Addiction, Babies, Two and a Half Men

Our local paper ran two stories this week that brought me up short.  On Tuesday there was a disturbing article about the three fold increase in drug dependent babies being born each year.  These babies are born needing methadone treatment in intensive care for weeks if not months to ease them off the drug addiction they are born with thanks to their low-life mothers who deliberately use drugs during pregnancy.  [And do not talk to me about addiction being an illness.  Diabetes is an illness; influenza is an illness; the common cold is an illness.  Drugs are something you choose to use, knowing you should not, knowing you have been told not to, knowing they are illegal.  Drinking, smoking and using drugs are all things a person makes a conscious decision to do and, indeed, go out of their way to do.  So, no sympathy here.]   Even if the sight of these innocent newborns taking their dose of methadone didn’t make you righteously indignant, the thought of the money being used to correct the grievous errors of their profligate mothers might. 

            One Wednesday, the same paper ran an article about the increase in the number of teens who report using pot as often as 20 times per month.  It seems that 1 in 10 teens feel the need to toke up almost every day.  This might explain some problems with grades, lack of book reading, and generally poor test scores. Marijuana is a gateway drug; no one begins using heroin or cocaine without starting with marijuana.   The same babies that are born with drug addictions are born to mothers who started out smoking pot, and probably in their teens.  We also know that the teenage brain, since it is still developing, is particularly prone to addictions of all kind.  That is why the stinking tobacco companies (and why are these leeches still getting agricultural subsidies????) market to young people.  Who takes up, “the habit” as a 40 year old? 

We have more pot smokers, more addicted babies, and no one worries about the relationship between these two facts.

            The most obvious link is the way the entertainment industry is working to legalize marijuana.  I used to like watching Two and a Half Men but I’ve given up on it in large part because I am disgusted by the weekly references to teen marijuana use.  It isn’t funny, it’s pathetic.  Without working too hard I can think of five other prime time television shows that use pot smoking as a constant joke line, treating it as a, “given” of modern life.  According to these script writers, the problem doesn’t seem to be wasting your time, life and health with the mental masturbation of drug use, the problem is that pot is illegal, therefore interfering with the instant gratification the characters are so richly entitled to. 

Just as the entertainment industry has decided it can manipulate the population into voting for the politicians of Hollywood’s choice, they also believe they can manipulate us into accepting any morality they advocate.  Maybe they can.  Personally, I have a prototype letter on my computer that I send to all of the advertisers of any television program I find offensive.  It simply states that, while the writers can produce any story line they like, I can decide which products I buy, and their product won’t be one of them because I am offended by the program they align themselves with.  I send it via e-mail or hard copy and it makes me feel better. 

Think through your choices, and keep the faith.