Drug or medicine?
The ability to tell a drug from a medicine is difficult.
A drug being a luxury you don’t truly need.
A medicine being a necessary treatment for a disease.
A good clue that it is a drug , is if they give free samples.
Just like the old dope peddler.
“He gives the kids free samples
Because he knows full well
That today’s young innocent faces
Will be tomorrow’s clientele”
If it is a medicine they don’t need to try to hook you addictively or don’t need to convince you to try it.
drug pedler song
ARTIST: Tom Lehrer
TITLE: The Old Dope Peddler
When the shades of night are falling,
Comes a fellow ev’ryone knows,
It’s the old dope peddler,
Spreading joy wherever he goes.
Ev’ry evening you will find him,
Around our neighborhood.
It’s the old dope peddler
Doing well by doing good.
He gives the kids free samples,
Because he knows full well
That today’s young innocent faces
Will be tomorrow’s clientele.
Here’s a cure for all your troubles,
Here’s an end to all distress.
It’s the old dope peddler
With his powdered ha-happiness.
Prohibition, the law against the drug alcohol ended at 4:31 p.m. on December 5, 1933, ending 13 years, 10 months, 19 days, 17 hours and 32.5 minutes of Prohibition. With no need for a prescription adults could consume the drug once again.
Huey Lewis and The News – I Want A New Drug
I want a new drug
One that won’t make me sick
One that won’t make me crash my car
Or make me feel three feet thick
I want a new drug
One that won’t hurt my head
One that won’t make my mouth too dry
Or make my eyes too red
One that won’t make me nervous
Wondering what to do
One that makes me feel like I feel when I’m with you
When I’m alone with you
I want a new drug
One that won’t spill
One that don’t cost too much
Or come in a pill
I want a new drug
One that won’t go away
One that won’t keep me up all night
One that won’t make me sleep all day
One that won’t make me nervous
Wondering what to do
One that makes me feel like I feel when I’m with you
When I’m alone with you
I’m alone with you baby
I want a new drug
One that does what it should
One that won’t make me feel too bad
One that won’t make me feel too good
I want a new drug
One with no doubt
One that won’t make me talk too much
Or make my face break out
One that won’t make me nervous
Wondering what to do
One that makes me feel like I feel when I’m with you
When I’m alone with you
_________________
Whole Families Hooked on Opium in Afghanistan
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/08/090810-afghanistan-opium-video-ap.html
August 10, 2009—In a small village in northeastern Afghanistan, it’s estimated more than half the residents are addicted to opium. Even the youngest of children are given the drug.
© 2009 National Geographic (AP)
Unedited Transcript
In a village in northeastern Afghanistan, it’s just past eight in the morning at Islam Begs house, and the family is already curled up around a burning opium pipe.
They include his one-year-old grandson.
No one looks twice as his aunt blows the opium at him.
It’s a common practice here, resulting in rampant child addiction. Residents argue there is no alternative because there is no medicine: there is one drug and that’s opium.
Islam Beg at age 65 admits he’s ashamed of what he’s become.
SOUNDBITE: (Dari), Islam Beg, drug addict “I started taking a smoke until I got addicted to this (opium). I lost my property, I lost my strength, my bravery and now I am laying here with an empty stomach.”
Beg’s forefathers used to own much of the land in the village and he once had 1,200 sheep. But they were sold, and then the land sold, to pay for opium.
The pipe is passed around and they all take turns to fill their lungs with this deadly substance.
This family of five is typical of the growing number of narcotics addicts in Afghanistan. There are an estimated 150,000 opium addicts and a further 50,000 heroin addicts here.
Decades of war and poverty have instilled a sense of hopelessness in many people here, making narcotics an easydestructive way to deal with an often grim reality.
This village Sarab has a population of fewer than 2,000, and half are already addicts.
Afghanistan has few drug treatment services availablecountry-wide, there are fewer than 200 beds total for drug rehabilitation.
In small villages like this everyone is linked and every family sinks further and further into debt.
SOUNDBITE: (Dari) Jan Begum, drug addict “All I had I lost buying this (opium) you can see nothing has been left for me. I have been sick for the last six months and I don’t have money to go to the doctor, all I had I spent on this (opium).”
This woman blows smoke into the face of a little girl.
SOUNDBITE: (Dari), Khanim Gul, drug addict “I blow opium smoke to her face because I want her to sleep well at night. Opium works for us as an alternative for any kind of medicine.”
Beg is hopeful that his grandchildren will escape his fate, he believes they’re not yet addicted.
But opium addiction in these remote mountain hamlets is so entrenched that whole families, from the smallest toddlers to old men, are held in its vice.
