The Words of a Survivor Ring True

It was a tiny outpost in the war against drugs, manned by a combat veteran, a recovering addict who understands the mistakes we are making in fighting this difficult enemy.

Earl Massey, a Los Angeles County firefighter and Pomona homeowner until he lost his job and house to a crack cocaine addiction, had invited me to accompany him to a class at El Camino College two weeks ago.

Massey, who runs an addiction rehabilitation and education program called Surviving in Recovery, had been asked by the college administration to speak about drug abuse.

Massey has the right idea about this war. Despite our journalistic love of the analogy, it’s not really a “war” at all, any more than efforts to beat cancer are a war. Drug addiction is a sickness mistakenly treated as a crime. Addiction, as we have learned, can’t be defeated by filling our jails with addicts and small-time street drug dealers.

This message, along with an explanation of the complexities of drug addiction, was what Massey brought to the young men and women in their 20s and 30s in the El Camino classroom.

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Surviving in Recovery, he told the students, was started by drug addicts, some with AIDS, who wanted to stand up to the drug addiction and dealing afflicting South Los Angeles, where the group is based. “Most of us felt we contributed to the destruction of the community,” Massey said.

The Surviving in Recovery program has a zero tolerance attitude toward drug and alcohol use. It is associated with another zero tolerance organization, the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention & Treatment, which has been working to close down drug dealer hangouts among South L.A. liquor stores and motels. Together, the organizations comprise an impressive, but outgunned, little army.

At first, I thought that Massey wasn’t connecting with the students in professor Sam Russo’s ethics in society class. He talked about addiction and how it comes in many forms--drugs, alcohol, food, work, exercise. “If you call all those things addictions, how do you live?” asked one man, echoing my sentiments.

But as the session continued through almost two hours, I saw that I was wrong, that Massey’s message, and his quietly charismatic speaking style, was making a strong impression on the young adults, some of them parents beginning to worry about their kids.

Their questions were practical. They were interested in the details of Massey’s plunge into addiction, his downfall into the ranks of the homeless and his recovery. “I congratulate you,” said a woman, “because you did one of the toughest things you can do.”

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I didn’t know the background of anyone in the classroom, but I assume the students are like most everyone else--if not afflicted with their own drug and alcohol problems, they have relatives or friends who are.

That’s why they wanted to hear Massey’s lessons, words from a man who’s survived the drug life rather than the holier-than-

thou rhetoric they usually get from politicians.

Politicians give us drug policies that have no relation to the concerns of average Americans.

They are based on long prison sentences and on such high-tech action as aerial spraying of cocaine-producing fields.

Certainly, we need prisons. Arrest the dealers, especially the big ones. But that won’t stop the drug trade. For you don’t have a business without customers. These customers might include your neighbor, your office mate, your spouse or kid--or even yourself. All kinds of people might stop at a certain street corner or bar on their way home from work to buy heroin or cocaine.

The message of Earl Massey and others like him in the trenches of the war on drugs is simple: Don’t legalize drugs; we don’t want a permissive society. But let’s try to eliminate the customers by diverting some of California’s huge prison expenditures into education, and the rehabilitation that has worked for him and many others.