David Magee, publisher of The Oxford Eagle, wrote a moving column for his Sunday newspaper entitled, “For Ole Miss freshmen: My son’s story.” It’s one that should be heard by college freshmen everywhere, as well as young people of all ages, especially those entering a new chapter of life where they are becoming free of parental restraints.
Magee’s son, William, who entered Ole Miss in 2008, compiled an outstanding academic record at the university. He also lettered in track, making the SEC’s all-academic team in 2010.
Like so many at Ole Miss and other colleges, as well as many who don’t go to college, he partied, partaking of both alcohol and drugs.
“William suffered from anxiety and low self- esteem,” his father wrote. “These issues he tried to medicate with alcohol and drugs, like so many others. He was comforted that substances like alcohol brought him closer to the conversation in social situations. He was considered a square more than a partier, and William hid his habit from many friends, but privately drawing the line was hard and one drug led to another over time as so often happens, sometimes by accident.” William was a senior at Ole Miss “by the time we recognized the depth of his troubles.”
After school, William was in an out of rehab before dying of a drug overdose at age 23. “Three years plus a few months later,” Magee wrote, “we have made peace with William’s addiction and tragic death, as much as parents can.” But “we don’t want other students to suffer like we have. That’s why I wish I could reach out and touch every freshman to tell them William’s story, to tell them that alcohol and drug binging and abuse isn’t a collegiate rite of passage, or contextual excuse. It can be a dangerous if not deadly path that is hard to escape.”
The same day Magee’s story was published, another newspaper, USA Today, reported on a rash of heroin overdoses in the four states of Ohio, New Jersey, Indiana and Kentucky that affected more than 200 people, including three deaths, in a single week.
And in the September issue of Esquire magazine, author Don Winslow writes a lengthy article about what he calls a heroin epidemic and blames it, at least in part, on the legalization of marijuana. He notes that four states have legalized it outright, others have decriminalized it, and in many jurisdictions police refuse to enforce laws on the books regarding pot, “creating a de facto street legalization.”
Legalization and decriminalization of marijuana made it hard for the Mexican drug cartels to compete against a superior American product that also had drastically lower transportation and security costs, Winslow opined.
So the Mexicans, noting an increasing number of Americans addicted to prescription opioids, such as Oxycontin, started undercutting the pharmaceutical industry by producing Mexican heroin, increasing the purity level and reducing the price.
Winslow’s lengthy article makes several other points, including intriguing reports on the Mexican drug battles. He contends that the recapture of drug lord Chapo “El Chapo” Guzman has done nothing to curtail drug trafficking and violence. In fact, he claims, the violence in Mexico, once declining, is on the rise again. Gang violence also is increasing in major American cities such as Chicago.
“We’re as addicted to the War on Drugs as we are to the drugs themselves,” he wrote, claiming “an entire economy is based on drug prohibition and punishment, something to the tune of $50 billion a year.”
And we’re losing the war.
