Sep 9, 2006 11:45:00 AM cite

Sima Wali: We know that these drugs are easily replaced by another addiction. The use of drugs in the case of profound suffering by human beings is more of a political issue. For example, when you look at Afghanistan, the side effects of the availability of drugs -- basically, drugs in Afghanistan and narcotics finances the war. And this is how the war, the insurgency, the war and insurgency and then during the Taliban was financed. However, this produces drug lords that prior to the war we did not have this kind of, the existence of drug lords or the war lords who financed their own crop, their way of being by drugs. But, however, we don’t have an alternate system. For example, we basically punish the farmers who plant poppies because they don’t have alternative income to produce. So they produced poppies and they benefit from poppies. We don’t need to eradicate their fields. We need to now address the root causes of war and poverty and etc., and how war is financed. So, drugs are there in the world. It has replaced the economy of choice. In Afghanistan, especially, drugs and drug finances the war. The illicit narcotic financing is about 60 percent of our economy, if not more. And, it is very important that we need to recognize, that we need to address the root causes of poverty and of war and that creates the side effects, which is basically one of the tragedies of Afghanistan, the production that is being -- that is currently undertaken.

by Sima Wali

Sep 9, 2006 11:45:00 AM cite

Simon Retallack: Well, of course, I think the suffering of the world has many causes. Drugs can contribute to suffering. There’s no doubt about that, I think, for the users of drugs and people that live with the users of drugs and the people that suffer from the users of drugs in the sense that in many instances addicts turn to crime to feed and support their habits. And there are victims. There’s absolutely no doubt about the drug culture. And the biggest victims, I think, are the users of drugs themselves. I think it is a problem that is hard to change. I think that we need to do far more to think about the drug problem in a holistic way, not just about the elimination of the production of illegal drugs--of course that’s a part of it--or about tougher policing, but about--it’s about understanding why people turn to drugs in the first place. And I think it’s a lot about -- of course, it’s about—escapism, about finding some relief from the stress and strain of modern life and for some people a source of -- I think it’s fake, but a source of –even if it’s fake – spiritual feeling, a connection to something beyond us; and in the past religions used to provide that; now religions particularly in the developed world have declined. It hasn’t happened; and drugs to some extent have filled that void, but it’s no answer. It’s a…[audio ends]

by Simon Retallack

Sep 9, 2006 11:45:00 AM cite

Sohrab Mahdavi: The second part of the question makes sense - addiction is a way to connect to another person, to another human being. Sometimes it’s excessive. We call it unhealthy relationship and sometimes it’s not that excessive but it brings dependency of sorts and we call it healthy. The same is true with relationship with substances. All kinds of substances. It doesn’t matter. Relationship to healthy substances can also be obsessive. The current drive for organic food, for foods that are wholesome, to me, is also an addiction that an unhealthy one because it ignores the totality of food production and the way we relate to food. It ignores that and it focuses on exclusive food, on food that are only in one part can be found in one part of the world and can be found on their exclusive conditions. As such, there is no difference between drugs, hard drugs, or organic food. It’s the relationship that determines how excessive, obsessive that relationship is to the substance, to the world.

by Sohrab Mahdavi

Sep 9, 2006 11:45:00 AM cite

Song Kosal: Drugs is not the only source of suffering. Yes, it is possible that addiction is really about relationships that human being form with another.

by Song Kosal

Sep 9, 2006 11:45:00 AM cite

Stephanie Robinson: I would argue that no. Addiction, even if we didn’t have drugs in the world, addiction to something would still exist. I think that addiction is part of a personality trait. I don’t believe that that personality trait in and of itself if it was removed, along with drugs, that suffering would somehow be eradicated. I mean what happens with addiction is actually a symptom of a deeper longing. Some would argue that is a longing for a deeper connection of relationships. I would argue that people who are addicted and people who suffer somehow, sometimes are in connection with many people and it’s not necessarily the connections and relationships that are built but it is something that is inside of the person that causes them to suffer. It’s the idea of tragedy, the idea of the complications and the woes of the world that cause internal suffering. So I don’t think that the absence of drugs somehow would cure addiction. I don’t think that simple willpower can defeat suffering. It is to say that drugs in and of themselves is problematic because it allows people to satiate somehow other problems that run quite deeper and it allows us to live in a place that masks what the real symptoms are, the real cause of the suffering may be. But by eradicating drugs altogether it of course would not eliminate the suffering that so many people in communities actually endure in this world.

