High Price (36 page)

I wasn’t sure what to do with this information. The best I could do was to say again that she and I had both been too young and that he shouldn’t be too hard on her. I changed the subject.

“So what are you doing work-wise?” I asked.

He said, “Shit, you know what I do.”

I didn’t quite get it. Maybe I didn’t want to.

“I’m slinging,” he said, meaning that he was a street-level pharmacist. He seemed almost to be daring me to make something of it. I didn’t know what he knew about my profession or area of interest as a researcher, but I did know that he was trying to tell me that he was strong and didn’t need anything from anyone. I asked a few questions to show him that I got that, along the lines of “How’s business? You making enough to handle your responsibilities?” He nodded affirmatively.

And when there was an awkward pause, I found myself questioning him about his education and trying to emphasize the importance of completing high school or getting a GED, though, at some level, I knew this was only a bandage for what amounted to a cancer by this point. I really was at a loss for words. I was accustomed to helping people solve problems by teaching and I was in that mind-set when we spoke, wanting to fix him and make it all right. Of course, that wasn’t possible: here he was, a young, uneducated black man in a world that had no use for him, a fate I’d only narrowly avoided myself.

But advice wasn’t what he wanted from me then anyway, I later recognized. All he wanted was to speak with his father, to tell him about his hopes and dreams and life. He wanted me to know that he was going to be a good father, that he was a good person. He wanted that affirmation from the man who had brought him into the world, just like I’d wanted from my own father as a child.

Meanwhile, I was still struggling with the fact that he was my son and that he actually was in the life I might have had myself if I’d stayed in Miami. I kept looking at him, but I really didn’t see any of myself there other than in his defiance. I sure recognized that angry swagger and desperate need for respect. I didn’t want to, but I did.

And truthfully, I didn’t really want to look very closely. At the time, I didn’t want to think too much about the other path my life could have taken, and be forced again to contemplate the differences between where I was now and the person I’d been growing up. I was surrounded by the starkness of that difference every time I came home. Still, we did manage to leave the lines of communication open.

And as I got to know him, I thought about the alternative reinforcers my other sons have had available to them that Tobias had either not been exposed to or not found ways to experience. I realized, too, that meeting Tobias had been especially shocking in comparison with my first encounters with my two other sons. The birth of my son Damon had been one of the deepest, most joyous, and most memorable experiences of my life. And by the time my son Malakai arrived six years later, I felt that I was actually starting to get the hang of this dad thing.

Though both of their births had been peak life experiences for me, I’d realized as I changed diapers, chased toddlers, and—before I knew it—found myself watching them play basketball and wondering when they’d be able to outplay me, that it wasn’t at all the biological bond that made a father. It was the care, the daily repetitive care. It was being there and learning with them, having a life together.

And so seeing Tobias had felt like a slap in the face. I felt as though I was being held responsible for a child I’d had no say in raising. I wanted to do the right thing but I couldn’t help feeling cheated. All the learning he’d done, all the reinforcement and punishment and extinction training he’d received for the most formative years of his life had had nothing to do with me. I’d almost literally been an unwitting sperm donor and yet this child was blood. The differences between him and my other sons and the arc of my childhood and his confounded me. I couldn’t help thinking about those differences as I slowly got to learn more about his life.

Although I can’t know for sure, I do have some speculations about some of the important differences. Unlike me, my son Tobias had never seriously participated in organized sports or even much in street games. He hadn’t known the pleasure of becoming skilled at something through practice and using the fruit of hard work to win public competitions. He hadn’t had a father like me in his life or older sisters like mine who nurtured him when his mother was unable to. His mother had been even younger and less well informed than MH had been when I was born; he didn’t know the real story about his father. He didn’t have even the limited academic success I’d had with math in elementary school. In fact, he doesn’t appear to have ever been engaged at all by education and he dropped out before completing high school.

Tobias didn’t have a Big Mama who stressed the importance of getting that degree, nor did he have a dream like mine of athletic glory, which led me to enlist in the air force rather than face the humiliation of not playing at least college-level ball. He didn’t get military training, nor did he have the opportunity to travel and see a world different from the one he knew in South Florida. He hadn’t found mentors who could teach him about black history and consciousness, real men who could show him the way to find different values than getting the most pussy (and seeing women in that demeaning fashion) and having a name on the street. The gap between us felt even more vast than the one between me and my family in Miami. At least I had a shared history with them.

When I met him, Tobias had so little mainstream cultural capital that he described me to his friends as a “teacher.” He didn’t understand the difference in status between a high school teacher and a college professor, let alone the differences between being a tenured professor or non-tenure-track lecturer, or between being at an Ivy League or a less prestigious school. Just as I’d been as a teenager, he was completely isolated from the mainstream.

I didn’t know how to reach him or provide him with appropriate and helpful alternative reinforcers. He isn’t a drug addict; he’s a young black man with no high school diploma and limited employable skills in a country that sees him as a problem, not a resource. The unemployment rate for black men at the end of 2012 was about 14 percent, twice the number for white men.
¹
Those problems don’t have answers in the neuropsychopharmacology that I study.

I began to realize that I would need to speak out if I was to ensure that my work didn’t lead people to the wrong conclusions about drugs and the causes of social problems.

