`War on drugs' hypocrisy

Ray Hartmann, one time publisher of "The Riverfront Times"
(the weekly alternative fish wrap in St. Louis, MO) used to
speak of "The War Against Drugs Without Major Corporate
Sponsorship." Which explains, I think, the critical difference
between "*these* drugs" and "these *other* drugs".

That just doesn't wash. Imagine all the extra revenue Phillip
Morris could be raking in if they were to start selling New!
MaryJane Golds (they're smmmmmoootttthhh, man...). Glaxo could
make a bundle off of Rooty Toot (tm), the advertising agencies
would be hiring on new people to do ads to tell people that
smoking pot will make hot women want to have sex with you, and
the government would be feasting on all of them with added tax
revenue. 

In his recollection of his time at an English "public" school,
"Such, such were the joys..." George Orwell says, "The various
codes which were presented to you at St Cyprian's ­ religious,
moral social and intellectual ­ contradicted one another if you
worked out their implications."  That's always seems to me true
of the Repugnican--or perhaps more generally, the hardline
conservative program--in this country.  And for reasons that are
all too much the same as Orwell outlines (transposed, of course,
to this country in the 21st century): 

The essential conflict was between the tradition of nineteenth 
century asceticism and the actually existing luxury and snobbery
of the pre-1914 age. On the one side were low-church Bible 
Christianity, sex puritanism, insistence on hard work, respect for
academic distinction, disapproval of self-indulgence: on the other,
contempt for ‘braininess’, and worship of games, contempt for
foreigners and the working class, an almost neurotic dread of
poverty, and, above all, the assumption not only that money and
privilege are the things that matter, but that it is better to
inherit them than to have to work for them.

Broadly, you were bidden to be at once a Christian and a social
success, which is impossible. At the time I did not perceive that
the various ideals which were set before us cancelled out. I merely
saw that they were all, or nearly all, unattainable, so far as I
was concerned, since they all depended not only on what you did but
on what you were. 

Essentially, there are no drug laws for those who can afford to be
beyond the penalties of those laws. An occasional arrest of a
flagrant rock or movie star, sure: but what are the consequences?
Enforcement is a matter of economic status, rather than law. Of
course this is a reflection of the larger hypocrisy of a society
that wants to have its pleasures but feels obligated--from religion?
--to keep up a much more restricted moral code.  It's the usual
abomination.  Surprise. 

Jack Kolb Dept. of English, UCLA

(with permission)
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