YOU SIMPLY CAN'T REPLACE ONE ADDICTION WITH ANOTHER

I KNOW a guy who wants to get off vodka because if he falls down, he cracks
his melon and dies.

So he drinks beer - gets fat and has a heart attack and dies.

Same guy wants to give up cigarettes so he smokes cigars - never inhales -
doesn't die of lung cancer, just lip cancer.

While I might use hyperbole to make my point, I am a little bit ticked at
all the geniuses who took a swipe at Mayor Giuliani.

And they took this swipe because the mayor dared to say he wants to get rid
of methadone clinics for heroin abusers.

The bureaucrats went bonkers, but the mayor's point was as clear a child's
pinkie - you don't beat an addiction by replacing it with another
addiction.

That is why if you want to give up vodka, don't drink - don't even eat rum cake.

If you want to give up cigarettes, cigars are just no good. Don't smoke.

When Giuliani suggested that methadone was going to be eighty-sixed, Don
Des Jarlais was quoted as going ballistic.

"He said what?" said the don. "From a public health stand point, that has
to be one of the more ridiculous things for any public official to say in
the past 30 years."

Don Des Jarlais is the director of the Chemical Dependency Institute of
Beth Israel Medical Center, and apparently like Giuliani and like me, is
not a medical doctor.

So what in good God's name does he really know about methadone?

"Methadone is purely and simply a drug," Dr. Joseph English of St.
Vincent's Hospital was saying. "It's a drug."

But Giuliani would come in for more blasts: "It's medical malpractice,"
said Dr. Edwin Salsitz. It so happens, Dr. Salsitz is the director of
methadone medical maintenance at guess where? Beth Israel.

Now both Des Jarlais and Salsitz have exquisite backgrounds, but for
Giuliani to take away methadone from their empire is a little like telling
the head of welfare that welfare is over. Ouch, that hurts.

I spoke to an old friend who is a spokesman for Phoenix House, which takes
heroin addiction very seriously.

They seem to have a winning record.

"Methadone is not in our program," he said. "Our goal is to get people off
drugs
period. We don't use drugs to get people off drugs."

Daytop Village, another heavy hitter in the war against the needle, doesn't
use methadone. Does coming down hurt? Oh, yeah.

Thank you and good night.

You see the carefully labored attack on Giuliani wasn't so much as if he
said: "Lock the bastards up and let them die in cold turkey."

No, it was much worse than that. He actually suggested that recovering
addicts go to work. Perish the thought.

And the liberals cringed. The liberals who have never seen anyone die can't
imagine doing anything naughty to people who are naughty.

Bums.

I have held people in my arms in Hong Kong while heroin made them throw up
forever over my starched shirt.

They were not ghetto kids, they were accountants and too many of them were
fellow journalists.

We all stray and asking forgiveness is not enough. We have to show we are sorry.

And being a smack-hack is not going to be cured by replacing one addiction
with another.

Unless, of course, all these heavy-hitting experts and liberals want a
methadone clinic next to their kids' kindergarten.

Rudy Giuliani is no day at the beach. He is a gorgeous target for these
wisenheimers who talk as long as they have letters after their name.

Once again, he is damn straight on. He is the Prince of the City.

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)