270 lines
15 KiB
Plaintext
270 lines
15 KiB
Plaintext
From: govegan@uclink.berkeley.edu (Scott Andrew Selby)
|
|
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs,alt.drugs
|
|
Subject: Why Drug Free Revised
|
|
Date: 1 May 1994 23:15:06 GMT
|
|
Message-ID: <2q1d5q$8v0@agate.berkeley.edu>
|
|
|
|
Thanks for people's feedback. Much of this second edition has been changed.
|
|
If you like this, please let me know. If you have any disagreements, please
|
|
send me specific, constructive criticism. E-mail me directly
|
|
(idealforliving@uclink.Berkeley.EDU) as I am not subscribed to any
|
|
newsgroups or mailing lists.
|
|
|
|
Before passing judgement on this, first read all of it as it is coming at
|
|
the issue from a completely new perspective. This an attempt to disseminate
|
|
information about the political effects of drug use from a liberal
|
|
perspective - it is NOT about the issue of drug legalization and does not
|
|
advocate prohibition, nor is it a personal attack on drug users. Instead, it
|
|
discusses the impact of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs on people's
|
|
health, world and U.S. politics, and the environment.
|
|
|
|
If you like this file, send a SASE to the address at the end of the file for
|
|
a hard copy and pass this e-mail file on to anyone who would be interested.
|
|
|
|
***************************************************************************
|
|
__ ___ ____ _____ ___
|
|
\ \ / / |__ _ _ | _ \ _ __ _ _ __ _ | ___| __ ___ __|__ \
|
|
\ \ /\ / /| '_ \| | | | | | | | '__| | | |/ _` | | |_ | '__/ _ \/ _ \/ /
|
|
\ V V / | | | | |_| | | |_| | | | |_| | (_| | | _|| | | __/ __/_|
|
|
\_/\_/ |_| |_|\__, | |____/|_| \__,_|\__, | |_| |_| \___|\___(_)
|
|
|___/ |___/
|
|
|
|
******** Personal and Political Responsibility in Daily Life ************
|
|
|
|
Recreational drug use is one of the most widespread and
|
|
destructive problems 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 consumer™s 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 the point of view
|
|
of activism, 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 using drugs, they support the establishment
|
|
which they dislike so much. Their consumption also minimizes the
|
|
volume of their dissent by neutralizing their activist-tendencies.
|
|
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 recreational
|
|
drugs is the toll their use takes on the human body. Cigarettes have
|
|
been 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).2 Moderate alcohol consumption increases one's risk of
|
|
certain cancers threefold,3 and use by a pregnant woman can cause
|
|
birth defects.4 A single marijuana cigarette, often thought to be
|
|
harmless, causes as much lung damage as five tobacco cigarettes.5
|
|
Marijuana also often leads to a long term lack of motivation and
|
|
apathy among regular users.6 And underlying almost every drug™s
|
|
list of individual problems is physical dependency (including
|
|
marijuana, commonly thought to be only psychologically addictive).7
|
|
New drugs continue to be created whose health effects are not fully
|
|
known.
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
For instance, second hand smoke alone is responsible for the deaths
|
|
of fifty-thousand Americans each year.8 Drunk drivers kill an
|
|
additional seventy-thousand people at the same rate.
|
|
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 abuse, domestic violence, and
|
|
physical abuse in general. Date rape is often caused by aggressive
|
|
sexual behavior brought on by drug consumption. A complete list of
|
|
social problems exacerbated by drug use is too long to include in a
|
|
pamphlet of this length. Even if one has never been a perpetrator in a
|
|
drug-related incident, one is still responsible for such occurrences (to
|
|
some degree), through drug consumption or support thereof.
|
|
|
|
POLITICAL ISSUES
|
|
Unfortunately, while use of illegal drugs is combated,
|
|
consumption of alcohol and tobacco is promoted. Corporations
|
|
consistently deny that the products they sell are dangerous. Cigarette
|
|
manufacturers, for example, claim that cigarettes are neither a threat
|
|
to the consumer™s health nor addictive,9 despite scientific proof to the
|
|
contrary. After a Philip Morris research team concluded that
|
|
nicotine is addictive in a 1983 report, the company forced a science
|
|
journal to withdraw the resulting article.10 The fact is that cigarettes
|
|
are at least as addictive as cocaine and heroin11 and their threat to
|
|
public health is undeniable: studies have shown cigarettes to contain
|
|
a horrifying array of substances, including acetone, carbon
|
|
monoxide, methanol, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, insecticides, and
|
|
benzene.12 In terms of public safety, the major tobacco corporations
|
|
have for years had the technology to safeguard against fires caused
|
|
by their products by making cigarettes that go out after a period of
|
|
non-use, but still they put additives in cigarettes that increase the rate
|
|
at which the product burns.13
|
|
The federal government is not doing much to stop the public
|
|
health threat caused by alcohol/cigarette consumption because
|
|
corporations have the United States Congress in shackles, which take
|
|
the form of gifts, contributions, and campaign funds.14 In the
|
|
American South, where tobacco is an important industry,
|
|
congressmen are forced to support the tobacco corporations or face
|
|
expulsion from office. For this reason, government subsidies exist for
|
|
tobacco growers that insure them a profit on their crops.15 The
|
|
corporations placate the would-be opposition in government with
|
|
money, which allows them to manufacture their products
|
|
unquestioned. Indeed it is only a minority of government officials
|
|
who have been fighting the tobacco industry.