CHAPTER 15

The New Crack

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

—
HIPPOCRATES

O
ne afternoon in mid-2005 I received a phone call from the U.S. drug czar’s office, the ONDCP, a component of the Executive Office of the President. Initially, I thought, Oh shit, I must be in trouble! But that wasn’t it. They were phoning to request my participation in a roundtable discussion about the drug methamphetamine. The purpose of this roundtable, the caller explained, was to educate writers about the real effects of methamphetamine so that stories written about the drug would be more authentic. The writer participants would consist of individuals who wrote for a variety of magazines and television shows. I happily agreed to take part because this seemed to be a departure from previous “educational” efforts by ONDCP. These were the same folks who in the late 1980s brought us the public service announcement (PSA), “This is your brain on drugs.” During the spot, a man holds up an egg and says, “This is your brain.” Then he picks up a frying pan and says, “This is drugs.” Then he cracks open the egg, fries the contents, and says, “This is your brain on drugs.” Finally, he asks, “Any questions?” This PSA is one of the most ridiculed antidrug advertisements of all time because of its simplistic and inaccurate portrayal of drug effects.
¹

Today, ONDCP’s slogan is “Relying on science, research and evidence to improve public health and safety in America.” So, perhaps one of the goals of the roundtable, I figured, was to provide the writers with information with foundations in evidence rather than fear-based anecdotes. In addition to me, the panelists were an assistant U.S. attorney, an undercover narcotics agent, and a methamphetamine “addict.” Because I was one of the few scientists studying the effects of methamphetamine in people, my role was to summarize the current state of our scientific knowledge about the drug. I began by saying that methamphetamine is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ADHD and narcolepsy. The attendees were surprised. How could this awful drug that they had heard about be sanctioned for anything? Then I presented data from my studies showing that methamphetamine produced the same effects as the better-known prescription medication Adderall (generic name: a mixture of amphetamine salts). The chemical structure of the two drugs is nearly identical (see figure 2).

This too was surprising to most in the room. Like amphetamine, methamphetamine increases energy and enhances one’s ability to focus and concentrate; it also reduces subjective feelings of tiredness and cognitive disruptions brought about by fatigue and/or sleep deprivation. Both drugs can increase blood pressure and the rate at which the heart beats. I explained that several nations’ militaries, including our own, have used (and continue to use) amphetamines since World War II because of these properties.
²
The drug helps soldiers fight better and longer.

Figure 2. Chemical structure of amphetamine (active ingredient in Adderall), left, and methamphetamine.

My fellow panelists were horrified because my lecture was in stark contrast to the stories they told about methamphetamine. The attorney showed a slide presentation filled with disheveled children of alleged illegal methamphetamine makers. “These are America’s children,” she asserted, hoping to evoke a sympathetic emotional response. Her remarks were echoed by the narcotics agent, who declared that methamphetamine was unlike any drug he had seen in his twenty years of service. They asserted that the drug produced an addiction more severe than any other drug, including crack cocaine. The police officer further warned that users of methamphetamine are so violent that Taser guns are ineffective at stopping them. “These people are animals,” he said, and insisted that more intensive methods are necessary for stopping someone high on methamphetamine. The officer concluded his remarks with an anecdote so ghastly that the audience moaned in unison. He stated that methamphetamine causes cognitive impairment so severe that it can lead parents to decapitate their own children; he swore he had witnessed this firsthand.

Judging from the audience’s responses, the anecdotes were effective. They urgently wanted know why law enforcement hasn’t done more do to get this awful drug off the streets. Or how could anyone in their right mind take such a destructive chemical? None of the writers raised questions about the veracity of the stories told by the attorney or the narcotics agent, even though they had just heard conflicting information about the drug. The world was flat again. My mind raced with thoughts about that 1914
New York Times
article describing “Negro cocaine fiends” and how southern police forces had to exchange their revolvers for heavier-caliber weapons because cocaine gave black people superhuman strength. I was baffled that others in the room didn’t recognize how myths about drugs are recycled from one generation to another; I was disappointed because I believed this roundtable would be different. I thought evidence from science would inform our view on the drug. Instead the roundtable turned out to be similar to other drug discussions sponsored by the government, an exchange in hysteria and ignorance. I was also angry because I knew such hysteria unfairly vilified methamphetamine users and decreased their willingness to seek help if needed.

The discussion also reminded me of the exaggerated claims about crack cocaine two decades before. As I pointed out earlier, that drug was believed to be so powerfully addictive that even first-time users would become addicted. It had also been linked to the deaths of two promising young athletes—Len Bias and Don Rogers—although later it became clear that the athletes had taken large amounts of powder and not crack cocaine. Powder cocaine was seen as a recreational drug for the wealthy.

Few people asked whether the sentencing disparity between the two forms of cocaine was based on scientific evidence. In 1986, there were only two scientific publications on smoked cocaine. Both studies contained a number of limitations, which decreased their relevance in public policy discussions. As a result, the law that created the 100:1 crack-powder sentencing ratio was based entirely on anecdotal reports. This in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing as long as lawmakers understood the limits of this approach and were prepared to alter the law as new, more complete knowledge dictated.