(Hawk's note: this is the same Frank Rich piece that appeared in NYT on Aug
12. In the IHT edition, the following sentence appeared in bold large
type as a sub-heading: U.S. drug warriors rail againt marijuana but have no
problem with Viagra, which appears to be a popular recreational drug with
all kinds of people.)

PSSST, KID, WANT SOME VIAGRA?

America's legal drug culture

In my 1960's youth, America couldn't stop talking about -- or taking
- -- a drug that promised sexual ecstasy and a sensory trip. If memory
serves, it was called marijuana and, though widely available, was
illegal. Three decades later, the new national drug of choice also
promises sexual ecstasy and, as a potential side effect, what the Food
and Drug Administration describes as mild temporary perceptual
"changes in blue/ green colors." It is called Viagra, and not only is
it a legal prescription medication, but anyone with a credit card can
score some over the Internet without even seeing or speaking to a
doctor. I know because I did.

Viagra is the emblem of our fin-de-millennium drug culture. On the
market only since April, it has spawned a cottage industry in humor,
not unlike all the stoned comedy of the 60's, and is minting money for
Pfizer, its manufacturer. Pfizer "has refined the art of publicizing a
'blockbuster drug' ... not unlike the way Hollywood releases a
summertime action flick," writes the journalist Greg Critser in his
Salon magazine report on the sprawling Viagra industry. "It's kind of
off the charts," said a Pfizer spokeswoman last week, sounding very
Hollywood as she talked about Viagra's box-office.

The same spokeswoman assured me that "we don't have a sense that there
is any kind of widespread abuse of this product." She also said that
"You can't go into a pharmacy and talk your way into a Viagra tablet
without a prescription." Nonetheless, it's not hard to find anecdotal
evidence that Viagra is being used, however improperly, as a
recreational aphrodisiac by both men without erectile dysfunction and
by women (for whose use it has not been cleared by the F.D.A.). An
Internet site titled "How and Where to Obtain Viagra" advises, "If you
can't get it from your doctor, try your local junior high school!! The
girls in the junior high school near to where I live have it and are
selling it to each other."

If you go into the widely used Web search engine Infoseek -- in which
Disney owns a big stake -- and merely type in the word "Viagra," an ad
immediately starts flashing "Free Viagra" and leads to an on-line
purveyor. At another site promoting the Viagra-hyping book "The
Virility Solution" by Steven Lamm, an assistant professor at the New
York University School of Medicine, a link speeds you to a cyberstore
called The Pill Box Pharmacy. There you click agreement to a waiver of
liability, fill out a simple questionnaire any way you wish, pick your
own dosage and -- party on!

Though Pill Box wouldn't fill my order when I clicked "no" to erectile
dysfunction, it did accept a deliberately vague boilerplate
description of some "problem." The pills soon arrived by UPS from San
Antonio, Tex. I was charged an additional $85 for a "consultation"
with a doctor whose name I learned only from the pill bottle. He not
only didn't talk to me, but he didn't consult with my primary-care
physician to verify my purported medical history or see if I was
telling the truth when I said I was not taking medications known to
interact dangerously with Viagra.

I asked Michael Risher, of the Lindesmith Center, the drug-policy
research group, why our national drug warriors look the other way at
such flagrant Viagra madness while railing against, say, the medical
use of marijuana. He said that "perception" rules: Viagra, after all,
has the fatherly imprimatur of the irreproachable Bob Dole. (We all
know which national figure is the poster boy for marijuana.) Yet even
as drug use among the young is being fought by a Clinton-and-Gingrich-endorsed
ad blitz costing taxpayers nearly $1 billion, what kind of mixed
messages are adults sending kids? The same ad industry that is making
the anti-drug spots speaks out of the other side of its mouth by
pushing grown-up-sanctioned drugs like alcohol and nicotine, not to
mention an exponentially increasing number of prescription
pharmaceuticals.

A drug culture is a drug culture is a drug culture, whether the
illicitly obtained gateway high of choice for a teen-ager is marijuana
or any legal, heavily promoted medicine that's perceived as life style
enhancing, no matter what its side effects or long-term consequences.
Viagra brings benefits to many legitimate patients, not to mention
stand-up comics, but who's the real butt of the jokes? Call it an acid
flashback to the 60's, but I'm taking my phone off the hook to avoid
all the friends coming after my stash.

Checked-by: Pat Dolan