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From: govegan@uclink.berkeley.edu (Scott Andrew Selby)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Subject: WHY DRUG FREE? (pamphlet)
Date: 14 Apr 1994 21:41:26 GMT
Message-ID: <2okda6$8kt@agate.berkeley.edu>
This is a new essay to try to explain the various issues involved
with drug consumption. Please e-mail comments on this to me as I
am going to do another draft of it. Both positive and negative
feedback is appreciated (but please be constructive). For a hard
copy to pass out, send a SASE to the address listed at the end of
this file. Thanks.
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WHY DRUG-FREE?
Personal and Political Responsibility in Daily Life
Recreational drug use is one of the most widespread and
destructive habits facing us today. Much like other matters of
lifestyle, drug use is not contained entirely within either the private
or the public realm, but lies somewhere in between. The
ramifications of the purchase and consumption of a beer and a
cigarette include, for instance, not only obvious harm to the
consumers body, but also tacit financial support of the political
causes to which the given alcohol/tobacco corporation contributes,
often right-wing in nature. The successful election campaigns of
North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms in 1984 and 1990, for
example, were both funded in large part by profits from the alcohol
and tobacco industries, of which the right-wing congressman has
been an ardent supporter.1 There is an element of irony in this; the
drugs that are used in the name of youthful rebellion end up
benefiting the extreme-right? against which the rebellion claims to
be pitted in the first place.
From a health/social perspective things look even worse.
While political setbacks can in the end be overcome, nothing can
be done to bring back the four-hundred thousand people who die
in the United States as a result of cigarette consumption alone
every year, during which hundreds of thousands more fall victim to
other alcohol- and other drug-related deaths.
HEALTH
Perhaps the most obvious argument against drug use is the
tremendous toll recreational drugs take on the human body.
Cigarettes have been conclusively shown to cause lung cancer;
cancer of the pharynx, larynx, esophagus, bladder, and pancreas;
chronic bronchitis; peptic ulcers; emphysema; and various birth
defects (if consumed by a pregnant woman). Alcohol can cause an
often-fatal cirrhosis of the liver if ingested regularly over a long
period of time, and use by a pregnant woman can cause birth
defects. Marijuana cigarettes, often thought to be harmless, cause
lung-related illnesses at a rate four times that of their tobacco-filled
bretheren, not to mention their user's lessened ability to
concentrate on difficult tasks, the chronic consumer's weakened
short-term memory, impotency for men, and long-term lowered sex-
drive for all users.2 Consumption of LSD can lead to permanent
brain damage, including psychosis and death. And underlying
each drug's long list of individual problems is the fact that almost all
recreational drugs result in physical dependency (even marijuana,
commonly thought in mainstream society to only be
"psychologically" addictive.)3 New drugs continue to be created
whose long term health affects are not yet known - although
immediate health-problems have been linked to some, such as the
draining of spinal fluid by MDMA (Ecstasy).4
Indeed, those who produce and sell recreational drugs are
guilty of human rights violations on a grand scale. In the name of
money and profits, they knowingly promote use of products that
end hundreds of thousands of lives every year, and harm countless
others.
SOCIAL RAMIFICATIONS
An individual's drug habit has a profound effect upon the
community of people with which he/she interacts on a daily basis.
According to government statistics, second hand smoke alone is
responsible for the deaths of fifty-thousand Americans each year.
Drunk drivers kill an additional seventy-thousand innocent human
beings during the same time period. In no uncertain terms this
amounts to murder. Are profits more important than human lives?
The answer from the recreational drug business is a resounding
"Yes!"
From an inter-personal perspective, it is clear that while
under the influence of any mind-altering drug, one has decreased
control of one's actions. This affects both the individual and those
around him/her. It is often the main factor in occurrences of assault,
sexual transgressions, domestic violence, and physical abuse in
general. Date rape is often caused by lessened sexual inhibitions
brought on by drug consumption. Unfortunately, a complete list of
social problems exacerbated by drug use is too long to include in a
pamphlet of this length. Even if one personally has never been a
perpetrator in a drug-related incident, one is still responsible for
such occurrences, through drug consumption or support thereof.