by Stephanie Robinson

Sep 9, 2006 11:45:00 AM cite

Steve Earle: Addiction to drugs is about drugs. But most of the misery that drugs cause in the world are about the market. They are about a product that creates a demand for itself. And our capacity as human beings to take advantage of our fellow human beings when we are confronted with an opportunity to make a lot of money really, really, really fast. Cocaine still only grows in one part of the world. It grows on the western slope of the Andes, and nobody has ever been able to cultivate it outside of that, and it still manages to get all over the world because there's a demand for it. And that demand was created by people that intentionally introduced it into other cultures. Because they knew that it created a demand for itself. It's the perfect product.

by Steve Earle

Sep 9, 2006 11:45:00 AM cite

Sulak Sivaraksa: Yes, I think the second part of the question is more appropriate. Drugs are bad, but drugs which is bad is worse than the drugs we know in the world. It is the drugs in our mind, which in Buddhism we call craving. When the mind is dull, the mind becomes very selfish, and this selfishness once is controlled by greed it never ends. It accommodate more and more money, more and more power. It also could be controlled by hatred, more and more violence to control the whole world, and worse than that because these drugs in the mind is linked to ignorance, delusion, egoism, and that of course really is bad. In the Buddhist teaching with ignorance that is selfishness, egoism, then the whole process of suffering started. So you can end the whole process of suffering by understanding the drug in the mind, and clear that drugs by mindfulness, by synchronizing your head and your heart, become less and less selfish, become mindful; then ignorance, delusion could be transformed into wisdom; greed could be transformed into generosity; hatred, violence could be transformed into living kindness, compassion. And then of course the ignorance, the deep roots drugged in the mind could really become transformed into wisdom.

by Sulak Sivaraksa

Sep 9, 2006 11:45:00 AM cite

Susan George: Well, I’ve never taken drugs myself and I’ve never been confronted in a life situation with this problem, and thank God my children did not and do not have substance abuse problem. But, I suppose my generation would be more given to alcoholism than to drugs. But, I think, addiction it’s not just a substance; it’s an addiction to what we think is going to be pleasurable. Of course, human beings seek pleasure and they seek to avoid pain and drugs seem to be a quick road to doing both of those. In this, we are just like other species. If you give rats a possibility to push the pleasure button, they will do so to the point of exhaustion. And, I -- we always have to remember that we are animals and that we run the danger of the risk of giving in too much to our animal nature and not appealing to what some of the Renaissance philosophers called, you know, we are little below the angels. We are somewhere between the angel and the beast, and we can also call upon our more angelic natures. But, I think, we are -- we have a passion for pleasure, but we do not always understand what are the more refined kinds of pleasures and thereby fall back on drugs. And, I think, the suffering that is caused by this is caused to people whose horizons have not been opened to know what are more refined and more pleasurable pleasures, if I can say that, than those that come from substances and forgetting who one is. That’s what substances do. They help us to forget who we are. We should do more to try to [audio ends]

by Susan George

Sep 9, 2006 11:45:00 AM cite

Swami Pragyapad: Answertext will be available soon.

by Swami Pragyapad

Sep 9, 2006 11:45:00 AM cite

Sydney Possuelo: I would say no. There would be no human suffering. The question of drugs... . If we could snap a finger and change all this, I think that the world is so fantastic with its colours, this illumination, I think that living is so fantastic and I didn’t use drugs, I don’t like drugs. I personally don’t like it. I would say that this has to do with this vision, this relation, I think that drugs have to do more with individual problems or with human relationships and behaviour. I think that it is something like this. For example, I never defended drugs. It is not my way. []In a certain way I think that, for me its not a good way, the way of drugs. I also think that using them doesn’t ameliorate the relationship with others. I don’t know.

by Sydney Possuelo

Sep 9, 2006 11:45:00 AM cite

Tamas St. Auby: If there would be no longer any drugs, there would be even much more suffering, especially in the case of missing the morphine. Let people live their will even for being addicted by drugs.

by Tamas St. Auby

Sep 9, 2006 11:45:00 AM cite

Tania Bruguera: [inaudible] If tomorrow the drugs disappeared by [inaudible] magic, I think that [inaudible] wouldn´t diappear [inaudible]they are consequences of suffering and not one single reason for [inaudible] consequence and what would happen is that the society would search other [inaudible] for which [inaudible] regulate the suffering, which create escape [inaudible] drugs are a bit some kins of escape, a bit a kind of state to another of being human. I think that on the one hand the drugs are beyond control but if the drugs were used in a regular way they weren´t such a bad thing in the world. There are some [inaudible] which lead to another state of consciousness, to another state of being human, [inaudible]. The only problem is in the way in which we treat the drug it´s like an escape from the society and not like

