Framing the Issue

One last short post before my hiatus, on framing.  The problem of drug testing has always been that the drug testing companies took advantage of a time of mass hysteria, where most people still believed the lies about drug addiction, and mass public cowardice wherein the majority was panicked enough to invite any method of control, even if it didn't work and invited massive civil rights violations.  They used this atmosphere of ignorance and fear and tribal emotionalism to not only spread their lies, but to frame the issue this way: 

"If you don't support drug testing, you are supporting the use of drugs.  Only dangerous stoners looking to protect their habit would oppose drug testing."

They did this so that those of use pointing out the valid reasons against it would be silenced.  This is a technique of witch-hunters throughout time:  frame the issue so that anyone who has concerns, objections, or even questions our methods will find themselves on the rack.  It's the technique of con-artists.  They have ensured that you and I and all of us who know the truth of what they're pulling will not be able to speak out and raise awareness of their dishonesty, and those who only have suspicions that this is ineffective BS, in the absence of the very logical and peer-review supported opposing arguments, will leap to support drug testing for fear of being seen as being pro-drug use or even be pre-convicted as a drug user themselves.  It's kept them in business since the eighties, creating an increasingly hostile environment for anyone who dares to raise awareness of the facts, to the point where some people simply refuse to even hear the facts for fear of being convinced and being accused of drug use too.  To this day, there are people who are absolutely sure I'm a hopeless stoner because of my strong stance against drug testing, and they have closed their ears to the fact that I am the most homebody white-bread girl in the world who doesn't even smoke or drink, much less the fact that I actually have valid points that are backed up by independent study or that drug testing has yet to pass peer review, the gold standard of science.  All they hear is "I wanna get stoned, and drug testing won't let me, wah!"  The drug testing companies have programmed the American people to believe this false dichotomy.

Nothing could be further from the truth, but even now many people assume that if you don't agree with drug testing you must either be high or you just "don't understand" how serious drug addiction is, and the drug testing companies clean up on this.  The fact is that those of use who oppose drug testing have a myriad of valid reasons that have never been successfully contradicted*, and we do understand drug addiction more than anyone.   We understand it so well that we know that drug testing is not the way to handle it--it's ineffective, inaccurate (despite the industry's lies), unreliable, and actually exacerbates the problem (for example, by prodding harmless marijuana users into harder drugs with narrow detection times).  Drug testing is a law enforcement tool, and law enforcement is 1) not the place of employers to enact on their employees private lives and bodies and 2) completely useless in fighting the problem of drug addiction.

So how do we fight drug addiction?  The same way that Portugal has done it:  treat it like a public health issue, decriminalize everything, and take the money out of law enforcement and pour it into free and effective rehabilitation for anyone who volunteers for it.  And this method has at least halved their addiction rates in ten years, and it's still getting better!  You see, one hand the Drug War stooges are emphasizing how serious, say, cocaine addiction is and how it requires medical attention to quit, and then they pretend that this same person is going to "just stop" using because their employer is doing random testing.  But if you eliminate the felonies against someone with a physical addiction and then give them a legitimate road out of addiction...amazingly enough, most of them flock down that road!

So don't listen to the drug testing companies, who would have us believe that to oppose their unethical and ineffective practice is tantamount to supporting drug use.  Let's start turning this around on them.

"To oppose drug testing is not equivalent to supporting drug use.  To oppose drug testing is to understand how addiction actually works in real life.  To oppose drug testing is to support reality and to support real solutions based on fact and evidence and to treat the drug problem as the public health issue it is."

The time is right to start turning this around.  The majority of the public is turning against the failed Drug War, and this could be our chance to neutralize the drug testing industry's harmful and dishonest framing of the issue.  I personally will not rest until every drug testing company is out of business forever.

Don't believe it can happen?  That's what the Drug Warriors said about marijuana legalization.  Remember the snide jokes about the "lost cause" of legalization proponents, all the hateful ignorant sneers and jibes for decades?  Now look at the fear in their eyes and the tantrums they're throwing in the face of their inevitable loss!  Marijuana accounts for 98% of all positive results, so they know they're finished once it's legalized (with all the other drugs being used in such minority and having such a narrow needle-in-a-haystack detection time, it will have to be recognized as the useless security theater blanket it is), and once we start hitting 25 medical marijuana states it's all downhill from there.

So keep your chin up, friends, and stand your ground!  Face the storm of their extinction burst with pride!  They're losing, and they know it.  We will win!

*Not that the drug testing companies haven't tried, but the only studies supporting them are the ones they conducted or funded themselves, so their arguments have all the credibility of Marlboro's "studies" that cigarette smoke is as healthy for you as oxygen.