Illegal Drug as Anaesthetic to Poverty

Despite calls from ICC, EU, US and International Human Rights advocates to heed human rights violations, Duterte Administration stands firm on its campaign on illegal drugs to the grim of the law.  Duterte's campaign against drug menace causes divisions between human rights advocates and Duterte's supporters, not only in the country but also among countries worldwide.  At the brim, arguments are stoned against each other to soften the edifice of each camp’s position.  At the outset, there are points raised either from each camp that cause us to reflect of their explicit and implicit meanings, like this line uttered from one supporter of Duterte, "illegal drug is anaesthetic to poverty."  Aside from its explicit meaning, this line does contain some implicit meaning, which somehow gives no clearer picture of drug menace in the country, but gives us a negative impression towards the poor instead.

It is in this context that I’d like to make some analysis of that statement to highlight what is hidden in it.  In philosophy, there is a science of interpretation known as hermeneutics.  This movement has been much talked about in the later part of the 19^th and early 20^th century.  However, its grip in the academe comes loose because of the influence of post-modernism such as deconstructionism fathered by Jacques Derrida, a French philosopher.  Hermeneutics is a discipline that makes the hidden meaning in a word, a phrase, a statement explicit.  Meanings are entangled by the written symbols.  Thus, one has to clean up any entanglement found in reading a text to free any meaning hidden behind those entanglements.  To know the real meaning of the text read is very important to avoid misunderstanding.  Moreover, meaning is contextual.  It is also necessary to put it in its historical and socio-cultural contexts.  Thus, there’s a need for interpretation and re-interpretation, if necessary.

What is obviously meant in the statement, “illegal drug is anaesthetic to poverty,” is the fact that Philippines is plagued with poverty.  We witness it sprawling in shams in major cities all over the islands.  Poor communities in cities are sores to the eyes.  They are known havens of drug addicts, pushers, and drug lords.  Poor people are most vulnerable to any form of abuses like this drug menace.  Powerlessness may be the main reason of their vulnerability.  Our hunch, however, would tell us that because of lack of money or resources, the poor are tempted to resort to use, abuse, push illegal drugs.  This is, I think, the context where we can understand the meaning of the statement, “illegal drug is anaesthetic to poverty.” 

There is, moreover, another sense I’d like to interpret on the statement.  By this time, the word, “anaesthetic” will be the focus of my analysis.  In medical sense, anaesthesia is a medical substance that if applied to a part of the body, a person may experience a loss of sensation on that part of the body like pain, but not necessarily losing his/her consciousness.  Figuratively, illegal drugs like cocaine or marijuana, if taken by the poor people, they will temporarily lose their feeling of being poor.  Karl Marx noted it in the lives of Christians who were suffering from social injustices from bourgeois system in saying, “religion is the opium of the poor.”  Our logical sense would tell us that using illegal drugs will help poor people escape “in abeyance” from the shackles of poverty.  I agree, poverty makes the poor people suffer –not so much from emotional pain but from forced hunger and thirst.  But I disagree with the point that the poor resort to drugs as a way to escape “temporarily” from poverty.  This sort of argument is “sweeping generality,” which is fallacious.  It’s not true that only poor people are doomed to illegal drugs.  There are also rich people suffered from drug addiction, involved in illegal drug, and mostly they’re the ones benefitting from drug trade.

A drug addict coming from affluent family confessed that he’s addicted to drugs because he felt something void in the family.  Although financially he has enough, but his family lacks emotional support for him, which is necessary for grown-ups.  So, his addiction is like also an escape from the void plaguing modern families.  Maybe, this guy has an absent father or mother since his parent or parents are working abroad.  Or, maybe his parents are both busy in work.  Parents’ absence creates this void in the family.  Parents’ role is not only to support financially but also to give guidance to grown-ups.  Gabriel Marcel remarked if the sense of belongingness is lost in the family, one member is tempted to long for it from outside.  The easiest way for these young grown-ups to find this sense of belongingness is in their peer-group.  Peer-group influences one to take drugs, which in a way helps him escape from family reality.

In deeper analysis, the above-mentioned remarked contains a certain bias, which I call “social class bias.”  It turns out that the poor become the “easiest scapegoats” of one who tries to diagnose these social ills.  When something bad is happening, the poor Juan becomes the easy target for blame.  Of course, it’s an obvious fact.  The poor are the powerless, the defenseless.  It’s a kind of cultural bias against the poor.

In conclusion, as emotions get intense brought by the controversy on Duterte’s campaign on drugs, one has to avoid giving comments that may “poison” the real matter of the issue.