OUR BLIND SPOT ABOUT DRUGS

When I was a high school social-studies teacher in Vermont, one of my
duties was to instruct a state-mandated unit on alcohol and illegal drugs.
Our curriculum encouraged us to lead "discussions" about these substances,
but there was one fact we could never discuss: They make you feel good.
That's right: They make you feel good. You read it here first.

And soon, New Yorkers will be reading it on the subway -- right under a
photograph of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Earlier this week, the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws unveiled a $500,000
advertising campaign featuring a quotation from Bloomberg. Asked last year
whether he had ever smoked marijuana, Bloomberg told New York magazine,
"You bet I did. And I enjoyed it."

Slated for display in subways, buses and newspapers, the advertisements
target ex-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's "zero-tolerance" policy against public
marijuana smoking. Thanks to Giuliani's zealous enforcement efforts, the
number of New Yorkers arrested for pot smoking in city streets or parks
soared from 720 in 1992 to 33,471 in 1999.

Bloomberg says he will continue to enforce the city's anti-marijuana laws
"vigorously," and perhaps he should. Public pot smoking can create a
menacing environment, especially for young children. It could also spawn a
general disregard for public law and order, as advocates of the
"broken-windows" theory maintain.

But we should not allow these legal issues to divert us from the important
truth that Bloomberg admitted: Drugs can be pleasurable. Indeed, a frank
acknowledgment of this fact -- especially in American schools -- might hold
the key to reducing our nation's dangerous dependence upon alcohol and
illegal narcotics.

Starting in the late 1800s, public schools taught children that drinking
alcohol -- even in small amounts -- would damage their livers, hearts, eyes
and lungs. After the repeal of national prohibition in 1933, textbooks
corrected many of these exaggerations. In the guise of "discussion,"
however, schools continued to emphasize the perils of strong drink -- and
the reasons that students should abstain from it.

A similar pattern marks the recent history of drug education. Since the
1980s, most anti-drug curricula have stressed the physiological and
psychological dangers of illegal narcotics. More than three-quarters of the
nation's school districts adopted a single curriculum, Drug Abuse
Resistance Education (DARE), which sent police officers into schools to
lecture about the harms of drugs.

In the face of mounting evidence that this approach did not deter narcotic
use, however, DARE switched course. Rather than stressing the evil
consequences of drugs, teachers and police officers now lead discussions
about why people choose to ingest them.

That's a welcome reform, but it won't work if we ignore the most obvious
reason: a desire for pleasure. At present, educators stress every reason
for alcohol and drug use except pleasure. Peer pressure, low self-esteem,
parental abuse -- the list goes on and on. But nowhere do we acknowledge
the plain fact that alcohol and drugs can promote euphoric feelings in the
human psyche.

A similar blind spot marks present-day sex education. Here, too, teachers
are asked to lead discussions about the reasons teenagers engage in
premarital sex. Only rarely, however, do our textbooks or teachers admit
the clearest reason: It feels good. In sex education, as in drug education,
pleasure remains the ultimate taboo.

Why? Most adults probably fear that any acknowledgment of pleasure will
increase the allure of these activities. But the students already know
about the joy of sex, alcohol and drugs. They know it from film and
television; they know it from popular music; they know it, sometimes, from
their own experience.

What they don't know -- or don't understand -- are the dangers that these
pleasures can bring. But we'll never persuade our children to take heed of
the dangers if we continue to lie or dissemble about the pleasures. Mayor
Bloomberg had the backbone to tell the truth about both of them. Let's hope
our schools follow suit.

The writer teaches history in the Steinhardt School of Education at New
York University. He is the author of "Distilling Democracy: Alcohol
Education in America's Public Schools, 1880-1925."