Pubdate: Fri, 21 Dec 2001
Source: Reason Magazine (US)
Issue: Jan 2002, Vol 33, Issue 8, Start page 4
Website: http://www.reason.com/
Address: 3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 400, Los Angeles, CA 90034-6064
Contact:  2001 The Reason Foundation
Author: Nick Gillespie

EDITOR'S NOTE: SEX, DRUGS, & TECHNO MUSIC

If the topic is illegal drugs, then a little candor is in order: I first 
smoked dope late one spring afternoon in the seventh grade, on a shady 
corner of the playground behind good old St. Mary's grammar school in New 
Monmouth, New Jersey. (Bless me, father, for I did sin.) I didn't get high 
that day, though I remember the weird sensation of taking my first hit off 
a joint while squinting across the playground at a cement statue of the 
Virgin Mary. Her arms were outstretched, her palms were turned upward, and 
her eyes were cast toward heaven in what struck me as a display of 
exasperation with the bad conduct she was witnessing.

After that precocious experience, I didn't experiment with drugs again 
until I was in college. By then, I was more adventurous and after long days 
of studying (really), I tore through pretty much whatever was at hand: pot 
and alcohol mostly, but also acid, mescaline, Ecstasy, mushrooms, coke, and 
meth. Why? Partly in earnest pursuit of expanded, even "cosmic," 
consciousness. (I'd read a lot of Aldous Huxley and Herman Hesse - bless me 
again, father.) But mostly I did drugs because they were fun and I liked 
the way I felt when I was high.

After college, I continued to engage in similar bouts of recreational drug 
use. As I've grown older, and especially as I've become a parent, such 
moments have become increasingly rare. That's mostly because of time: Work 
and family take precedence over what might be called optional leisure-time 
experiences. Indeed, for exactly the same reasons, I don't-alas-exercise as 
much as I used to.

I recount all this neither to boast of an unsavory pedigree nor to confess 
to dark, personal demons. In fact, there's little extraordinary in such 
biographical material: According to the federal government's latest 
National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, which tallies the frequency and 
types of drug use, about 39 percent of Americans 12 years and older-some 87 
million people-said they had used illegal drugs at least once; about 11 
percent - 25 million people reported using drugs in the past year. What's 
more, drug use typically climbs during adolescence, peaks in the late teens 
and early 20s, and then begins a long decline, interrupted only by a slight 
uptick among 40-44-year-olds (something to look forward to, I suppose).

I mention my drug use as a way of introducing several stories in this issue 
that take a sharply critical look at the War on Drugs, that $40 billion 
annual effort by government to keep people from using certain "illicit" 
substances. Senior Editor Jacob Sullum's "Sex, Drugs & Techno Music" (page 
26) demonstrates how recent stories about the drug Ecstasy tell us more 
about long standing social anxieties regarding sex and youth than they do 
about today's kids. In "Battlefield Conversions" (page 36), National 
Correspondent Michael W. Lynch talks with a former police chief, a former 
federal drug agent, and a California Superior Court judge and learns why 
they've turned their backs on the drug war. Finally, in "A Splendid Little 
Drug War" (page 63), Contributing Editor Glenn Garvin explores how drug 
policy has thoroughly perverted U.S. relations with Latin America.

These are very different stories, but they have this in common: They 
recognize that drug prohibition is underwritten by the sense that drug 
users are strange, alien beings-"others" who are out of control and must be 
stopped, for their good and ours. Each of these pieces underscores that in 
fact, the opposite is more likely to be true: It's the people prosecuting 
the drug war who need to be stopped the sooner, the better.

Nick Gillespie
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