Thursday, May 24, 2012

HBO And Legalizing Drugs

Quite a few of the SLOBs seem to be in favor of legalizing drugs. The arguments typically center around two themes:
  • Personal freedom. You can't tell me what to do!
  • Cost. We're losing the war on drugs and we're spending too much money doing it!
So let's assume for a moment that we legalize all drugs. What happens next? Well, for one thing, recreational drugs become commodities sold under some amount of regulation. OK, that seems pretty organized and tame. What else?

How about marketing? How much money do you think recreational drug manufacturers will have to spend on advertising? How's that whole drug pipeline thing going for Pfizer right now? Pretty bad, right? How about if we give them the opportunity to research opium derivatives and then advertise them? Think there'll be some money in that?

How about the media? HBO is larded up with "edgy" shows encouraging you to get it on with whoever you want. With funding from drug giants behind them, how long before using heroin-lite, developed by GlaxoSmithKline and pushed by Omnicom, becomes hip and cool and in? If they didn't care about whole neighborhoods regressing into little Mogadishus, do you think they're going to care what happens to your kids?

If the culture can change to the point where we're seriously considering letting two men marry each other, do you think you're going to do anything other than get steamrolled by the team of Novartis plus Ogilvy and Mather?

Yeah, you're Superman, pal. You're gonna stop that pair.


HBO cares about you and your family. Oh yes they do.

5 comments:

tim eisele said...

1. Just because somebody thinks that marijuana is hardly a threat to civilization, doesn't mean that they think opium dens should be legalized.

2. Just because a drug is legal, doesn't mean that advertising them has to be allowed. Cigarette and alcohol ads were restricted ages ago.

3. In spite of both cigarettes and alcohol being legal, only a minority of the population are chain smokers or alcoholics. And nicotine is rated as more addictive than pretty much any other abused drug (with alcohol right up there in the rankings as well). Why would other drugs be much worse if they were legal?

John Travolta said...

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as if you're comparing gay marriage with something as dangerous and destructive as heroin addiction...

Doo Doo Econ said...

"The difference between medicine and poison is dosage." Paracelsus

However, I don't get the true blood video.I understand that it is a gay agenda show dressed up in blood, but I am not sure that this is your point.

Foxfier said...

What makes me laugh is the idea that regulating the legal use of a drug is easier than banning it entirely....

K T Cat said...

My point here is that legalizing drugs is not the last development. Once legalized, you unleash all kinds of forces that you cannot fully control. In the case of recreational drugs, there is a tremendous amount of money to be made by companies that are looking out into a pretty bleak medium-term future. Combine that with an influential entertainment industry that promotes self-gratification and there's no way it ends with legalization.

The True Blood video and the gay marriage remark were simply to say this: the entertainment industry doesn't care about you. American poverty is dominated by people who do exactly what HBO glorifies. American society can mutate in just a decade or so to embrace things no one thought possible. Legalizing drugs lets loose forces much more powerful than you.