TAKING STOCK ON THE WAR ON DRUGS (Cont.)

BATTISTA: What do you think of this new ad campaign, Mike?

GRAY: Well, I'm strongly in favor of prevention messages going out to
teenagers. The problem with this ad campaign, like the previous ad
campaigns, is it's based upon very flawed premises.

Let me tell you, about three years ago when I was in the middle of the
research for my book, "Drug Crazy," I got a call from one of my son's former
high school buddies. And he said, "I understand you're working on a book
about drugs. I need help. I'm a heroin addict." Well, I was blown away. And
I couldn't understand what had happened to this kid who was, you know, had a
scholarship to college and was on the way to a brilliant career as an
artist. And I asked him, "How did you stumble into this hole?" And he said,
"Well, they lied to us about marijuana, and I figured they were lying to us
about this stuff as well."

Well, it turns out we weren't lying about heroin. We were telling the truth.
But how is this kid supposed to know? And that's the underlying flaw that
permeates this campaign and others is in the attempt to rope marijuana in
with these hard drugs: heroin and cocaine.

BATTISTA: So you're worried the kids won't take these ads seriously?

GRAY: Well, the problem is in attempting to equate marijuana with the evil
of heroin, the message that we send them is that heroin is no more dangerous
than marijuana. And that's a terrible message to send to these kids, and we
are now reaping the message -- the harvest that that message sowed.

MCCAFFREY: Bobbie, I wonder if I could add something.

BATTISTA: Yeah, go ahead, General.

MCCAFFREY: I think Mike actually has a lot of good points, one of which I
would certainly underscore is that we've got to read history. And Professor
Dave Musto up at Yale University is a good place to start, probably our
prominent historian about drug abuse in America.

GRAY: That's where I started.

MCCAFFREY: We've had a terrible drug problem in America during the early
part of this century. Cocaine and opiate use was widespread. We had a
terrible drug use problem in the 1870s. We've been here before. And what
happens when we get energized and reject this substance abuse, it goes down.
So, you know, to some extent, Mike and I may agree on it.

Now second thing you've got to clearly argue is that when I'm asked what the
most dangerous drug in America is, I don't talk about methamphetamines and
heroin. I talk about a 12-year-old smoking pot regularly and using beer.

And Bobbie, the reason we say that is that when we look at this Columbia
University data, Joe Califano and his associates, a 12-year- old smoking pot
is 79 times more likely to end up as a chronic drug abuser than one who
isn't. So gateway behavior is a threat.

BATTISTA: Let's ask our medical person to get in on that. Dr. Alexander.

ALEXANDER: Thank you. I was just about to jump in on that. I agree with a
lot of these points that are being made. I do like the fact that we're going
to be doing this campaign where people are actually able to see some of
these things on television.

The problem I have with it, I think, is sometimes it's off target for the
kids. They have been hit with so many different things on the media that
many times they'll tune these things out. And the message that they get from
their friends is that this isn't bad. The message that they sometimes get
from their parents who smoke, who drink, who may or may not use marijuana
is: "This isn't bad." And then when they do eventually get around to talking
to them about the heroin or something other that's harder, then they may not
often put this all together.

And I think that we need to be working harder to educate these younger kids.
The general mentioned that many of these kids now are ten, 12 years old are
smoking pot. I have seen that, and it's very, very frustrating when they
come in. It's really frightening when you have an 11-year-old who is so
drunk that they can't stand up. And you know that they're getting it either
at school or after school. And their parents come in and deny it, and then
parents have to leave to go out and smoke a cigarette. I think this is
really bad behavior.

BATTISTA: We have to interrupt for just a second. We will continue our
discussion here with our guests. We have to go back to the newsroom now and
Natalie Allen.

(BREAKING NEWS COVERAGE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: We work more with countries where drugs are grown and processed to
try to stop the drugs from coming into the United States in the first place.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BATTISTA: And welcome back, everybody, to TALKBACK LIVE. The topic is drugs
today. Let's take a look at a couple of faxes from Mark: "The government is
spending money on an ad campaign that causes most of our youth to go into
convulsive fits of laughter. The kids know that these ads are largely
comprised of half truths and fabrications. The fact has sabotaged our
credibility as adults and authority figures."

And from Thomas in Arkansas: "Drug prohibition can never work for the simple
reason that it creates a criminal black market that is impossible to
control. It is time to end a brain dead, self-defeating policy that causes a
hundred times as much trouble as the drugs themselves could ever do." I
guess we would have to ask Thomas what the alternative is. But anyway, let's
go to Peter in our audience.

PETER: Great. I'm a New York City school teacher in Staten Island, New York,
and I have found that one of the most difficult problems in discussing drugs
- -- I had the opportunity to teach a sociology course this year, and many of
the students said to me, "The president of the United States has been on
MTV, and he told us that he smoked pot. And therefore, we can do it, too."

And they even asked me as their teacher, "Did you ever smoke pot?" And I
said, "No, I've never used drugs. I didn't use them in school. I still don't
use them today," and they don't believe me. They say, "If the president has
done it, why can't we?" And I just feel, General, that we've taken a great
step backwards as opposed to the Nancy Reagan campaigns which stated, "Just
say no to drugs," that told kids that they could say no and they did have an
option. What are your feelings on that?

