Pubdate: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 Source: Hendersonville Times-News (NC) Contact: 2002 Hendersonville Newspaper Corporation Website: http://www.hendersonvillenews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/793 Author: Susan Hanley Lane Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization) BLACK AND WHITE AND SHADES OF GRAY The worst thing about black and white thinking is that it eclipses shades of gray. Gray is that fuzzy, puzzling area that leaves most of us wondering where right ends and wrong begins. For instance: Who is the more insidious threat to the American way of life? A member of the Taliban, or an American businessman with a keen sense of a unique market need? Silly question, isn't it? Or is it? If we allow ourselves to go beyond black and white answers to the gray area where legitimate questions are entertained, we might start by asking, "Tell me more about each of these men." Suppose the Taliban member is not involved in bombing Americans. In fact, his one job in life is to ensure that the Taliban's prohibition against the cultivation and sale of poppies in Afghanistan is strictly enforced. Now suppose the American businessman is involved in the manufacture and sale of a kit which, when used properly, is designed to circumvent drug testing. By upholding the Islamic belief that the use and sale of drugs is morally wrong, is not the Taliban member more moral than the American who knows full well what havoc drugs wreak in the lives of countless Americans, but who is willing to set this knowledge aside to turn a buck? This brings us to the troubling question: When it comes to drugs, what is moral? Is it moral to tax some drugs, thereby profiting from the use of those drugs, and ban others that are less harmful because they came into popular use after we began to understand something about the dangers of substance abuse? When we wonder why teen-agers and young adults are hell-bent on smoking pot and floating frat parties in oceans of beer, we have no farther to look than the local ABC. The number one drug of abuse in America is nicotine, followed closely by its legal cousin, alcohol. Since Prohibition was a dismal failure, the United States' answer to the hazards of beer, liquor and cigarettes has been to profit from their use, under the guise that heavy taxes will make using them more expensive, and therefore less desirable. Well, they were half right. Heavy taxes on alcohol and cigarettes helps fill all kinds of government coffers. But do you know anyone who has stopped drinking and smoking because of them? How many? Unfortunately, since marijuana is illegal, we have no way of adequately testing the health consequences of pot smoking as opposed to cigarettes and alcohol. But one thing is certain, ask any high school senior what the difference between them is and you'll likely hear that pot just makes you "mellow" whereas liquor makes some people downright crazy. Not that I'm advocating pot. Personally I've never smoked the stuff. But as long as alcohol is sold in bars and restaurants to patrons who must then drive home, as long as cigarette ads stare at us from magazines, billboards and sports events, as long as crafty businessmen are willing to sell clean urine and an accompanying kit designed to out-maneuver drug testing, don't expect young people to take drug enforcement seriously. Nor will other countries, for that matter. Now that the Taliban has been ousted from power, the interim regime operating from Kabul, Afghanistan, has candidly admitted they are not strong enough to take the firm stand against poppy farming that the Taliban did. The impending poppy crop, the precursor of opium and heroin, has drug enforcement agents in Europe and America sweating in despair. Meanwhile, a small businessman in Hendersonville has lost one tiny battle in an ongoing war. The Supreme Court has ruled that he can no longer sell his own version of liquid gold - alias: clean urine - in his ingenious little kit designed to outsmart the system designed to help addicts clean up their act. That is the point, isn't it? Drug testing is not designed to exclude users from all the fun things straight people do, it's designed to protect straight people from the hazards of dealing with those who are functionally impaired from drug use. But the real goal of drug testing is to intervene in an addict's life before he (or she) kills himself. For those who feel that substance abuse is no one's business but the addict's, talk to the child of an addict who has overdosed, or the social worker who must now place that child in foster care, or the grandparent who must raise that child, or the teacher who must deal with that child in class, or the kid whose mother is selling her soul for her next hit on the crack pipe. In an imperfect world there are no perfect answers. Sometimes our best answers get waylaid in the harrowing terrain of the human heart. Who can know why others do what they do? We can guess, and we might even be right sometimes. But there is always that elusive moment when black and white just doesn't cut it and the only options reside in the mind-boggling maze of gray that leaves us questioning our own hearts and our own motives. When it comes to drugs, as long as we are willing to ban some and imprison those who use them while not only condoning others, but taxing them and regulating their sale, we have no right to ask any intelligent young person to take our rhetoric about some mystical war on drugs seriously. It's called: Pay the man. Either by legal taxes or illegal bribes. In many minds there really isn't any difference. There's only one question. Is the man wearing a black hat or a white hat? - --- MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk