Drugs in Our Society

Pkdick

==========

Maria Guerra

Eng 201

Dr. Crum

19 April, 2017

Drugs in Our Society

The issue of identity has deep roots in the work of Philip K. Dick, the idea that perhaps we are not who we are, or at least our desires are not ours at all, but have been inserted by a society that seeks to become obsessive android. Dick knew that addiction was not merely a domestic or personal problem but a complex social-political affair where both the police and some corporations had a lot to do, hence the novelist's way of plotting his plot from a common stance: The paranoia. On the other hand Youngquist on his essay “Score, Scan, Schiz: Dick on Drugs he compares narcotic abuse to consumer culture and intake, he believes that “drugs represent commodities in the greater world of business transactions, then American capitalism is a drug economy through and through”. But in reality who can survive without them? For pleasure or medicinal, scored or prescribed drugs allay all kind of physical and spiritual points.

In another hand, for decades, US drug policy has consisted in criminalizing its use and distribution in the United States, and attempting to prevent its introduction into other countries. This policy has not worked. Drugs remain as available as ever, and drug addiction remains a problem. According to Youngquist in his essay he says that “recent statistics indicate that illicit drug use maybe declining, but the war on drugs range unabated”

“What I fear, he said “night and day, is that our children, your children and my children…” Again paused. “I have two,” he said. Then, extra quietly, “Little ones, very little.” And then he raised his voice emphatically. “But not too little to be addictive, calculatedly addicted, for profit, by those who would destroy this society.” Another pause “We don’t know as yet,” he continued presently, more calmly, “specifically who these men – or rather animals – are who prey on our young, as if in a wild jungle abroad, as in some foreign country, not ours. The identity of our purveyors of the poison concocted of brain- destructive filth shot daily, orally taken daily, smoked daily by several million men and women – or rather, that were once men and women.” (pg. 24)

Philip K. Dick introduces us to the world and the marginal culture of the streets, where access to dangerous substances never has a recreational goal, but works as a tool to keep alert to the constant threats. However, the most interesting thing about A Scanner Darkly is not its description of this clandestine world, but the physical and psychological nightmare of getting rid of it. People get worry all the times about what is happening in our society right now and although we all know the drugs cause a serious damage to the physical and mental health and generate networks of delinquency and corruption. Its critics point out that it is used for the defense of political interests, the interference in the internal affairs of certain nations, the irruption in the private life of the citizens and that the problems related to the drug traffic and the consumption, they come for the most part from the prohibition itself.

Youngquest on his essay says that “why