4 - Sunday, May 26. 1991 - North Shore News Confessic otine junk THIS IS the sad tale of a junkie. A legal junkie, but a junkie nonetheless. Me. I must say 1 marvel every day at the weird logic of our society when it comes to drugs. items like cannabis and hashish are illegal. Nicotine isn’t. Nicotine is, in fact, a highly addictive drug that causes slow, horrible death. 1 haven't seen any definitive studies on the health ef- fects of the other substances, but they surely can’t be any worse. It is peculiar the way law- makers and law-enforcers manage to convince themselves of their righteousness in upholding the current drug laws no matter how patently hypocritical they obvious- ly are. Laws have to make sense in order to enjoy any measure of Tespect. Our drug laws clearly do not. The truth of the matter is that I would have more respect for the drug laws — and the government itself — if [had to look up a nic- otine dealer in a back alley some- where in order to score a package of Player’s Filter. I mean, why on earth is this stuff legal? Ii kills. The first victim of lung cancer I personally knew was a managing editor of mine at the Vancouver Sun, way back in the early '70s, a terrific guy named Bill Galt. There’s no good reason why Bill couldn’t still be around, with his dro!l sense of humor and his keen powers of observation. Except for nicotine, I’m quite sure he would be alive today. Much closer to home, i watched my mother die of lung cancer last summer. Thanks to modern medicine — i.e., morphine — her death was relatively painless. Morphine is wonderful. But in a way, it helps in the great cancer cover-up. So do hospitals themselves. If Mom had had to die at home, without morphine, while her helpless family watched, there would be some pretty passionate anti-smokers in our tribe right now. At one point, I asked the nurse if she could lay off the morphine for a few minutes. Mom was get- ting the stuff every couple of hours by then. She wasn’t in the real world at all. She couldn’t recognize any of us. { wanted one last chance to get through to her. Sure enough, as the morphine began to wear off, she briefly and fickeringly recognized me — enough to weep at the pain of permanent parting. Then she began to twitch. From head to toe. A horrifying twitch. From inside, she was being eaten alive by cancer cells. It was PROVEN RESULTS with over 8 years experience! LESLIE LaFLECHE 984-9711 (24 hrs.) STRICTLY PERSONAL __ like an internal crucifixion with a million little nails. She was too far gone even to be able to scream. It was me who did the scream- ing for the nurse, who came right away. When the morphine didn’t im- mediately work, I demanded to know why. Because it takes 15 minutes to kick in, she advised me. Which meant that for the next 15 minutes there was nothing I could do to ease my mother’s unbelievable pain. I thought seriously about put- ting my hand or a pillow over her mouth to get her oui of her misery, but couldn't bring myself to do it. I felt — and will always feel — that I failed her in her worst moment. One more night of being eaten alive and she mercifully died. There was more than a little irony in helplessly holding my mother’s hand as she died from jung cancer. When I was 15, you see, she : CG figured out | was smoking ciga- rettes with the guys after Scouts and at school. Being the genuine liberal that she was, she told me firmly she didn’t want me ‘‘smoking in back lanes.’’ I guess she figured | would hang out with the wrong crowd. She would rather | smoked at home. And so I did. Of course, back then, there were no public statistics about the rate of lung cancer or heart at- tacks or whatever else nicotine does to kill you. By 17, } was already making my first desperate, futile efforts to kick the habit. Over the years | must have seriously tried to quit smoking 50 or 60 or 70 times. 1 quit for 10 years once, only to mistakenly take a puff on a real Havana cigar, finding myself within a matter of months bumm- ing a smoke here, a smoke there, until the fateful day I was actually purchasing an entire package again. It was back on the weed for two years for me. Last summer, | managed to hick it again. And lasted eight months before a crisis drove me down to the drug store (indeed!) for another Player’s Filter, please. I got off again a couple months back, but was only a dozen days through the cold turkey phase when a friend's wife left a suicide note and we spent the whole day combing the beach lor her body. About 3 p.m., | folded and bought a pack. The next day my friend’s wife showed up unharmed. That drama behind us, [ set out again to quit. And have now survived 16 days without a smoke. There’s no punch-line to this column. It is just, as J said, the sad story of one more junkie try- ing to get a legal monkey off his back. - 66 | WANT HIM 70 PLAY THis SUAAMER...AND PASS NEXT FALL. 99 You cn help vour child do better in schook nest tall wand add to the summers lun, Bring him to Svlan Leaming Centre. * We test to pinpoint strengths und weaknesses Then. we desin a customized leaning progr which includes lots of indisidial aueauion, motivation and rewards from caring, certified teachers. “Phe result: improved Jeaming skills and study habits, Se. for the learning skills that will help veur child now aad through: out his fife, Sean’ is the answer, Get your FREE copy of Sylvan... . Step One -- an evaluation form that lets you analyze your needs in the privacy of your home. 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