Pubdate: Tue, 15 May 2007
Source: Hamilton Spectator (CN ON)
Copyright: 2007 The Hamilton Spectator
Contact:  http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/181
Author: Adam Liptak, The New York Times

FROM THE SUMMER OF LOVE TO THE AGE OF TERROR

Andrew Feldmar, a Vancouver psychotherapist, was on his  way to pick
up a friend at the Seattle airport last  summer when he ran into a
little trouble at the border.

A guard typed Feldmar's name into an Internet search  engine, which
revealed that he had written about using  LSD in the 1960s in an
interdisciplinary journal.  Feldmar was turned back and is no longer
welcome in the  United States, where he has been active professionally
  and where both of his children live.

Feldmar, 66, has a distinguished resume, no criminal  record and a
candid manner. Though he has not used  illegal drugs since 1974, he
says he has no regrets.

"It was an absolutely fascinating and life-altering  experience for
me," he said last week of his  experimentation with LSD and other
psychedelic drugs.

"The insights it provided have lasted for a lifetime.  It allowed me
to feel what it would be like to live  without habits."

Feldmar said he had been in the United States more than  100 times and
always without incident since he last  took an illegal drug.

But that changed in August, thanks to the happenstance  of an Internet
search, conducted for unexplained  reasons, at the Peace Arch border
station in Blaine,  Wash.

The search turned up an article in a 2001 issue of the  journal Janus
Head devoted to the legacy of R.D. Laing,  with whom Feldmar had
studied in London about 30 years  before.

"I travelled to many regions many times with the help  of many
different substances," Feldmar wrote of his  experiences with Laing
and other psychiatrists and  therapists.

"I took peyote, psilocybin mushrooms, cannabis" and  other drugs, he
added, "but I kept coming back to LSD."

He was asked by a border guard if he was author of the  article and
whether it was true. Yes, he replied. And  yes.

Feldmar was held for four hours, fingerprinted and,  after signing a
statement conceding the long-ago drug  use, sent home.

Mike Milne, a spokesperson for the Customs and Border  Protection
agency in Seattle, said he could not discuss  individual cases for
reasons of privacy. But the law is  clear, Milne said. People who have
used drugs are not  welcome here.

"If you are or have been a drug user," he said, "that's  one of the
many things that can make you inadmissible  to the United States."

He added that the government was constantly on the hunt  for new
sources of information. "Any new technology  that we have available to
us, we use to do searches  on," Milne said.

Feldmar has been told by the U.S. consul general in  Vancouver that he
may now enter the United States only  if he obtains a formal waiver.

"Both our countries have very similar regulations  regarding issuance
of visas for citizens who have  violated the law," the consul, Lewis
A. Lukens, wrote  to Feldmar in September.

"The issue here is not the writing of an article, but  the taking of
controlled substances. I hear from  American citizens all the time
with decades-old DUI  convictions who are barred from entry into
Canada and  who must apply for waivers. Same thing here."

The waiver process would require a lawyer, several  thousand dollars
and dishonesty, Feldmar said. He would  have to say he has been
rehabilitated.

"Rehabilitated from what?" he asked. "It's degrading,  literally
degrading."

Ethan Nadelmann, the executive director of the Drug  Policy Alliance,
which works to ease drug penalties,  said Feldmar's case proves how
arbitrary U.S. drug  policy can be.

"Roughly a majority of the population of the United  States between
the ages of 18 and 58 has violated a  drug law at least once,"
Nadelmann said, and there is  no reason to think that Canadians and
other foreigners  of a certain age have experimented much less.

It has been a long, strange trip from the Summer of  Love to the Age
of Terror, from excluding people based  on actual criminal convictions
to turning them away  based on a guard's Internet search.

The first approach is rooted in due process and  enhances the nation's
security. The second is  profoundly arbitrary and effectively punishes
not past  drug use but honest discourse about it.

"I should warn people that the electronic footprint you  leave on the
Net will be used against you," Feldmar  said. "It cannot be erased."
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MAP posted-by: Derek