In grade two, in one of the portables at my east end Catholic elementary school, we were asked to choose topics for our Bristol board presentations that culminated our "Body" unit. I had the best idea, and smiled as the kids in the row beside me snatched up what they thought were the good ones: The digestive system, the eyes, the lungs. Me?

"Narcotic drugs and alcohol."

"What do you mean?" That teacher sighed, I remember, as she had grown accustomed to my "creativity."

"Like, how they affect the body."

Aws and ohs from the students around me told me I'd definitely thought up the coolest topic. I didn't know it, but I was a seven-year-old wunderkind to the American-led war on drugs. I embodied the wide-eyed fear and fascination prompted by the television commercial music chorus of, "Drugs, drugs, drugs;which are good, which are bad?" I seem to recall this was communicated via a conga line of diverse-background actors wearing requisite highlighter-coloured 90s clothes.

Fast forward to high school, grade 8, where my favourite book is the anonymous drug epic, "Go Ask Alice," followed in close second by "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." My fascination with drug culture and its depictions in pop culture may have been fuelled by a unique curiosity all my own, or a seed planted by the aforementioned propagandist drug messaging campaign. I'm yet undecided, but continually enthralled by the subject mater.


When choosing my fourth-year university optional law courses, I jumped on one called, "Drugs, the User and the State." How perfect! The first few weeks' worth of reading were kind of lame, but I wasn't there to learn about the 1911 Opium Act. I was there for the good stuff: The debates on how prescription drugs had westerners sucking at the teat of pharmaceutical corporations, how single,lower-class mothers addicted to weed get busted for possession while la-dee-da hoity-toity coke addicts do not.

Here's what I learned that surprised me most: Crack babies (remember how outrageous and enraging that concept once was?) are far better off than fetal alcohol syndrome babies in the long run. Weird, eh? A coke-addicted mother can snuff it throughout gestation and her undersized baby may go through withdrawal but is generally much better off than the offspring of a mum with a bun in the oven and a brew in her hand.

Other surprising fact: Hard street drugs, like heroin and cocaine, when not cut with other sketchy agents like Clorox and baking soda on the street, have the same potency and properties as many popular-use prescription drugs. Essentially,the morphine user and the heroin junky go to the same elixir for relief. Those who are administered Ritalin for their attention deficits (real or perceived)are being dealt forms of cocaine. Huh?

Long-term cocaine use results in short-term memory loss, and physical degradation of the nasal cavity. But really, is that as scary as we all thought? I wasn't convinced, anyway.

All this left me wondering: Are the street drugs we have been conditioned to fear as seedy aspects of a loathed drug culture really that bad when they're being prescribed under different names at a Shopper's Drug Mart near you? Or are the prescription drugs we're taking with water at mealtime as potentially harmful as the stuff the toothless man on the park bench is injecting in his armacross the street?I sure am going to miss academia.

Nonetheless, I found this to be quite the interesting debate. Feel free to call me out on perceived inaccuracies; I'm feeling quite pretentious. And for the record, my findings will not see me to a seedy alleyway with a needle in my arm nor a cocktail party with a rolled up dollar bill connecting nose to powder on table. Thoughts?