LETTERS: PEER PRESSURE AND DRUGS

To the editor:

It is often called peer pressure. It seems to make it more legitimate or acceptable if others may be following a certain pattern of behavior. At times it may be done almost subconsciously. It may be just a fad, such as buying a certain style of clothes simply because others are wearing them. We soon learn that just because others may be following a custom doesn't necessarily make it good or even desirable.

Fifty years ago I lived in the cocaine-growing area of Bolivia. No one seemed to think much about it. It was simply known as coca, and one could buy the coca leaves at any market. For the poor farmers (mainly Indians or mestizos (mixed), coca was one of the main cash products. It was so commonly grown and used that few thought or knew much about the effect of coca. I have a colored slide of a poor old Indian woman sitting in the cancha, or marketplace, beside a little pile of coca leaves which was sold at a very cheap price. In fact, our gardener chewed it much of the time mixed with juice of lime. I never even gave it a thought.

At that time our engineers and construction workers were building that part of the Pan American Highway between the cities of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Today I hear that Santa Cruz just west of Corumba, Brazil, is a distributing city for shipping coca out to and through Uruguay, which is being investigated for its role in the shipment of cocaine to Europe and to the so-called more civilized world.

I can't blame the cocaine growers for selling their crop. When one sees the miserable condition in which the poor live, it is hard to blame them for trying to make a living. It is the trafficker and the consumer addict who promote the drug trade.

Rather than show others that there are huge profits to be made by the dealer who creates misery for the user in order to gain profit for himself, or rather than send troops into those areas of production of cocaine, wouldn't it be better to penalize the promoter, and wouldn't we be of more assistance by helping the cocaine grower develop other, more wholesome products rather than just trying to destroy his means of living?

It does me pain to see many so-called educated or civilized people enhance the use of the drug while becoming victimized simply because they see that others are doing it.

Peer pressure has many ramifications, be it smoking cigars, drinking alcohol, sexual harassment, swearing or keeping up with the Joneses.

IVAN NOTHDURFT

Cape Girardeau