by Tania Bruguera

Sep 9, 2006 11:45:00 AM cite

Tavis Smiley: I don’t subscribe to the philosophy that just because there are no more drugs in the world that all suffering is over, because there is so much suffering in the world not connected to drugs. In fact, people turn to drugs, oftentimes, to avoid the suffering that they’re experiencing in other aspects of their lives. So I’m not certain that just because there are no drugs we render suffering inoperable or nonexistent. That said, what bothers me even more so, or certainly just as much, is how we deal with the crisis of drugs that has engulfed the world in which we live. Too often I find that we look at this drug crisis first and foremost as an issue of criminality rather than as an issue of high-quality and good health, so that when a person has a drug problem the first thing we look to do is to deal with it from a criminal aspect, rather than to accept and to embrace the fact that this person has a health problem, a health challenge, and it ought to be attacked and addressed from that particular angle. So I think that we go about dealing with the drug crisis in the wrong way to begin with.

by Tavis Smiley

Sep 9, 2006 11:45:00 AM cite

Tegla Loroupe: Answertext will be available soon.

by Tegla Loroupe

Sep 9, 2006 11:45:00 AM cite

Thenmozhi Soundararajan: This question was actually very hard for me, because I needed to actually take a step back and look at some of the assumptions being asked here. I think there’s actually two structural problems that it’s talking about. The first is, I think, one question of why is it that people addict themselves and I think that has to do with a whole host of the ways people cope with a very stressful and violent society. But I think that’s very different for the structural reasons about why our governments engage and use drug and drug monies to be able to promote their intentions of empire. That’s actually what I would like to talk a little bit about. I know that with the United States the ‘War on Drugs’ is similar to the ‘War on Terror’. It was a very convenient frame to use in the ‘80s to be able to funnel lots of money to governments that were doing bad things to their people that we supported because we didn’t want them to become Communists; one of the most famous of which was the Iran-Contra that led to the Iran-Contra Affair. I think one of the things that was terribly tragic about the ‘War on Drugs’ was that the ‘War on Drugs’ punitized people that were already dealing with addiction issues, and penalizing people that are drug addicts actually doesn’t provide them services to get off of drugs. It just actually provides a readily available prison labor workforce that can work for slave wages versus working wages. I also think one of the things when you look at the ‘War on Drugs’ and the failure that it was in the United States was that it was one of the ways that we introduced crack cocaine into our communities. It’s ironic that we had a drug czar. We were publicly saying how bad drugs were, and yet at a time when Black communities and urban communities as a whole were at this amazing pivotal historical moment coming out of the ‘60s and ‘70s, self-determination movements, you had crack enter their communities and it was like watching a wave of self-destruction. That was something our government did and for which I believe there should be reparations for. So, I really think when I look at the ‘War on Drugs’ I kind of think of it is an empty frame. I think it was convenient for ‘Empire Building’ and it’s created a fluid workforce that can work for prison wages and has not effectively [audio ends]

by Thenmozhi Soundararajan

Sep 9, 2006 11:45:00 AM cite

Tu Weiming: It is important to recognize that addiction is only one form of all kinds of human sufferings. The obsession with one particular substance is manifested in many kinds of self-deception and self-obsessiveness related to the isolation of the person from the rest of humanity and so I agree it is not simply a medical problem. It’s a social problem, it's a personal problem, it’s a problem of human relatedness. However, the elimination of addiction is inevitably intertwined with medicine. It is important to understand the physical, chemical, physiological, neurological features involved in the addiction and that’s what science and technology have helped us to understand. But it is not enough simply to remain at that level. We need to look at the situation holistically and we need to look at the situation sequentially. We need to involve not only a physician, the expert in dealing with the problem, we have to involve another extended network of concerned people, especially members of the family, friends and so forth. And if the elimination of addiction naturally brings to happiness, then a human world would be very simple and simple minded. That certainly is not the case.

by Tu Weiming

Sep 9, 2006 11:45:00 AM cite

Valentina Melnikova: Sufferings are a part of our life, a part of human existence. And desappearing of drugs would not relieve a human being of sufferings, but it can reduce the number of people who are out of human life at first temporarily and then forever. This terrible suffering of people who depend on drugs could certainly be reduced both by creating a sytem to oviate grug dependence and educating self-confidence in people and practice of optimism and of a habit to calculate on one's own abilities and find consolation and oblivion neither in drugs, nor in alcohol, nor in antisocial behavior. The drug problem is in my opinion related to the suicide problem because a man who depends on drugs actually deprives himself of the right to live, accepts the fact that he is destroying himself and that he is not able to struggle and survive in this world. And certainly the start of drugs dependence can be linked with family, society, work or studing.

by Valentina Melnikova