I guess the rule is that it’s OK to drug children with benadryl for takeoff if you’re an airline, but a criminal offense to use the same drug on them at naptime if you’re running a day care center. (Actually, there is a certain logic to this, because it is undeniable that flight attendants have a more compelling interest in quiet children than do day care workers.)
Then there’s Ritalin. It’s OK for schools to drug children to make them pay attention in class, so that they’ll perform better in school. But it’s not OK to drug athletes to enhance their performance in sports. And God forbid that musicians might try improving their musical performance with drugs.
Somewhere in all of this, there’s an exception for drugging under a “performance enhancement theory” — but it is not being applied consistently.
Then there’s medication for pain. For physical pain, it’s OK to drug people — even at the risk of making them feel good. For mental pain, though, while there might be certain allowable drugs, if a drug used to treat emotional pain makes people feel good, its bad.
I’m thinking about the manufacture of morality again. It’s always tough to keep abreast of these constantly changing standards.
MORE: The bottom line seems to be that where it comes to drugs, all adults are children.
Except the authorities (and the “experts”)!
Drug the children!
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3 responses to “Drug the children!”
” And God forbid that musicians might try improving their musical performance with drugs.”
As a musician, the only drug I’ve seen actually help a musician is a beta blocker (to stop shaking from stage nerves).
Talented musicians had it whether they were on drugs or not. The untalented ones only thought the drugs made them better.
I saw the movie ‘The Guns of Navarone’ at Radio City Music Hall in 1961. In one scene, the Germans injected a captured British officer with scopolamine, a ‘truth serum’, and within a few minutes, the British officer gives the Nazis complete truthful answers to their questions. I remember thinking at the time that it would be nice if they could inject politicians with that stuff just before election eve debates.
Actually, a lot of doctors will not give adequate drugs for physical pain since the DEA has made it a habit to determine they’ve overprescribed and prosecuted them.