NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/rec/music/bluenote/9685

Text File | 1992-12-31 | 3.3 KB | 66 lines

Newsgroups: rec.music.bluenote
Path: sparky!uunet!usc!rpi!sarah!itchy.geog.albany.edu!rstump
From: [e-mail] (Roger Stump)
Subject: Re: drugs, ethics, health
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (News Administrator)
Organization: Syracuse University
References: <[e-mail]>
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 92 21:50:02 GMT
Lines: 54

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Richard Shapiro) writes:
>
>   In any case, if I were forced to choose one or the
>   other, and I were concerned with my life expectancy, I would rather be
>   addicted to tobacco than to crack or heroin.
>
>Depends on whether you're speaking pragmatically, physiologically or
>morally.  Pragmatically, in a world in which heroin is an expensive
>product typically bought from armed gangsters, quite possibly cut with
>some foreign substance, and administered with an unclean needle, your
>life expectancy as a user is indeed likely to be short.  But these

Agreed, a principal danger of illegal drug use is that this activity takes
place beyond the protection of mainstream society -- but that makes
it no less dangerous.

>factors are all attributable to the legal status of heroin.  From a
>purely physiological point of view, cigarettes and alcohol are much
>more destructive than any of the popular illegal drugs. I think it's

I'm certainly not an expert on the physiological effects of legal or
illegal drugs, but is it really possible to make such a comparison?  How
do you compare dosages of different substances, for example?  The pattern
of use will also likely have a significant impact.  For example, I think
it would be rather difficult to overdose on tobacco, but much easier
on heroin -- so are we talking about long-term or short-term dangers?
Admittedly I'm out of my depth here, but am somewhat skeptical.

>pretty clear that drug use is generally considered to be morally
>wrong, while smoking and casual drinking are not.
>
>I find it interesting to note that Marcel felt it worth pointing out
>that one figure on the cover of This Is Our Music was on the nod (a
>morally evil practice, by the usual standards) but not worth
>mentioning that three of the four were holding cigarettes (a morally
>neutral practice, by the same standards)!

Or it could be that using heroin was not a common social practice at
the time, but smoking was.  Again, I'm not convinced that morality
comes into it as much as social convention (although the two are
obviously closely linked).

Despite the above comments, I'm somewhat sympathetic with Richard Shapiro's
larger point, that drug use among jazz musicians (or any other cultural
phenomenon, for that matter) can best be understood if it is examined
"objectively," without being filtered through a pre-conceived set of
moral standards or judgments (which may differ considerably from
those of the musicians in question).  At the same time, though, that
objectivity requires that the consequences of drug use be realistically
taken into account -- and those consequences have often been destructive.
Such a conclusion is not based on moral grounds, but on the obvious misery
and the many lost opportunities that drugs have brought to users' lives.
--
Roger Stump  ([e-mail])