Drug Use Is Bad News, but It Doesn’t Erase Good Works

Reggie Lewis was a rising star with the Boston Celtics until he died in July of 1993. The official cause of death was listed as heart failure caused by a virus, but there recently have been allegations of a cocaine cover-up. Some doctors now say the scarring of Lewis’ heart was consistent with cocaine use, but that’s as far as they can go.

For various reasons, the mystery may never be cleared up. The sentiment in Boston and in the National Basketball Assn. seems to be to let the matter drop, partly because Lewis was an extremely popular player and a knighted member of the Boston community. The team retired his jersey this week, perhaps as much for his civic involvement as for his basketball talent.

The unease people feel in reconciling Reggie Lewis the humanitarian and Reggie Lewis the possible cocaine user captures once again the country’s ambivalence about the drug scene. It’s as if people think both aspects of Lewis couldn’t have coexisted, when the obvious answer is that they could.

For the sake of argument, what if Lewis were a cocaine user? To what extent would our knowledge of that detract from the countless hours he reportedly spent on charitable forays in Boston? To what extent would it detract from the kind of human being he was?

The obvious retort to that is that possession of cocaine is against the law. Therefore, if Lewis was a user, he was a criminal. End of discussion.

For lots of people, though, it isn’t that simple. If Lewis held up banks on the side, we would all agree that his good works would lose their luster. If he molested children or cheated business partners out of money, his community work would suddenly seem hollow.

But what if his crime was doing cocaine in the privacy of his own home?

Perhaps like many people, I wimp out when it comes to drug legalization. I don’t know at this point if I’d vote up or down for it. I’ve never tried cocaine, mostly because a doctor almost killed me once with a cocaine sedative. If you’ve never experienced the inability to draw a breath until a nurse revives you with a shot of adrenaline, you may not know what I’m talking about.

My experience with cocaine, then, involves only friends who have used it. To think of them as criminals in any meaningful sense of the word is laughable.

Dan Staso is a psychologist with a practice in Los Alamitos, part of which is devoted to treating cocaine users. He opposes legalizing cocaine because, he says, doing so would make it more widely used and widen the destructive impact it wreaks on addicted users. “It’s one of the last drugs you’d want to legalize,” he says.

Cocaine doesn’t make people violent, but addictive use can damage personal relationships, as well as lead to criminal activity because of the need to get money to buy it, Staso says.

I asked, though, if he considers his cocaine clientele as criminals. “No,” he said. “Most have no prior criminal history, no significant personality problems, they wouldn’t think to commit crimes, they have steady work histories. You’d never think of these individuals as having problems with drugs, but there they are.

“I don’t think a person is a bad person because they’ve used cocaine, and I don’t think it’s appropriate to assume someone is a bad person because they have. There are a lot of people who use it recreationally, and that doesn’t mean they wind up being addicted to it.”

Much as when the drug first burst onto the scene, Staso says, “There’s still an association of coke with prestige, elitism and power.”

If people know Reggie Lewis used cocaine frequently, they should come forward. Not because it would ruin his reputation, but because it might reacquaint people with the potential physical dangers associated with the drug.

It must be painful for Reggie Lewis’s widow to have to defend her husband’s reputation, as if suggestions of cocaine use suddenly relocates him from the Good Guy side of the ledger to the Bad Guy side.

In my book, it doesn’t. If he was a user, I don’t think less of him as a man who gave of himself. I’m only sorry that he didn’t realize it could kill him.

The debate to legalize drugs may never go anywhere, but it might be helpful to keep Staso’s words in mind when considering the Lewis matter.

Yes, cocaine is a drug you don’t want to mess around with.

But, no, using it doesn’t invalidate every good thing you’ve done with your life.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.