Some words go up in smoke

By Patricia Smith, Globe Staff, 09/22/97

It was a sultry Saturday afternoon, stamped with summer's waning
signature. Joggers, bicyclists, and inline skaters recreated
doubletime, trying to cram in as much leisure sensation as possible
before autumn ices their bones. Lovers linked hands and strolled the
waterfront, readers lolled against tree trunks with a favorite tome.
It was one of those days when it made absolutely no sense to be
indoors.

Parents: Did you know where your children were? Well, if
they had half a mind and heartbeat, they were snorting the
wafting air on the Common, grinning goofily, and savoring
their contact highs. Yes, yes, yes, of course they told you
that
they were joining friends for some squeakyclean,
allAmerican enterprise such as softball or Frisbee
flinging.
But think back. When they came home, didn't a few things
strike you as strange? That sudden sense of worldliness in
their
lizardlidded eyes? The fact that they inhaled a gross of
Twinkies before dinner? While it was true that a number of
revelers at Saturday's Freedom Rally were earnestly there
to
work toward the legalization of marijuana for a variety of
medicinal and murkier reasons, a pretty big slice of the
approximately 40,000 kindred souls simply thought it was
the
coolest place in the world to be. Long after the rally
dissipated, there were reports of adolescent clusters,
ditzy on
their share of the Common air, wending their way back to
comfy suburban

haunts and terrorizing commuters with rampant giggling and general
feistiness. Some of the luckier kids even got to puff an actual bit
of the wily weed within sniffing distance of Boston's finest, who
seemed inordinately mellow during the proceedings. Could it be that
they were...? Nah. A few steps and a million mindsets away at the
Hatch Shell, Boston drug czar Kattie Portis tried not to be
disheartened as she communed with a much smaller crowd at the somber
2d annual Sober Day Festival. An estimate of 3,000 attendees seemed
wildly inflated, but it is possible that a total of 3,000 strolled
through the area. Slowly. Over a great period of time. There just
wasn't the sense of unbridled revelry that characterized the aromatic
Boston Common bash. ''That's why I have this job,'' Portis said. ''We
haven't gotten to everybody. Even though marijuana is illegal, it's
plentiful and young people are using it. We see the suicides, we see
the warning signs, but kids don't realize that marijuana is the
gateway drug. It's the way in. After awhile it's not good enough, it
doesn't do the job anymore. ''And kids don't know how they're growing
marijuana now. It's no longer grown in the ground, it's grown from
chemicals. Sure, there are fields of the stuff, but the majority of
it is grown inside, and it's grown fast. That's what they're putting
in their bodies. That's what they think is good dope. But it's just
as addictive as anything else.'' Portis isn't just spinning the
company line or blabbering in an official capacity. Years before the
mayor nabbed her for her current position, she was a heroin addict.
She remembers the gateway, the feeling that walking through couldn't
hurt her. She has been in recovery for 25 years. ''I wonder what
parents thought about their children being out on the Common,''
Portis said. ''I wonder how many parents knew where their kids
were.'' Before Saturday, Marc Goldfinger, an activist and poet who
kicked a heroin habit 3 1/2 years ago, didn't even know that a Sober
Day Festival was plann

d. ''Their publicity must have been poor,'' he said. ''And they're
saying there were more than 1,000 people there? It looked more like
30 or 40 to me. ''Sobriety is not that big a priority, except for
people who really need to be sober or choose it as a lifestyle. I
wouldn't go to meetings if I didn't have to. I remember when my back
was up against the wall, and I'll do anything not to feel that way
again.'' ''Being sober isn't sexy, so it's a lifestyle that's not
saying anything at all to kids,'' said Jon Craig, a recovering
alcoholic who stuck it out at the Sober Day fest. ''If I was young
and didn't know any better, I'd be celebrating the weed too. After
all, what fun is there in not taking any chances?'' Saturday's dismal
Sober Day showing hasn't deterred Kattie Portis; her first priority
as Boston drug czar is still the kid who wandered home that day
smelling vaguely of contraband. ''I won't give up on this city's
children,'' she said. ''But you know how your mama used to tell you
that you can lead

horse to water but you can't make him drink?'' she said. ''Well, some
days you can't even lead him to water.''

This story ran on page B01 of the Boston Globe on 09/22/97.
_ Copyright 1997 Globe Newspaper Company.