the ther Press Volume 23 © Issue 14 ® January 20 1999 Room 1020-700 Royal Avenue New Westminster, BC V3L 5B2 submit@op.douglas.bc.ca general@op.douglas.bc.ca Fax//604.525.3505 or 604.527.5095 Phone//604.525.3542 David Lam Campus Room a3107 Phone//604.527.5805 The Other Press is Douglas College’s autonomous student newspaper. We've been publishing since 1976. The Other Press is run as a non- hierarchical collective, which means that if anything goes wrong, none will take the blame. Expect us to pass the buck. The OP is published weekly during the fall and winter semesters and monthly [as a magazine] during the summer. When we manage to publish at all. In this case, we blame technology. We receive our funding from a student levy collected every semester at registration, and from local and national advertising revenue. But, if you really want it, we'll give you your money back. Please, don’t ask. The Other Press is a member of the Canadian University Press (CUP), a cooperative of student newspapers from across Canada. We adhere to CUP’s Statement of Common Principles and Code of Ethics—not that we claim to understand them, we just stick by them. The Other Press reserves the right to choose what to publish, and what not to publish, but usually we print everything, unless it is racist, sexist or homophobic. If you have any quibbles with what we choose, maybe you should get your lazy butt down here and help. No, really. We can use the help. Coordinators Athletics ~ Hamish Knox sport@op.douglas.bc.ca Coq. Athletics ~ Mike Quong Culture ~ Jen Swanston a&e@op.douglas.bc.ca Coq. Culture ~ Ryan Kuzek Coquitlam ~ Lorenzo Sia cog_coordinator@op.douglas.bc.ca CUP Liaison ~ Cathy Tan cup@op.douglas.bc.ca Distribution ~ Pierre Florendo Features ~ Annette Martin & Jen Swanston features@op.douglas.bc.ca News ~ Annette Martin news@op.douglas.bc.ca OP/Ed ~ Tom Laws opinions@op.douglas.bc.ca Cog. OP/Ed ~ Michael Cox Photography ~ Dave Tam photo@op.douglas.bc.ca Photo Assistant: Kristina Holtz Production ~ Bodie Duble production_co@op.douglas.bc.ca Webslinger ~ Mark Smeets op_web@op.douglas.bc.ca Employees New West Advertising ~ Vacant ad@op.douglas.bc.ca Coquitlam Advertising ~ John Morash Bookkeeping ~ Zahra Jamal Production Resource~ Joyce Robinson production@op.douglas.bc.ca Editorial Resource ~ Corene McKay ed_res@op.douglas.bc.ca Contributors Holly Keyes, Gweny Wong, Jones. 2 February 3 1999 Opinions This stuff is legal? Devil's Advocate Drugs are good. The legal ones, that is. Not to say that illegal ones don't also have their perks, but for medicinal purposes, legal drugs are good. And there are millions of them. If you look in any pharmacology book, you'll see literally thousands of drugs which have purposes you cannot even begin to imagine. Most drugs are made out of necessity. That is, there is a specific illness with a specific set of symptoms that drug companies create a drug to modify. Slightly depressed or obsessive compulsive brain disorders call for an SSRI (selective seratonin reuptake inhibitor); for a manic depressive, there is lithium or Paxil. The drug companies who manufacture these drugs are now a more formidable economic force than oil companies or software design companies. If you think about it, every home in Canada has a bottle of Tylenol or ASA or Ibuprofen, but not everyone drives a car. Or has Windows on their computer. Or even has a computer at all. But they all have some form of drug. So what's the problem? You have a headache, you take a pain killer for it. It’s “that time of the month,” you take a Mydol. You have a bacterial infection, you take antibiotics to cure it. The problem is that we are depending on our bodies, the single most impressive feat of nature, less and less for help. Instead of letting a cold run its course, we take some drug to ease the pain. Then the body cannot naturally gain an immunity to this disease, and next time, our body will be just as susceptible. Whereas if you take the pain for a few days, chances are if the Other Press (CH,), NCH, \ a. - HCI O CHNO, Think before you swallow: Zantac 75 or N(2-(((5-(((dimethylamino)methyl)-2- furanyl)methyl)thio)ethyl)-N’-methyl-2-nitro-1,1-ethenediamine HCL that exact strain of disease comes back, you won't get it. Like chicken pox. Once you've had it, the body can defend against it. And everyone has heard about the ‘super virus’ that can change its protein code and thus become im- mune to the drugs we make. They adapt, like we used to, to their environment. But, for the most part, drugs do us some good. They'll ease the pain until our bodies can come back on-line. What's truly frightening are the new drugs concocted by drug companies, which are made for the sole purpose of destroying ourselves. Case in point: Those antacid pills like Zantac 75, and Tagamet HB. The Tagamet commer- cials advertise that you can eat chili dogs like a kid again without getting heartbum if you take their pill. Or you can take Zantac after eating the chili dog to relieve heartburn (the acid that crawls up from your stomach. Much like vomit does). “What a great idea,” everyone said when it came out, “finally I can eat like a pig and not feel the reprocutions of it.” What everyone fails to realize is that the human body does things to get rid of invaders. Sneezing gets rid of impuri- ties filtered through the nose, coughing releases phlegm in the lungs, and vomiting gets rid of some- thing toxic to the body. In other words, the body feels * md , a that it would be a bad thing to do to itself if it digested this substance. Maybe when you wolf down chili dogs full of nitrites and garbage like that, the body gives you heartburn saying, get this crap out of here. But now, we can just take a pill to stop our bodies from protecting us. Instead of letting a marvel of nature do what it has been doing for thousands of years, we figure that a guy in a lab coat with some Nitrogen and Carbon in a flask can do a better job. It’s just another case of people not thinking before they act. The excuse is that “it tastes good.” What kind of a society have we become that we allow ourselves to be gluttonous fools merely for the taste of something that will disappear long before the effects of it have past? Ironically, people will not ingest something immedi- ately toxic to themselves (like antifreeze) because they know it will kill them. Instead, they'll feast on things that will gradually lll them. All because it tastes good, and they don’t have to feel the negative effects of their actions for a few months. Soon, we will be totally dependent on drugs. There will be one for everything. Hell, there are already male and female versions of Viagra to help stimulation, there are drugs to help you sleep, drugs to help you keep awake, drugs to get pregnant, drugs to stop from getting pregnant, drugs to make you want to eat, and drugs to help you stop eating. Indeed, in the very near future, for every single human action, there will be a drug to either enhance it, or inhibit it. No longer will it be “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” it will become “for every action there is an equal and oppo- site addiction.” Tel. 604.720.8657 : Fax.604.454.9456 Email pgopher@yahoo.com a anything Then you say ordois— wrong by default. But write it down anyway and send it to: the Other Press Rm. 1020 Nw 1511 Wms oe ag C2) og Be Bes