McCAFFREY: Well, you know, what we've got to recognize in our country is
that one out of three adult Americans has used an illegal drug: marijuana,
cocaine, LSD. We had a revolution in the 1970s which almost wrecked America,
our economic efficiency, our homes, the armed forces. It was a disaster.
Those 72 million Americans, the Speaker of the House, and others, it depends
on how old you are and where you were during that period of time whether you
encountered this. But they've rejected drug use. And so you've got people
like our president, who is a great father and a parent who doesn't want his
daughter using drugs and doesn't want a society that's stoned and dazed. So
I think all of us shouldn't say, "Let's look back at the 1970s." Let's say,
"Who commits to creating a drug-free country."

BATTISTA: Well, maybe it doesn't go far enough with these ads. Let's ask Dr.
Alexander why he has been nicknamed Dr. Vomit, for one thing, because,
Doctor, you do take a bit more graphic approach to this, don't you?

ALEXANDER: I do. I feel a lot of times that these ad campaigns really don't
do enough for kids. And after having been through quite a few situations
that really just made me angry and actually really hurt me where I had to be
the one to call parents to tell them their child had died of a heroin
overdose, I decided I wanted to do something about it. And I was asked by
the schools to come talk to the kids about drugs.

And the first time I went, they didn't seemingly get anything out of it
because I went in my suit and tie and I talked to them as a physician. I
changed my tactics after that and started dressing down. I dressed in blue
jeans, a shirt, tennis shoes, and I started telling them the stories about
what I did in the emergency department, what I was seeing. And I found that
they began to listen. And I started relating some of the stories about some
of the kids that they knew who had died.

And in the end, I wound up finding that the thing that really got them was
the dramatic approach using the example of what it felt like to die from
heroin. And most people who die from heroin die because they stop breathing.
And most of the time the reason they stop breathing is because they vomited
due to the narcotic effect of the drug. They swallow all the vomit back into
their lungs and basically drown on their own vomit. And that seemingly
struck a large nerve with most of the kids I talked with.

And as the word got around, the kids starting talking more about the vomit
doctor. And that's how that name came about. But it seems to work.

BATTISTA: And Mike Gray, I read in the research also that you were
expounding a bit on how they do things overseas, certainly places in Europe.

GRAY: Well, Bobbie, the Dutch don't have this problem. I mean, the Dutch
realized a long time ago that a certain small segment of the youths are
going to experiment with drugs regardless of what we do. And they felt that
it was better for them to experiment with marijuana than with heroin and
cocaine. So they erected a barrier between these drugs. They made marijuana
available in coffee shops to anyone over 18. And as a consequence, they have
an aging heroin population. In other words, the number of the heroin users
in Holland are getting older and older, which means that they are not
getting new recruits.

General McCaffrey informs us that here in the United States, the greatest
jump in use is among eighth graders. And this is during this incredibly
stringent prohibition.

The Dutch have a much more tolerant policy, and their results are better
than ours across the board.

MCCAFFREY: Mike, if I may, let me say again, I think we ought to agree to
disagree on the facts. The Dutch experience is not something I would suggest
we want to model. It's been an unmitigated disaster...

GRAY: General, General, General, let me...

MCCAFFREY: Let me finish, if I may, Mike.

GRAY: OK, all right.

MCCAFFREY: I would argue instead... Let me just take the title of your book,
"Drug Crazy." It seems to me you've got to be crazy to use drugs or to make
it easier for young people to do that. And that's essentially what some of
us argue the Dutch have tried to do.

GRAY: General, let me caution you that your deputy, Jim McDunna (ph), told
me that the situation in the Netherlands was a disaster during one of our
recent debates. So yesterday, I checked with the Dutch embassy in
Washington. And hopefully, they are monitoring this broadcast, and you may
get a diplomatic protest from the Dutch embassy because they are quite
concerned...

MCCAFFREY: They've done them from the French, also, I might add, diplomatic
protests, and the Germans and others who are concerned about their example
in Europe.

GRAY: General, let me finish. The French have a higher addiction rate than
the Dutch. We have a higher addiction rate than the Dutch. And the worse
thing that we have is a decreasing age among the heroin users.

MCCAFFREY: Actually, you know, I probably would again dispute you on the
facts. The rates of drug abuse among young people in Holland have tended to
go up dramatically during this period of time, while ours were going down.
So I really don't agree with what you're saying.

GRAY: Bobbie, I hope for the sake of settling this argument once and for all
you will check with the Dutch embassy, because the Dutch embassy is going to
issue a formal protest against this...

BATTISTA: Mike, unfortunately, hold on to that thought and others. We do
have to hit a break very quickly here. We'll be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TERRI: Yes, I'd like to respond to the gentleman who asked the question, is
the fight on drugs -- is it going to be harder now that the president has
used drugs. Well, I'd like to answer that question. I feel that the answer
to that question is no, simple because we're not only here to preach the
drug-free message to our young adults, we're also here to teach them that
they need to learn from their mistakes.

Now, I believe if the president of the United States can actually admit on
national TV that he has used pot, but now, he's here to fight against it --
now I do believe if students, like the gentleman said early, if the students
may look up to the president, and say he has used it, why can't we. If they
can look up to him to say that, why can't they look up to him now being that
he has made a mistake and say well, he admitted that he made a mistake, why
can't we stand up now and say, hey, we don't want to do this.

BATTISTA: And welcome back everyone, I'm Bobbie Battista, we're talking
about your children and drugs today. And right before we went to the break,
Mike Gray, you made a couple references to legalization. And I know Dr.
Alexander wanted to comment on that.

Continues: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98/n542/a01.html


Checked-by: Melodi Cornett