Vol.8 No.6

Be Angry and Sin Not
by Betsy Mayer

“How many more lives have to be ruined by drugs before we say ‘enough is enough’?”

Sitting in the dimly lit room, I feel my moral outrage and sorrow rise. I’m watching Masquerade, a video about the drug crisis in American culture, with tears rolling down my cheeks. My associate editor is struggling, too.

Speaker Milton Creagh is a huge, bearlike man that wants to end our denial and complacency with drug use. “How many of you know at least one person your age who is using drugs?” he asks a room full of high-school teens. Most hands go up.

“How many of you know at least one person who’s been sexually abused by someone on drugs?” Girls begin to weep. Young people try to comfort one another. He laces his pointed questions with stories about people he’s met who’ve been hurt by drugs.

“How many of you have adult family members, aunts, uncles, fathers, mothers, who are using dope?” Some guys are breaking down now.

“How many lives have to be ruined before we say ‘enough is enough’?” He’s got their attention. He’s got mine, too.

He’s right. How many? Where is my moral outrage about this horrible specter stalking our land, devouring lives, homes, and communities?

I’m a medical professional and it’s easier for me to act clinical when I hear these stories. Anger is not a professional response.

Creagh tells the story about the well-to-do housewife with a crack habit. Her husband finds out and cuts her off from the bank account and credit cards. But she’s still addicted and turns to another source of funds. Police find her two children when they raid a child porn studio. She has hired  them to pedophiles for drug money.

With this story, my denial gets soft on the edges. Faces of close friends, family members, school mates float before my eyes. This isn’t happening on some distant planet I pass in my spaceship. These faces belong to people I love. People who sat in my classes, came to family reunions, called me on the phone, and chatted with me around the edges of their lives. For every one of them who chose to use drugs there are exponential numbers of innocent victims. Thinking of this makes me angry. Angry for the wasted lives. Angry with myself for giving up so easily when people I love choose drugs.

Sometimes it is sinful not to be angry. Holy anger doesn’t leave us complacent. It pushes us to do noticeable things like speak up or shake our heads and glare when everyone else is nodding. But without it, we won’t act on our concerns.

So how do we channel our anger against drugs into productive results?

First, admit that everything isn’t all right. Next, seek help for those we love who are being destroyed by drugs. Even clumsy help is better than no help. Then, we should give movies, art, attitudes, and fashions depicting the drug lifestyle zero toleration.

Drug use is a symptom of moral poverty.  People who use drugs, and those who ignore the reality of drugs destroying their communities, families, or friends, are not morally responsible individuals.