2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: A gay man's view on Hillary's Nancy Reagan/AIDS comments [View all]Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)All drugs are not created equal nor are all the people who take them, the reasons they take them, and situations in which they take or use them, nor is every individual's relationship to them.
I fully admit I am a strung out addict, addicted to a drug that I pretty fucking much have to have, every morning, to function normally. If I don't get it I get a monster headache, at best.
I've also dealt with addictions around me far more serious than espresso, of course.
One of the worst in terms of damage and wreckage, by far, being alcohol. There is simply no contest. And then, of course, nicotine. That one killed my Father, with the help of Joe Camel.
But funny enough, neither alcohol, nicotine OR caffeine were the focus of the inane "just say no" campaign, which--- like our nation's misguided drug war; which it enabled and dovetailed with, along with a metric shit-ton of authoritarian, fourth amdendment destroying bullshit fucking up the lives of otherwise law-abiding Americans--- was inordinately focused on marijuana, a drug which by any rational yardstick is far less dangerous than alcohol or nicotine, if not less conducive to tolerating daily menial drudgery than caffeine.
"Just Say No" was designed to, among other things make baby boomers coming off a cocaine binge in the early 80s, feel less guilty and hypocritcal about spewing preachy bullshit at younger people. I can tell you that as one of the younger people of that era, we didn't give a flying fuck about it, any more than the noises about AIDS made us stop having sex the way the media and the boomers kept fantasizing that it did. It was, in a very real way, the equivalent of "abstinence only" education.
"just say no" is an oversimplification and an inane bumper sticker aphorism, which (like drugs) are fine for some people- 12 steppers, etc- but like many bumpersticker aphorisms, it's not even technically true, or correct. It seems to me that some people should say no, some people should say no under certain circumstances, and some people function just fine- in fact, arguably better- occasionally saying yes to certain things that work for them.
And prime among and above all that is that people should be able to make up their own fucking minds about their own lives and their own bodies, insofar as they're not directly harming or endangering anyone else.
Wow, nuance and an actually intelligent approach to a complex situation, imagine that.
That's not what we got from the Reagans or their era. Ever.