What type of people take rx pills versus heroin?
One group of abusers is people that unintentionally got hooked on a prescription drug. Then there’s the other group, where people are constantly abusing their bodies and putting foreign substances in there just for the sake of getting high. So that’s why I’m careful about the terminology; so we don’t get so jaded that we just say everybody’s bad that uses drugs, because that’s not true. Some people unfortunately get hooked and that’s the only way they can survive. I think we need to do a better job as a society when we prescribe medications of tracking the long-lasting effects on people and recognizing when people get hooked.
Take a look at this doctor [Kevin Lowe] that just got arrested in Kingston last week. One of the largest drug rings of Oxycodone that was being sold in the city of New York and one of the people was here in our own community. So I guess it goes back to supply and demand. If you have a doctor’s office that’s ordering this stuff that’s off the charts compared to other doctors’ offices, there should be red flags going up.
Do users think prescription drugs are safer?
I think there’s a sense that ‘this is a prescription drug so it doesn’t make me a drug user or a drug dealer’ versus when you buy heroin. So it really comes down to individuals looking for a way to circumvent the truth, I might say, to make themselves feel better about what they’re doing.
How do you plan to address drug issues in the community this year?
Coming in here as a new police chief there was a lot we did with the department. We rewrote rules and regs, we became an accredited police agency. We had a million irons in the fire and unfortunately, in the past year and a half I’ve been the chief, we kind of neglected really taking a hard look at the drug usage here. We’re constantly gathering the intelligence and passing it off to other agencies [state and county], however now we’re going to be taking a direct role in the investigations.
What made you want to focus on drugs this year?
Part of my agenda, quite honestly. These are all areas that a police chief has to address and it’s now come to that part of my planning for this agency. I want to address it before it becomes a major problem. And I’m not saying there are any indicators that we’re at the foot of a major problem, but now’s the time to address it. Just the fact that we have people that visit our communities because of the events we put on here, they bring drugs with them. We have a concert coming in, and it’s nothing to do with the concert promoters, but it has to do with the people that come to these concerts. Some people feel that it’s their right to bring drugs into these venues, and we don’t want that.
So you’d say that the Winston Farm concert coming to Saugerties is part of the reason you wanted to address it?
That definitely drives to the forefront a concern that needs to be addressed, there’s no doubt about that. Listen, not every person that goes to a concert is bringing drugs with them, it’s a very small percentage of people. But again with these things coming in here I want to make sure we’re not taking a backseat to it and then end up in a position where we have to react to a problem.
Before you said drug use patterns are cyclical. Do you see any connection between the rise of a stimulant like cocaine in the go-go ’80s and now, in an economically depressed time, the resurgence of depressants like heroin?
You bring up an interesting observation. Cocaine is almost like an energizing drug before it’s a depressant, while heroin is a depressant right off the bat, a way to escape rather than interject oneself. Where in the ’80s people were interjecting themselves into a fast-paced lifestyle. That’s when the money was flowing and everybody was making money hand-over-fist and when you really take a look at the ’80s it was somewhat cocaine-driven. When you take a look at athletes, the biggest issue they had was cocaine, people like Darryl Strawberry. It was infiltrating every part of society.
When you think of heroin use we all think of the ’60s. We all think of a confused, young population at the time. They wanted to escape the reality of life, they wanted to go into commune-type living. So when I say it’s a cyclical pattern, you take a look at our economy and it’s depressed, like you said, and you kind of wonder if people are just at a point where they’re looking to escape. There’s very little work out there. And unfortunately we created it because we outsourced all our jobs. So there’s a million contributing factors to why we are where we are today… What you’re saying could be factual, it would be an interesting theory for the experts to look at.
With Gov. Cuomo taking steps to legalize medical marijuana, the debate over broader legalization could be next. Where do you stand on these issues?
My first gut reaction response to that is, ‘you want to take our gun rights away but you want to give us marijuana?’ I mean that doesn’t make any sense to me whatsoever.
I’ll tell you right off the bat I am definitely not in favor of legalizing marijuana. We have a hard enough time corralling individuals who want to consume alcohol and get behind the wheel of their vehicle, now we’re going to compound it – and it’s bad enough that it’s already compounded many times by the use of illicit drugs – but now we’re going to make it legal? To me, we’re going to destroy ourselves if we don’t wake up to common sense and say no, these things are no good for you, we’re not going to do it. We pass ridiculous laws, we take away people’s civil rights, and then we’re going to turn around and take a drug that we know people don’t think clearly on and – let’s face it, a lot of people use marijuana because they want to escape – so we’re going to legalize it? That to me is a way for us to destroy ourselves as a society.
You think society as a whole would suffer from increased marijuana use?
Yes, I firmly believe that.
What about the argument that alcohol as a legal drug causes more damage to society in the form of car accidents and addiction than marijuana, so it’s hypocritical for one to be legal and the other illegal?
I understand that argument, but I don’t think it’s a valid argument. There’s health risks with both. Again, I just go back to the SAFE Act. We’re talking about reducing death, we’re talking about reducing violence, and we want that so we say we’re going to restrict firearms in the state of New York. But yet we’re going to turn around and say it’s okay to smoke dope? That’s where I get confused. It seems like the agenda is always askew.
With alcohol, there was a time in our society where we treated alcohol like drugs after it had been introduced into society, and we had Prohibition, and we see the carnage that was created because of that. How many law enforcement officers and civilians lost their lives over that battle? And I think in the end the government realized that you’re saving more lives by allowing alcohol back into society.
And you’d say that’s a different case than the current drug war?
Here’s the thing: [Alcohol is] something that’s already into our society, so to take it out of society is a difficult task. Why are we going to introduce something into our society that later on we’re going to regret doing and then try to get it back out of society? I think with drugs, even with alcohol, we destroy ourselves with it if we misuse it, and I don’t see how you can properly use marijuana.
If medical marijuana is legalized, does that have any repercussions for recreational marijuana use and distribution?
You’re looking at something that’s being used medicinally compared to something that’s being used socially. Could one segue into another? I think most definitely, if they’re not careful. They’re going to say how come people get to use it for medicinal purposes but they can’t use it for social purposes? Well, there’s a lot of things that are used for medicinal purposes that we don’t allow people to use for social purposes, such as morphine.
