I could go on and on and get even more outrageously sarcastic and cynical, but I think you get the picture by now. And of course, I know that another doesn't right one wrong. If you already have bad habits and are obviously addiction-prone, even dabbling with dangerously addictive narcotics is just asking for serious trouble. But good grief, the sheer magnitude of hypocrisy exhibited by my generation with regard to any and all drug usage was nothing less than an embarrassment to me.
When President Bill Clinton was confronted publicly with the report that some of his fraternity brothers in college had told journalist sources that the President used to smoke marijuana at frat parties they attended, he had the audacityto say that he had “never inhaled!” As adults, we all have learned how to “doublethink” (a la Orwell's “1984”) so even though we can think to ourselves that this is an untruth; we allow it to stand as the truth. But what about the message we are sending our not yet jaded, disillusioned, or brainwashed children? Can he, and all of us in our generation, consider our children thatstupid? Do we guess that we can cover up our past, lie in the face of our kids, tell them to “do as we say and not as we have done,” all the while continuing to abuse our bodies and minds with “legal” drugs and bad habits? Give me a living break!
What happened to the virtue of temperance? Where's the Yin-Yang wisdom? Have we all gone mad in this country?
It is human nature to want what is forbidden. Remember the Biblical story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? All the abundance of foods at their disposal to eat of as they pleased, without having to do any labor, and what do they wind up cherishing as their most desired fruit? The forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, of course. What we're told we cannot have becomes the object of our strongest desire.
Here in the United States of Hypocrisy, we tell our children to not drink alcohol, to not do any drugs, and to not smoke tobacco. Of course, many adults do some or all of these things, but for some obscure reason, we decide that these “adult” indulgences should be reserved for anyone who has attained a certain arbitrary age. We vote on what that age should be from time to time, but for the most part it is 18 for smoking, 21 for drinking, and neverfor “illegal” drugs. Protecting our children, right? Making sure they live healthy lives, right?
Wrong.
It wasn't until the 1920s that narcotics were made illegal. Until that time, the general consensus was that laws should not be used to regulate personal behavior. In fact, the Bayer Company introduced “heroin” as a brand name for a seemingly very useful respiratory ailment drug in 1898. Were there narcotics addicts back then? Of course there were. But creating laws against their use, making them now “forbidden fruits,” scarcely got rid of the problem; it rather exacerbated it. Now we had addicts andoccasional users, who were all now criminals, and a whole global syndicate of criminal suppliers, distributors and pushers to fuel the illicit industry.2 Has the problem gotten any better? Have narcotics addiction levels in our society decreased from the 1920s to the present? Have we seen a decrease in crime rates (especially drug abuse-related crime) since then? You answer that one.
In Switzerland, the legal drinking age is 14. Common sense would tell us that they must have a higher rate of alcoholics over there than we do, right? Wrong again, folks. They have less of a problem. From 1961 to 2001, there was no gain in percentage of alcohol users among their overall population, and their percentage of binge drinkers among young adults was lower (25 percent among males and 6 percent among females) 3 than ours (38.5 percent overall). 4 Why? Because of the “Forbidden Fruit” syndrome, of course!
In France, nudity is not considered to be such a monumental moral taboo as it is here in the United Puritans of America. Therefore, it would follow that they must have a higher rate of sexual assaults over there, right? Wrong once more. Just the opposite is true: They have fewer sex crimes there (2 percent of adult women reporting sexual assault) 5 than we do here (7.7 percent of adult women sexually assaulted). 6
Consider third world countries in temperate climates, where it is the tradition and custom for women to go about naked from the waist up. Do those men lose their senses and commit sexual crimes against their women because of such a sight? Of course not; they are accustomed to it.
