ELECTRIC KOOL-AID VIAGRA

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: Mike Gogulski