He gives free advice
and pills to bring trippers
"down." But onlt his
patients can cure themselves 

Susan admits her need with words, but tears.

THOUSANDS OF YOUNG PEOPLE, from all parts of America, have come to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district this summer. As part of growing up, they use drugs and sample communal living, trying to explore and change their inner selves with LSD and other chemicals. Most will return home this fall after their vacations.

 Many, however, plan to stay. They have quit parents, homes, schools and careers. They hope the Haight Ashbury will derail their lives, throwing them off the track their elders laid. Seeking new experiences, they take self-destructive drugs like heroin and Methedrine as well as self-exploring psychedelics. They change their names to prove their "liberation" and live primarily for euphoria. They bury themselves in the present.
 

Others become lost from society and from their selves overnight. They take drugs that trigger frightening personal revelations and, sometimes, psychotic behavior. Even if they use LSD only once, their "bad trips" may never end. Alone in a strange city, they do not know who can help them "get down." Having defied California and Federal laws in taking drugs, they feel outside society, afraid of its police and health officers. When their pain finally becomes unbearable and they cry out, few hear their pleas or understand their needs.

 David Smith is one man in San Francisco who knows drugs and listens to the young. Trained in toxicology and pharmacology at the University of California medical school, he runs the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Screening Unit at San Francisco General Hospital. The year-old public health program offers medication, counseling and hospitalization for drug users and abusers without threat of police involvement. Many of Smith's patients, like the lost girl on this page, come because they trust the young doctor. Only 28, he speaks their language, listens to their music and likes it. He is a friend to the young leaders of the Haight-Ashbury community and urges them to send runaways to him for treatment.

 Some older critics wonder if Smith is mature enough for his responsibilities. He answered one: "LSD wasn't in the pharmacology curriculum five years ago. My practice was created by a problem. I may be working in the unknown, but no one else seems to care." A colleague goes further, saying, "Dave is one of the few doctors in San Francisco who knows how big the problem is, let alone how to treat it. And his feeling for the young is perhaps his best qualification for the job."