Editorial:
Substances,
Substances
5/10/98
P>As the twentieth century draws to a close, America finds itself embroiled in conflict over substances of all kinds. Newspapers, in fact, are starting to read like pharmacology textbooks. Ritalin, Prozac, marijuana, caffeine, Viagra, tobacco, cocaine, Phen-fen, heroin, Valium, methamphetamine, Thalidomide, MDMA, ginseng, ephedrine, alcohol, and guarana, to name just a few, have all been recent subjects of bitter debate: why or why not, how much is too much, who should have access, and what steps, if any, should be taken to control their use. The past hundred years have brought advances in chemistry so dramatic as to have changed the boundaries of human life itself, and altered our concepts of health and well being. The pharmacopoeia has been radically expanded, and even our understanding of centuries-old substances has been broadened. But nothing comes without a cost, and just as each of these substances can have both desired and undesirable effects, the ability to create more diverse and more interesting substances has brought with it questions that we are obviously still struggling to answer. While it is undoubtedly true that each substance poses its own unique issues, it is also true that arguing each of these issues anew, without reference to a common framework, is a hopeless and a losing battle. The inevitable, interminable arguments, as we are having today, condemn our society to a never ending battle over the science and the details, the risks and the benefits, the hopes, the fears, the morality, and inevitably, if obsequiously, the money. New drugs, new analogs, new substances are being conceived and created at an incredible pace by chemists and mavericks, in labs both corporate and clandestine, for fun and for profit, every single day. We have to start asking larger questions. We have to arrive at more inclusive answers. There are two basic realities that we must decide to accept, if we are ever to become as sophisticated in living with our substances as we are in creating them. The first is that it is beyond the legitimate power of government to use force to control what a free adult citizen may ingest. As radical as that may sound, it is unequivocally true. There is no more sacred right than the right to control ones' body and mind. And the freedom to exercise that control only in ways of which the government approves, is no freedom at all. In matters of personal health and well-being, the government may suggest, it may cajole, it may inform, but it must not demand that individuals maintain themselves in accordance with its wishes. The right to be human is the right to err, or to be foolish, or to be stupid. The second thing that we must come to agreement on is that the government -- state, federal or local, take your pick -- has the right to demand that the thing that is put into the marketplace is precisely what it claims to be, and that care is taken to disclose what it does, and how it does it. And, in addition, that those who bring new substances into the marketplace do ample testing and analysis, and make their best faith effort to be sure that what it says it does is all that it does, and that there are no horrific surprises. And that there are strict and certain penalties for anyone who risks the public health by ignoring these requirements. And that there is no level of wealth or of corporate power which can act as a shield against them. In an age of chemical wonder, and of equally awesome chemical danger, it is imperative that we as a people come to a sane and responsible relationship with the substances we create. That level of responsibility can only be personal and real, not state-mandated and enforced. It must be imbued by the family, by the norms of social groups, by information and by education. It can never be internalized at the point of a gun. If a person, a free person, with full information, wants to trade twenty years of her life for the pleasure of tobacco, flirt with dependence to unwind with valium, or even risk a heart attack to party with cocaine, that is her choice. It is a poor choice perhaps, but a choice nonetheless. And when we come to agree upon that, then and only then will we as a people develop a mature relationship with "drugs", only then will be begin to make better choices, to choose better substances, or to choose none at all. The power of our science is wondrous indeed. But if our ancestors could have foreseen the day when their progeny would have elixirs for nearly everything, they most certainly would have thought that we'd have figured out how to deal with them. Adam J. Smith
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