Passivity equals compliance.
POLITICAL ISSUES
It is a travesty that while use of illegal drugs is combated,
consumption of alcohol and tobacco is actively promoted.
Corporations are even willing to lie in order to increase profits.
They consistently deny that the products they make and sell are
dangerous. Cigarette manufacturers, for example, claim that
cigarettes are neither a threat to the consumer's health nor
addictive,5 despite scientific proof to the contrary. Even the United
States government, ostensibly set up to protect the rights of the
country's citizens, have been promoters of the legal drug industry.
Indeed it is only a minority of government officials who have been
fighting the tobacco industry, albeit on a limited scale.
The federal government is not doing much to stop the public
health threat caused by alcohol/cigarette consumption because the
major corporations have the United States Congress in shackles,
which take the form of gifts, contributions, and campaign funds.6 In
the American South, where tobacco is an important industry,
congressmen are virtually forced to support the tobacco
corporations or face expulsion from office come election-time. For
this reason, federal subsidies exist for tobacco growers that insure
them a profit on their crops.7 The corporations placate the would-
be opposition in government with money, which allows them to
manufacture their harmful products unquestioned.
The products and their health-hazards, however, are only
part of the picture. Both in the United States and abroad,
alcohol/tobacco corporations have been well-known supporters of
an ultra-conservative political agenda. Indeed, almost all of the
corporations that manufacture alcohol and cigarettes turn over a
significant portion of their profits to special-interest groups that
oppose civil-rights legislation and social programs. The Coors
corporation, for example, has opposed the U.S. Civil Rights Act,
affirmative action, the Equal Rights Amendment, U.S. labor unions,
and has been guilty of severe environmental damage in Colorado.
Perhaps most conspicuously they are the founders and primary
financial backers of the Colorado-based Heritage Foundation: an
anti-Semitic, racist, anti-civil rights, right-wing think tank.8 Coors is
not alone in its reactionary pursuits. Henry Weinhard's brewery, for
example, has used profits from beer sales to fund Operation
Rescue.
From the perspective of change, drugs only contribute to
maintaining the status quo. Those who are opposed to the current
system often believe that there is something rebellious about
consuming illegal drugs. The reality is that by purchasing and
consuming drugs, they support the establishment which they
dislike so much. Their consumption also minimizes the volume of
their dissent by neutralizing their activist-tendencies. Drug use
fosters an apathetic environment in which people seek to escape
the troubled conditions of this world instead of working to change
them. It is the people who live in the worst conditions, (and thus
have the greatest need to fight for social change), who most often
become drug addicts, a fact which explains the high rate of
alcoholism among the economically-depressed Native Americans,
and a similarly high percentage of drug use among America's
urban lower class. This, of course, pleases those who run the
country: they face no threat of rebellion as long as the
disenfranchised are busily involved with drugs. In 1989, under
President George Bush, the government set up a highly-selective
'War on Drugs', which gave law enforcement officials free reign to
abuse their authority among society's underclass, all the while
promoting the use of alcohol and other legal drugs among the
same sector of society.
Drug production is a waste of environmental resources. It is
unnecessary, unsustainable, and often directly damages the
environment. Food-stuffs, which in sharp contrast are important to
produce, could be grown on the land used to produce the drugs.
Residents of Northern California and parts of Hawaii have
witnessed the virtual destruction of their respective ecosystems
with the large marijuana crops that have taken over their
countryside.9 Coca plants (used in cocaine production) litter vast
tracts of land in Central and South America, as do poppies (used
for heroin production) in various Asian countries. Tobacco
production often involves heavy use of wood, burned in order to
"flue cure" the product. In Eastern Kenya, Pakistan, and heavily-
forested Brazil, the effects of logging for the purposes of this aspect
of cigarette production have already been felt. In fact, it is estimated
that one tree is felled per 300 cigarettes made.10 In addition,
pollution is created with the production of LSD, cocaine, alcoholic
beverages, and heroin. The packaging involved for some of these
substances is often wasteful, especially that of cigarettes, which
involves throw-away plastic products.
