BLACK AND WHITE AND SHADES OF GRAY

The worst thing about black and white thinking is that it eclipses shades of
gray. Gray is that fuzzy, puzzling area that leaves most of us wondering
where right ends and wrong begins.

For instance: Who is the more insidious threat to the American way of life?
A member of the Taliban, or an American businessman with a keen sense of a
unique market need? Silly question, isn't it?

Or is it?

If we allow ourselves to go beyond black and white answers to the gray area
where legitimate questions are entertained, we might start by asking, "Tell
me more about each of these men."

Suppose the Taliban member is not involved in bombing Americans. In fact,
his one job in life is to ensure that the Taliban's prohibition against the
cultivation and sale of poppies in Afghanistan is strictly enforced.

Now suppose the American businessman is involved in the manufacture and sale
of a kit which, when used properly, is designed to circumvent drug testing.

By upholding the Islamic belief that the use and sale of drugs is morally
wrong, is not the Taliban member more moral than the American who knows full
well what havoc drugs wreak in the lives of countless Americans, but who is
willing to set this knowledge aside to turn a buck?

This brings us to the troubling question: When it comes to drugs, what is
moral? Is it moral to tax some drugs, thereby profiting from the use of
those drugs, and ban others that are less harmful because they came into
popular use after we began to understand something about the dangers of
substance abuse?

When we wonder why teen-agers and young adults are hell-bent on smoking pot
and floating frat parties in oceans of beer, we have no farther to look than
the local ABC. The number one drug of abuse in America is nicotine, followed
closely by its legal cousin, alcohol.

Since Prohibition was a dismal failure, the United States' answer to the
hazards of beer, liquor and cigarettes has been to profit from their use,
under the guise that heavy taxes will make using them more expensive, and
therefore less desirable.

Well, they were half right. Heavy taxes on alcohol and cigarettes helps fill
all kinds of government coffers. But do you know anyone who has stopped
drinking and smoking because of them? How many?

Unfortunately, since marijuana is illegal, we have no way of adequately
testing the health consequences of pot smoking as opposed to cigarettes and
alcohol. But one thing is certain, ask any high school senior what the
difference between them is and you'll likely hear that pot just makes you
"mellow" whereas liquor makes some people downright crazy.

Not that I'm advocating pot. Personally I've never smoked the stuff. But as
long as alcohol is sold in bars and restaurants to patrons who must then
drive home, as long as cigarette ads stare at us from magazines, billboards
and sports events, as long as crafty businessmen are willing to sell clean
urine and an accompanying kit designed to out-maneuver drug testing, don't
expect young people to take drug enforcement seriously.

Nor will other countries, for that matter. Now that the Taliban has been
ousted from power, the interim regime operating from Kabul, Afghanistan, has
candidly admitted they are not strong enough to take the firm stand against
poppy farming that the Taliban did. The impending poppy crop, the precursor
of opium and heroin, has drug enforcement agents in Europe and America
sweating in despair.

Meanwhile, a small businessman in Hendersonville has lost one tiny battle in
an ongoing war. The Supreme Court has ruled that he can no longer sell his
own version of liquid gold - alias: clean urine - in his ingenious little
kit designed to outsmart the system designed to help addicts clean up their
act.

That is the point, isn't it? Drug testing is not designed to exclude users
from all the fun things straight people do, it's designed to protect
straight people from the hazards of dealing with those who are functionally
impaired from drug use. But the real goal of drug testing is to intervene in
an addict's life before he (or she) kills himself.

For those who feel that substance abuse is no one's business but the
addict's, talk to the child of an addict who has overdosed, or the social
worker who must now place that child in foster care, or the grandparent who
must raise that child, or the teacher who must deal with that child in
class, or the kid whose mother is selling her soul for her next hit on the
crack pipe.

In an imperfect world there are no perfect answers. Sometimes our best
answers get waylaid in the harrowing terrain of the human heart. Who can
know why others do what they do? We can guess, and we might even be right
sometimes.

But there is always that elusive moment when black and white just doesn't
cut it and the only options reside in the mind-boggling maze of gray that
leaves us questioning our own hearts and our own motives.

When it comes to drugs, as long as we are willing to ban some and imprison
those who use them while not only condoning others, but taxing them and
regulating their sale, we have no right to ask any intelligent young person
to take our rhetoric about some mystical war on drugs seriously.

It's called: Pay the man. Either by legal taxes or illegal bribes. In many
minds there really isn't any difference. There's only one question. Is the
man wearing a black hat or a white hat?