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.