcohol "America's most pervasive drug problem" and then goes on to
document the claim.

Alcohol-related deaths outnumber deaths related to drugs 4-to-1. Alcohol is
a factor in more than half of all domestic-violence and sexual-assault
cases. Between accidents, health problems, crime and lost productivity,
researchers estimate alcohol abuse costs the economy $167 billion a year. In
1995 four out of every 10 people on probation said they were drinking when
they committed a violent crime, while only one in 10 admitted using illicit
drugs.

Close your eyes and substitute the word "blah-blah" for alcohol in any of
those sentences, and you'd have to conclude that an all-out war on blah-blah
would result.

Yet when members of Congress tried to pass legislation that would make
alcohol part of the purview of the nation's drug czar, the measure failed.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving faces opposition to both its education
programs and its public-service ads from principals and parents who think
illicit drugs should be given greater priority.

The argument is this: Heroin, cocaine and marijuana are harmful and against
the law, but alcohol is used in moderation with no ill effects by many
people.

Here's the counterargument: There are an enormous number of people who
cannot and will never be able to drink in moderation. And what they leave in
their wake is often more difficult to quantify than DWIs or date rapes.

In his memoir, A Drinking Life, Pete Hamill describes simply and eloquently
the binges, the blackouts, the routine: "If I wrote a good column for the
newspaper, I'd go to the bar and celebrate; if I wrote a poor column, I
would drink away my regret.

Then I'd go home, another dinner missed, another chance to play with the
children gone, and in the morning, hung over, thick-tongued, and
thick-fingered, I'd attempt through my disgust to make amends."

Hamill and I used to drink, when we were younger, at a dark place down a
short flight of stairs in the Village called the Lion's Head. There were
book jackets covering the walls, jackets that I looked at with envy, books
by the newspapermen and novelists who used to drink there. But then I got
older, and when I passed the Head, I sometimes thought of how many books had
never been written at all because of the drinking.

Everyone has a friend/an uncle/a co-worker/a spouse/a neighbor who drinks
too much. A recent poll of 7,000 adults found that 82 percent said they'd
even be willing to pay more for a drink if the money were used to combat
alcohol abuse.

New Mexico and Montana already use excise taxes on alcohol to pay for
treatment programs.

It's probably just coincidence that, as Drug Strategies reports, the average
excise tax on beer is 19 cents a gallon, while in Missouri and Wisconsin,
homes to Anheuser-Busch and Miller, respectively, the tax is only 6 cents.

A wholesale uprising in Washington against Philip Morris, which owns Miller
Brewing and was the largest donor of soft money to the Republicans in 1998,
or against Seagram, which did the same for the Democrats in 1996, doesn't
seem likely.

Home schooling is in order, a harder sell even than to elected officials,
since many parents prefer lessons that do not require self-examination.
Talking about underage drinking and peer pressure lets them off the hook by
suggesting that it's all about 16-year-olds with six-packs.

But the peer group is everywhere, from the frogs that croak "Bud" on
commercials to those tiresome folks who behave as if wine were as important
as books (it's not) to parents who drink to excess and teach an indelible
life lesson.

Prohibition was cooked up to try to ameliorate the damage that drinking does
to daily life. It didn't work. But there is always self-prohibition. It's
not easy, since all the world's a speakeasy. "Not even wine?" Hamill recalls
he was asked at dinner parties after he stopped.

Of course children should not drink, and people who sell them alcohol should
be prosecuted. Of course people should not drink and drive, and those who do
should be punished.

But 21 is not a magic number, and the living room is not necessarily a safe
place.

There is a larger story that needs to be told, loud and clear, in homes and
schools and on commercials given as much prominence and paid for in the same
way as those that talk about the dangers of smack or crack: that alcohol is
a mind-altering, mood-altering drug, and that lots of people should never
start to drink at all. "I have no talent for it," Hamill told friends.

Just like that.