SUCCESS IS UNACCEPTABLE IF IT'S NOT OUR WAY

Drugs: A U.K. clinic helping heroin addicts live decent lives is
closed after U.S. enforcers object to its unorthodox approach.

Maureen was a 19-year-old Irish redhead when she married a rich %% kid
from Manchester who gave her three children and introduced her to
heroin. A few years later he decided to run off with a younger woman,
so he left Maureen with the kids, no money and a serious heroin habit.

For the next several years, she moved the kids from one
bed-and-breakfast to another, supporting herself with prostitution and
shoplifting, all the time frantically chasing the dragon. Like most
addicts, she tried to kick the habit repeatedly without success.

Finally the authorities were breathing down her neck and she knew she
was about to lose her children. Desperate, a friend steered her to a
clinic in suburban Liverpool, where her life was instantly
transformed.

John Marks, a bearded Welsh psychiatrist who ran the clinic, examined
her and determined that she was indeed a heroin addict.

So he wrote her a prescription for heroin and told her to come back in
a week.

Almost unbelieving, she took the slip of paper to the pharmacist up
the street and he filled it without batting an eye. As she stood at
the counter staring at the small round container of pure heroin, an
odd sensation washed over her. The auger of panic that had been
twisting her gut every waking moment for a decade was spinning down.
For the first time in memory, she had a tiny bit of brain space that
wasn't focused on how to get the next fix. It began to dawn on her
that it no longer made any difference whether she could get the cash
or whether her dealer would show up or whether the stuff was any good
or whether cops would beat her to it.

As she slipped the package into her purse, she caught a glimpse of
herself in the glass and for the first time in 10 years she stopped to
take a serious look. She was stunned. Then she glanced down at her
children, and she said, "Oh, my God." In an instant, the morality that
had been instilled in her as a child came flooding back: "I felt so
disgusted." Over the next weeks and months, her dose was stabilized at
a point that allowed her to function without suffering withdrawal, and
within a year her life had been completely turned around. She had a
job, her kids were in school, and she was talking about going back to
college. The paper John Marks handed her almost nonchalantly turned
out to be a passport out of hell.

Unfortunately, the Liverpool clinic--one of the last of the old
British heroin maintenance programs--was featured on a CBS "60
Minutes" broadcast and U.S. drug enforcers went into
convulsions.

The success of the clinic--a 90% drop in the local crime rate, zero
cases of AIDS, moving people off welfare rolls into productive
jobs--flew in the face of American drug war orthodoxy.

Marks was warned by friends in the Home Office that the
U.S. Embassy was exerting tremendous pressure to shut him down, and in the
end they were successful. The 450 patients Marks had been serving were
kicked into the street and told to find a detox program where they
could learn to give up their evil ways. "Two years later," said Marks,
"25 of the addicts were dead." And what of Maureen, the heroin user
with three children who planned to go to college? "I saw Maureen the
other day," said Marks. "She was desperate, back to criminality; a lot
of her friends are back in prison. She's on the streets. She saw me in
passing and asked if I could take her back on. Her doctor tried to
refer her to me, but the Health Authority refused to defray the
costs." And so the state, in its righteous determination to set
everything straight, has managed to teach Maureen and her children a
lesson.

It's one they won't soon forget.

Mike Gray Is the Author of "Drug Crazy: How We Got Into This Mess and How We
Can Get Out" (Random House, 1998), From Which This Is Excerpted.
Copyright 1998 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved


Checked-by: Patrick Henry