unculturedswine

Did you know that drugs used to be bad? Yep. When I was kid, drugs were bad. Everyone from politicians to teachers to athletes to tv stars were out to tell you that drugs are bad. We even had cool commercials that said ‘Just Say No’. Here’s one of the more popular ones:

It’s pretty easy to understand, and the advertising works. Aside from a few Zamfir commercials I really don’t remember many commercials from when I was kid.

Nancy Reagan was huge on the push for this, making the slogan “Just Say No” incredibly popular, and every kid in school knew about it. It worked. For me at least.

Nowadays, however, drugs are not bad. They’re cool. It’s hip to be “420 friendly”, and even the White House doesn’t care about marijuana anymore. This, obviously, is just one of the stumbling blocks in the way of this nation and world’s prosperity. A few hundred years ago, a political radical had this to say:

“Is it not high time for the people of this country explicitly to declare, whether they will be freemen or slaves? It is an important question which ought to be decided. It concerns us more than anything in this life. The salvation of our souls is interested in the event. For wherever tyranny is established, immorality of every kind comes in like a torrent. It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail. The religion and public liberty of a people are intimately connected; their interest are interwoven, they cannot subsist separately; and therefore they rise and fall together. For this reason, it is always observable that those who are combined to destroy the people’s liberties, practice every art to poison their morals. How greatly then does it concern us, at all events, to put a stop to the progress of tyranny.”

That crazy radical? Samuel Adams, October 1772.

Umm… yeah. Just food for thought. I don’t seem to hear much about drugs being bad anymore, and now, that vice is pretty much glorified, is it not? And the very government we vote in to protect us isn’t really batting an eye towards it, cause Health Care (fixing a problem that’s already arrived) is much more important than Health Problem Prevention (like… you know, saying no to drugs BEFORE they start to kill you…)