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Seth
Gets Smoked
I normally find
Slate
's work to be analytically sound and faithful to the facts.
However, Seth Stevenson's "High and Mighty" of July 23 could not be more inaccurate.
First, to suggest that the
problem with heroin is that it is illegal--forcing addicts into criminality--is
dead wrong. Heroin is criminal because it is deadly, not vice versa. The vast
majority of heroin addicts, criminality aside, cannot adequately sustain
themselves in society. For this reason, heroin maintenance programs in
Switzerland have been forced to create a government subsidized job category:
"professional addict." The Swiss give these addicts not just heroin but a
salary, housing, medical care, and in many cases even a dog and money to
support the dog. Why? Because these addicts cannot hold down a job, and for
many heroin is deadly.
If children see what heroin
use is really like--not the somewhat benign face Stevenson puts on it--they
won't use this deadly drug. To this end, one of the other ads in the National
Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign shows an attractive woman who, as the ad rolls,
begins to strip away her makeup. She ages before your eyes, becoming
increasingly haggard and ill looking. Finally, she removes her artificial
teeth--one of the outcomes of heroin use is the loss of teeth--and she shows
just how glamorous heroin use is not. This is real life.
Second, Stevenson's repeated
references to marijuana are medically inaccurate. Take a look at recent medical
evidence:
A PET brain scan of a
regular marijuana user shows that marijuana changes the chemistry of the brain
to render vast sections of the brain less active. Moreover, marijuana smoke
contains countless known carcinogens, and the lung smoking of marijuana to
achieve a high adds to the problem--the smoking equivalent of mainlining cancer
into your body. (Smoking just five or more joints a day produces the same lung
diseases as smoking a full pack of 20 cigarettes a day.)
However, it doesn't end
there. Babies born to mothers who smoke marijuana during pregnancy have an
elevenfold increase in nonlymphoblastic leukemia. The most consistent finding
from the literature on employee marijuana use is its association with increased
absenteeism. It is also associated with increased accidents, higher turnover,
low job satisfaction, counterproductive behavior, withdrawal and antagonistic
behaviors, and higher use of employee assistance programs and medical
benefits.
Stevenson also
misunderstands the current ad campaign. The author says the campaign targets
children, and he is right. However, the campaign is also largely focused on
adults. One of the core messages of the campaign is that parents and other
adult mentors need to talk to children about the real dangers of drug use.
The one
area where Stevenson has it correct is that it is increasingly hard to educate
young people about the real dangers of drug use. Unfortunately, for all his
couching language ("Drugs can be awful") and care, the author is part of the
problem, not the solution. Inaccuracies like those discussed above, which
downplay the dangers in drug use, send our young people mixed messages and
increase distrust. Against this backdrop it is easy for young people to not buy
the facts about drugs. The bottom line is: We can disagree about policies in a
democracy; however, our disagreements should be based on facts. This article
largely failed that measure.
-- Robert
Housman Chief policy adviser, Strategic Planning Office of National Drug
Control Policy
Seth
Stevenson responds:
I applaud Robert
Housman's lust for facts. No one benefits from propaganda based on scare
tactics rather than the truth.
But Housman's facts are
not facts, and his assumptions are misleading. While his claims of increased
child cancer rates have been refuted (see the excellent Marijuana Myths,
Marijuana Facts for a debunking of the study that produced this figure and
direct refutations of each of Housman's other factual claims), they are, more
important, irrelevant. Obviously, pregnant women should not smoke pot--just as
they should not smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol. As for Housman's litany on
"employee marijuana use," each of those effects (increased absenteeism,
increased accidents, higher turnover, low job satisfaction, etc.) will show up
tenfold in relation to employee alcohol use. Without doubt, constant
intoxication of any form will hurt one's work capacity. And then this: "Smoking
just five or more joints a day produces the same lung diseases as smoking a
full pack of 20 cigarettes a day." Funny, I don't see the government arresting
pack-a-day cigarette smokers or lobbying to criminalize tobacco.
To be
sure, there are "real dangers" of drug use, just as there are real dangers of
alcohol and tobacco use. Let's be honest with our kids about all of them,
instead of terrorizing them with exaggerations and lies.
The
Straight Dope
While you
write eloquently regarding your controlled drug use in Seth Stevenson's
"High and
Mighty," many other less fortunate persons are either dead or not in a
position within our society to be heard. Your attitude makes me sick!
Publishing that article is like inviting an alcoholic to a wine-tasting party:
You're within your rights but very wrong.
-- Phil
Johnston Louisville, Ky.
Hey,
Wait a Minute, Potheads!
Seth Stevenson's "High and Mighty"
practically endorses legalization of heroin and the free use of marijuana among
teen-agers. In the article, you mentioned how Republicans are hypocritical in
their diatribes against illegal drugs and their resistance to slamming "Big
Tobacco." From a perspective you have a point, but I would rather be busy
keeping an illegal , dangerous substance out of the reach of my kids than
jumping on the bandwagon to tax the crap out of my fellow citizens who smoke a
legal substance. I also would rather see my co-workers smoke cigarettes
than use marijuana or heroin. Marijuana alters the brain's chemistry to produce
hallucinogenic effects, while nicotine only satisfies the addiction the
smoker's body feels. Would you want the person driving behind you to be high on
marijuana or on nicotine? The chances of him/her plowing into you while under
the influence of nicotine are far less than being high on marijuana.
Heroin is
a drug that can kill you on the very first try, and most heroin addicts didn't
start out shooting up with needles--they were smoking pot as teen-agers.
