Oregon daily emerald., January 13, 1977, SECTION A, Page 3, Image 3

Lecturer denounces
“scare ’em” tactics
By MICHAEL KESTON
Of the Emerald
Mark Miller strides briskly out of
the small, shack-like building
which houses the Drug Informa
tion Center (DIC), handing me a
motorcycle helmet as he starts
up his Yamaha 650.
"Vrrrooommm!" Helmets in
place, we re on our way, wheeling
through Eugene traffic on a clear,
brisk winter day We re headed for
Horizons, Eugene's alternative
high school, where Miller will de
liver the first in a series of eight
hourly sessions on dealing with
today s ever-increasing drug
technology.
Once at Horizons, Miller doesn t
waste any time getting on with his
class As the sole lecturer pro
vided by the DIC, he has a busy
schedule to keep After this class
is completed, he will zip over to the
state motor pool where he II pick
up a Pinto to drive to Roseburg.
There, he II give his presentation
to a group that niqht The next
morning will find the 25 year-old
drug technologist in front of a
classroom at South Eugene High
at 8 50 a m
His two-hour lecture, entitled
' Drug Dynamics is delivered to
every Health 150 and 250 class on
campus Besides lecturing to
schools and other groups, he in
structs 12 police training sessions
around the state in the use of
drugs
Although only a few students
are present in the Horizons class
room as Miller begins, more
wander in during the lecture and
stay — their attention riveted to
the curly-haired person pacing in
front of the blackboard in frayed
tain the latest data. Reliable, up
to-date information on literally
hundreds of thousands of drugs is
gathered and maintained in the
center's extensive library, which is
available to the public as are sev
eral publications put out by the
DIC People can call in for infor
mation or ask for a speaker or
class for a specific group The
anonymous, over the telephone
(686-5411) drug analysis service
offered by the center informs peo
ple about just what they're putting
into their bodies as well as inform
ing the center itself on what's
going around these days.
The DIC started out five years
ago as a student idea and has
since grown into a well-respected
information and referral service
that is now affiliated with the
University's health education de
partment The DIC is also a
member of the national Drug
Abuse Communications Network
(DRACON), making it the primary
source for drug information in the
state
The financial rewards, how
ever, are not great While the
center gathers its funds from a var
iety of federal, state and local
sources, Miller gets by on $100 a
month he receives for teaching a
course at the University. At the
last state legislative session, the
Human Resources Committee
unanimously passed Senate Bill
819 which appropriated $280,000
to the center to cover the DIC's
costs for such things as a prop
osed toll-free WATS line for
state wide utilization of DIC ser
vices The bill did not become a
reality, being tabled in deference
to other issues The present Legis
“At the beginning of a class
I can almost divide the room
between straights and stoners.”
jeans and thick-heeled boots. The
young students are surprised to
hear an older person talk to them
frankly about drugs and their
bodies The Fonz" of drug tech
nology, Miller tells his listeners
that if they end up victims of drug
abuse after being through his
class they are "fools" or worse,
"nerds."
"At the beginning of a class I
can almost divide the room in half
between the straights and the
stoners," Miller says. "The
straights are there thinking they
will never use drugs, but a little
curious about what all their friends
are talking about The stoners are
sitting there smirking, thinking
they know it all. By the end of the
class, a noticeable shift occurs
The straights know that they do
use drugs and the stoners will con
tinue to use druas but will be
aware enough to utilize them in a
safe manner."
He says people get hurt with
drugs because they have not
been taught how to use them.
"The only education we have in
any of the schools to prepare our
young citizens to deal with the
massive number of drugs out
there is we talk about illegal drugs
and there we usually give biased
facts, misinformation, inaccurate
statements...in short, we try to
scare 'em," says Miller
Miller asserts that scare tactics
haven't worked with the drug
abuse problem that now faces
society and that's where the Drug
Information Center comes in. The
DIC has access to professional
consults and computer lines to ob
lature could be the scene of
another lobbying effort by the DIC
Miller estimates the center
reaches between 600 to 2.000
clients with its services each
month, depending on the season.
'When mushrooms were happen
ing, we had people lined up out
isde the door at 9 a m. holding
their bags of mushrooms up in the
air, waiting to have them iden
tified," he says.
When most people think of
drugs in relation to the DIC they
think of the illicit or so-called hard
drugs and Miller says he feels
that's unfortunate. "These (the il
licit drugs) do exist, but they're
only a small part of the entire
technology. There are thousands
of prescription drugs, a hundred
thousand over the counter drugs
in drug stores. There are com
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Mark Miller. "The Fonz " of drug technology, travels
throughout the Eugene area daily lecturing to clas
Photo by Pafli McNabb
ses and groups about drug use and the Drug Infor
mation Center.
mercial drugs that people get in
the food, the water, and the air.
There are recreational drugs
which people are normally sur
prised to hear, but alcohol is a re
creational drug; coffee, nicotine —
all are For every single illicit drug
you can think of there are 216
legal drugs you may end up
using, he says
No matter how straight people
may think they are, sooner or later
they're going to come in contact
with one or another drug, yet they
will have practically no skills to
help them deal with that experi
ence when it happens. Miller de
scribes our current predicament
with drugs as culture shock or fu
ture shock. In short, a technology
that's completely ahead of
people's abilities to deal with it.
He compared drugs to another
form of technology — the au
tomobile. "You put somebody be
hind the wheel of an automobile
without any skills taught to them
and you're going to have an acci
dent. We do exactly the same with
drugs in our society We say,
Here, take the drug.' We don't
teach you how to drive it."
The present shroud of mystery
and ignorance which surrounds
our use of drugs can be changed,
Miller says, ideally with an educa
tion program which would start in
the third, fifth, seventh and
eleventh grades with a gradual in
troduction to the drug technology.
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As students reach the higher
grades, they'd be given more in
formation, teaching them to be
more responsible.
Miller sees such a mass educa
tion program as imperative in light
of the increased possibility for
change in our drug laws as they
now stand. “One of the problems
people have to recognize,
whether they agree with it or not, is
that current drug laws are scienti
fically inaccurate Furthermore, a
significant minority of the popula
tion is stating that these laws have
no right to be enforced on them,
that they violate the Second and
Fourteenth Amendments to pur
r
suit of happiness and privacy.
“Sooner or later these drug
laws are going to change and
we re going to need some kind of
response to them. What are we
going to do in our society when we
make one more drug available
that no one's been taught how to
use properly?” Miller asks.
Well, until things change we ll
probably continue to rely on Mark
Miller and his small group of dedi
cated colleagues over at the DIC
to educate the entire state Miller
encourages people to call DIC at
686-5411 to have any drug
evaluated in order to experience
more responsible, safer use of it.
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