Drugs And Society

There are two parts which may be helpful in framing an answer. The first part lies in simple continuum with what appears to be a common human urge to alter awareness, compounded and made lethal by contemporary chemistry. All cultures own techniques for altering consciousness for a variety of motives, from the spiritually transcendent to the equally universal, but less distinguished impulse to get "off the hook" - the temporary relief of everyday stress. Whether one employs fasting, dance, prayer, meditation, song, or the ingestion of psychoactive substances: cannabis, hashish, nicotine, yage, peyote, ayahuasca, alcohol, opium, epena, caffeine, or countless others, the act is as universal as disparaging the substances other cultures choose for their own pleasures. In North America use of caffeine, nicotine and alcohol is ubiquitous; yet we harbor the view that the universal use of the the coca leaf by Bolivian Indians is somehow a more sinister order of activity.

Whether an act as "social" or "anti-social" depends on prevailing community views. Murder directed toward members of the same society is universally prohibited, but murder directed at members of other societies is called war, and is almost universally condoned. The taking of psychoactive plants at puberty is celebrated as an act of initiation by many peoples in many cultures. By this celebration, elders in those societies absorb the transcendental impulse within the society and commensurately expand the society's menu of acceptable states of consciousness. Young Americans smoking marijuana are "anti-social" only to the degree that their parents resent the children's choice of altered state and draw prohibitory lines. Were the parents to understand that their children are driven by impulses common to the species, the matter could be dealt with in a less alarmist and divisive fashion.

The more pertinent aspect of the "answer" to the crack problem resides in the high it produces. The high itself offers the most distinctive clues of why it is so popular.

Anyone who has ever used cocaine in any form, and I plead guilty to past abuse, will agree on several characteristics of the high: a feeling of lucidity (rarely justified), a sense of engagement and excitement, and feelings of potency. Obviously, people who return to this drug again and again have some special attachment to such feelings. Consequently, it is fair to hypothesize that feelings of disengagement, confusion and social impotence might be common factors among those driven to seek their alternatives.

Variants of these feelings are common and engendered by personal histories which are beyond the scope of this discussion. What interests me however, are ways in which our domestic culture exacerbates such feelings, and consequently enhances or supports the drug problem. Understanding this might offer some direction as to what might be done about them.

Disengagement

Disengagement is a social common denominator uniting many classes and professions. Whether one makes the minimum wage flogging burgers at McDonald's, $75,000 a year designing a "better" promotion campaign for underarm deodorant, or $350,000 a year as a game show host, makes less difference than the uniting fact that all may be unfulfilled, unchallenged, and bored by their labors.

Confusion

Confusion (the opposite of lucidity) is impossible to avoid when media, politicians and experts, pundits and think-tanks, compete with one another to put the correct "spin " on scandals and conflicts which the man in the street usually perceives quite correctly or could if given available data. It is difficult to fight the status and power of the media and experts; their confidence, expensive reports, and polls and their apparent immunity to consequences. Even though the average person may well understand that pollsters tend to arrive at results their employers seek, after enough bombardment, citizens will retreat to cynicism (disengagement) or confusion (self-doubt) and retire from public debate. I offer the 65% of the voting public which stays home as casual evidence of this assertion.

Social Impotence

Social Impotence is the direct result of knowing that the Emperor is naked (or the product defective, or the approved plan absurd) and having no avenues or authority to address the case, or make a contribution towards a solution. This is fate of most employees in America, who contrary to managerial shibboleths, would enjoy feeling good at the end of a day. They labor under archaic management assumptions that assume labor as the "brawn" and management the "brains" of the corporate body. Management is rendered equally impotent by this division because it is denied access to the practical, problem-solving skills of its labor force. Is it any wonder that such stalemates, coupled with meaningless work induces desires to "get out of it"? [ To those who would challenge my assertion that disengagement and social impotence are endemic to the organization of labor and management by asking why aren't all labor and management stoned, my answer is "they damned near are." Why else has drug testing become such an issue for an increasingly broad spectrum of citizens?]

Years ago, I was a cultural policy advisor to the Governor of California, serving on the State Arts Council and Chairing that body for several years. At the beginning of my tenure there, I attended a retreat conducted by John Alexander,Vice-President of the American Management Association. His address was an eye-opening study of the complexities of office systems and an introduction to good management techniques. One aphorism from his opening remarks has stayed with me over the years and seems particularly appropriate to this issue: "If you don't have the authority to solve a problem, it is not your problem."

While this may be unequivocally true for a hierarchical, structured, organization, it is only partially true for society as a whole. The failure of managers to design or allow modes of work which encourage human growth, engagement and development of skills, becomes everyone's problem as consumers seek to save money by buying the highest quality goods elsewhere. Plants close and more and more people are reduced to "service" occupations, or worse, no occupations at all.

The failure of public policy makers and elected officials to discuss cultural and economic assumptions that support alienation, frustration and despair becomes everyone's problem as the ranks of the disenfranchised swell, and the franchised

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