Cool, man. Hey, what about uppers? Downers? Qualudes? Oxy?
Does human nature have any legal standing? Well, let's see.
Every lawyer and judge in the country will tell you, the legal system is in a whale of a mess. The number of people in jail is preposterous, obscene and draconian, even if all this allows some misguided moralists to beat their chests about doing the crime and, doing the time. If anyone really wanted to start a revolution in this country, the penal system would be the most fertile breeding ground. Just by the numbers alone , that's a no-brainer. By every appearance, and anyone's common or popularly educated measure the legal system is largely broken for any number of reasons.
The legalize marijuana and legalize all drugs crowd would argue, concerning all those in prison for drug crimes, that these are victimless crimes, and that these prisoners should largely be released. Yes, yes. But that doesn't relieve the problem that sent them there in the first place. Does it?
All the conventional moral posturing is generally untenable based upon the wholly cretinous and immoral reasoning of secular humanism run amuck. I'm all for emptying out the prisons to some degree. But, I want them emptied because I don't think such a penal legacy has much to be said for it in the sense that this is what will be bequeathed to the future. Prisons are a man-made living Hell. And, as such, we shouldn't be building them, because people in the future are going to end up caged in them under conditions that make the world one hell of an ugly place, which is immoral.
I'm not herein going to argue either side of this issue directly. Rather my intent is to make the argument for culpability and, specifically for strict liability for the negligence of those who do not do their moral best in accounting for human nature by their actions, especially when those actions cause harm to others, as does the drug problem in this country.
Here is the problem in a nutshell, or a crack vial, if you will. Drug use crimes are not victimless. Those who use illicit drugs support an economic entity that will outlive us all. Drug use today re-vitalizes the drug use of tomorrow by keeping these economic entities alive and well in our culture. We can say, Go after the drug pushers, but, as long as there are drug users, there will be drug pushers. And of even more moral importance, there will continue to be drugs available in our society in the future because drug users today encourage the vitality of the economic entities that provide the drugs of tomorrow.
When we look at native localized cultures (I deign here to use the word "primitive" as it gives one a false and far less than modestly unwarranted sense of superiority) wherein drug use is prevalent, we see stained teeth, no teeth, and decadence. By tolerating drug use in our own culture, it should be obvious we are bequeathing the very same effect to the future, and worse because of the liquid affluence and troubling complexity of our culture. Most Boomers despite having inhaled deeply and having come up choking with tears in their reddened eyes are horrified when they hear their own kids are experimenting with drugs. Imagine.
Since I was in school in the Sixties, the recreational drug segment of our economy has grown and cleverly diversified. Then the college parochial and colloquial of quack knowledge was that there were good drugs and bad drugs. Such a rule of thumb kept many from finding their own disaster. There are in fact however, bad drugs, worse drugs and suicidal drugs.
Recreational drugs run a wide gambit.
Cigarettes, alcohol, and coffee are all recreational drugs. These are also all bad drugs, bad for your health and, addictive. Of these three legal vices, alcohol can quite easily land your sorry-assed-mug in one of those Hell on Earth prisons. Should you drive while intoxicated and kill or seriously injure someone in some states you can be locked away for a very long time in Hell on Earth, (granted, too often contingent upon your skin color and your socio-economic status).
Marijuana was the drug of choice in the Sixties. It too is unhealthy, can lead to serious motivational and psychotic episodes as well as land your dumb ass in prison for a very long time. This personal danger is no more true when you are doing the jail house rock than when you are stuffing your face with everything you can find, in your own refrigerator, in your own kitchen, and still can't seem to find enough to satisfy what you're hankering for three hours later. Was that a "knock" at the door? Yes, it was.
Now we pass onto what were termed bad drugs when I was in school in Boston in the Sixties and early Seventies. Bennies, downers, heroin and cocaine were then the bad drugs. These drugs are not only highly addictive, bad for your health and your psyche, they generally were a guaranteed ticket to a long stay in the Big House, if you didn't die or, go insane from their use, or, from your inability to feed your sickly, craving habit.
LSD and Mescaline were drugs of a different class. These are not addictive but are psycho-active hallucinogenic substances, Timothy Leary. Taking such a trip is for some like putting a loaded revolver to their head, with one chamber empty, hoping for the better results of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and, pulling the trigger for the ten hour rush, followed by weeks of oblivion, if you were lucky and, a lifetime of oblivion, if you were not so lucky. Kids will be kids though, which brings me to the topic of this article, human nature.
Very few reading here actually learned anything from the primer on recreational drugs I just provided.
Still, it is almost as easy as getting a cat pregnant as it is to get locked up in jail for drug use. That has been the societal reaction, if slower in coming, but now just as sure for those who murder on the highways by their reckless alcohol abuse. But this is only the criminal side of society's mixed bag of wholly biased legal ameliorations. The other side is the civil side.
Who is liable for the devastation that drugs cause in our society?
As a philosopher I now always start with the moral imperative of life. It gives me an even, and irrefutable keel. Such is good philosophy. For those who try and argue against the moral imperative, it is not so much a sucker punch they receive, as it is like getting out of your boat, mid-ocean and watching it drift out of sight as the sun is going down on your bobbing in the wide water or your rationale.
The moral imperative of life is to live a life that detracts not at all from the lives available to those who will follow us into this world.
If you need a philosophic primer on why the moral imperative is the basis for all sound moral reasoning, read, A Brief Schematic of Morality, Prioritizing Moral Reason.
