Vigil For Lost Promise

On June 3rd, in Washington D.C. a bunch of people will be getting together for the first ever Vigil for Lost Promise in memory of young men and women who died from drugs. This is more than just a gathering of parents and friends to remember the departed, however. This is a cynical propaganda effort by the Drug Enforcement Agency.

The associated web site includes eight Stories of Lost Promise about young people who died from drugs. They make for instructive reading, both in the dangers of drug abuse and the source of those dangers. While even the DEA is sane enough not to directly using this event to propose legislation or ask for funding, it’s clear they have a few things in mind.

One of the stories is about an 18-year old who died from an overdose of Vicodin that he obtained over the internet. I’m inclined to believe that this is a real problem. Vicodin is a relatively easy drug to abuse or become addicted to. As the parent who wrote the story suggests, it probably shouln’t be available without a prescription after seeing a doctor.

Another case is a 19-year old man who died from an overdose of Xanax which he was taking for recreational purposes. That’s a legal prescription drug which he obtained through a source that is not described in the story.

The rest of the stories, however, tend to illustrate problems with the war on drugs:

• One of the stories is about a 16-year old boy who died from inhalant abuse. Inhalants are legal substances (although probably illegal to inhale) which is one of the reasons kids use them instead of safer drugs like marijuana or Ecstasy.
• Two stories are about heroin users who died of overdoses. Because it’s illegal, the supply of heroin, and therefore the quality and purity of each dose, is controlled entirely by criminals.
• Two of the stories are drawn from the relative handful of people who have ever died from taking Ecstasy. One is a 23-year old woman who died of an Ecstasy overdose, although the story doesn’t give details. The other was a 14-year old girl who took an Ecstasy pill and became very sick, but her friends didn’t get adult help until it was too late because they were afraid of being busted for having the drugs.
• One of the stories is about a young man who hung himself, an incident which is being blamed on depression brought on by suddenly cessation of steroid use. Perhaps he and his parents would have known how to stop the steroids safely—or even use them safely—if there weren’t such restrictive rules about them.

Pete Guither at Drug WarRant has created his own counter-web-site, also known as Vigil for Lost Promise. It contains links to his Drug War Victims page. By linking to it as I have, I and others hope to push it to the top of the Google search above the official DEA site.