Are They Testing Your Urine Or
Your Spirit?
A Reader Goes From Awareness To Anger To Activism.
(Marijuananews note: Inasmuch as urine testing
is clearly aimed at nothing more than intimidating the middle class into stopping
marijuana use, it is fundamentally political.
See "Drug" Testing
and
Bill To Encourage Workplace
"Drug" Testing Funds Prohibitionist Lobbies;
Reported By Prohibitionist Propaganda
I think that the prohibitionists have assumed that if the middle class would lose interest
in marijuana – thereby wiping out its only politically effective constituency, then
the prohibitionist establishment could effectively get away with anything.
So far, so good. However, as with the overflowing prisons and the uppity sick and dying
who want to use medical marijuana, this program has created a backlash. Slowly but surely,
more and more people are objecting to the dehumanizing, degrading business of being forced
to urinate on command. People have not lost interest in personal freedom and dignity!
The following letter was distributed to the Mapinc list, so many of you may already
have seen it. However, it is so eloquent and heartfelt that I think that it deserves the
widest possible distribution.
I have corresponded a bit with the author. I am very proud of him, a fellow Texan.
Kicks butt, bro!)
February 28, 1999
Hi y’all,
I have recently volunteered, with 11 other good, enlightened people to help Mark Greer
by becoming a focus alert specialist for Mapinc. See www.mapinc.org
In the future, don’t be surprised to see one (many) of these Focus Alerts
(F.A.’s) authored by yours truly.
There are lots of opportunities "out there on the net"
and elsewhere for plain folks (like us) to be involved, make a difference and effect
change.
Sometimes it just takes a "catalyst circumstance" for a person to
make up his/her mind to find/make time to do something.
For me, it was learning that my employer (for whom I have faithfully and loyally worked
for 8 years and received numerous promotions without a single sick day) had decided that I
was not worthy or deserving of keeping my job and continuing my employment unless I could
prove that my lifestyle met the arbitrary standards of their scrutiny - based on the
contents of my urine!
So, ladies and gentlemen, there I stood, in the clinic restroom with all my personal
effects: keys, wallet, money clip, change and my dignity left outside the door, a specimen
collection cup in one hand - and in the other hand......... feeling totally, absolutely
and completely degraded and betrayed.
I knew it was wrong. I knew it was against everything I’ve
ever believed in. But I did it. I pissed in the cup. I emptied my bladder and gave it back
to them. I retrieved my keys, my wallet, my money clip and my change.
As for my dignity, it was unretrievable. Lost in the quagmire of a misguided,
oppressive, totalitarian, fascist, Orwellian policy of ignorance. Drowned in the foul
smelling filth of excreted waste at the bottom of that cup.
I hated them. I hated them all. I hated the receptionist for whom I signed away my
rights of privacy. I hated the technicians who promptly stepped away when I opened the
door, pretending they hadn’t been listening. I hated the nurse who measured the
temperature of my specimen. I hated my boss who drove me to the clinic. I hated my
employer to whom I was once grateful for giving me the best job I ever had. I hated my
co-workers who had also succumbed to this tragic result of paranoid idiocy. And I hated
myself.
I still hate myself. I hate myself every time I think about and remember the sound of
my urine rattling the bottom of that cup.
Swirling and filling that vessel as my being was filling with hate. I hate myself every
time I think that this little charade can and will be repeated randomly ad-infinitum. A
perpetual reminder that we are no longer masters of our own civil liberties, our own
bodily fluids, indeed our very dignity - anymore.
It is my wish that no one ever has to go through that experience.
It is my hope that it does not take such an experience to prompt
others to action.
Frodo
(Marijuananews note: I don’t like quoting myself, but I am reminded of how I ended
the 1986 National Review article,
In his anti-drug speech, President Reagan
urged: "Please remember this when your courage is tested: You are Americans.
You’re the product of the freest society mankind has ever known. No one ever has the
right to destroy your dreams and shatter your life." Precisely, Mr. President. And we
should remember exactly the same thing when our urine is tested.
This tragicomical, degrading, dehumanizing invasion of private
bodily functions is the perfect symbol of drug prohibition, the logical conclusion of the
subordination of the individual to a failed policy. We are not going to be drug-free,
just unfree.
That is exactly what has happened. However, our freedom is not irretrievably lost.
Frodo is regaining his freedom and dignity by working to overthrow the tyranny.
Whenever I walk around Amsterdam, I pay my respects to the monuments to the Dutch
resistance who were killed by the Nazis. Many of them were killed in the very last days of
the war, when it would have been so easy to just sit and wait for the Allies to liberate
them.
Compared to the danger they faced, ours is an easy task.
There is something that almost everyone can do. Inform yourself. Practice your writing
skills, then write letters to your politicians and newspapers, and the national media.
Join NORML and Mapinc, and any local groups -- like the ACLU and/or the Libertarian
Party -- that will help us. It isn't necessary to agree with their whole agenda. The enemy
of our enemy is our friend.
But whatever you do, don’t just sit there and curse the darkness.)
See
Supported