Kalliope Jones’ privilege
Editor’s note: This comment was made online under the article “Kalliope Jones Takes it to the Web.”
True, this is an important problem. You undermine the conversation, though, when you do the following: Scapegoat individuals rather than look at the problem from a systemic point of view. The kids did an interview for MTV. Do we really think MTV is a champion for combating the objectification of women in the music industry?
Fail to tell the story as it really happened or at least don’t correct the misinformation that is out there. For example, many of the stories suggest the kids took on the judges themselves or that the offending judge was a leering old man.
Fail to recognize other aspects of your identity that might privilege you — white privilege or lookism for example. Part of what makes the story interesting is the picture that was provided. How did that play into why the story was taken up?
The addicts in my life
Many thanks for your column — or perhaps you classify it as an editorial — “The Addicts in All Our Lives” (Sept. 17-23, 2015). I especially value the point that most addicts don’t fit the prevalent stereotype. I know that because of the addicts in my white, middle-class family. I’ll be sharing this piece with many people.
Help everyone; legalize recreational drugs
Editor’s note: This comment was made online under the article “The Addicts in All Our Lives.”
The writer of the piece didn’t touch the real problem: Certain drugs are illegal, so the use of them can become a problem. Most of the problems involving drugs are from their illegality rather than the drug itself or reactions to the drug; although there sometimes are overdoses. If the drugs were legal and the chemical or drug industry distributed them in a reasonable fashion and government didn’t impose excessive taxes, then there would be little trouble from drugs, and the associated crimes would almost disappear.
The cost of production, transportation, and distribution of a dose of a recreational drug is a small part of the retail price after the risk premium is removed. The difficulty of covering the expense of being a drug addict results in some users turning to crime for funds. The other source of trouble from the drug business is competition among criminal gangs. Making drugs legal would end those drugs wars, especially if major corporations got involved in the business. Violence can eat into profits.
Many people have trouble backing the idea of legalizing drugs. That trouble is usually caused by ignorance. The medical and scientific industries have usually condemned drug use because they make money from treating addiction. But drug addictions are ordinary reactions to chemicals that are similar to neurotransmitters, so similar that they can occupy the receptors for the neurotransmitters — except THC, which has its own receptors in the human brain because it is produced in the brain. Heroin uses receptors for endorphin; nicotine uses receptors for acetylcholine; cocaine is a reuptake inhibitor for dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephine.
I mention the brain chemistry of some drugs because it appears that the drugs are effective because the users have abnormal brain chemistry to start with. For example, only about half of the population can become addicted to nicotine; those who do not become addicted appear to have more acetylcholine receptors, so it makes no difference whether some are occupied by nicotine instead of acetylcholine. But in people with fewer receptors there is a demand for more receptors, so there will be enough for the acetylcholine and for nicotine. The increase in receptors brings on a need to fill them. If there were a way to adjust the number of receptors that addicts had, then addiction might be cured, but if the drugs that adjusted the filling of the receptors were available and inexpensive, the same net result would be attained.
Complete legalization of drugs would lead to the elimination of the social problems that are caused by drug addiction, including excessive taxation necessary to pay for extra police and for prisons that are necessitated by drug laws. And the chemical imbalances in the brains of drug users could more readily be corrected.