Problems in the non-industrialized world brought on by legal
drug corporations as well as illegal drug producers is another
disturbing consequence of the drug business. Tobacco and alcohol
are sold to poor people in developing nations often without any
warnings about negative health-effects, especially horrendous
given the fact that the cigarettes sold there often contain twice as
much tar (the main carcinogen in cigarettes) as do those sold in the
First World.11 Instead of improving their dire conditions, people are
encouraged to spend what little money they have on products that
will make them more like members of the industrialized world.
Cigarettes, for example, are promoted on television and billboards
as a symbol of progress.12 The reality is that with each drink, puff,
snort, and injection, the already-slim chance that the third-world
citizen will ever live in conditions comparable to those of a typical
first-world counterpart begin to disappear. The drain on financial
resources caused by a drug habit is magnified in the case of the
third-world addict. Unfortunately, many of the targeted consumers
do not have the opportunity to make an informed decision about
the products that may eventually kill them.
Legal and illegal drug production in the developing world
affects not only consumers, but workers as well. They are abused
by employers, earning very little money picking cash crops, while
they could instead be making a decent living producing food-stuffs.
The employers, especially those who manufacture and traffic illegal
drugs, often resort to violent means of protecting their industry. In
some countries, most notably Columbia, the result is chaos. With
the money obtained from selling their cocaine, marijuana, heroin,
and other drugs, those involved in the drug trade have created a
climate of corruption and violence throughout the non-
industrialized world, as they have in many economically depressed
areas of the developed world.
ALTERNATIVES
In the face of a corrupt industry, both in America and abroad,
people must challenge the idea that illegal drugs should be treated
separately from alcohol and tobacco, a distinction based upon the
assumption that only illegal drugs are truly "drugs". This way of
thinking demonizes illicit drugs and at the same time makes licit
drugs appear innocuous? hiding the fact that there is no real
difference between the two categories. A prominent proponent of
the legal/illegal mind-set is the "Partnership for a Drug-Free
America", which, in fact, is primarily financed by the alcohol and
tobacco industries. The ideas promoted by this group through print
and television ads bolster the sales of the legal drug industry's
products, maintaining a good public image. They operate on the
assumption that the public is gullible enough to believe that 'drugs
can't be too bad if they are legal'. Much too often, their strategy has
worked.
A change in personal lifestyle can be a slow process, but
luckily there are many effective methods of ending one's personal
drug habit. If you are addicted to drugs and want to quit, you can.
Seek help or counseling if you need it. Build strength to deal with
issues without needing an escape or depending upon a crutch.
Develop friendships that do not depend on sharing drugs to be
able to relate to one another. Make a life-long commitment to
yourself and the world to live drug-free. By being drug-free, one
boycotts both the various industries (legal and illegal) that produce
drugs as well as the actual concept of drug-taking. Awareness and
a change in personal lifestyle are both essential to effecting
political change.
ENDNOTES
1. (White) pp. 56-69.
2. UC Berkeley Tang Medical Health Center.
3. ibid.
4. ibid.
5. Tobacco Institute: (phone interview, April 1994).
6. (White) pp. 45-71.
7. (Whelan) p147.
8. (Bellant).
9. Humboldt County (CA) Chamber of Commerce (phone interview,
April 1994).
10. (Whelan) p172.
11. ibid. p170.
12. ibid. p169.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY/BOOKS TO READ
Booze Merchants: The Inebriating of America M Jacobson, R.
Atkins, G. Hacker. CSPI Books, Washington D.C. 1983
Coors Connection R.Bellant. Political Research Associates,
Cambridge MA 1990 (Bellant)
Merchants of Death- The American Tobacco Industry L.C. White.
Beech Tree Books, New York, NY 1988 (White)
Smoking Gun: How the Tobacco Industry Gets Away With Murder
E.M. Whelan. George F. Stickley Co. Philadelphia PA 1984
(Whelan)
Ask a local librarian for help inter-library borrowing these
books or books on quitting specific substances. Please photocopy
and distribute this pamphlet. For more information or if you want to
help, send a self-addressed stamped envelope to:
Ideal For Living
PO Box 4353
Berkeley CA 94704-0353