Thursday, April 19, 2007

Side effects may include: bad policy?

To the chagrin of Libertarians, drug users, and hippies everywhere, the federal government long ago decided some of the non-food substances consumed by humans needed to be controlled. Many of the substances that permeate our culture are against the law - possessing or distributing these drugs can yield a fine or substantial jailtime. Other substances, however, are not so illegal, simply restricted to those above a certain age. While hypocrisy, logic gaps, and misplaced moralism in regards to these two types of controlled substances are widespread and ever present, they pale in comparison to the sheer ineptitude and corruption involved in controlling the market for prescription drugs.

There are two ways to look at the federal government's control of substances. Acting as the benevolent protector, the government restricts the possession and ingestion of substances to only those substances with current medical application, and only to those with permission of
government-sanctioned "parents", the country's health care professionals. Any drug with high risk of dependency and no current medical application is labeled 'Schedule 1', a category which includes a laundry-list of hard drugs, heroin, DMT, and ecstasy to list a few.

This benevolent agenda of control is propegated upon the idea that the average American simply doesn't have the medical knowledge to know what effects any given substance will have upon him - that must be left solely to health care professionals. The government argues it has a viable interest in protecting its citizens from their own stupidity and ignorance, and uses this as a justification for not allowing people to put whatever they want into their bodies.

The more cynical way in which to view current U.S. drug policy is as a policy created by politicians completely in the pocket of the major pharmaceutical companies. The major pharmaceutical companies spent $4.1bn on advertising in 2005, a number accompanied by obscene profits of $42bn, according to Fortune Magazine.

From the tens of billions of dollars made every year by the pharmaceutical companies, a sizeable quantity finds itself as funds for election campaigns of senators, congressman, and presidents, regardless of party, ensuring not only that politicians friendly to the drug industry's agenda remain in power, but that every politician be an amiable compatriot in maintaining Pfizer and Glaxo Smith Kline's monopoly on the "feel good" market.

And it is a "feel good" market. Be it cocaine, vidocin, or prozac, people take drugs because it makes them feel good. Society has moralized prozac and vicodin dependence to look more favorably than a coke habit, but in reality all three are drugs which, if done too much, become addictive. One of my favorite hours of television each week centers on a pill-popping egomaniacal physician - yet were he to snort lines of cocaine as often as he popped vicodin you would be hard pressed to get "House M.D." on TV anywhere outside of premium cable.

Politicians have created a "feel good" drug monopoly for the pharmaceutical companies in exchange for the funds they need to stay in office, and the pharmaceutical companies have used this lobbying clout to keep drugs as innocuous as marijuana illegal. After all, if you legalized marijuana, people would hit the pipe instead of the pharmacy everytime they had a pain or an ache - robbing the drug manufacturers, or at least the legal ones, of their beloved profits.

Instead the government enforces the pharmaceutical monopoly on artificially feeling good through force, fines, and prison, effectively creating a nation of prescription drug users who have moralized their addictions as legal, and therefore acceptable, at the same time condemning and outlawing the sinful ways of recreational drug users.

People feel the way they do about drugs - it is a deep-seeded belief and not something a single article is going to change about a person. The system of double standards in place, however, creates a charged moralistic environment that serves to directly line the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies, where prescription pills are alright but illicit drugs are immoral.

The bottom line is that it is one or the other - either chemical dependencies of any kind are unacceptable, or they aren't. Yet, to classify marijuana as schedule 1, thereby putting it on the same level as heroin and crack cocaine, defines it as a drug with a high chance of addiction, no accepted medical use, and inherent dangers involved in its use (choking on a Cheet-oh I'd imagine). As a counter to that, classified as schedule 3, meaning far lesser standards of government control and penalty for violating drug control laws, are both anabolic steroids and Vicodin. Steroids, unlike marijuana, used without physician consent come with severe developmental side effects, from high blood pressure and heart disease to reduced sexual function, and Vicodin, which is extremely addictive, has become a drug of choice for pill-poppers nationwide.

The double standard here is immoral - it amounts to nothing short of a handout to the "legal" drug dealers of the United States: GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer, allowing them to legally cause the addictions of millions to its products and price-gouge, all in the name of profit.