by John Young
(From John Young’s http://yjohn.wordpress.com)
If you are using drugs for recreation and you believe it is not adversely affecting your potential, you are lying to yourself.
I recently received a communication asking what I think of recreational drug use. The short answer is that I believe recreational drug use is self-destructive and incompatible with the mandate in our Statement of Ethics that we each and all make the most of ourselves in every way that we can.
Most people engaged in the use of drugs lie to themselves about the effects, and ignore contradictory inputs. After all, if they admitted to themselves the full reality of the situation, there would be no rational alternative but to cease the activity.
I have seen a great deal of potential destroyed by drug use.
About eleven years ago, when I was single, I met a girl for coffee at an upscale coffee house. She described how she had just gotten out of a mental hospital as a result of disorders triggered by illegal drugs, and would probably never be right again. She described how, when she had graduated college with a degree in molecular biology, she had high hopes for solving all manner of problems afflicting humanity, but that now she had her hands full because she had to concentrate just to “keep the table under her food solid.” While I certainly had compassion for her, and appreciated her honesty, I didn’t ask her out on a second date.When I was a kid, an older kid who lived next door went to jail for manslaughter. He and his buds had been smoking dope in the midst of transporting some dope for a party. They came upon a bridge and because of the impairment, hit the bridge railings — which led to one of the passengers having his head sheared off of his body.
And I know a man today who has always had enormous potential as a singer, composer and musician. Yet, he has never gone anywhere because his spare cash has gone into dope and the errors in judgment he has made while under the influence of dope — including shoving his pistol into an unsuspecting woman’s nose and threatening to kill her — have landed him in jail for years at a stretch. He can’t even obtain a decent regular job, much less fulfill his dreams. And as his recreational drug use has progressed, what potential he had to start with has been diminished day by day through destroying his powers of memory, creativity and concentration.
If you are using drugs for recreation and you believe it is not adversely affecting your potential, you are lying to yourself. Recreational drug use is simply incompatible with being the best you can be, and is thus incompatible with the EAU Statement of Ethics.
But there is another dimension — the law enforcement angle.
I’ll be the first to tell you that the so-called “War on Drugs” is a sham. The illegality makes drugs expensive and profitable — generating billions upon billions of dollars in black-market profits that are used to fund everything from sex slavery to bribing police. It’s a disaster. And the drug war has served to increase the power of the state enormously; especially with regard to the use of informants, entrapment, and civil asset seizure. It has also provided an impetus leading to the militarization of civilian law enforcement that bodes ill for our future freedom.
So I have real issues with the so-called “War on Drugs.”
At the same time, because these drugs ARE illegal, anyone who uses them is putting his or her money into a ruthless and murderous underground economy whose actions almost universally run contrary to the best interests of our Folk.
Most dope originates outside of the U.S., in places like Mexico and Central/South America. And even if it is made domestically, it often gets distributed using the same infrastructure. When folks in the U.S. buy it, the money ultimately goes to fatten the coffers of ruthless criminal gangs who have all but out-gunned the civil and military law enforcement authorities of their respective areas of operations. This destabilizes the region leading to economic displacement and the inability to establish the sort of civil order needed to have a functional society. As a result, millions upon millions of refugees are created.
And where do they go? Why … HERE, of course. Illegal drug use is one of the factors that ultimately fuels both legal and illegal immigration.
Meanwhile, the economy and infrastructure created by this trade creates serious power disparities on our side of the border as well. There are entire sections of California, for example, that have been surrendered to the drug gangs in actual written agreements because it is no longer possible to deal with the problem using civilian law enforcement. Those areas will only grow.
This is just the beginning. The entire organizational culture dealing with drugs for recreational use is brutal and inhumane in the extreme; and includes utter insensitivity to human beings to the extent that summary execution, torture, and sexual slavery are common. And the more drugs we use — the bigger this gets.
I’m sure it never crosses whatever passes for a mind in a recreational drug user; but every penny he spends on his “recreation” ultimately goes to support murder, extortion, bribery, rape and more on a grand scale. Contributing to this — voluntarily — is unconscionable.
In an ideal dope-user’s world, maybe things would be different. But we don’t live in that ideal world. Instead, we live in a world in which our decisions make a difference in other people’s lives; and in which buying some marijuana today contributes to a little girl getting raped tomorrow. The fact that you don’t see it with your own eyes doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
Think about it.