Uruguay - the first country to create a legal market for drugs

Uruguay has taken a momentous step towards becoming the first country in the world to create a legal, national market for cannabis after the lower chamber of its Congress voted in favour of the groundbreaking plan.

The Bill would allow consumers to either grow up to six plants at home or buy up to 40g per month of the soft drug – produced by the government – from licensed chemists for recreational or medical use. Previously, although possession of small amounts for personal consumption was not criminalised in the small South American nation, growing and selling it was against the law.

The Bill passed by 50 votes to 46 shortly before midnight on Wednesday after a 14-hour debate as pro-legalisation activists crowded the balconies above the legislature floor. 

Uruguay’s Senate, where the ruling left-wing coalition has a larger majority, is now expected to approve the measure. President José Mujica, an octogenarian former armed rebel – who has previously overseen the passing of measures to allow abortion and gay marriage – backs the move.

Proponents of the Bill argue marijuana use is already prevalent in Uruguay and that by bringing consumers out of the shadows the government will be better able to regulate their behaviour, drive a wedge between them and peddlers of harder, more dangerous drugs, and tax cannabis sales.

They also believe that it closes the loophole that outlaws growing or buying cannabis while turning a legal blind eye to its consumption. Currently, judges in Uruguay have discretion to decide whether an undefined small quantity of the drug is for personal use or not.

Campaigners for an end to prohibition were quick to claim the vote as a landmark in the international push for drug policy reform. “Sometimes small countries do great things,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, whose board includes entrepreneur Richard Branson, but also the late President Ronald Reagan’s former Secretary of State, George Shultz.

“Uruguay’s bold move does more than follow in the footsteps of Colorado and Washington,” added Mr Nadelmann, referring to the two Western US states that recently also permitted recreational cannabis use. “It provides a model for legally regulating marijuana that other countries, and US states, will want to consider.”

Hannah Hetzer, the Drug Policy Alliance’s Americas coordinator, who is based in Montevideo, added: “At the heart of the Uruguayan marijuana regulation Bill is a focus on improving public health and public safety. Instead of closing their eyes to the problem of drug abuse and drug trafficking, Uruguay is taking an important step towards responsible regulation of an existing reality.”

Nevertheless, the measure has divided Uruguay and in the run-up to the vote few dared predict its outcome, with the 99-member house almost split down the middle. All 49 opposition deputies had agreed to vote against the measure en bloc, while the 50 members of President Mujica’s ruling coalition were due to back it.

One of the government deputies, Darío Pérez, a doctor by training, had warned that cannabis is a gateway drug to harder substances and feared that fully legalising it would trigger a mushrooming of Uruguay’s already serious problems with crack and other cheaper, highly addictive cocaine derivatives.

In the most keenly awaited speech of the debate, Mr Pérez attacked the Bill but said he would vote in line with the coalition whip, although he could not have made his displeasure clearer. “Marijuana is manure,” he told the chamber. “With or without this law, it is the enemy of the student and of the worker.”

Mr Pérez was also unhappy with what he saw as a broken promise by Mr Mujica not to foist the law on a society that was not yet ready for it, citing a recent survey by pollsters Cifra that found 63 per cent of Uruguayans opposed cannabis legalisation while 23 per cent backed it.

Last December, the president had temporarily placed the measure on the back burner to give advocates a chance to rally public opinion. “The majority has to come in the streets,” he said then. “The people need to understand that with bullets and baton blows, putting people in jail, the only thing we are doing is gifting a market to the narco-traffickers.”

But those arguments failed to convince Gerardo Amarilla, a deputy for the conservative opposition National Party, who told the chamber: “We are playing with fire. Maybe we think that this is a way to change reality. Unfortunately, we are discovering a worse reality.”

Official studies from Uruguay’s National Drugs Board have found that of the country’s population of 3.4 million, around 184,000 people have smoked cannabis in the last year. Of that number, 18,400 are daily consumers. But independent researchers believe that may be a serious underestimate. The Association of Cannabis Studies has claimed there are 200,000 regular users in Uruguay.

One thing that no one disputes is that Uruguay has a serious and growing problem with harder drugs, principally cocaine and its highly addictive derivatives flooding into the Southern Cone and Brazil, mainly from Peru and Bolivia. That, in turn, has fuelled a crime wave as addicts seek to fund their cravings. Breaking the link between them and cannabis users is one of the government’s principal justifications for marijuana legalisation.

