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The
Straight Dope
for
release 12-09-04
I don't want to write about this subject. I've
spent too much time doing it. But the fact is that we are a drug saturated
society. At the same time we contend that we are fighting a 'War on Drugs.'
The hypocrisy of this is more than slightly evident.
The Centers for Disease Control last week reported that more than 40 percent
of the American population is taking at least one prescription drug, and
one person in every six takes three or more. This is not counting OTC
drugs.
You can't tune-in to the evening news without seeing a deluge of ads for
antacids, allergy medicines and drugs to enhance your cock or other drugs
called cox inhibitors. Go figure.
All our role models are either on drugs or strung out on plastic surgery.
Some of them even have personal trainers.
Everybody knows that you can't be a championship athlete without being
on steroids or some other performance enhancing drugs. Babe Ruth and Mickey
Mantle were infamous users of alcohol. Yet, this week, Senators such as
John McCain and even the President himself are calling for regulation
of drug use among baseball players.
The evening news is a veritable medicine chest. Within ten minutes you
get commercials about Cialis or Viagra or Levitra (those are going to
be the names of my back-up singers when I invent my rock and roll tour),
which are definitely in the category of 'performance enhancing drugs,'
and then a news story about an athlete who is using steroids or other
'performance enhancing' drugs and whether or not to kick him out of the
Hall of Fame or take away his Olympic gold medals. It's madness.
If Pfizer could get a patent on cocaine or marijuana, they would gladly
sell it to you complete with ads on the evening news. But when the Afghanis
want to grow poppies because they offer the best yield for a cash crop,
it's a capital offense. This is hypocrisy of the highest order.
As usual, it's a money game. If Merck could get a patent on crack cocaine,
there would be ads on Fox and ABC telling you what a thrill it was and
how it was great for your health. There would be studies and surveys to
support this contention. These 'studies' would be presented as news when
they are really ads for a product that is being sold by a sibling subsidiary
of the parent corporation.
If they can convince you that your nose is too snotty, or your dick is
too limp, or that you aren't enjoying life like you should be, or that
the reason why you can't concentrate on your job is because you have a
disease related to alphabet soup, then they can sell you all manner of
snake oil. Let's do a pre-emptive strike on heart disease or osteoporosis.
How is your good cholesterol as compared to your bad cholesterol? Do you
have incipient arthritis or can we meter your diabetes? Will our purple
pill fit your decor?
It becomes a question of which drugs are approved and which drugs are
not. Marijuana is bad and Vioxx is good....no, scratch Vioxx, we'll use
Celebrex. No steroids if you're an athlete, but they are fine if you are
an arthritic. Oxycontin is ok if you are Rush Limbaugh but heroin is forbidden
to William Burroughs. If you have a doctor's prescription, you can get
most any toxic substance you want, but if you rely on the black market
you are damned to economic and legal suppression. There are no ads in
the Yellow Pages for medical marijuana.
When I was a teenager I was a member of the same country club in Dallas
where Mickey Mantle played golf. I played with him several times and knew
his sons. Mickey's temper was legendary. It was not uncommon, on the Glenn
Lakes fairways, to see one of Mickey's autographed three irons wrapped
around a tree trunk. He was an angel on steroids. And now they are talking
about showing Barry Bonds the door at the Hall of Fame and negating his
records because he used performance enhancers. If Babe Ruth could have
obtained a creme that he could have rubbed on his bat to make home runs,
don't you think he would have used it?
The Poet's Eye sees that in the real world it's Balls to the Wall. Anything
you can do to get the edge on your competition is legit. If there are
drugs that will buy you home runs or gold medals at the expense of your
health, you should be able to make that trade. If you can take a drug
that will get you an A on a test or amp up your testosterone or straighten
your member or keep you awake or make you sleepy or give you confidence
or cause you not to care, it should be your decision whether or not to
take it. I call it Body Sovereignty.
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email Lightning Rod here
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