I just finished a phone call with a young lady who rang to raise concerns about the ‘inaccuracy’ of one of our Drug Information Sheets on the drug, street-named ‘Ecstasy’. I was willing to take the call, being fully aware it is no more than a ‘fishing’ expedition to try and provoke an argument. Understanding this, I quickly and politely expressed my concern that there may be inaccuracies and asked if she could point them out, so that we could rectify them. Of course, the ‘errors’ were not so much that, but a perceived ‘imbalance’ in our reporting on the drug MDMA. She then started to talk about the therapeutic benefits of MDMA (pure) and the need for us to present that. Of course my response on the potential therapeutic properties of MDMA was that they are not yet fully understood, let alone approved by the proper authorities, and that MDMA is only a small part (if at all) of the drug Ecstasy and that is what we want young people to stay away from.
Then it came, the statement that we were just ‘scaremongering!’ (If we wanted to scaremonger we would put personal stories into the documents to highlight the fear. I wasn’t quick enough to mention that’s exactly what is done with the anti-tobacco campaign and with great effect in this country). Although I advised her that we certainly do have an agenda: to warn people, particularly young people, away from experimentation with any drug, as ALL the literature is clear, that substance use is detrimental to the developing brain and body. Then she quickly moved the subject to ‘what about the damage that prohibition has caused?’ This of course was the real agenda for the call; a pro-drug advocate, wanting to challenge the notion of prohibition of drug use. After futilely trying to broach the subject of the benefits of prohibition, the conversation ended.
Disturbing developments.
What I find as a growing concern is that a clearly educated, supposed healthy and functional young person wants to invest in a campaign/process that not only seeks to make drug use more easily accessible on the market place, but that somehow this is for the culture’s benefit. Of all the ‘causes’ that one could be involved with to change the world, drug use promulgation, is the one she and many others have/are invested their lives in.
What I’d like to know is where is this coming from? What processes, values, ideas, ’education’, narrative, worldview is informing this space — a ‘cause’ to invest my resources into promoting the spread of drug use in a culture?
The anecdotal evidence leads me to the new wave of so called ‘progressive’ ideologies, which are an attempt to experiment with any and all conventions, particularly traditional (and disappearing) moral and values conventions, to find some sense of significance in promoting a ‘new thing’!
Speaking with University students, we hear such ideologies are taught to impressionable young people via ‘curriculum addendums’ – Young people who are told that ‘whatever they feel/think is right, is probably right, as long as you don’t hurt someone else.’
What is is of note is that the historical and often unchallenged mantra emanating from those managing the drug policy framework, is that the reasons for drug use have been homelessness, poverty, lack of education or opportunities, along with other negative ‘social determinants’. Over recent decades, however, we have seen the emergence of this new demographic and motivation for drug use.
What is driving this?
The First-World West is not only the largest consumers of drugs (of all kinds), we are also the largest demand drivers on the planet. Survey after survey of young people from the West who have tried or use illicit drugs, site the major motivators as peer pressure and curiosity; and what’s more, in the vast majority of cases the drug user disclosed that it was obtained from a friend and/or at a party. Clearly, factors such as, ‘relationship’ fuels both a sense of ‘trust’, and wanting to fit in. Add to that the desire to alleviate boredom and/or ‘enhance’ the party experience present as key influencers for drug use in this demographic. It is not a stretch to conclude from this growing data around young people, that hedonism and insecurity are primary drivers for demand in the First World at the moment.
The Dalgarno Institute has identified four key drivers for uptake of and ongoing drug use and they are…
- Relentless pain
- Relational poverty (disconnected from value adding, modelling, instructive relationships from older/wiser people)
- Recalcitrant Hedonism
- Residing Absurdity (Meaninglessness and subsequent boredom)
The Drug-Pushing Lobby!
From where does the drug law reformers lobby emerge? In this group you’ll find few that are homeless, uneducated or the abject poor. Instead we have an entourage of entitled, educated, influential and for the most part well-heeled individuals and celebrities who use everything from ‘war on drugs has failed’ mantras to the prefacing of all claims to drug use with the phrase ‘human right’. This of course in the new meme emerging from the postmodern egocentric activists, who subjectively re-define both the terms ‘human’ and ‘rights’, if they define them at all!
Why are these people pushing drug use as a human right? The latest world drug report on the numbers of people having reported using an illicit drug in the previous 12 months had dropped from around 6.1% on previous survey to around 5% for the 16-64 demographic. A small minority demanding the majority of the population agree with their agenda to unleash current illicit substances into the market place with taxpayer approval.
When all the dust settles, the witty, cynical celebrity repartee and spin subside, what do we distill as the key drivers for foisting a social experiment on the other 95% of the population? It would appear from the presenting evidence that the following emerges:
1) That laws (drug law specifically) are stupid/redundant/pointless and (thus subsequently assumed) that they don’t apply to me, so I ignore them or seek to change them.
2) I want my own way and I’m going to trivialise human rights as a specious vehicle to enable me to legitimise my taking of a psychotropic toxin into my body and unleash the same onto the community.
3) I want to get ‘high’ and I don’t care about anyone else.
If this is what constitutes (or at the very least) is derived from the so called ‘progressive’ agenda, then our nation/s is/are in real trouble. There is one reality that will precipitate a greater and faster decline of our culture and the following equation encapsulates that very real potential outcome.
Meaninglessness + Selfishness + ‘Human Rights’ claims + Drug use + Legalisation = Generation GONE!
Dalgarno Institute