Under the measure, registered users will be able to buy cannabis from the nation’s chemists, cultivate plants at home and form cannabis clubs of 15 to 45 members to collectively grow up to 99 plants. Although the high would depend on the strength of the cannabis, which can vary significantly, the 40g per month limit would allow a user to potentially smoke several joints every day. To prevent cannabis tourism, such as that which has developed in Amsterdam, only Uruguayan nationals will be able to register as cannabis purchasers or growers.

Uruguay’s move comes as pressure grows across Latin America for a new approach to Washington’s “war on drugs”, which has ravaged the region, seeing hundreds of thousands die in drug-fuelled conflicts from Brazil’s favelas to Mexico’s troubled border cities.

Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos has called for a discussion of the alternatives while his Guatemalan counterpart Otto Pérez Molina has openly advocated legalisation. Meanwhile, Felipe Calderón, President of Mexico from 2006 to 2012, has also called for a look at “market” solutions to the drug trade.

Crucially, all three are conservatives with impeccable records as tough opponents of the drug trade. Mr Pérez Molina is a former army general with a no-nonsense reputation, while Mr Santos served as Defence Minister for his predecessor, the hard-right President Álvaro Uribe. Meanwhile, Mr Calderón was widely criticised during his time in power for the bloodbath unleashed by his full-frontal assault on the drug cartels, a conflict which cost an estimated 60,000 lives during his presidency.

The subversive world of online drug dealing

 

Encrypted websites selling illegal drugs may render prohibition obsolete, but their profit-driven nature could be just as harmful

• 
• • Mike Power
  • guardian.co.uk, Monday 1 July 2013 19.00 BST

Drugs … 'there will always be a market'. Photograph: Anthony Bolante/Reuters

A nameless admin at Atlantis, a website selling everything from magic mushrooms to marijuana to crack cocaine, posted an advert on YouTube last week. The video was swiftly taken down, but not before about 40,000 people had seen it, copied down the strange URL and gone off to investigate. It's part of a bold new marketing campaign to allow people to easily buy illegal drugs, wherever they are in the world. Whether that's a good or bad thing is debatable.

Atlantis is a competitor to the Silk Road, an underground online market where drugs are bought and sold openly, sent to users under plain wrap in the mail. But where the Silk Road hides and does not share its URL very widely, Atlantis is shockingly blatant and comes over like a cocky web start-up. It is paying dividends: the site's owners claim to have processed half a million dollars in deals since March. There are allegations that it is a honeypot, drawing in ex-Silk Road vendors by charging lower fees, and offering proprietary encryption, rather than demanding that users learn PGP software (Pretty Good Privacy). This means the site's owners might be able to see where dealers on the site are sending drugs to, and identify customers, or listen in on email conversations and begin to expose dealers. Might the DEA have set up a bogus site to ensnare the unwary?

While nothing any government does around privacy should surprise us nowadays, from indiscriminately recording our every thought and whim, to spying on the grieving parents of murdered children with the aim of smearing their characters, the emergence of Atlantis and sites like it into the mainstream does raise the interesting prospect of a new war on encryption. Encryption software, most commonly PGP, scrambles your mail, making it impossible for a third party who does not own two special "keys" to read your mail. 

Now the Prism and Tempora cats are out of the bag, and it's dawned on almost everyone what fools they've been, I'd guess that governments will soon be very keen to control encryption and will use the drug problem as a straw man defence for their next wave of intrusion. Note to government, it didn't work last time. To quote John Callas, who helped invent PGP with Phil Zimmerman: "PGP is just math, and you can't ban math."

In the UK, though, encryption can be a de facto crime under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa), the Labour-era assault on civil liberties. Refuse to hand over the private keys to your private files and you can and will be jailed. IT website The Register reported in 2009 that the first person jailed under part three of Ripa was "a schizophrenic science hobbyist with no criminal record". Found with a model rocket as he returned from Paris, he refused to give police the keys to his encrypted data: indeed, he refused to speak at all, and was jailed for 13 months. Six months into his sentence the man was sectioned under the Mental Health Act and does not know when he will be released.

It's pretty easy to see what the initial official response to sites such as Atlantis will be. There'll be a concerted media campaign to scare people off. A few big busts of users, plus an attempted and likely very public assault on Bitcoin, the anonymous currency used to pay for the drugs.

