Posted on 08/21/2002 11:45:42 AM PDT by JediGirl
Teenage boys might be forgiven if the government's mixed drug message comes off as just more adult hypocrisy.
"Don't do drugs" and "don't do steroids" are among the powerful admonitions aimed at young people in general and young men in particular. Baseball players already have confused the steroid issue, but now the government, too, is looking for "a better warrior through chemistry."
It seems the nation's military services are doing serious research into how they can better produce drug-enhanced warriors, the sort who can go for days under extreme conditions with limited supplies and no sleep.
What the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has in mind is a "radical approach" meant to achieve "continuous assisted performance" for up to a week. That, for those young people not yet familiar with government legalese, means better and longer performance through drugs.
The military has a long history of combat-induced use of amphetamines followed by "downers" that force sleep. This was a cycle that some U.S. pilots say they used to their benefit during the Persian Gulf War. But other observers are skeptical. They warn that the risks of drug use by military personnel - even controlled use - differ little from the potential hazards that face civilian users. Those risks include unwanted side effects, such as paranoia or misdirected aggression, and possible addiction.
Moreover, there is little doubt the military's promotion of "assisted performance" is a far cry from "Just Say No." For young men, then, the message from the government is "don't do this" or we will continue to fill prisons with your drug- abusing kind. Unless of course, you abuse them for us.
It probably has young people shaking their heads. But, in fact, this is not the only time the U.S. government has said one thing and done another.
For years, it propped up Southern tobacco farmers with price supports. Now it is suing them for having promoted an unhealthy product, conveniently forgetting it was government itself that helped make those sales possible.
That very same government has long paid farmers not to grow certain crops, despite the fact that kids go to bed hungry in America every night. Other examples are easy to cite.
Thus, teens are not the only ones who have been confused by the government.
The warrior enhancements are sometimes couched in odd phrases - "ergogenic substances," for example, rather than the plainer "drugs." But sometimes not. In one part of a memo outlining military objectives, blood doping is a suggested method.
Just say no, then, until we tell you to say yes. Now that's clarity.
The phrase used to trigger a post-hypnotic suggestion in the soldiers of the United Nations Exploratory Force. The Taurans were slaughtered by Strike Force Alpha.
The post-hypnotic suggestion was to "psych" the troops into battle -- it worked too well, and was not used again due to the after-battle reaction.
Libertarians who still have functioning brain cells must know that drug legalization or decriminalization will only replace one form of government involvement and coercion with another. Whereas before the coercion was targeted against drug users and dealers, the new coercion will be targeted against ordinary taxpayers
The nanny state will become larger and more suffocating when the costs of drug abuse have been socialized to the same extent that the costs of alcohol abuse have already been socialized. More and more taxes will be coerced from the rest of us to coddle drug abusers as they line up to collect supplemental social security, Medicaid, and Medicare on account of their "disability."
Pro-dope libertarians are nanny government's most zealous allies.
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