Pubdate: Tue, 11 Jul 2000
Source: Roanoke Times (VA)
Copyright: 2000 Roanoke Times
Contact:  201 W. Campbell Ave., Roanoke, Va. 24010
Website: http://www.roanoke.com/roatimes/index.html
Author: Kirk A. Ballin
Note: Kirk A. Ballin of Roanoke is pastor of the First Unitarian Church in 
Lynchburg.

UNDERSTANDING OUR INHERENT HUMAN NEEDS

Winning The Drug War Will Require A New Perspective

WITH ALL DUE respect to Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, his recent letter to 
the editor ("In praise of Allen's anti-drug plan, June 21) in support of 
Republican Senatorial candidate George Allen's anti-drug program was sorely 
off the mark.

Yet his comments were typical of the prevalent response to America's 
obsession with "getting high" and the worldwide illegal industry that has 
grown up around this obsession. This response, with modifications from the 
two dominant political parties, is based on tough (and tougher) laws, 
increased drug rehabilitation, education on the perils of drugs, improved 
economic conditions for the poor and military surveillance and intervention 
at the source of illegal drug production and distribution.

This approach has been going on for at least 30 years with expenditures 
ballooning while drug use has also increased at a hefty pace.

As well-meaning as this multifaceted approach may be in trying to protect 
Americans, especially children, from the consequences of drug use, it has 
obviously failed - and will continue to do so.

Instead, our prisons swell with non-violent drug offenders. Our tax dollars 
feed anti-drug offensives that reach well beyond our hemisphere. Many 
people in this country and others grow wealthy from the illegal-drug trade. 
Children are experimenting with drugs at earlier ages. Drug rehabilitation 
in itself has become a multibillion-dollar industry dependent upon drug 
abuse. Poorer neighborhoods sag even more deeply from the weight of drug 
addictions. The legal drug of alcohol is the No. 1 drug of choice and 
abuse. Legal drugs and herbs for mind/mood alteration are advertised 
publicly. Political pundits build their egos upon get-tough rhetoric. And a 
former cocaine user/alcohol abuser and a child of the '60s drug culture are 
running as the respective Republican and Democratic presidential candidates.

What all this tells us is that no number of laws, no number of 
rehabilitation programs, no number of economic-development programs, no 
number of educational programs, no number of military interventions in 
foreign countries, no number of powerful politicians are by themselves 
going to simply wipe away this problem.

Many of the drug laws themselves may be contributing to America's social 
problems: Prisons are not healthy environments to nurture human beings. 
Keeping drugs illegal makes them a highly valued commodity worth the risks 
for quick wealth.

The real problem with America's obsession with getting high lies in the 
fact that we are asking the wrong questions about drug use and abuse. We 
have criminalized a pathological response to what may very well be an 
inherent human need: Altering our states of consciousness as human beings 
may be a natural and probably necessary experience for healthy human 
development and even for human evolution.

What makes it pathological is that this inherent impulse is being done with 
no sense of cultural purpose and with chemicals/substances that are 
ultimately addictive and harmful.

In other words, the crux of our problem lies not in the people who are 
"breaking the law" so much as it lies in the nature of our culture as a 
whole. The problem is not that getting high is bad in itself; rather, the 
reasons why and how we get high are what are killing us.

Our culture provides no guidance for the reasons to get high. It merely 
provides legal status for certain substances by which to get high and 
punishes those who go outside of the law - even for growing a plant.

Instead of debating how to punish or reform those who use illegal drugs, we 
need to ask ourselves: Why do people get high in the first place? Why are 
certain drugs being used? What can be done to nurture healthy acts of 
getting high and for what culturally serving purpose?

This shifts the problem from being a legal and thereby political issue to 
being an issue of human development and cultural responsibility.

Goodlatte's final words in his Roanoke Times letter were, "It's time to 
implement sound leadership and initiatives to battle the drug war." Those 
words were probably intended to support the ongoing drug war.

But read another way, I would have to agree with him. The drug war is part 
of the problem and needs to be eliminated. New initiatives looking at the 
human dimension of this whole cultural issue need to be the intent of sound 
leadership. Otherwise, the drug war will go on forever, and as with all 
wars, we will pay a heavy social price.

Kirk A. Ballin of Roanoke is pastor of the First Unitarian Church in Lynchburg.
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