OPINION

'VICTIMLESS' CRIMES? SURE

NEW BEDFORD Ah, yes. The "victimless" crimes. I'm just about at my limit
with the "victimless" crimes. My Mom used to say, "Just wait till you have
kids." "Yeah, right." I scoffed as I walked out the door to my friends and
the pinball machine. Well Mamma, I ain't laughing anymore.

A child of the sixties, living the good life of being in my 20s in the
seventies, I'm not immune to the early days of drugs, sex and rock n' roll.
We were groovin' and we were swayin' to the music. But as John Lennon so
poignantly stated, "Life is what happens while you're making other plans."
Words to live by.

The victimless crimes. They are abundant and we see them every day. The guy
who runs a stop sign. The teen-ager running the red light. The father who
buys illegal fireworks on the Fourth of July for his kids. Right down to the
illegal gun hidden in the home from the kiddies, "just for protection."

Yeah, they're victimless crimes all right. Until that is, the guy running
the stop sign slams into a truck he didn't see. The teen-ager hits the
bicycle that was in his blind spot. The fireworks don't work just right and
the kid loses a few fingers. And, how the heck did that kid find that gun
anyway? Victimless till the right victim comes along. And lives are changed
forever.

So what I see here is a lack of seeing the big picture. No vision. Not the
slightest foresight. (Is hindsight everything?) So is smoking cannabis in
your home such a big deal? I love that, cannabis. Nice word, has a ring to
it. Let's get real, you're smoking pot, doing drugs, getting high. In your
home, hey, your business. What do I care?

But victimless? I think not, honey. Think big picture and take the rap for
it. So, I guess you're buying your pot from some sweet old lady in a pink
and blue flowered house dress, selling her fruits and vegetables at the
little wooden shed on the side of a long, winding country road. Six ears of
corn, a pound of those red, juicy tomatoes. And oh yeah, a dime bag of your
good stuff.

Anybody home here? New Bedford has its share and then some of drug crime and
victims. And some of them, you don't see in the newspaper, my friend.
Because when there are drug crimes, we're all victims. Ask the school
teachers who are trying to keep order in a classroom -- a principal trying
to support an entire school when the population of the school is laden with
children from homes where drug use and its results affect their behavior,
their learning capacity, their ability to relate calmly and rationally to
other students.

Do parents who do drugs have children who do drugs? I do believe that's the
point.

There's a reason pot is called the gateway drug. It is the door that opens
to a whole world of artificial joy and abandonment. And if you have a
teen-ager, and you were imbibed with the spirit of Woodstock, Jefferson
Airplane and Country Joe, listen up.

Your kid will not pride himself on rolling the thinnest, tightest joint of
all their friends. These days, man, it's blunts. Know what they are? Philly
cigars, rolled with weed nice and fat. Take that thinner-than-a-pencil joint
you rolled and shared among your nearest and dearest, and multiply it by
four or five. Yeah, things are sure different these days.

Today I'm the parent of a teen-ager who, I might add, is subject to my
frequent lectures on the dangers and pitfalls of drug use, and that includes
pot. Particularly pot. I also happen to live in a tenement shared with other
tenants who are tax-paying, law abiding cannabis smokers. They have children
also, so hey, no smoking pot in their house. They don't want their children
exposed to that stuff. So, it's smoked in the yard, on the porches, in the
cellar, on the sidewalk. Gotta keep their kids away from that stuff.

Hey! What about my kid, thank you very much? More evenings than I can count,
the scent of marijuana enters my apartment through my open windows, fills my
hallways and I can only guess creeps under the door. I swear one night I had
a contact high.

Of course, along with the pot comes the beer. Cans all over the yard.
Bottles left on the porches, on the sidewalk. Then there was the day someone
stole my neighbor's drugs. Of all the people coming and going, sharing the
good times had by all, my neighbor saw my kid as the perfect candidate for
stealing his stuff. We live in the tenement, after all, so it was obvious.
Even threatened to have my child grabbed on the street by a party unknown to
find out for sure. Yeah, you've got to love those law-abiding, tax-paying
cannabis smokers committing that victimless crime.

So pal, give me a break. You wanna smoke pot in your house? Be my guest. But
kindly keep your lifestyle out of mine. I don't wanna smell it. I don't want
my kid exposed to it. And I don't want those sweet young things you buy your
drugs from hanging around my home. And to be honest, and politically
incorrect, I don't want my kid's day at school disrupted by your kid's
dysfunctional behavior because you're too busy getting high at home to pay
attention to what he's doing.

Hey, I was cool when I was 20. Pretty much when I was 30, too. Even my
friends' kids think I'm still cool. My kid? Thinks I'm a drag. Fine with me.
My Mom was right: It all changes when you have kids of your own.

Wonder what my neighbors will say to the first person who gives their kids a
joint? Or worse. I'd like to be around when my neighbors' kids hit their
teens. But I won't be. Because we are outta here, pal. Oh, we may not be
able to escape drugs, I'm no fool. But I do believe that on this planet, I
can find a place to live where the law-abiding, tax-paying victimless crime
constituents at least know the meaning of privacy, respect for others and
"against the law." So I'll say it again, one last time. Mom, you were right.
I didn't know then, but I sure know now. And it downright scares me.