Pubdate: Wed, 02 Aug 2000
Source: Santa Barbara News-Press (CA)
Section: Voice from Santa Barbara
Copyright: 2000 Santa Barbara News-Press
Contact:  P.O. Box 1359, Santa Barbara, CA 93102
Website: http://www.newspress.com/
Author: Frank M. Lick
Note: Headline supplied by Newshawk

LOOKING FOR SOLUTIONS, NOT MORE DRUG LAWS

Looking for solutions, not more drug laws "Johnny, you know that other 
children at school are going to offer you drugs and you are to 'just say 
no.' Now, take your Ritalin and get on the bus."

Door slams and Johnny is on his way. "Oh damn, I forgot to take my Prozac?" 
What's wrong with this scenario?

Can anyone point to a school or other mass shooting in which drugs did not 
play an important role? Drugs, including common prescription drugs that 
have been abused, mixed with street drugs or alcohol, or result in 
unsatisfactory side effects, are present in every such case I've read 
about. Ritalin, Valium, and Prozac, for instance, are freely traded and 
abused in most schools.

These mind-altering drugs can all cause distortions in the way someone thinks.

Depression and antisocial, even psychotic, feelings are not uncommon 
symptoms of use and abuse.

When Ritalin was prescribed for our son, he wouldn't take it because it 
made him feel "funny."

School teachers find it inconvenient to deal with (mostly) boys who are 
bored to death in dumbed down class room situations. School psychologists 
and psychiatrists advise uninformed parents to seek Ritalin, or some 
equivalent, prescriptions for these problem boys. Than the teacher doesn't 
have to deal with these "boy" problems.

The boy, it is theorized, becomes something else. More feminine?

At least less of a problem -- less disruptive. Unless or until the shooting 
starts.

This medication is encouraged by the psychiatric community.

They call the boy problem "Attention Deficit Disorder."

A disease that now is ascribed to something like 50 percent of school aged 
boys. Half the boys in our society are mentally ill? Get real! I think 
there is something terribly wrong with the people who are making these 
judgments. Perhaps too many drugs?

All this has resulted in what is called "zero tolerance."

That means we punish everyone for the actions of a few. How can a boy go to 
school, or anywhere, without a pocket knife?

How can he play wimbley peg or any of the other things boys do? How does a 
girl get along without a nail file? It must be like not having a watch on 
your wrist or a pen in your pocket.

It's hard for me to imagine.

The problem here is not drugs themselves, legal or illegal.

They are inanimate.

The problem is the idea that drugs solve problems. They don't. They are, a 
god-send, to relieve pain and suffering.

But what causes the pain is going to have to be dealt with, whether it's 
physical or emotional pain. Emotional pain such as sitting in a class room, 
bored out of ones' mind while the teacher explains to a kid who should be 
two grades lower, but can't be held back because it may hurt his ego, for 
the umpteenth time, what a fraction is. Or people, frustrated and 
disillusioned because they still have problems, in spite of the promises of 
the people they elect to public office to solve all their problems.

They run to doctors with very real psychosomatic pains.

Harried doctors, striving to cram as many billable Medicare or HMO patients 
into a day as possible, don't have time to delve into causes of pain. It's 
faster and easier to prescribe a pill, than on to the next patient.

Or, emotionally disturbed people seeking escape from dead-end poverty, 
destitution, depravation, squalid tenement buildings, an impossible, 
unfathomable world, seek solace in the magic smoke and needles of the 
friendly local drug dealer.

In all these cases drugs can certainly relieve pain temporarily. But, in 
none of these cases do drugs solve the problem.

So what is the answer? I don't know. Certainly not blaming the Colombians. 
Or Mafia -- Italian, Mexican or otherwise.

Or blaming guns, another inanimate object.

Or boys who simply act like boys. I see, in my experience, women, time 
after time, marrying someone who is an incurable alcoholic or drug addict, 
even a wife beater, with the idea that, "If he loves me he'll change."

The woman spends years, a life time, trying to change this man. Hence, I 
ask the questions, "Is it the end result that's important? Or is it the 
process of trying to change the man that's important?

Is the process of trying to change school boys important?

Is this a control thing?" I also know the answer is not passing more laws. 
The war on drugs is already besieged by a crazy quilt of laws threatening 
to topple the very Constitution this country was built upon. This war alone 
has been the source of more corruption than Congress and the White House 
combined, more innocent deaths than are caused by the drugs themselves, 
more incarcerated people than any other nation in our solar system, and 
more money spent than all the other wars we have fought taken together.

Maybe we're enamored by both drugs and the war on drugs?

Perhaps they fulfill our needs for heroes, villains and violence?

Or, maybe, the war on illegal drugs somehow justifies our perceived need 
for legal or prescription drugs?

But what a cost!
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