The Difference Between Use and Abuse

I hate the phrase, “Just Say No”. It makes no distinction between one who uses and one who abuses. It feeds the notion that if you use drugs you are bad. This is a terrible thing to tell people. Everybody uses drugs. Christians use drugs. Parents use drugs.

“Just Say No” makes it us against them. Good christians don’t use drugs at all, non-christians and atheists use drugs. Satanists use drugs. It tells you that, if you use drugs, you are a bad person.

Why would Nancy Reagan wish to do this? Why would she wish to make people feel terrible when her messiah went around making people feel good?

A hint of the reason is Ayn Rand’s conclusion that you cannot rule a guilt free man. With Nancy and her little catch phrase, it is not ‘rule’ that is meant; control works better. The republican party is about control. Control of the media, control of the market, control of the governments of other countries. Thought control.

I would have had no problem with the “Just Say No” campaign were she to have added three words. This might have diminished the effectiveness of her phrase, considering the font would have to be smaller to put it all on a bumper sticker, but it would have been a more humane, christ-like thing to say. The three words? ‘ . . . to drug abuse’.

Say it with me, friends; the new phrase would be “Just Say No To Drug Abuse”.

I know my idea would have fallen on deaf ears. No one would have used it because it significantly reduces the number of people one can feel superior to, therefore, judgmental of. The right-wing, christian conservative republican is all about exclusion. And, like children, they love big simple reasons that give them their feeling of superiority.

*******************************

What really pisses me off about that bumper-sticker campaign of Nancy Reagan’s is that it was never meant to get people to quit using drugs. It was a throw together to make it look like Nancy gave a damn about doing something for the country and not just redecorating the White House. It was engineered to make it look like she cared about people and not just things.

Why is Nancy Reagan’s bumper-sticker campaign a big deal? As a consequence of her simple-minded actions, my children judge me to be a bad person based solely on the fact that I drink beer and smoke cigarettes. I don’t hit my kids, using time-outs and grounding; I encourage my kids to be individuals, I pay attention to them, and look them in the eye when they are talking, and I take their concerns seriously. Being a good, attentive father means everything to me. Yet, because they had a ‘Just Say No’ class at school, they came home with all these cellophane-wrapped things to say about my nasty little habits. And you cannot fight righteousness in a child. They want something to bang you over the head with; something that will diminish you, the disciplinarian, in their eyes.

It occurred to me that that is the reason we have what republicans call a lost generation of predatory consumerist children whose heads are messed up. They go to school and read bumper stickers all day, and come home to find their parents lacking. The same people who say that taking prayer out of public schools is the source of all the bad things happening in America, teach your children that you are bad if you have a beer after work, or take a Prozac when you’re stressed, or smoke a cigarette.

Even if you are abusing these things I have no problem with you until you cross the line from hurting yourself to hurting others.

Understand something, “Just Say No” was not meant to prevent you from using drugs, it was meant to pit you against those around you. It is a tool of division. There is no forgiveness or excuses within the “Just Say No” zealotry; you are either with us or against us.

A wrench can be used to great benefit, yet the power it provides you can be used in negative ways. Instead of using it to repair your automobile you can use it to kill someone by whacking them on their head. That would be abuse.

Use is a good thing. Abuse is too much of a good thing.

Just say ‘no’ to “Just Say No”.

No Fax Payday Loans