DRUGS NOT JUST A CITY SCOURGE

Who, exactly, do we think uses illegal drugs? Surely not white,
middle-aged, elementary school principals, if reaction to the arrest of
Margaret Loder-Healy on a charge of heroin possession is any guide.

The sight of the matronly educator from the Newton, N.H., school system,
standing before a federal magistrate in her sensible shoes, has us
positively flummoxed.

Where are the young black and Latino actors who star in the videotape that
plays in our heads when we hear the words ''drug bust,'' or ''heroin
addict?'' Where are the mean streets that form the stage set of our
imagined ''drug wars?'' Where is the backdrop of social dysfunction -
unemployment, violence - that we assume composes the classic subplot of
illicit drug use?

Margaret Loder-Healy, mother, educator, community leader, is big news this
week, the actor cast against type.

Alas, the scriptwriters of this melodrama are delusional. Just how
delusional is clear in the shattered voices of Laurence and Susan Sheehan.
Only days ago, the prosperous Wellesley couple buried their beautiful,
well-educated, gainfully employed daughter, dead of a drug overdose they
never saw coming.

It was not supposed to happen to her or to them.

''We all think, this is suburbia, Disneyland, we're protected, that these
things don't happen here,'' Alison Sheehan's heartbroken father said
yesterday. ''That's a fantasy. Drugs are pervasive. They are a fact of
life, of all our lives.''

In her eulogy for Ali, Sue Sheehan recalled the little girl who mastered
the piano at age 5, the young woman who only last spring began
participating in public readings of her poetry after working at her office
job. She evoked memories of the schoolgirl who loved tennis and ice
skating, soccer and skiing. She remembered the daughter who, having just
earned her certification as a yoga teacher, was eagerly planning to launch
a yoga program for children.

How did a young woman whose dad still thought of her, at age 25, as ''a
little pixie'' end up one Saturday night in October in a drug-induced coma
in the emergency room of Mount Auburn Hospital?

Maybe she was just young and foolish. Maybe the persistent pain from a
neural disorder, diagnosed during her freshman year at the University of
Arizona, led her to experiment with street drugs. From her final resting
place in Woodlawn Cemetery, Ali Sheehan can't tell us.

It is easy enough to judge the dead. It is hard to understand a young woman
of promise and privilege spending the last hours of her life at a party
ingesting illegal drugs, harder still to fathom the ''friends'' who,
fearing arrest, waited too long to summon medical help.

''My plea is simple,'' Sue Sheehan told mourners at her daughter's funeral.
''If you have a friend who is doing drugs and passing out, call for help
before they stop breathing. Ali's life could have been saved if only she
had been brought to the hospital before she had stopped breathing. It
sounds so simple, but apparently it is not an easy act to do. We help blind
people cross the street, why not at least give a passed-out person on drugs
the opportunity to breathe again?''

It's the question the parents of Scott Krueger asked two years ago when the
MIT freshman died of alcohol poisoning after a fraternity party. It's the
question, thankfully, the parents of a Wellesley College student need not
ask because friends got her to a hospital in time after she drank past the
point of intoxication at another MIT frat party earlier this month.

We ought to ask some questions of ourselves, as well. Why are we so shocked
to find drug and alcohol abuse in our most prestigious universities, in our
most prosperous communities? Why are we so quick to demonize a principal
who is said to have been receiving treatment for her heroin addiction? Is
it a lack of tolerance for the vulnerable? No forgiveness for those who
relapse?

''Our society believes in free will. Well, I don't in the case of drugs.
Doctors, family, and friends, when you suspect a person is on drugs,
confront them!'' Sue Sheehan pleaded in her eulogy. ''Tell someone who will
intervene! We can't have young adults ending up like this.''

Or middle-aged ones, either.

Margaret Loder-Healy doesn't look like a heroin addict, we say.

Who does, exactly?