-- Scott Hicks
Reality
Check
Re Seth
Stevenson's "High
and Mighty": I have one comment in regard to drugs--they kill! My
girlfriend's brother was found dead only a few weeks ago of what has since been
determined to have been an overdose of heroin. This was someone who no one
would have ever thought to have been a drug user. Personally, I don't give a
flip what kind of action anyone takes to warn people against the use of drugs,
because they are killers.
-- Sam McGowan
The
Propaganda OD
Having
just read Seth Stevenson's "High and Mighty," I must applaud him vigorously. I'm an
elementary-school teacher--which is surely the profession most indoctrinated
with anti-drug propaganda--in a small Texas town. For me, there's an inherent
stupidity in the absoluteness of the "Just Say No" campaign, which insists that
drugs and alcohol are completely intolerable in a society where both,
especially the latter, are so prevalent. How can we preach such an absolute
message to kids all day at school or on television and expect them to ignore
our social behaviors every evening? It has become uncomfortable for mom and dad
to enjoy a beer or cocktail at the end of the day, lest junior regale them with
the evils of drug and alcohol use. What's wrong with a society where supposedly
rational adults have to "sneak around" to enjoy a drink within the walls of
their own home?
-- Pam Ferguson
Coming
Clean
You will
doubtless get a great deal of trouble about your decision to publish Seth
Stevenson's "High
and Mighty" on the current drug ad campaign. There is no topic today that
is so steeped in cant and posturing. Thanks for pointing out the obvious--that
drug use, while dicey, is an established and unavoidable part of human culture
and that dishonesty on this point does no one any good.
-- Robert
Frodeman Department of philosophy and religion, University of Tennessee
Gag
Yourself With a Sex Dress
In its promotional letter of
July 31,
Slate
wrote, "Dear Reader, Monica's sex dress has
resurfaced, and
Slate
can't stop talking about it."
PLEASE
DO! As a new reader, I have to tell you that I was disappointed in this opener.
You seemed, at first blush, to be above all the crap/sensationalist headlines
the big papers use to sell their stuff. But for days now, all you can talk
about is the Clinton scandal. Could you possibly tear yourself away and find
something more interesting to discuss? This can't be the only story.
-- Claire
Wynters
Secret
Self-Service
David
Plotz is absolutely right in his July 23 piece, "The
Secret Service's Real Secret," about the extent to which presidential
protection has become absurd, but even Plotz fails to ask outright the most
important question: What makes the president's life so valuable? In a
democracy, after all, citizens' lives are supposed to be equally valuable.
During the Cold War, it was feared that a presidential assassination might set
off a nuclear exchange, so by protecting the president, the Secret Service was,
at least arguably, protecting us all. But nobody worries about that sort of
thing nowadays, and yet the president is more tightly protected than at the
height of the Cold War. Perhaps the Secret Service is really protecting its own
bureaucratic rear.
-- Glenn H.
Reynolds Professor of law, University of Tennessee
I-Rate
About the E-Rate
Trying to be charitable, the
best I can muster about Patrick Quigley's July 23 article, "Server Time Out," is
that he is simply ignorant of the facts of rural life.
In conservative Texas, we
have a Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund for schools and libraries
(dreamed up by a Republican state senator, among others) that antedates the
e-rate and is far more generous with the telcos' money.
I work for a public library
system in central Texas (not even the most rural part of the state) with 61
members. My system and the Texas State Library provide access to a number of
rather expensive databases that few libraries can afford to purchase on their
own. The smaller, poorer libraries benefit most, as their communities would
otherwise not have access to such resources. The most cost-effective way to
deliver this service to our libraries is via the Internet.
I have spent a good part of
the past several weeks trying to get any kind of non-800 Internet access
for two of our libraries that have the misfortune of not having an ISP in their
local calling area. (Ironically, thanks to the heavy hand of big bad state
government, they can get an affordable ISDN line, but as ISPs are not
regulated, there are no ISPs where the ISDN lines terminate.)
Quigley should try getting
DirecPC out in the boonies. In the first place, getting service at the rate he
quotes requires a dial-up phone line connection to an ISP for the upstream link
(there is a much-higher-priced two-way service). Second, while, in theory,
Hughes provides a DirecPC LAN service (TIF generously provided two computers
for these libraries), I asked several times for pricing and conditions back in
April, and I still haven't heard anything more than that it would "probably" be
several hundred dollars.
In short, while the market
probably will work quite well in providing good telecommunications in dense
urban areas, very little has changed over the past few years in the rural areas
I work with. I stopped believing the hype about satellite, cable, or xDSL
rollouts in rural areas some time back.
I can't
resist saying it: Quigley is an armchair theorist spouting snide opinions about
circumstances of which he obviously has little firsthand knowledge. His "let
them eat cake" attitude is insulting and offensive.
-- Bob Gaines
Central Texas Library System
Patrick
Quigley responds:
I find
it upsetting that someone could so quickly lose faith in the possibility of
technological innovation in an industry that has been around for less than six
years. While it seems as if all our technological problems would be solved if
we simply regulated the industry, let me remind you that it took at least six
years for even the VHS-Betamax argument to be solved. Economists everywhere
would frown on the idea of ghettoizing an industry that is only in its
infancy--to do so would irrevocably cripple its progress and make the
possibility of lower costs almost nonexistent. Your complaints (e.g., no local
ISPs, lack of choice in satellite technology) are exactly the reasons that the
e-rate would not work. Without these innovations, which only the market can
produce, the Internet connection cost will remain exorbitant, even with the
e-rate discounts! Second, the assumption that the Internet industry will all
but ignore the needs of the rural population is absurd. The latest census
figures show that 24.8 percent of the U.S. population lives in rural areas--to
suggest that the industry will ignore almost one quarter of the U.S. market is
inane at best.
Address
your e-mail to the editors to [email protected]. All writers must include their address and
daytime phone number (for confirmation only).
