| The Alcohol, Tobacco, Pharmaceutical, and Illegal Drug Industries |
E. The Alcohol, Tobacco, Pharmaceutical,
and Illegal Drug Industries
Men are the primary victims of the powerful alcohol, tobacco, and drug industries. This victimization is more and more extended to women as the society "matures" to the point of near collapse. However, men are "expected" to be the principal participants in and the principal victims of drug and alcohol abuse. This abuse of men is offered as a way of "assuaging" the injuries and ill health that are part of men's lives and are expected by them as a matter of course. In many countries, the standard means of "recovering" from the intense overwork of men's jobs is to "stop in the tavern" on the way home.
The role and goal of the multi-national alcohol industry is to normalize use of alcohol in every part of society. Alcohol becomes identified with a wide range of images that men are trained to view as positive, including sex, sports, success, and physical beauty. All this conditioning feeds a denial at the societal level that alcohol is a drug at all or that it is one of the more deadly and costly drugs in all societies. The entire society is manipulated into accepting alcohol's presence and importance in men's lives, and, in the United States since "Prohibition," is oriented toward blaming the drinking man, rather than the drink, for the problems men's drinking causes for them and for those around them.
Alcohol use also undergirds many other problems in the society, and its
role in them often goes unrecognized. These problems include domestic
violence, rape, homicide, suicide, transmission of sexually-transmitted diseases, drownings, falls, motor vehicle crashes, and workplace injuries.
Alcohol also feeds the persistent economic under-development of poor communities and countries, where a history of encouraging alcohol outlets and industries leaves a legacy that is inhospitable to the development of other sources of income.
The global tobacco industry markets the most addictive drug known to humanity with virtual impunity across the globe. Despite clear proofs that the industry has known for years how addictive and deadly the drug it markets is, it has successfully bought off political leaders in country after country and has found myriad ways to press its products and logos upon the public. Because tobacco tends to kill its users near the end of their "productive" lives, it has served oppressive societies well. A strong stand needs to be taken against this "killing-off" of men (and increasingly, women) now that the dangers of tobacco use are well known. The illegal drug industry functions in many inner-city and minority communities in the United States as the primary means of employment and economic support. Forces in the oppressive society such as the Central Intelligence Agency have encouraged and at least tacitly supported the illegal domestic drug trade, at the same time that other oppressive forces have used it as a means of controlling minority populations in the United States and interfering in the internal affairs of other nations. To justify oppressive drug wars, myths have been propounded regarding the supposed dominance of young black and Latino males among drug users in the United States. In fact, the majority of drug users are white men, while black and Latino men are greatly over-represented among those who suffer the
repressive consequences of the most recent "drug war."
What is labeled a "good drug" or a "bad drug" in the society is more often determined for social rather than for medical reasons. The prescription drug industry is the primary purveyor of the drugs that the society has labeled as "good." Although some prescription drugs do bring benefits to humans, the organization of the industry for profit distorts its ability to serve the health of the public and subjects it to enormous pressure to continue to define new clinical "conditions" that require its newest drugs.
Although in this era, women have been the primary targets of the new
classes of psychoactive drugs, drugs suchanti-depressants are pressed upon men and boys as well. If men cannot be seduced by drugs, they are prescribed them.
That boys in the United States are currently, in large numbers, being given Ritalin to control behavior (behavior that is the result of being mistreated as boys during this period of societal collapse) marks the spread of the oppressive "mental health" organization to a new "target market." This oppressive activity directed at boys is creating a whole new generation of men who will be easier to oppress and addict to other drugs later in life because of early damage to their central nervous systems by Ritalin and other drugs, as well as early damage to their sense of their own power by being forced to take drugs against their will.
Tobacco, alcohol, mood- and mind-altering drugs, and psychoactive drugs, whether legal or illegal, interfere with the process of discharge and re-evaluation. They also function to keep men distracted and unable to organize to remove the causes of their unhappiness, which lie in the irrational organization of the society to support the profit-making of the few at the expense of the many.
Men today have been systematically denied access to the discharge process.
There is a direct relationship between the use of drugs and alcohol and suppression of the discharge process. Whenever society doesn't want men to feel something, it will tend to drug them so that they won't feel it. Multi-national drug corporations addict young males to these substances on the false basis that they will provide "relaxation," "enjoyment," and "relief from stress." In reality, the use of these products destroys bodies and minds and creates an environment in which destructive and self-destructive behaviors thrive.
Meanwhile, the real sources of stress go unchallenged. These include loneliness, dangerous or unsatisfying work conditions, unemployment or underemployment, and the deeply inhibited ability to discharge and re-evaluate.
By discharging the distress recordings that underlie the addiction, it is possible to eliminate any form of addiction that keeps people from being able to change their lives the way they want to.
GOALS
Eliminate any form of profit-making in relation to the supply of alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs. Make public the information that any addiction can be fully recovered from and assist men to do so. Organize humans to end the targeting of men by alcohol, tobacco, and other drug industries. Expose the special extra oppression inflicted on men of color and communities of color by their being falsely blamed as the active agents for spreading drug use.
STRATEGIES
a) Organize humans everywhere to remove profit from the production and sale of drugs, and to remove the unwanted presence of these drug industries from people's lives. Promote alternative forms of economic development that don't rest on the alcohol and drug industries. Educate the public about the social movements throughout history that have successfully motivated people to stop using drugs and to confront the oppressive forces that produce and market them.
b) Furnish counseling assistance to men to recover fully from all addictions, by teaching Re-evaluation Counseling and setting up RC support groups widely, focusing on discharging the distress recordings that underlie addictions. Promote complete integration of the discharge process into the daily practice of men, so that they may discharge both physical and emotional distresses, as part of ending the efforts of the oppressive society to replace men's bad feelings (produced by oppression and mistreatment) with the numbness produced by drugs. Finally, we need to challenge the real sources of stress: loneliness, dangerous or unsatisfying work conditions, unemployment or underemployment, and the deeply inhibited ability to discharge and re-evaluate.
c) Expose the racism and classism behind these industries, and the mechanism of targeting communities of people of color and communities of poor, working-class people.
(c) copyright 1999
Rational Island Publishers
Reprinted on this site with permission of the copyright owner.
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