POT'S A GATEWAY DRUG THAT LEADS TO HEARTACHE

They disingenuously called themselves the Committee for Sensible
Marijuana Policy, and they were ecstatic last week after persuading
the electorate that possessing a small amount of weed is really not
that big a deal.

That same morning a call arrived here from an old friend whose voice
revealed something was terribly wrong.

Indeed, "What's new?" elicited an anguished response as he told of a
daughter now flailing in the riptides of addiction.

"It's like knowing there's going to be a car accident and you can't
do a damn thing to stop it," he said. "All you can do is watch. She
won't give up this guy who got her into Oxys (Oxycontin), which led
her into heroin. She says, 'Dad, if I don't stay with him, he's going
to kill himself.' She thinks she can fix him; instead he's taking her
with him."

He tries to think of things to tell her, things that might penetrate
the wall of tension that's risen between them.

"She had a best friend in high school," he recalled. "A few years ago
her dad found her dead with a needle in her arm. He's a wonderful
human being and they were the all-American family. I said to my
daughter, 'Remember how we stood at her grave and watched how hard he
cried? Do you really want to see me doing that, too?'

"The answer I always get is, 'Dad, I'm not comfortable discussing
this with you.'

"It seems like yesterday when the two of them were playing ball
together; I'd be driving them home, listening to them giggling and
laughing, the way 15-year-old girls do. I never could have imagined
this stuff getting to either one of them."

He continues to think of things to say, appeals to make, futilely
searching for magic words that might bring clarity to this kid he loves.

"It's like I'm in a dark room, groping for the light switch," he said.

That's when Question 2 came up, the referendum implying marijuana is
relatively harmless.

"I've learned this much," he said. "Talk to anyone using heroin,
crack cocaine or any of the barbiturates destroying kids today, and
just about every one will tell you they began with marijuana."

Everyone knows it's a gateway drug, and those who succeeded in
advancing its acceptance and availability surely had to know that,
for many who fall into its clutches, it's a gateway that leads to
heartache and tragedy.

How can anyone celebrate that?