|
|
The products and their health-hazards, however, are only
|
|
part of the picture. 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.16 Coors is not alone in its reactionary
|
|
pursuits. Henry Weinhard™s brewery, for example, has used profits
|
|
from beer sales to fund Operation Rescue.
|
|
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, attempting to escape the troubled conditions of
|
|
this world instead of working to change them. This serves the
|
|
interests of those who run the country: they face no threat of
|
|
rebellion as long as the disenfranchised are busily involved with
|
|
drugs, e.g. the rampant alcohol abuse in Native American
|
|
communities. In 1989, under President 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 urban
|
|
underclass, while condoning the promotion of alcohol and other legal
|
|
drugs in the same sector of society.
|
|
Drug production is a waste of environmental resources.
|
|
Food-stuffs, which in sharp contrast are important to produce, could
|
|
be grown on the land used to grow and manufacture drugs. 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. California marijuana
|
|
growers kill large numbers of deer, in some areas more than hunters,
|
|
in an effort to protect their expensive crops.17 Tobacco production
|
|
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.18 In addition, significant pollutants
|
|
are created with the production of cocaine, alcoholic beverages, and
|
|
heroin. The packaging involved for drugs is also wasteful, especially
|
|
that of cigarettes, which involves plastic products such as filters, 533
|
|
billion of which are disposed of in the U.S. each year.19
|
|
Problems in the non-industrialized world brought on by
|
|
legal drug corporations as well as illegal drug producers are 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 severe considering
|
|
that the cigarettes sold there generally contain twice as much tar (the
|
|
main carcinogen in cigarettes) as do those sold in developed
|
|
nations.20 With cigarette sales waning in the United States, the major
|
|
cigarette corporations have nearly doubled international sales.
|
|
Philip Morris, the largest player in the U.S. tobacco industry, has
|
|
increased its revenues abroad from $8.4 billion in 1989 to $15.7
|
|
billion in 1993.21 Instead of improving their dire conditions, people
|
|
in third world nations 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.22 The reality is
|
|
that drug use only worsens living conditions in the non-
|
|
industrialized world, where the drain on financial resources caused
|
|
by a drug habit is magnified. 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 scant wages picking cash crops that they cannot
|
|
use for food. 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 illegal drugs, those
|
|
involved in the trade have created a climate of corruption and
|
|
violence throughout the non-industrialized world, as they have in
|
|
many 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 mindset is •Partnership for a Drug-Free America¢,
|
|
which, in fact, is 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 by helping them
|
|
maintain 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 drug habit. If
|
|
you are addicted to drugs and want to quit, you can. Seek help or
|
|
counseling if you need it. By being drug free, one boycotts both the
|
|
various industries (legal and illegal) that produce drugs as well as
|
|
the 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 The American Medical Association Encyclopedia of Medicine, Dr. Charles
|
|
B. Clayman, Random House, 1989, pp. 991-992.
|
|
3 You Are What You Drink, Allan Luks & Joseph Barbato, 1989, p.69
|
|
4 Health and Wellness, Edlin Golanty, Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Fourth
|
|
Edition, 1992, p. 292.
|
|
5 Personal Health Choices, Sandra Smith, Jones & Bartlett Pub., 1990, p. 399.
|
|
6 Clayman p. 665.
|
|
7 ibid, p. 665.
|
|
8 California Department of Public Health, 1994.
|
|
9 •Blowing Smoke at Congress¢, New York Times, April 24 , 1994, Editorial.
|
|
10 •The Butt Stops Here¢, Time, April 18, 1994 , p. 59.
|
|
11 •Should Cigarettes be Banned?¢, U.S. News & World Report,4/18/94, p. 36.
|
|
12 Golanty p. 304.
|
|
13 (Whelan) pp. 151 and 164.
|
|
14 (White) pp. 45-71.
|
|
15 (Whelan) p. 147.
|
|
16 (Bellant).
|
|
17 •Pot Growers Killing California™s Wildlife¢, International Wildlife, July/
|
|
August 1985, p. 32.
|
|
18 (Whelan) p. 172.
|
|
19 Golanty p. 304.
|
|
20 (Whelan) p. 170.
|
|
21 •Smoke, Flame and Fire¢, U.S. News & World Report, April 18, 1994, p. 47.
|
|
22 (Whelan) p. 169.
|
|
|
|
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 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
|
|
|
|
e-mail: idealforliving@uclink.Berkeley.EDU
|
|
|
|
|