The role of the pharmaceuticals industry and its aggressive marketing techniques in our new addiction epidemic is well documented, but its nothing new, its happened before.

In the 1960s, youth and the counterculture movement began an enthusiastic exploration of mind-altering substances, particularly marijuana and lysergic acid, as well as other, more exotic psychoactive products such as psilocybin and mescaline. The deleterious effects of these substances have never been convincingly demonstrated, and none are actually addictive, but they were all vigorously opposed by the authorities. At the time, this opposition was interpreted as strictly political by the users and proponents of these drugs.

This is not a stretch by any means. Let us not forget, marijuana, a mild psychedelic with a use (both medicinal and recreational) that goes back to prehistory, was only banned in 1937 as a means of persecuting its primary users (blacks and Mexicans). Again, there is nothing new here. Opium (a highly addictive and certainly less benign drug) was freely available over the counter and only made illegal when it was found it could be used against its primary users, unwelcome Chinese immigrants). It is particularly ironic to note that Chinese opioid use began when British merchants introduced the drug into the country who had no use for other British goods. America has a long history of bringing in cheap labor for exploitation, and then criminalizing it when it is no longer profitable.

But as you’ve possibly guessed by now, this post isn’t about the pharmacology of these substances, or whether or not their alleged toxicity justifies government control. Regardless of WHY they were outlawed, they were, and a great deal of attention on how harmful they were was pushed by government propaganda in those days. This was the start of the culture wars, and the drug war was just getting started. Not only were people going to prison and getting their lives ruined for smoking a perfectly benign weed, for the most part, the victims of this law enforcement zeal were long haired college kids who opposed the war in Viet Nam.

However, in spite of of all the hoopla concerning hippies smoking weed there was a parallel development of particular interest. A whole new class of drugs were being developed and marketed by Big Pharma. Tranquilizers were the big thing, medical mellow for frustrated housewives and stressed-out executives: the Stones even wrote a song about it, “Mother’s Little Helper”.

Now you would think that at a time when there was so much manufactured concern and hysteria about pot-smoking, acid-dropping, left-wing radical hippies getting buzzed on cheap botanicals and contraband chemicals, that the sudden appearance of vast quantities of mass-produced high-tech tranquilizers, stimulants and barbiturates (many already recognized as addictive) would have been opposed, or at least, strictly monitored by the authorities. Nothing could be further from the truth. These pills were profitably prescribed by doctors to nice middle class suburban types. And even though the quantities being produced far exceeded the legitimate medical demand, no special action was taken to control or discourage their use. (Does that sound familiar?)

I even recall that when this was pointed out to John Mitchell, Richard Nixon’s Attorney General (before he went to prison for his Watergate activities) he remarked that “there are already sufficient controls and oversight on the distribution of legitimate prescription medicines”. I can’t prove it, of course, but I suspect Mr Mitchell understood perfectly well the surplus production of these mind-numbing substances would be effectively channeled by the black market to anesthetize and cripple the potential disruptive politics of the counterculture.

I don’t think the current prescription opioid abuse can be traced to an effort to nullify the political aspirations of rural, working class America. However, there can be little doubt that the pharmaceutical industry’s quest for profits is playing a very similar role in today’s drug epidemic. They have managed to lobby against every attempt to regulate this traffic.

However, how society is responding to this new abuse is quite instructive. When the black ghettoes were being savaged by crack cocaine, a whole constellation of legal attacks on that population were brought forward, (“zero tolerance”, “three strikes and you’re out”, “mandatory sentencing”) which never seemed to apply to young preppies and entrepreneurs relaxing with the finest snorted powder coke.

Today, the opioid epidemic in the Trump heartland is being responded to by calls for education, counseling, treatment, “programs”, and all that other touchy-feely crapola that never made it into the ghettoes for crack.

Its political and social Darwinism. Giraffes didn’t get long necks by reaching up to leaves in increasingly higher branches of increasingly taller trees. It just that the giraffes that already had longer necks to begin with had a better chance of surviving long enough to reproduce than their shorter-necked cousins. There are no conspiracies of evil capitalists maliciously making evil things happen, its just that capitalism itself, when left unregulated and unsupervised, tends to favor evil unconsciously, by natural selection.