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A Drug Lesson Worth Remembering

Reprinted from the San Diego Union-Tribune, February 20, 2002
Written by Stephen J. Pasierb & Mary F. Harrison

Most parents in America don't know much about Ecstasy. But Jim and Elsa Heird do.

They were introduced to the drug on July 20, 2000, the day Las Vegas Police told the Heirds their 21-year-old daughter, Danielle, had been found dead at a friend's apartment. Danielle's death, they were told was caused by an overdose of Ecstasy.

Neither Jim nor Elsa had any idea what the police were talking about. "When the coroner came to the office," Elsa recalls, "I said, 'What is Ecstasy?'" A generation of young Americans like Danielle Heird is embracing Ecstasy. As they do, it's worth remembering the hard lesson another generation learned about cocaine.

If you remember the late '70s and early '80s, you remember a time when cocaine was still seen as a relatively benign drug. At the time, only one of three teens thought there was great risk in using the drug. The media sometimes glorified cocaine as the socially acceptable drug of the moment. Cocaine reigned and its use soared - until celebrities and everyday people started dying. That's when the nation started taking a closer look at the drug's real dangers. Only then did cocaine use begin to reverse. Today, the deadly pattern is repeating, only now the drug is Ecstasy. Ecstasy is a dangerous, illegal drug that's part hallucinogen, part speed, part LSD, part methamphetamine. Available on the streets for between $10 and $40 a pill, Ecstasy gives users an intense high.

Research released earlier this month by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America shows teen use of Ecstasy has climbed 71 percent since 1999. Nearly 3 million teens have tried Ecstasy, which puts the drug ahead of or on par with teen experimentation with cocaine, crack, heroin, LSD and methamphetamine. As with cocaine, Ecstasy is a lie. While users talk about the pleasures of the "hug drug," a growing body of research has found Ecstasy to be neurotoxin. The National Institute on Drug Abuse says Ecstasy poisons the brain, and as the Heirds now know, that poison can be deadly: According to the coroner, the only drug in Danielle's system was Ecstasy. The real risks and dangers of Ecstasy have yet to be understood by most Americans. If you're the parent of a teen-ager, you may be old enough to remember Len Bias. The star basketball player from the University of Maryland appeared destined for stardom in the NBA in 1986, but two days after he was drafted by the Boston Celtics, Bias partied with the benign, harmless drug of his day. Roughly six hours later, he was dead from a cocaine overdose.

After Bias' death, public attitudes about cocaine began to change, especially among kids who looked at Bias the way today's kids look at Michael, Shaq or Tony Gwynn. The media started reporting the real dangers and consequences of cocaine use. By the early 1990s, attitudes toward cocaine had changed drastically and use of the drug plummeted. Today, cocaine use is down nearly 80 percent from the levels of Bias' time. Today's teens don't know the Bias story. Will it take a high profile Ecstasy death - or the death of dozens of everyday people - before the nation applies the lessons of its harsh experience with cocaine to its handling of Ecstasy?
If the cocaine experience taught us anything, it is these facts: (1) supposedly harmless highs often are not, and (2) it is possible to change attitudes about drugs and cut drug use. Parents play a critical role in bringing such changes about.

Jim and Elsa Heird didn't know much about Ecstasy before their daughter died. Elsa says they've "learned a lot about it since then." She and Jim are hoping other parents won't wait to learn about Ecstasy for themselves.

Pasierb is president and chief executive officer of Partnership for a Drug-Free America. Harrison is executive director of Communities Against Substance Abuse/Partnership for a Drug-Free San Diego.