REACTIONS REVEAL DOUBLE STANDARD

According to the president of the board of the Child Advocacy Center
of Lehigh County, it is wrong "to revile a government employee who
is struggling successfully with his addiction and in fact should be
cited as a shining example of what someone with an addiction should
do."

J. Layne Turner, wrote Barbara Stoffa, "is well thought of where he
works" at a top job in the county's Drug and Alcohol agency. (Stoffa
is the retired head of another agency and is the wife of Northampton
County Executive John Stoffa.)

"Just what is the point of attacking someone ... who is successfully
mastering his addiction?" Stoffa asked." If you saw someone who
recently had a cast removed from a broken leg, would you kick that
leg just to see if it is indeed healed?"

That referred to Sunday's column, in which I ridiculed a drug and
alcohol survey distributed by Turner. I also noted Turner's previous
problems with the law, stemming from what he blamed on drinking
heavily and using drugs, although he got his rap sheet wiped clean by
getting accepted into the court system's accelerated rehabilitative
disposition program.

"Putting [Turner] in charge of a drug and alcohol program would be
like hiring an arsonist as your fire chief," I wrote.

"What personal and shaming behaviors of yours should be printed in
your paper?" Stoffa demanded, "or are you inadvertently revealing
them as you write."

I responded by asking her "what sort of Freudian slip on my part"
let the cat out of the bag about my shameful past. But mainly, I
wanted to ask a hypothetical question.

"If this had been a case of a man previously charged with sexual
assaults on children," I e-mailed, "and he managed to get ARD by
blubbering about how sorry he was, would you be in favor of giving
him a government job where he has authority over children?"

"No," Stoffa acknowledged, but she denied "there is any
comparability in the two scenarios."

I greatly respect Stoffa, but I think my comparison is pithy. It's
preposterous to argue that the best people to help drug and alcohol
abusers are other drug and alcohol abusers, reformed or otherwise.
That's like saying the best people to fix your plumbing are those
with a history of being unable to fix their own leaks.

I do not think double standards are appropriate anywhere, and I think
people with alcohol and other drug problems cause as much harm as sex
maniacs.

At the same time, I strongly feel that once people have been cleared
of wrongdoing, or have paid their debts to society, they should be
allowed to get on with their lives, perhaps even in government jobs.

I'd have no problem if the county hired Turner to paint lines on a
road, or to fix county plumbing. But there must be somebody out there
who, based on past performance, is better qualified to tell others
what's what regarding drugs and alcohol.

It has been quite a week for reactions to what I've said about drugs,
including last Friday's column urging the decriminalization of
marijuana for medical purposes.

A deluge of responses included several noting that the American
Medical Association opposes the therapeutic use of marijuana
(although the AMA retreated a bit from its medieval stance last month).

The AMA represents a trillion-dollar-a-year enterprise and if, say, 1
percent of patients are allowed to switch to something they can grow
in their own yards, it could put a $10 billion hole in medical
industry profits. So anybody gullible enough to believe anything the
AMA says about pot probably would buy the Brooklyn Bridge.

My favorite response came from a man who grew up in Catasauqua but
now lives in California, one of 13 states that allow possession and
use of small amounts of marijuana for valid medical purposes. He
asked that I withhold his name because he fears his employer in the
Bay Area may not be as enlightened as the voters who enacted
California's Prop 215 law in 1996.

"I suffer from an autoimmune form of arthritis that causes my immune
system to attack my joints for no particular reason," the Catty
native wrote. "This condition is extremely debilitating and
painful." He has been allowed to treat his symptoms with marijuana
instead of with opiates and other prescription drugs that have
horrible risks and side effects.

"I have long been concerned for family members and friends still
living in the Lehigh Valley who do not have this choice," he said.
"These people represent a segment of our population that are ...
persecuted by the draconian drug laws that you highlighted so
eloquently in your article."

We eloquent types think that drunks and other drug abusers are not
the best people to be in positions of authority over others when it
comes those same problems, but I'd be happy to exempt those who used
marijuana to relieve the horrors of illnesses. If that represents a
double standard on my part, so be it.