Making Sense of US Drug Policy

The Not 100% Complete FAQs for the Pretty Fucked Up Person in a Pretty Fucked Up World

Corporations/Society

Now that we have a logical framework with which to view our fucked up society, we can analyze current US drug policy. Let's go down our handy checklist!

Checklist Item #1: Is everybody wrong?

Check! We have a winner! Everybody with an opinion on the handling of illegal drugs or 'controlled substances' is wrong! Everybody who thinks they are harmful and detrimental to society is wrong and everybody who thinks they are not harmful and detrimental to society is wrong. People who think alcohol is harmful and marijuana is not are wrong - and people who think marijuana is harmful and alcohol is not are wrong. Both are extremely good for you and both are quite harmful. People who think the 'War on Drugs' is a good idea are wrong and people who think the War on Drugs is a bad idea are wrong. People who think we are winning the War on Drugs are wrong and people who think we are not winning the War on Drugs are wrong. If you have any ideas whatsoever on how illegal substances should be approached - you are wrong! If you have no ideas on how they should be approached - you are wrong! This is good news. America has successfully implemented the first step in the handling of any issue. Score one for us - and let's give a long, rousing Boo! to any other country that says we can't do anything right here.

Checklist Item #2: Has Violent Disagreement been implemented?

Our score: A disappointing C-. Sure, there is disagreement. But it's not nearly violent enough. When it comes to general drug-related disagreement, our violence quotient is appallingly deficient. The only people regularly engaging in violent disagreement on the subject of illegal drugs are the suppliers - and their disagreements tend to center solely on issues as to whether certain quantities have been paid for and how distribution terrorities may be equitably divided. The General Wrong Public can barely be bothered to scream at anyone on this issue and that's a sign of not only apathetic laziness but societal dereliction of duty! This is one area where US drug policy needs serious buffing up and you can help! Implement Violent Disagreement today! We'll talk more about this deficiency and what you can do as soon as we finish our checklist.

Checklist Item #3: Has an Average Answer been derived?

The startling answer here is yes! Although the disagreement is violence-deficient, widespread disagreement on this issue does exist. And out of this disagreement, in spite of the Best Efforts of Authorities, an Average Answer has been crafted. The Average Answer is that certain drugs in this country are illegal - kind of. If you took the 2 polar extremes of 'ecstasy should definitely be illegal' and 'no way should ecstasy be illegal' and mushed them together into an Average Answer that made nobody happy - it would be - 'ecstasy should be kinda illegal, not really you know, but sometimes, maybe it should be....' This is exactly the situation we have!

Although it is supposedly illegal, lots and lots of otherwise law-abiding citizens use it, or have used it, or will use it, or are considering using it, or used to use it, or have kind of used it. And most of the time nobody does anything about it, tries to stop this, or even wants to. Except sometimes they do, and then they arrest somebody and all the affected parties are reminded - oh yeah, that's supposedly illegal and everything. In this way, nobody's happy, but society does not run itself over a cliff either. People who really enjoy it and want it to be legal and freely available and widely admired and installed in the All-Time Greatest Things Ever Hall Of Fame find their style cramped by its so-called illegality and are not happy because their experience of it is crimped and pinched by social disapproval. On the other hand, people who severely disapprove of it and want people who use, sell, or talk about it to be sent to the dungeon where ravenous tiny spiders will eat their toes off are severely disappointed to discover that its use is widespread and furthermore nobody really gives a shit.

This is the Social Hypocrisy Average Answer and every society everywhere from your Native Americans to your Communist Chinese use this form of Average Answer. Sometimes the only way to ensure that everyone is unhappy and that no extremes are adopted or that something doesn't become a dangerous Local Custom is to cleverly pretend that something isn't allowed and then to allow it anyway. Or sometimes a society will pretend that everybody does do something, but in reality most people don't. Victorian England pretended that prostitution was illegal due to the Local Custom that sex was bad and no one in their right mind engaged in it for anything other than procreation. And then they cheerfully or not so cheerfully had more prostitutes per square foot in London than at any other time in their history. Or Communist China pretended vigorously that everyone liked Mao Tse-Tung when in fact millions and millions of people in that country didn't really. Social Hypocrisy often has dire consequences for individuals caught in vise-like pincers. There are always individuals with a certain terrible rage against Social Hypocrisy because it causes suffering. But societies love it! It allows them to implement an Average Answer while pretending to bypass Violent Disagreement. It allows them to survive even while seriously fucked up. Social Hypocrisy comes with a shelf-life. A best when used by date. At some point, people get fed up with it, the Average Answer changes and the Hypocrisy becomes irrelevant. But you usually need a vigorous spurt of Violent Disagreement to get that going.

Checklist Item #4: Has General Agreement been adopted as a Local Custom?

