The night before Linda Seven's death, her son and two of his friends chipped in $20 each to buy hallucinogenic mushrooms. Using scales to divide up the drugs, the boys ingested the mushrooms and smoked some marijuana. That's when things turned tragic. We often hear of how drugs give users feelings of supernatural power. But no matter how hard he tried, or how loud he cried "open your eyes, open your eyes, I love you," David Seven, 17, a junior at Clackamas High School outside Portland, couldn't revive his mother, Linda. That's because, according to police, David—high on marijuana and mushrooms—had killed her.
With tragedies like these, the citizens of Portland scarcely need to be reminded of how drug use wrecks lives, shatters families, and erodes communities. These painful consequences make a mockery of the claim that drug use is a "victimless crime."
We don't have to yield to the harms of drugs. Many people in Portland have already chosen to make a difference. Community coalitions, like the Oregon Partnership, provide a forum for local citizens to get involved and help stop drug use. Another group, the Mt. Hood Coalition Against Drug Crime, demolished a drug house just last week as neighbors took back their community from the thugs who threatened to destroy it. As the crowd stood watching and cheering, neighbors recognized and reclaimed items the drug-using residents had stolen from them as many as fifteen years earlier. When citizens fight back, they strengthen themselves, and the problem gets smaller.
This kind of effort is needed now more than ever. Recently there has been a jump in drug-induced deaths in Portland—from 160 in 1995 to 221 in 1998, the last year for which data are available. We know that drug use is associated with crime: 66 percent of the men arrested in Portland last year tested positive for drugs. There is reason for hope though: marijuana use by 8th graders in Multnomah County decreased significantly last year, according to local surveys.
Decades of painful experience have taught us that there is no single route to success. The way to make lasting progress against drugs is with a balanced strategy of community drug prevention, treatment, and law enforcement.
Anti-drug efforts start with prevention. If young people don't start using drugs as teenagers, the likelihood that they will go on to develop problems with drugs later in life is massively reduced. Research and experience demonstrate that when neighborhoods and individuals unite and push back against this problem, lives are saved and communities prosper. Portland has seen this work first hand, through the work of community coalitions.
We've also learned that it's not possible to sustain progress without treating the addicted. Drug courts, court-supervised drug treatment programs, offer a "carrot and stick" method of treating drug addicts. By encouraging addicts to stay drug-free, drug courts provide a valuable alternative to incarceration, while lowering rates of addiction.
Portland's law enforcement community likewise plays a critical role, since citizen involvement works best in a climate where laws are upheld and people are discouraged from bringing drugs into the neighborhood in the first place.
We need local communities—their elected officials, grass-roots organizers, faith leaders, parents, teachers and young people—to tackle this problem and help deliver change. As with safe schools, pure water and clean air, communities must insist that their neighborhoods are drug free. Indeed, local communities—not the federal government—are our most important catalysts for change.
I'm visiting Portland this week for a reason: to learn about the challenges that local leaders face and successes this city has achieved. Together, by confronting this issue openly and honestly, we can achieve real results. We find policies that are effective in reducing drug use. By doing so, we will help to prevent tragedies like Linda Seven's from diminishing our communities.
