Part of a Nutritious Breakfast
"I don't do drugs... anymore. At least, no more then say, your average touring funk band..."
-A dead comedian.
Drugs are illegal. They're against the laws, both legal and moral. And nobody can really tell me why.
Are drugs "bad" because they mess with your perception? Because you can become addicted to them, and they'll have a negative impact on your life? Well shit, if that's the case, then why are cigarettes and alcoholic beverages legal? People get cheerfully fucked up those all the time, and you can buy them from any local convenience store. You can get drunk enough to beat your kids, crash your car into some elderly folks with your dog tied to the back bumper, and still make it to church on time.
And as for cigarettes, well... Think about it logically for a moment: If a guy told his girlfriend that it'd cost her a few bucks every time she wanted to go down on him, and that sucking said costly cock would give her bad breath, yellow lips and teeth, and quite possibly eventual throat and lung cancer, how much head do you imagine that guy getting?
Drugs are immoral. Only nasty bad people do them. A person who does drugs is not worthy of respect, is not worthy of anything other then a nice jail sentence or maybe just a bullet to the head. If someone does drugs, then they are breaking the law, and that means that they do not respect the law, they don't respect the system. They do have no respect for the rules by which we live our lives. Doing illegal drugs is not unlike walking in a gay pride parade; it makes a rather large statement about where your head is coming from. No pun intended. Well, maybe a little.
But, in this cheerfully hypocritical little society of ours, drugs are also a reward. Life has taught us that rich people get to do all the drugs they want, when and how they want. Movie stars, musicians, athletes, and all those nameless folks who have more money then us regular folks would know what to do with; they get to do any and all the drugs they want, whenever and however they want. Drugs are like money, as you can tell how successful a person is, by how much they have. That guy smoking the joint, he's not very successful. But that other guy, with the 50 kilos of coke? Well, he's at the top of the food chain my friend, for the time being.
Drugs, since they are so illegal and immoral, tend to be violent. This is not the fault of the drugs, mind you. Because drugs are illegal, the system gets to use force to prevent them from spreading out amongst the people. The people trying to get the drugs out, they respond to the force with force of their own, and like a poker game with firearms instead of cards, everybody just keeps upping the ante. One side uses force to keep the drugs down, so the other side has to use more force to get the drugs up. And so it goes, back and forth, swallowing up lives as it does so.
"Legalize it." Peter Tosh suggests on posters. He's talking about ganja, which is to say "the marijuana". (I love putting the word "the" in front of a drug, it makes you sound like somebody who really doesn't know what he's talking about.) Now, I don't really know what to think about that. I mean, I like the idea for sure. It's freedom, which I love, and its allowing people access to a substance that may act as a tool which could serve some valuable purposes, physically, emotionally, and in some cases, spiritually.
On the flip-side, it's... Well, it's freedom. Freedom requires a certain level of responsibility, and that's not something that humanity always seems ready to face up to. Pot is, and in fact I'd say all drugs are, some powerful strong juju. It is, and they are, shit that can really nail people on a lot of different levels, and can mess them up real bad if they're not equipped for it. Mess them up physically, emotionally, and in some cases, spiritually.
So, what's the answer?
I won't be so arrogant at this time as to suggest that I've got one. I've got a couple of ideas, mind you.
The main one at this time, is licensing. We license people to drive, and to fly. A person has to reach a specific age before they can drink or buy a gun, or vote, or join the army, and even then certain registrations are normally required, in some form or another. So, why not that for drugs? Maybe a series of tests, physical, psychological and emotional. I can't honestly say that I really know what those tests would, or should, entail. It's just an idea, a work in progress. Shit, everybody's got different outlooks and limitations, and to make some sort of a blanket statement or rule with regards to substance use, would just be foolish.
It's not a simple topic, but everybody wants to make it one. People don't want an intelligent argument, they want something that they can boil down onto a bumper-sticker or a T-shirt. They want slogans, catch-phrases, and buzzwords. "Just Say No." What a fucking joke that is... First off, just say "no" to what, exactly? All drugs? Even medicinal ones? Or just the ones that the government likes to imagine being sold to school children by black men in long coats?