FLAWED PERCEPTION OF DRUG USE HARMFUL

I would like to thank Jared Strong for his insightful and thought-provoking
Dec. 2 column, "Methamphetamine can ruin lives." With a majority of the
media spending its time on things such as clown-men that like to sleep with
little boys and the shocking revelation that superstar athletes cheat on
their wives, it was refreshing to read commentary on a serious subject that
impacts millions of American families.

The issues Jared raised about methamphetamine abuse are applicable to the
drug problem in this country as a whole. Unfortunately, this problem begins
not at the onset of addiction or even the first use of a substance, but in
grade school where well-meaning but hopelessly flawed programs such as Drug
Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) offer completely unrealistic and
misleading perspectives on the drug culture.

These programs seek to prevent first-time drug use by stigmatizing drugs as
morally wrong. They try, as with most programs with a conservative slant,
to create as much of a "black and white" scenario as possible, branding
drug users as plain "bad people" while praising those who "Just say no." As
Jared points out, once the inevitable experiment with gateway drugs takes
place (usually alcohol or marijuana), they find out that they have
essentially been lied to by the establishment, and may go on to try other,
more powerful drugs.

Instead of engaging in useless moralizing, educational programs should
offer the truth about drugs. What drugs really are are profound examples of
cost/benefit analysis. The less powerful drugs (such as acetaminophen)
provide small gains at very low risk, while the drugs that provide the more
potent and pleasurable effects to the brain (like meth) are associated with
higher rates of addiction, health problems and emotional damage.

The thousands of social and moral concerns are merely byproducts of this
elementary reason why people use drugs -- they want to feel good. By
viewing drug use in this way, perhaps we could stop persecuting people who
commit victimless crimes and one day even learn to accept that substance
abuse is simply a matter of personal choice.

Femi Oyekan

Senior Management

Information Systems