The King of Methlehem by Mark Lindquist

Author:Mark Lindquist
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2007-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

People Want the Truth

“Are we winning the war on drugs?” Mike repeats the question back to the interviewer from MSNBC, a standard gambit to clarify and buy time to think. Working late, he had to cancel his date with June. Sometimes he wishes he could go back to grad school and just read piles of books.

“You’re in the trenches,” the reporter says. “Is victory in sight from your perspective?”

People want the truth?

A cousin of his, a politician, told him this once—people want the truth and will not hold it against you for telling them. He would like to believe this.

“War is not really a useful metaphor,” he says, starting off with his stock answer. “Drug use has been with us forever, always will be.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“People like to feel good.”

“So you’re saying we’re never going to win this war?”

“Again, war is not a useful metaphor.”

“So if war isn’t a useful metaphor, what is?”

“Realism is useful.”

“And by that you mean?”

He stares up past the Cobain poster at a small ball of water slowly forming on his ceiling, not yet heavy enough to drop.

“People like their drugs,” he says. “People like caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, painkillers, antidepressants. People like to alter their consciousness.”

“Okay, but what about methamphetamine? Can we eliminate meth use?”

Mike listens to reporters carefully to gauge their angle, Googles them when he can, but he did not have time with this one.

“Not until the next drug du jour comes around.”

“So what do we do in the meantime?”

Kill all the meth cooks?

“Two-prong approach to stop the bleeding,” he says. “Cut supply, and cut demand. Right now, however, we don’t have sufficient resources to do either, so we need to be more innovative.”

“How do you cut supply?”

“Shut down sales of ephedrine or pseudoephedrine for starters, but the pharmaceutical companies have been blocking that for years. Billions of dollars are at stake. The corporate profit margin on pseudoephedrine would embarrass most drug dealers.”

“Isn’t Congress considering a bill this session?”

“Yes, Senator Cantwell is working on it, it’s called the Combat Meth Act, and it’s been tacked onto the Patriot Act, but even if we could cut off the legal sources for pseudo, there’s still the black market, which will expand to meet the demand.”

“Okay, so how do you cut demand, then?”

“We need to work with the addicts, get innovative in that area as well.”

“What drives people to damaging drugs?”

People want the truth.

“You got me.”

“What?”

“I don’t know why people want to screw up their lives chasing drugs or money or sex or their obsession of choice. I don’t know why politicians destroy their careers and reputations over petty bribes or sex with an intern. I don’t get compulsive behavior. Of course, I don’t even know how to work a microwave.”

“Good night,” one of his attorneys says on her way out, waving her umbrella.

“I’m leaving, too,” Cort announces, stepping out into the hallway in his blue raincoat. “The Xerox machine is broken again, by the way. I’ve alerted the others.”

Taken from the television series, Lost, “the others” is Cort’s reference to office administration.

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