Check! Due to the variances allowed by Social Hypocrisy, all Official Spokespeople for society can freely espouse General Agreement that Drugs Are Bad, Just Say No, and whatever other catch phrases. Social Hypocrisy has rendered the issue Unimportant. Which means that Katie Couric can look very serious and sympathetic and disapproving when doing a piece on the 'terrible' issue of drug abuse on morning television and then, if she chooses, wait til the girls have gone to bed, whip out her bong and indulge in a little recreational relaxation herb-style. There is nothing to stop her and therefore there is no reason for anything other than Official Hypocritical General Agreement.

Checklist Item #5: Are Some People Too Happy?

Check! Nobody is actually too too happy these days but repressive Ashcroft types are a little too happy in that as long as certain drugs are completely illegal, and as long as certain laws are draconian, then there is a little too much happiness in the conservative sector. This has been the case ever since Reagan was president. However, it must be noted in fairness, that the conservative disapproving approach gained Unwarranted Happiness in the 80s precisely because the party-hearty, anything goes, Whoah Give Me Some of That Shit, Studio 54, acid-dropping, dope-dealing hippies, freaks, cokeheads, and general drug lovers of all kinds were too happy in the 70s. I told you happiness meant trouble.

We can take heart, though, in the fact that the federal government is made continually unhappy and annoyed by the fact that certain states keep passing laws allowing medical use of marijuana. States like Arizona, Oregon, and California pass these laws very specifically to piss off the federal government. This is not only a healthy sign it provides a truly enjoyable form of Violent Disagreement for the states involved. Nothing spells sheer political fun like passing a law specifically to piss off the federal government! Southern states use this tactic liberally when passing laws that require the branding of the 10 commandments onto every citizen's ass or mandatory worship of the confederate flag or whatever similar kind of damn laws they are always passing down there to piss off the F.G. Meanwhile, we move on to:

Checklist Item #6: Has Mass Hysteria Been Utilized?

Of course it has. From time to time, we get a nice froth of Mass Hysteria going in a direction of Astounding Wrongness, and drug-related witch hunts ensue, nostalgic vintage movies like Reefer Madness are made, rumors are spread, crackdowns are implemented, individuals are caught in a vise-like grip, and society attempts to run itself over a cliff. The US, however, has proven itself to be both too lazy and too sensible to get a really good Mass Hysteria going for some time. The War on Drugs was an attempt to whip up Mass Hysteria, based on the theory that drug use was unimportant because only poor people really engaged in it. This turned out be inaccurate, and although a great many individuals have suffered greatly due to the vagaries of Social Hypocrisy and Aborted Mass Hysteria - the truth is the General Wrong Public has not really supported anything truly Mass Hysterical because huge quantities of the General Wrong Public loves its drugs. Thus the General Wrong Public is much more willing to get Massly Hysterical about Drug Dealers Who Make More Money Than They Do and Yet Pay Less Taxes - because that's just clearly wrong. It's less inclined to support the death penalty for an occasional tab of acid. In other words, the General Wrong Public is quite sensibly more willing to support any form of Mass Hysteria directed at anybody other than itself. The US has, to some degree, run itself over a cliff by expending massive amounts of money combatting something that not only doesn't want to be combatted but is smarter than the US, namely the importation of potent drugs from other countries. But, as cliffs go, it is nothing like the cliff it ran itself over when the Founding Fathers agreed with the Local Custom that Human Slavery Is A Perfectly Good Idea. That particular instance of Widespread Wrongness installed as a Local Custom in our early history led to a lemming-like catastrophe whose consequences we are in no way free of. Hopefully we will not pay for excesses against heroin traffickers in any similar fashion. And I doubt we will - for in spite of occasionally optimistic or dire rhetoric, the actual war on drugs, waged by low-paid police officers, is not only nothing like Mass Hysteria - it is a dreary and necessary slog against various persistent forms of human misery. Which leaves us with...

Checklist Item #7: Has stagnation and paralysis ensued because nobody can really figure out any more whether the issue of illegal drugs is important?

Bingo! Yes it has. Nobody can figure out any more whether it's important or not, so society and its lawmakers are basically just letting disagreement play itself out. There are worse things that could happen actually. Eventually, we will arrive at something more or less like the correct answer and Social Hypocrisy will not be necessary. About 200 years from now.

In the meantime...

By now you should have been pretty much bludgeoned by reason, logic, excessive word count, and the desire to quit reading and go take some recreational drugs into complete passivity. Your rage should be quelled, your fondness for chemical enhancement stoked, and your desire to do anything whatsoever about society completely negated. You should no longer give a shit, as long as you can take your kind of illegal drugs in peace. This is essentially the correct standpoint and reflects the Average Answer.

However....if you are the tiniest bit curious as to how the Average Answer can be altered, and Social Hypocrisy speeded toward its throw-out date then you will just have to heave a hearty sigh, bite the bullet, and click one more link.

prettyfedup.com

the pretty fucked up website

The Not 100% Complete FAQs for the Pretty Fucked Up Person in a Pretty Fucked Up World

The very very important role of Social Hypocrisy....