DISAPPOINTING PRESIDENTIAL SILENCE ABOUT ILLICIT DRUGS

I was surprised, but hardly shocked, to hear that President Bush all but
admitted to illicit drug use during a conversation that was secretly taped.
I am only disappointed by the sleazy way the disclosure was disclosed and
by the president's reluctance to set the record straight.

Like many of the rest of us parents, he says in the tape that he doesn't
want to talk about any of his alleged past drug indiscretions because he
doesn't want youngsters to do the same.

Unfortunately, experience shows, silence is a self-defeating way to
discourage kids from drug use.

And in Washington, where public ignorance feeds endless mischief, silence
also can lead to well-meaning but wrong-headed legislation.

In case you missed it, Bush suggests on the tapes that were recorded when
he was the governor of Texas that he smoked marijuana in the past. He also
dodged a question on the tapes, whose authenticity the White House does not
dispute, about whether he had used cocaine.

The New York Times broke the story in a Page 1 report on Doug Wead, a
Christian activist who has published a book based in part on conversations
with Bush that Wead secretly recorded in 1998 and 1999. Wead has since
expressed regrets over releasing part of the conversations without Bush's
permission, a move on the treachery scale that rivaled Linda Tripp's
bugging of her chats with Monica Lewinsky. Wead has since announced that he
is donating the book's proceeds to charity. Ah, nothing concentrates your
conscience like having a nation of millions call you a sleazebag.

Fortunately for the president, the tapes' contents have done less damage to
Bush's reputation than to Wead's.

My disappointment comes with Bush's refusal, so far, to speak openly and
candidly about his past drug and alcohol use and how he recovered. He says
he does not want to answer the questions "because I don't want some little
kid doing what I tried."

Take it from me, Mr. President, a lot of today's teenagers think you
"smoked and snorted," as one of my son's high school classmates put it,
anyway. Your silence does nothing to defuse their suspicions. For the
record, our president has never acknowledged using drugs, despite repeated
questions from nosy reporters during his days as Texas governor. He has
acknowledged a drinking problem that he appears to have kicked, to his
credit, through the wonder-working powers of his religious conversion.

His party-animal days involved nothing more than "just, you know, wild
behavior," he told Wead, although he did worry, apparently with
justification, that his opponents would revive allegations of cocaine use.

Bush's reputed "wild" days hardly make him unique among us, his fellow Baby
Boomers and post-Baby Boomers. Unfortunately too few parents have a clue
about how to come clean with our own kids in ways that can help them to
avoid our mistakes--and worse.

A national survey released by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America,
coincidentally a few days after the disclosure of the Wead tapes, found
that the number of parents who report never talking with their children
about drugs actually has doubled in the last six years, to 12 percent in
2004 from 6 percent in 1998.

And while many of us parents say we've talked to our kids about drugs,
that's not what a lot of our kids are saying: 85 percent of the 1,205
surveyed parents said they had talked to their children at least once in
the last 12 months about drugs, but only 30 percent of teenagers said
they've learned much about drug risks from their parents.

We need to share more straight talk, not silence, with our kids.

And more straight talk from the White House on down would help government
to avoid doing greater harm, like the provision that Congress passed in
1998 that bars college students or applicants with drug convictions from
receiving federal financial aid. If ever there was a case of throwing
obstacles in the way of young people who are trying to improve their lives,
regardless of past errors, this is it.

The provision's author, Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.), says he intended the
bill to apply only to those convicted while they are students or loan
applicants, not to earlier convictions. He also has been trying to correct
that error with a new amendment, although the wheels of Congress have been
grinding exceedingly slow in that process.

In the meantime, we have a president who refuses to talk about his own drug
history, whatever it may be, and a Congress that continues to discriminate
against aspiring college students who are honest about their own past drug
use. That's nuts. We, the people, need to talk. Then Congress needs to act.
Leadership from the White House will help, Mr. President. Your silence will
not.