From: J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Date: Tue Jan 11 2000 - 15:54:50 MST
>This incorporates a weird assumption, to my mind, that the taking of drugs
>induces unruliness. Indeed, it's one of the big arguments of
>pro-marijuana debaters that marijuana, for example, doesn't make you
>unruly in the way that, for example, alcohol does.
It depends on the drugs doesn't it? Who wants to take drugs that will make them
into compliant robot slaves of the state? Unruliness doesn't necessitate the
implication of freedom from the state. The state may in fact encourage drug
crazed assassins to carry on the work of politics by other means.
Drug use does not threaten the ruling class. The ruling class takes drugs to
assuage its own feelings of existential angst. A drugged ruling class continues
to insist that its subjects remain soberly productive.
>So why not make marijuana a prescription drug? Or opium?
Because to do so, the ruling class must admit that it had erred in making them
illegal. Furthermore (and probably more significantly), the ruling class
generates untold wealth for itself via confiscation of personal property in
connection with drug busts. In addition, pharmaceutical companies (a sector of
the ruling class, after all) eschew the idea of people self-medicating
themselves -- better to have professionals in charge, in control, and in the
chips. Self-medication threatens the ruling class' hold on this lucrative
industry.
> Again, we can
>characterize this behavior as foolishness, (since opiating the masses
>would be wiser than forbidding the use of opium,) but I don't see how you
>can consistently characterize this as the ruling class trying to protect
>their ruling status.
People can grow their own opium poppies, but they can't manufacture their own
Ritalin.
Again, self-medication (illicit drug use) threatens the power of the ruling
class.
>I DO have an axe to grind. All too often I hear people ascribe all sorts
>of crazy behavior to the "ruling class," usually in a conspiratorial mood,
>though not always, and invariably with little explanation. No
>prostitution? Blame the man. Can't smoke up? Blame the man. Late to
>work? Somewhere, somehow, the man's responsible.
So who do you blame?
**********************
"The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate
the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit
that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive
contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his
success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of
others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be
owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to
his own defects -- his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or
stupidity." --Henry Hazlitt
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