They have become a potent American metaphor.
Anyone raising children in an American city these days has had to confront the following disconcerting scene: a person unconscious or semiconscious, in filthy clothes, stoned at midday, a nuisance if not a menace. As you lead your child gingerly around an adult prone on the sidewalk, the questions come: Why is that person lying there? Are they okay? Why do they take drugs if they know it could kill them? We tie ourselves in syntactic knots trying to formulate credible answers. We want to emphasize personal responsibility: that person made choices, but you can make different ones. We also don’t want our children to think us hard-hearted: that person is still a human being; somebody loves them. This conversation is even more difficult for the millions of Americans who have addicts in their own families.
