Pharmaceutical Trigger

Saw a piece on Glen Campbell's drunk driving arrest on Dateline. The first half looked like the typical piece on drinking: the history, the typical behaviors, the typical conclusions. But then, an amazing thing happened. They mentioned the fact that Campbell had had some kind of medical procedure and was then prescribed pain meds that produced anxiety attacks. That made him turn back to alcohol.

Nevermind the fact that the line between legal and illegal drugs, like so many other things in this winded culture, has become arbitrary to the point of utter meaninglessness. But the really evil part is that there is a straw man out there, the patsy, the cliche, that covers for the new, unregulated money-makers that wreak far more havoc in a month than pot has in millions of years.

Does this argument seem disjointed? As though the connection is tenuous? But isn't all drug prosecution about explaining the source of behavior? In this case, the source is a first layer that drops into another. The absolute inculpability of legal drugs under any circumstances is one of the most damning indictments of the preposterous drug war.