If you are on the wrong side of the moral imperative, you are acting immorally. I don't care who you are, what your status in life is, or whose god you might be. The beauty of the moral imperative is, it is absolute, 100% of the time. You can throw up your hands in despair, and say, I don't care about your stinking morality equations, but it will do you no good. Your boat will simply drift away.
Over the line of the moral imperative is a maleficence by a malefactor that can demonstrate clear intent to ignore your moral responsibilities by your actions. In the eyes of the law, or a bored and sweaty jury, if you are painted with the immoral brush, you might just as well tell everyone in the court room you're shacked up with the devil, eh, Charley Manson?
What this says about drug use however, is sometimes counterintuitive and even more often, rather startling.
Say you give your buddy a couple of joints to go to a concert in Mississippi or one of the other Bible Belt states where they can throw you in jail quicker than you can say, "Hallelujah," for drug possession. Are you liable for your negligence?
Well Honey, sure you are. It is not a commonly pursued matter, but you could end up not just praying for your buddy, you could end up paying him as well for at least part of the time your buddy ends up rotting in the pen.
If the state wanted to come after you however, look out, because they could get you to pay for all his rent and upkeep, because it was your negligence that led to landing the poor sucker in their stinking jail. The state could argue, Why should the Great State of Mississippi pay for your care-less negligence? I'm all for this sort of strict civil liability, especially if it cuts down on the number of prisons filled to the brim with the truly suffering schmoes who end up in there doing the time.
So, you're saying right about now, this guy is on drugs, right? Well, hear me out. I'm a philosopher, born to astound and wholly impervious to the shocked revulsion of your overworked senses.
Since my years in Beantown as a college student, the latest drug of choice has been creatively manufactured by a pharmaceutical company that intentionally set out to manufacture synthetic heroin, always a favorite choice once you've tried it! Once a junkie, always a junkie is the apt expression about smack.
That drug of course is Oxycontin, manufactured by Purdue Pharma. This drug has ravaged large swaths of the U.S. youth population, destroying countless lives, families and literally filling a large percentage of the bunk beds in the Hell House Hotels every state keeps up for the unconnected and unluckily nabbed in our society, essentially all those peons who aren't Senator's sons.
Well, guess what boys and girls. Purdue Pharma lobbied the FDA and got Oxycontin approved despite the fact that heroin had been illegal in this country for almost a hundred years because of the well known societal dangers of such an addictive substance. This is the cash cow that started the Opium Wars Purdue Pharma has been manufacturing willy-nilly because the FDA approved it with its sweeping oversight, if that oversight was applied as is all governmental oversight, with a somewhat strikingly less moral approach than those who are thought to keep perdition so toasty-warm.
Purdue Pharma, I'm coming to getcha! And it is no idle threat made here, because I'm already beginning to brand every corrupt public official who had anything to do with allowing this to happen as an immoral leech, and a verminous raptor of human life and flesh abusing the moral public trust. The gig is up, fellas. You do the crime, you do the time.
Fantastic, but the wholly unrealistic press was inclined for a while to cover the break-ins at Pharmacies that have occurred since the introduction of Oxycontin, but that cannot account for the whole story of negligence here, not by any stretch of even the greedy imagination. Everyone at Purdue Pharma surely knew this sort of thing was going to happen long before free Oxycontin samples were ever given to doctors with cash incentives for prescribing it into the doe-like population.
You see, here is the whole legal liability problem Purdue Pharma has cooked up for itself in its stupendous greed. Despite the fact that FDA gave its far worse than pernicious blessings to Oxycontin, Purdue Pharma still has an easily arguable legal responsibility to every single person who is addicted to, been affected by someone who is addicted to, or is incarcerated due to Oxycontin.
How so? Because they had a very special duty knowing the dangerousness of this drug and how things would play out due to human nature, which they counted on being very profitable IF, the risk of litigation could be avoided by playing the media and the government like a harp that sang to crowds choked with crocodile tears.
You see, all that Oxycontin floating around in our society came from Purdue Pharma or a Purdue Pharma licensed manufacturing facility. There can be no argument made that Purdue Pharma was unaware of human nature. There can be no argument made that Purdue Pharma has not been negligent, and thus liable for all the lives Oxycontin has ruined. Oxycontin is far more valuable than gold by weight. And yet some how, Purdue Pharma has let literally tons of this highly addictive substance end up in hands for whom it was not intended, all the while reaping fast profits and making millionaires and billionaires in the addiction marketplace no matter who ended up consuming their Oxycontin.
Is that much gold lost every year too? No. I doubt that much tonnage in corn flakes goes missing every year.
So, whether you are a Governor in one of our American states looking toward where the funding is going to come from for your prison, or you are someone who like me would like to see the prison population decline, you needn't look any further than strict liability for those who do not take into account human nature in their actions. Human nature will always be human nature, and no one likes their pocket picked. That is human nature. So, once the heat is applied, you can expect to see Purdue Pharma and lots of other drug manufacturers pressuring government to get those people out of their hideous prisons, pronto.
Making a better world is easy, if you take it one step at a time philosophically.
Government is just a service industry, and these guys aren't taking out the trash or cleaning the toilets because they have grown fat, lazy and have put on airs that are simply out of proportion to their second rate janitorialship in this world. So get a hold of your Governor. They return calls. And, if you get any guff, because they don't like cleaning toilets, just let me know. I'll feature them in a column and get their asses voted out of office quicker than you can say, "Panama Red".
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
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