‘Bennett the Menace’

Your editorial (“Bennett the Menace” Jan. 13) on the newly-appointed drug czar concluded correctly that the best approach to the drug problems in our communities is to fund education and treatment programs. Apparently, the prospects seem remote. We cannot stop the flow of drugs into the U.S., the “zero tolerance” program was a massive waste of resources in search of the evening news, and the “just say no” approach of the Reagan era was naive and simplistic. Working with the drug user is an individual, one-day-at-a-time proposition.

The forces that are at work on young people are complex and powerful, yet there are many hundreds of teen-agers in Los Angeles who have become and stayed sober at impressively early ages. What is less well understood is that the drug user’s parents are integrally co-dependent with the user and their lives have become unmanageable, too. Often the parents deny the problem and/or feel isolated, angry, baffled, embarrassed and terrified. Both the young drug users and their parents need a better way to deal with their problems and with each other. Happily, there are tools by which many families have recovered and grown closer as a result.

There are several effective programs in the Los Angeles area. One, the Palmer Drug Abuse Program of Los Angeles Inc., offers twice weekly meetings and support groups for both youth and their parents, individual and family counseling, education, training and sober activities. Unfortunately, it is a not-for-profit organization which is meagerly funded by donations and minimal fees for counseling and has shrunk in an effort to stay afloat.

Your editorial shows that federal funds will continue to be wasted in burning down crops in far-off jungles and in negotiations with foreign countries while William Bennett glows in the headlines thinking he has done his job. The problem is to address the drug user and his/her family in our communities, but the agencies that have a chance of doing that are starving.

DAVID T. HULETT

Santa Monica