Helen Mirren's coke announcement

Dear Star Savior,

Hi. I'm Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren. I recently announced that I used to love using cocaine until I found out that the cocaine trade benefited a Nazi war criminal. It may be a risky thing to admit in GQ magazine, but I think it's OK, since I quit back in the early 1980s. What do you think?

Dear Helen,

It's great that you publicly declared your former love for coke. Coke really needs good press these days, and nothing does it like a celebrity endorsement. But the best thing about your announcement is that it calls attention to an overlooked part of history -- the long history of Nazis associated with addicts going clean.

In fact, Alcoholics Anonymous was created right after Adolf Hitler opened a liquor store, The Fifth Reich. And nobody talks about it, but Adolf Eichmann, "the architect of the Holocaust," founded the first drug-rehab center. He just liked to see addicts deprived of drugs. It helped him find his calling.

It's good that you found the link between Nazis and drugs, but you have a responsibility to your junkie brethren. You must help them see the link, since they don't do much research before they buy coke. Don't let the twitching fool you. Junkies can be picky when they have a reason. It's why all crack now is baked or steamed, not fried. That's how crackheads stay so trim.

You should use your celebrity status to pressure crack dealers to put their business information on their crack packs, right next to the nutritional information, like calories, protein and fat. They might resist at first, but they'll cooperate. Remember when they started labeling coke with the "heart smart" symbol?

Junkies deserve to be informed shoppers, and you can help them move toward non-Nazi coke. Addicts want to know they're supporting the mom-and-pop coke dealers on the corners. They'd skip a fix to keep money from going to a Nazi, and they'd sleep well that night -- except for the shakes.

The Star Savior