KIDS DO THE DARNDEST THINGS: JOE BIDEN'S COCAINE DILEMMA

I received a text message at 11 p.m. on Saturday while I was walking
to a party in Brooklyn. The message was about a "breaking story":
Ashley Biden, daughter of Vice President Joe Biden, has allegedly
been caught on video using cocaine. My friends know that I work at
the Drug Policy Alliance, so I often get e-mails or calls when
celebrities or elected officials have some drug-use drama.

My first thought was shit, again? It was less than two months ago
that Michael Phelps face was plastered all over the media for the
Bong Hit Seen Around the World. While walking down the street, with
my own vodka buzz on, a range of other thoughts started racing through my head.

Part of me is thinking of the irony. As senator in the late 1980s,
Biden was a cheerleader for the drug war. He played a major role in
creating the drug czar's office and in enacting the draconian
mandatory minimum sentences that have filled our prisons with
nonviolent drug law offenders.

It's practically a page right out of the Traffic screenplay. If the
video proves to be legitimate, Ashley Biden could join Noelle Bush,
Rush Limbaugh, Patrick Kennedy, Ted Haggard and the many other
examples that prove drug use and abuse can touch every family.

The next feeling is uneasiness. When stories like this hit families,
especially political ones, it can break in two ways.

On one hand, I can envision Vice President Biden, realizing that drug
use is so widespread that it even touches his daughter, would become
more sympathetic to other people who use drugs. There are hundreds of
thousands people behind bars serving long prison sentences on drug
charges. The realization that other people's kids are living in a
cage for doing the same thing that his daughter did could be a
transformative experience.

In recent years, Biden has championed a number of progressive
drug-policy reforms -- like introducing legislation to completely
eliminate the 100-to-1 crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity and
rolling back the mandatory minimums he favored in the late 1980s.
Perhaps his daughter's experience will strengthen his resolve.

On the other hand, these experiences can cause people to move into
another direction. When Jimmy Carter was president, his
administration seriously considered marijuana decriminalization.
There is even footage of Carter and others in his administration
saying that the laws against marijuana are more harmful than the drug.

But before the law was changed, someone in his drug-policy staff was
outed for doing cocaine at a D.C. party -- and the issue of
decriminalizing marijuana never came up again.

I don't know the details of Ashley Biden and her alleged cocaine use.
If she does have a drug problem, then it's likely that she'll gain
access to the best treatment options available. It would be terrific
if this led Joe Biden to advocate for treatment on demand for all
those who need it in this country.

That said, there are millions of people who have tried cocaine, or
use it occasionally, who don't develop a problem. If this is true in
Ashley Biden's case, she would strike another blow to the myth that
if you try cocaine you will become an addict and before you know it
end up unemployed and homeless.

It also raises the question about whether we should be arresting and
incarcerating -- or even forcing people like her into treatment
through drug courts -- when she may not even have a drug problem.

Too many people, including Joe Biden, automatically want the
alternative to incarceration to be coerced treatment under the
supervision of the criminal justice system. Maybe we should just
leave alone people whose drug use isn't harming anyone else.

If Ashley Biden truly doesn't have a drug problem and her biggest
mistake was to allow herself to be filmed by a so-called friend
trying to make money off her trust, I hope she doesn't misdiagnosis
the problem and solution.

I hope that her and her father's crisis management strategy will not
lead to tearful apologies where she claims to have a drug problem and
promises to go to treatment to go get help.

Given Joe Biden's high-profile views on the drug war, they also
shouldn't claim that this is a personal issue and that they want their privacy.

I would hope instead that Ashley Biden's response and action is to
join the millions of people who are challenging the ignorance and
irrationality of locking up hundreds of thousands of our fellow
citizens because of a nonviolent drug offense.

If Ashley and Joe Biden can use this embarrassing experience to
become involved in changing our inhumane polices, then the Biden
family, and our country, will be better for it.