Many people today do not recognize the name Len Bias. When I say that, I mean most people who are younger than 40 and perhaps some of the people older than that who were old enough at the time to recognize what happened to him but have forgotten him over the years. I think it's enough to say that he has been generally forgotten, yet his impact as monumental as it can be as a college basketball player.
So who was Len Bias? Len Bias played basketball for the University of Maryland. In 1986 he won the ACC Male Athlete of the Year-an award won by Michael Jordon two years earlier. In fact, his name was often said in the name breath as MJ's (remember, Jordon was only a youngster, he wasn't yet what he is now). The fact is, though, he could have been.
Well, what happened, then? He was drafted by the Boston Celtics with the #2 overall pick. He was about to go play with Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Danny Ainge, Robert Parrish and an aging Bill Walton, who had just won the NBA finals, and would lose the next year to the Lakers. But two days after the draft he went out with some friends and never lived to see the next day.
The killer--cocaine. Today when we hear that someone OD'd on cocaine what do we say? "He had it coming to him," "Didn't he know that drugs kill," and "How irresponsible." Do you know why we say these things? Because of LEN BIAS.
Nobody knew how dangerous drugs were--or that they were even harmful, really--until Len Bias died. No one said "He had it coming to him," or "Didn't he know that drugs kill," or "How irresponsible," because no one was under the impression that drugs had that type of effect on the body. Until a perfectly healthy super-human athlete died people were unaware of how thin line drug abuse actually was to walk. The Celtics' GM said about drug use, "The dangers were not as clear then as they were the day after he died." The death of Len Bias revealed to the nation the dangers of cocaine, and the inquiry as to the dangers of other illicit drugs. This is the positive influence of his death. People began to realize that they couldn't play around with drug use, that it could kill you. As the graph shows, a spike appears in the years directly following Len Bias' death (1987-). Drug use significantly dropped as a result of a higher risk perception.
I don't know exactly why risk perception went down again and why drug use went up, but I do know that most children are educated that drugs are addictive, harmful to your health, and can ruin your life. This is at least partially a result of the aftermath of the death of Len Bias. I don't know, maybe the story no longer hits a soft spot in anyone today. Every drug related death we see we ask those quesions I posed earlier, and the people who still take the chance seem to believe that it could never happen to them. People are unsure as whether or not that was Len's first try at cocaine, but it's very likely that he had not used much before, and he most likely didn't remotely think he would be dead from using it that night. It's not just the heavy users that are at risk, it's the casual, social users, and it could even be the first timers.
Here's the link to the first youtube installment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHFUUkrg2VA
