Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Class War

In my post Treatment vs Recreation I looked at how the pharmaceutical industry has come to the rescue of the middle class by making a whole host of drugs that substitute for the illegal variety. I'd like to take another look at the subject Tim Wu brought up in his Slate article. The Class War aspect. Let me quote from Tim:

...the current program of drug legalization in the United States is closely and explicitly tied to the strange economics of the U.S. health-care industry. The consequence is that how people get their dopamine or other brain chemicals is ever more explicitly, like the rest of medicine, tied to questions of class.

Antidepressants and anxiety treatments aren't cheap: A fancy drug like Wellbutrin can cost anywhere from $1,000 to $2,400 a year. These drugs also require access to a sympathetic doctor who will issue a prescription. That's why, generally speaking, the new legalization program is for better-off Americans. As the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University reports, rich people tend to abuse prescription drugs, while poorer Americans tend to self-medicate with old-fashioned illegal drugs or just get drunk.
So there you have it. The well off get "treatment" the poor get jail.

I don't see how in good conscience we can keep doing what we are doing. In fact I pointed it out in a number of articles such as Dr. John Beresford Has Passed where I look at the Nazi connection to the Drug War and How To Put an End to Drug Users where I make that connection even more explicit with a review of Drug Warriors and Their Preyby R.L. Miller. I show exactly how conscience has been buried. We prefer to look the other way and make all kinds of excuses rather than looking at exactly what we are doing. If we faced it, we would have to see ourselves as kinder and gentler Nazis. We don't do mass murder. We do mass incarceration. Not exactly a step up we should be proud of. What exactly is the difference between a war on Jews and a war on the poor? Beats the hell out of me.

HT Instapundit

Cross Posted at Classical Values

4 comments:

Patinkin, Seth said...

I think there is some information
here:

http://kevinrobling.blogspot.com
http://markkruzan.blogspot.com
http://lisaabbott.blogspot.com

or google "margie schrader" AND
bloomington

or google "mark kruzan" AND
"residential entry"

or google "kevin robling" AND
anti-semitism

Anonymous said...

Aside from you never mentioning the oh-so-inconvenient issue of dosage amid your hilarious blanket statements of drug equivalence in these tiresome posts, how many times does it have to be pointed out that people CHOOSE to take illegal drugs, making your Nazi comparison, for the umpteenth time, galactically stupid. You'll never understand it, since you've obviously fallen in love with the shock value of your accusation (plus it makes you think you're a hero for standing up to these modern-day Eichmanns as they incinerate potheads and ... oh, wait) but it devalues your argument by several orders of magnitude to compare genocide with incarceration of criminals who knowingly break the law. Adults, fully aware of the choices they're making, as opposed to the reckless eternal children you require society to be composed of, have to take responsibility for their actions.

Rae Ann said...

I'm not sure what the anonymous commenter means in regard to dosing. Let me share a personal story. I've been on Effexor for almost five years now. The dose has increased with time as I've developed a "tolerance" for it. My experience with this legal prescription drug is really no different from the experience one might have with an illegal drug because I'm literally physically addicted to it. Effexor is known to have the worst "withdrawal symptoms" of any of the antidepressants, but they dress it up with the name "discontinuation syndrome" to try to distinguish it. But Effexor really did save my life, and because I really must have it to remain "normal" it is worth the addiction and the $160 per month cost. I spend less per month on any "self-medication" that I'm not actually physically addicted to because I could quit it without any withdrawal symptoms.

So the moral of the story is, for anonymous commenter, that just because a drug is "legal" doesn't mean it's less addictive or problematic than one that is illegal.

Filling our jails with potheads only makes less room for the rapists, child molesters, drunk drivers, thieves, and other true criminals.

M. Simon said...

Yeah. And people choose to take anti-depressants.

So what is your point?