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. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 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-rightÑ 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 innocuousÑ 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