Syndicated column: With Americans so busy taking drugs, why the surprise about coke found at the White House?

The White House was, as required, horrified by the presence of cocaine within the sacred precincts of democracy. So were numerous commenters who apparently do not live in America where the public is gobbling drugs like they are hot wings.

My father used to look at a group of poor people and say, "If you turned 'em upside down and shook 'em, you'd get a buck eighty-five in change."

Now, imagine any random group of Americans, some rich, some poor, some working class. Turn 'em upside down and shake 'em. What falls out of their pockets? Weed. Meth. Heroin. Pills. Crack. Ecstasy. The drugstore. Maybe even an old-fashioned guy in the crowd with a half pint of whiskey in his pocket.

So those of us whose personal life is filmed in Realityvision weren't at all surprised when they found a bag of coke in the White House. It's America, and dope is as American as apple pie

Sure, Joe Biden's kid is a junkie, but who among us is not a blood relative to someone who is sucking up whatever the mules haul across the Mexican border? You're not? What are you, Amish? And by the way, if you turned 10 Amish people upside down and shook 'em, I'm sure you'd get at least a little sumpin' sumpin'. I bet some of that Jan. 6 insurrection crowd took along a little something for courage, too.

The country is suicidal, and we're doing it with guns and drugs.

Did Joe Biden know there were drugs in the White House? Some people say the coke belonged to Biden's addict son, but there's no proof of that - and Biden's son doesn't live in the White House.

But there are millions of Americans who've had heroin or fentanyl in their homes and never knew. They found out when their son Shane overdosed, and the high school lacrosse team was down one player. The high school offered "grief counseling," but a lot of the kids just got loaded instead. Shane would have understood. If he were still alive, he'd take a hit.

I have almost no history of illegal drug abuse, but during my 20s and 30s, I drank like I was being paid to drink. I pulled out of it when I got married because you have to. No woman gets married so she can wait for you to get home from a bar. It's not like I don't understand the territory. I've gone to the movies with two cold beers in my coat pockets.

If the most recent coke discovery in the White House is the only one, it's because they're not looking, or the staff keeps what they find or they don't turn you upside down and shake you before the state dinner. Ten bucks says hundreds of people have done a line of coke in a White House bathroom, maybe thousands. They give tours, they have guests and a staff, and Americans have drugs on 'em like dogs have fleas.

I'm 66 years old, and I've lived through every phase of the American war on drugs. Nothing worked. Nothing even slowed things down. I've sat in a high school auditorium while some broken-down ex-athlete told us all how he "threw it all away" on drugs. There was a war on drugs, and America lost. The enemy planted its bag, I mean flag, at the White House. It'll happen again.

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