DRUG PUSHERS, USERS AS VICTIMS OF CAPITALISM

DEAREST CINTRA, I Seek Your Guidance: Please help me. Last week my yuppified
apartment building was assaulted by police in what I assume was some sort of
a drug bust. I rubbernecked as a half dozen of the city's finest burst into
my neighbor's apartment with guns drawn, shouting, "Down on your knees!
Don't make a move! Do you want to get your ass shot?!" There was more
shouting, most of it unprintable, but all indicating that our heroic civil
servants spend their Saturday nights at home watching "Cops."

My first reaction to this was anger at my neighbor for being involved
in whatever it is that brought these noisy intruders into my home. But
aside from his annoying habit of having riotous late-night visitors in
a building that houses mostly working professionals, he's really not a
bad guy. I decided my anger was misdirected. Were it not for this
country's puritanical drug laws, the entire incident would never have
happened. Now I'm really angry. Don't these people in Washington have
eyes and ears? Don't they see how much better the world would be if
they would abandon their war on drugs and focus our resources on the
root causes of the drug problem?

By demonizing drugs as the cause of our social problems instead of
correctly identifying the drug problem as a result of social
inequities, we're engaging in dangerously delusional behavior. I
suspect that we're all too frightened to face up to the truth. We're
frightened that the true enemy is this capitalist system that has
provided so nicely for most of us. We're afraid that if we admit to
the true nature of the problem we'll have to give up some of the many
luxuries we've come to feel we cannot live without.

One of the problems with living in a democracy is that we don't search
for real solutions to our country's problems until they affect the
majority of the population.

Don't add my name to any blacklists yet. Democracy is the best system
of government realistically available, and capitalism is the best
economic system. We just need to recognize that these systems have
their victims. We don't call them victims, though.

Our fear demands that we call them criminals, addicts and pushers. As
soon as we begin to recognize that these are nothing more than the
victims of our own good fortune, we will be more willing to share with
them a little of the life with which we have been blessed.

It's really as simple as that. And we can finance our love fest with
the billions we'll save by halting the military operations in Humboldt
County. Alas! I feel I am the voice of a hopeless cause. Those in
power seem determined to run the current course until society explodes
like a trailer park meth lab.

I feel so helpless. How can I make the world see how simple the
solution is? Please help! These feelings are really starting to take a
toll on my emotional well being. - Yours, Singin' the Police Blues.

Dearest Singin': Weeeelll, you're almost on the right track.
Prosecuting drug-related crimes to the fullest extent of the law is
certainly indicative of the short-sighted, neofundamentalist
spontaneous-generation-of-animals-and-Noah-was-real kind of wishful
moral hyper-myopia that colors many of the ways the government lords
over society. Drug trafficking is certainly the response of a
disenfranchised societal element coping with the dribble-down of 95
percent of everything that is ownable in the world being owned by 1
percent of its inhabitants. The drug trade is certainly the throaty
war cry of the capitalist virus in action at its wildest, setting up
an alternative parasitic economy where the legit one spreads too thin.
Money doesn't care where it comes from.

However, there are way more complicated questions inherent in the drug
issue, because addiction is so personal. Addiction can either be a
biochemical predisposition because of genetics or a personal response
to having a yawning chasm of inner Lack, or even just acute loneliness.

The question then is: Are drug dealers evil for preying in a
Machiavellian fashion on the terrible weaknesses of addicts? Doesn't
all consumerism and advertising smack of the same type of
exploitation? Don't breast implants and new cars also infuse
artificial self-esteem and a sense of well-being? Shouldn't addicts,
in a "free country," be allowed to smear themselves into runny-nosed
stupors with any substance they choose?

These questions are not going to be answered in any kind of
sophisticated fashion by the Jesus-avenging witch-dunkers in the tall
black-buckled hats who demand that the revision of prescribed ethics
in legislature trot forward no speedier than a goat cart.

So, "Singin'," I'm not real clear on what your simple solution for all
this is, but if you can put it a little more succinctly, I'll sign any
petition you circulate my way. Until then, forgive thy friendly
drug-dealing brethren with all the puritanical turn-the-other-cheeking
in thy heart, for even though they know full well what they do, the
times, they are confusing, and not a-changin' fast enough. Selahhhh.

Have you hugged your cartel today? Please write to: CINTRA WILSON
FEELS YOUR PAIN, San Francisco Examiner, P.O. Box 7260, San Francisco,
CA 94120, or e-mail the Psychic Supergenius at xintra@earthlink.net.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry