August 16, 1978

One Person's Private Hell

A good friend of mine is undergoing her own private hell because her son has been caught in possession of five pounds of marijuana - a dealer quantity - and sentenced to two years in tough Mansfield prison.  A mother's love transcends adversity.

Both she and her son accept the conviction and the sentence - it is wrong to traffic in mind-bending drugs.

But they are bitter over the double standard of political morality applied to drug abuse.

Her son is a first offender who was trapped into picking up a supply of pot for a friend already saddled with two offenses.  Not very smart, but there it is.

His trial occurred the week Dr. Peter Bourne, President Carter's advisor on national drug abuse, was caught writing an illegal prescription for a restricted sedative.  Thereafter, Time Magazine and other news media revealed that the White House aide had smoked pot and snorted cocaine at a jet-set party in Washington.

With the Bert Lance affair still fresh in the voters' memories, President Carter quickly accepted Dr.  Bourne's resignation "with regret" and sent him back to his posh practice in Atlanta.

White House Press Secretary Jody Powell pouted a bit at the next meeting of reporters.  "Yes, some presidential staff members do partake occasionally of recreational drugs, but hardly enough to be concerned about."

President Carter fired off a memo to his aides: "Obey the drug laws or seek employment elsewhere."

Translation: "Don't get caught!"

The Bourne Affair is incredible in that a born-again president does not demand drug abstinence, just stay within the law.  And his right-hand man excuses the use of drugs for "recreational" purposes, as if there was a working use not acceptable.

Another incredible consequence of the incident is the tolerance of Americans for drug abuse by highly placed people.  The acrid smoke of marijuana drifts down the corridors of the White House, but the nation's chief executive is not asked to resign.  A little cocaine is snorted in the privacy of broom closets, but Congress does not launch an investigation.

Basketball stars carry heroin around in their gym bags.  Boxing champions keep a stash of speed in their hat band.  Football heroes transport suitcases of cocaine as they travel the sports circuit.  Guests on the late night talk shows smirk as they show off their tiny gold coke spoons carried around their neck on a jeweled chain.  A Hollywood doctor makes a fortune repairing the noses of movie personalities who have inhaled one dose too much of cocaine.  Rock musicians sing of the joys of hard drugs while the audience puffs enthusiastically on pot.

It bothers me that none of this seems to raise much indignation.  We applaud and emulate the celebrities who show us the way to the good life via dreams, tingling of nerve ends and insensibility.

Every person is entitled to his own stupidities so long as he doesn't attempt to inflict them on others.  It should be a crime, however, to entice the public.  Television networks, movie studios, sports teams and other entertainment outlets should lose their licenses to operate if they knowingly engage addicts or permit dialogue treating drug use lightly.

And don't give me any clap-trap about freedom of speech.  Many laws properly circumscribe irresponsible speech, and it doesn't take a Greek philosopher to figure out the difference.

Two years for a first offense of marijuana possession can be defended if the punishment is applied even-handed.  Severe penalties must be part of any program to bring drug abuse under control.

It is unfair and unrealistic, however, to bear down hard in rural Wayne County where moral standards are high and overlook gangsterism in Cuyahoga County.  It is hypocritical to send an unknown young man to a hard-core prison, and patrol a smoke-in by 10,000 pot heads around the Wallington Monument.

There is considerable agitation to "decriminalize" marijuana on the basis that so many people use it enforcement of drug-abuse laws in impossible.  Maybe so, but where next shall we draw the line?

Rather than slip without a struggle into an opium haze and historical oblivion, society must deal with the problem immediately at hand.

Drug use will increase so long as we allow entertainers to set our moral standards.  Happy dust will decline when each of us who know drugs are self-destroying lead public opinion.  Only a convinced citizenry can solve problems, not laws.

Action comes when one person's private hell becomes everybody's public hell.

Author: Lindsey Williams