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With a
Drug Czar like John Walters, Who Needs Osama? Mike
Males, c Youth Today, June 2004 Nothing
enrages Office of National Drug Control Policy zealots--especially its current director, John Walters--like a teenager
who smokes marijuana and doesn’t suffer. Unfortunately
for Walters, teens who smoke pot moderately and don’t flunk out, disown parents, become heroin junkies, and overdose
behind dumpsters comprise the vast majority of youthful drug users. Of the 100 million Americans who first tried
marijuana as adolescents, 97 million-plus never gatewayed into dope fiends--or even regular pot smokers. Since
most teenage marijuana users aren’t hurting themselves, ONDCP’s obsession is finding ways for government to harm
them--by arrest, school expulsion, college loan bans, needless addiction treatment, ads branding them baby killers and
terrorist accomplices... and now, mandatory drug testing. ONDCP’s
School Drug Testing Summit in Fresno, California, in March--which permitted only advocates of student drug-testing to
speak--conjured images of hordes of pupils self-destructing on drugs. Ignored were federal reports show low rates of
teenage deaths, crime, and hospital emergency treatments caused by illicit-drug abuse. In fact,
these reports’ figures strongly argue that school should leave students alone and test parents, teachers,
administrators, coaches, and other role models instead. A 40 year-old is three times more likely to suffer serious
illegal-drug abuse problems than a 16 year-old is. But ONDCP
has never cared about reality. Its speakers freely admitted testing wouldn’t catch hard-drug users (heroin, cocaine,
and speed metabolize too quickly for tests to detect) or deter hardcore potheads (who drop out or devise ways to beat
tests) anyway. No,
ONDCP’s prey is occasional teenage users of marijuana, whose residue remains detectable for weeks. Why? Because they
AREN’T suffering. Monitoring the Future surveys find students who use only marijuana are virtually indistinguishable
from abstainers. Dammit, we can’t even tell whether they use drugs at all unless we make them pee in a bottle. For
when it comes to wrecking the lives of moderate, non-suffering, non-problem drug users--while letting hardcore junkies
keep on shooting up, robbing, killing, and dying--Walters is king. During
Walters’ first tenure as a top federal drug policymaker from 1985 to 1992, he and drug czar William Bennett declared
that stopping drug “use itself” was ONDCP’s policy priority. Addicts? Let ‘em suffer for their sins. Their
mean-spirited idiocy launched 20 years of drug-war calamity. While other Western countries contained drug problems with
sensible social and health measures, America’s drug abuse skyrocketed. During Walters’ reign, drug-related hospital
emergencies rose 30 percent, deaths jumped 53 percent, and murders soared 132 percent. The
drug-war ideology Walters perpetuates has inflicted unspeakable suffering on aging Baby Boomers. Today, 80 percent of
illegal-drug death and hospital ER cases are over age 35. The never-mentioned history of today’s middle-age drug
crisis is ugly. In the
1970s, the Nixon administration’s crackdown on Vietnam troops’ marijuana use (including thousands of arrests and
discharges) provoked a wholesale switch to heroin--more concealable, no smoke, less detectable in tests. Returning
troops, four in 10 heroin-addicted, were discharged without treatment. They formed the core of escalating 1980s and
‘90s heroin, cocaine, speed, polydrug, and drug-alcohol scourges. Today’s
drug abuse crises were not caused by young, casual marijuana smokers taking up harder drugs, but aging hard-drug abusers
whose relapses stem from Vietnam-era stresses. Since
dogmatic deception and massive failure are key qualifications to be drug czar, Walters is back at ONDCP’s helm--and
with him, more addiction and death. Federal
figures show drug-related deaths jumped to 22,300 and hospital emergency cases to 670,000 in 2002, both record peaks.
America now suffers our worst drug crisis ever, with fatality rates three to 10 times higher than Canada’s and
Europe’s. Unsatisfied
with the damage his warped policies caused older generations, Walters now seeks to extend his destruction into the next
one. Initial
evaluations of modern school drug testing show history repeating itself. Monitoring
the Future’s research team studied 900 schools over five years. Their updated October 2003 report found school drug
testing worthless, with one troubling exception: Students subjected to random drug testing reported a bit less casual
marijuana use but significantly more use of other drugs. If
Congress continues allowing Walters to wreak ideological incompetence on drug policy, he may well create something we
don’t have now--a genuine teenage drug crisis. Because more suffering is exactly what drug-war hardliners want.
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Why are the police targeting more and more marijuana smokers as they arrest fewer heroin and cocaine users? |
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