Drugs at Harvard

College officials last week assured the outside world that they were "concerned" about the drug situation in Harvard Square. You could sense it. They really were concerned--concerned that the minor furor over drugs would grow and become the 1965 version of last year's Sex "Scandal."

As with the sex controversy, the publicity on drugs has only confused matters. Everyone seemed, however, to agree on a few basic points:

* Whatever the Square's drug traffic, it hasn't drastically increased during the past six months or the past year, and is not now on an upsurge.

* Most of the peddlers are not Harvard students. Living in areas nearby the University, however, they are the same age as students and dress like students.

* A certain amount of drug traffic in and around a place like Harvard is inevitable (just as a certain amount is inevitable in large cities like Boston and New York). And as long as there is enough housing space and the rents are low enough, a community of student-age, non-college people will live around the University.

* The Square's drug traffic is largely--almost solely--in marijuana, which is non-addictive.

What, of course, remains in doubt is how many people are actually using marijuana and how serious a problem this constitutes. All those people who had a vested interest in saying that there was no problem promptly did so last week.

"I don't think that if a fair number of students were using marijuana, we wouldn't know about it," Dean Watson said. Cambridge Police Chief Daniel J. Brennan told the City Council that the drug situation was exaggerated and that no serious problem existed. And Dr. Dana L. Farnsworth, chief of the University Health Services, echoed Dean Watson, although both professed their concern about what traffic there is.

The really loud cry to "clean up Harvard Square" came from Middlesex Superior Court Justice Frank W. Tomasello, who issued a blast just before sentencing a 19-year old Cambridge youth to a five-to-seven-year suspended sentence for drug peddling. Just three weeks before, one of Tomasello's colleagues had made a similar, though milder, attack after sentencing three men to suspended sentences. The police and the University (which helped in the apprehension of the youth sentenced by Tomasello) must have been a bit chagrined: by catching the peddlers, they precipitated harsh criticism.

But Tomasello's own comments, although probably sincerely meant, appeared suspect, because he seemed to be using drugs as an excuse to attack the University. Without ever naming Harvard or M.I.T., he asked that "instead of taking in these students who are anti-the-country and anti-the-leadership, these tax-free institutions should screen whom they let in." And then, in a reference to recent marches in protest of U.S. Vietnam policy, he urged, "Let's get some patriotism at these institutions."

The row over drugs has confirmed the obvious: Harvard is a rich, prestigious place, very vulnerable to attack. A Harvard scandal--or anything that hints of scandal--is a big story for any newspaper.

As for drugs themselves, the word of the University Administration and the Cambridge police, who are closer to the situation than anyone else, must define for the present the rough limits of the traffic. The activity is probably greater than they are willing to admit, but nothing indicates that either the extent or quality (truly addictive drugs are very rare) constitutes a real emergency. The absence of any apparent federal presence, which could easily clean out a truly dangerous situation in such an open place as Harvard, seems to confirm this view.

Next Monday, the City Council will meet with the Middlesex County District Attorney, the City Police Chief, and the head of the state's food and drug administration. Nothing may come of the meeting; and that would be all to the good. Harvard Square is clearly not an important source for narcotics, and a commitment of either state agents or more Cambridge police would produce only a temporary--and largely valueless--decline in the traffic.