Drug peddlers as users who create demand
06/27/97

By Richard Estrada / The Dallas Morning News

NEW YORK I was talking to a young friend about the drug issue a few
weeks ago when he suggested that I take a walk through lower Manhattan.

Twentyeight years old, the young man recounted his foray through
Greenwich Village on a Saturday night in May. What surprised him most,
he said, was that he and his companions weren't able to go more than a
block without being pestered by drug dealers.

No sooner had I deplaned at LaGuardia Airport than I opened up the New
York Times and saw more clearly what my friend meant. Only two days
before, police and federal agents had descended en masse on a park in
lower Manhattan to arrest more than 50 marijuana dealers.

Law enforcement's goal was to break the back of pot peddling in the
neighborhood by targeting recidivist dealers for arrest. One of the
alleged marijuana dealers collared that day had been busted 75 times
before.

The very ubiquitousness of drug dealing and drug abuse is a major issue
by itself. According to the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at
Columbia University, the number of illicit drug users in New York is
almost 500,000. But in a particularly troubling observation, the center
asserts that drug abuse is so widespread that by the sixth grade most
children in urban America have seen individuals use banned substances.

Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy,
is familiar with the phenomenon of rising drug abuse among youth. "It's
clear that youth exposure to drugs is increasing," he recently said.
"Primarily, it's a marijuana threat but in combination with other
drugs."

Nor is any of this surprising to Chris Policano, a spokesman for Phoenix
House in New York, one of the largest nonprofit substance abuse service
agencies in the country. "Kids are being taught by example in their
neighborhoods and even their own homes that drug abuse is normal," he
affirms.

Worse yet, kids are using more potent marijuana more regularly. "For
some time now, they have been purchasing cigars known as 'blunts,'
removing the tobacco and packing the cigars with marijuana instead,"
says Mr. Policano. "The marijuana is so strong and so affordable that
some of the kids smoke several blunts a day." Mr. Policano is convinced
that marijuana can and does serve as a gateway drug. The abuse of
cocaine, methamphetamines and even heroin often follows.

Yet the story of drug abusers and drug dealers has another twist. Often
miscast as a mere issue of demand driving supply, the evidence in New
York and other cities indicates that even though demand is key, supply
also is a major factor in the overall challenge especially when backed
by effective marketing.

Almost two centuries ago, the French economist J.B. Seay suggested that
supply can create its own demand. While the influence of his theory
waned with the onset of the Great Depression, it is clear that Mr. Seay
wasn't entirely wrong.

Americans who live near openair drug markets aren't necessarily
concerned about the myriad pros and cons of the ongoing drug debate. In
the end, they only know that drug dealing detracts from the quality of
their life, and they don't like it.

But Mr. Policano warns that if the problem is to be intelligently
addressed, it is important to grasp the nuances. And what Phoenix House
is hearing from dealers who seek treatment is that they deal substances
such as crack in order to be able to afford substances such as
marijuana.

"To point this out is not to argue against law enforcement," says Mr.
Policano. "The enforcement of the drug laws often obliges drug dealers
and abusers to seek treatment, we are for enforcement. But society
should understand that the problem is complicated and interrelated
rather than neat and compartmentalized."

A few days after the raid, when I visited Washington Square Park, at the
foot of Fifth Avenue, things were idyllic. Students were reading
placidly, children were wading merrily in a water fountain, and the old
men were playing chess underneath the trees. It was anything but an
openair market for drug dealers.

It was something that many Americans, including children, often don't
get these days. It was a drugfree world, with no drugs to buy and no
drugs to sell. In all its supreme simplicity, it was just another day in
the park.

Richard Estrada is an associate editor of The Dallas Morning News
editorial page.