The Small Group of Thoughtful, Committed Citizens Has Been Drugged

[Donnachaidh]

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-swanson/36365/the-small-group-of-thoughtful-committed-citizens-has-been-drugged

Movements for justice have historically been driven by a small percentage of any population. One percent of Americans nonviolently occupying Washington, D.C., could make Cairo and Madison and Madrid look like warm-up acts. It is certainly true that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens is the only thing that ever has changed the world for the better.

So, what happens if a society picks out a significant slice of its population, one including many thoughtful and committed citizens, and drugs them?

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) held a first-time, one-day, little publicized event last September that allowed people to turn in their extra prescription drugs. The DEA reports collecting 242,000 pounds or 121 tons. A second such day was held in April with 376,593 pounds or 188 tons of pills collected. This is the stuff nobody wants and is willing to hand in to the government. This is not the amount that's out in circulation. That amount is no doubt in proportion to the roaring flood of television ads for the stuff. "More Americans currently abuse prescription drugs," says the DEA, "than the number of those using cocaine, hallucinogens, and heroin combined. . . . ndividuals that abuse prescription drugs often obtained them from family and friends, including from the home medicine cabinet." And that's just the users said to be abusing.

Ted Rall suggested drugging to me as a possible explanation for the big mystery staring us in the face, namely why Americans sit back and take so much more than other people from their government. The Patriot Act is being put on steroids with hardly a peep of protest. The "Defense Authorization Act" now before Congress would give presidents virtually limitless power to single-handedly make wars or imprison people. This is the biggest formal transfer of power in the U.S. government since the drafting of its Constitution. This undoes the American War for Independence. But perhaps we'd still be 13 colonies if Prozac and Zoloft had come along sooner.

More at the link --

[vim876]

1. Zoloft is not a major threat to democracy.

It is still possible to give a crap on antidepressants. In fact, for a depressed person, it may be impossible to give a crap without them. Drugs don't stop me from going to protests.

[aquart]

2. Pasture pastry.

People are passing pills around because this country refuses to deal with pain in any sane kind of way.

For years I was under orders NEVER to refuse a prescription for pain medication. For a tooth for anything because my sister was in AGONY from bungled back surgery. Even after being granted full disability, she was still in the hands of idiots who insisted that she jump through hoops to get any kind of relief. She is finally in a pain program that demands urine samples to prove she is actually taking her pills and not selling them for cash but that is the least of the indignities she's been through and we're fine with it.

I remember my dying father shrieking in pain like an animal being slaughtered. When we begged the hospital to give him some relief they said that morphine would depress his breathing and he might die. They thought it was better for him to linger two weeks in misery than to be without pain. They made us feel like we were ordering his murder when we insisted on the morphine.

As long as government and the medical industry is ridiculous about pain, people will take the situation into their own hands.

[99th_Monkey]

4. +1 The hysteria and hype about prescription opiates being abused is absurd.

This is one of the very LAST things I would suspect as a reason DC isn't under siege by millions
of pissed off Americans. Thank you for injecting a note of sanity into this discussion.

[DURHAM D]

3. So did the DEA dump those pills in our drinking water systems?