But Bitcoin is essentially unassailable, because the currency has no central bank, and is made and maintained by a network of users. There's now enough of it in circulation to become a closed and private economy. Bitcoin is divisible into eight decimal places – 0.00000001 BTC is the smallest amount that can be handled in a transaction – so there's plenty of spare capacity. Perhaps an attack on Tor might work? Tor is the anonymising software that enables these markets to be hosted and accessed secretly. To quote Andrew Lewman, the Tor project's spokesman: 

"Our code is all open source, everything we do is open source, and is mirrored all over the world. So even if, for whatever reason, let's say the paedophile-terrorist-druglords and the four horsemen of the apocalypse take over Tor and that's the majority usage, then the current Tor network could shut down, and just like a phoenix it will get born again. Then maybe we'll have 10 or 1,200 Tor networks because everyone starts running their own."

The only way to tackle online markets such as this is to make postal procedures hugely onerous. But that costs. The Royal Mail is about to be privatised and no one wants to invest. With 96% of its staff supporting a strike and opposing privatisation, it's hard to see workers agreeing to new requirements to scan every piece of post for drugs. In any case, queues in understaffed offices are so lengthy and the entire process of posting a letter so redolent of the frustrating world before the net there would be a customer revolt.

And there's no way sniffer dogs can tackle the circa 70m pieces of just domestic post at the sorting offices each day. When I was researching my book on the internet drugs trade, the Royal Mail refused to answer even the simplest questions about steps taken to identify packages containing drugs. The reason for that, postmen have told me privately, is that there are none. There's a new Russian anonymous market, that has just come online too. There will be many more, since prohibition makes their operation profitable and their use logical.

Free market economics, whose rules of supply and demand we so conspicuously ignore in this vast sector of the economy, make simple herbs and plant extracts or simply produced chemicals worth many millions of pounds per tonne. And so there will always be a market. That market has now been virtualised: Drugs 2.0 – click here to buy now.

But while I smile in disbelief at the defiance and subversion of sites like Silk Road and Atlantis, I can't help thinking that this cavalier dismantling of the failed and discredited prohibition model, replacing it with another system driven by private profit with no regard to people's health, risks exposing people to similar harms as prohibition did. Note past tense.  

What Sexual Consent Really Means

How do we teach young people what sexual consent really means?

Reports from youth workers suggest that many young people are confused as to what constitutes rape. But recent events show that they are not the only ones

• 
• • Emine Saner
  • guardian.co.uk, Monday 27 August 2012 20.00 BST

Many young people believe that sex education comprises "too little, too late" Photograph: Rex Features

"Young people will describe scenarios where, I think 'this sounds abusive'," says Rhiannon Holder, a youth worker for Brook, the sexual advisory service for young people and co-chair of Bread, a Bristol youth project.

"They're not sure if they had sex or they wanted sex – and if they did have sex they're not sure if they consented to it. As professionals, we're having to reflect to young people [that some] of the situations they have experienced could be labelled as sexual bullying or assault, or rape."

With politicians such as George Galloway and Tony Benn spouting shameful ideas of what consent means (having sex with someone who is asleep is "bad sexual etiquette", not rape, according to Galloway), a worryingly high proportion of the adult public doesn't seem to grasp it either. A survey for Amnesty found 37% of respondents thought a woman was responsible for being raped if she didn't say "no" clearly enough. With attitudes like this, is it any surprise young people may be dangerously confused?

They certainly seem to be. Only 69% of young men would not try to have sex with someone who did not want to, and one in 20 said they would try to have sex with someone who was asleep, according to a shocking 2010 survey of young people aged between 18 and 25 by the Havens, the specialist London-based sexual assault referral centres. A significant proportion also seemed confused about what constitutes rape: only 77% of young men agreed that having sex with someone who has said no was rape. While in 2009, a study for the NSPCC found a third of girls aged between 13 and 17 who were in relationships had experienced unwanted sexual acts, and one in 16 had been raped.

So, what needs to change? "Too often [consent] is viewed as a simple yes or no, and it's much more complex than that," says Holder. "I don't think many young people are offered the opportunity to explore all of the factors involved in giving consent: peer pressure, alcohol and drugs, self-esteem, coercion, gender issues."

When Holder does workshops with young people, she asks them to consider different scenarios, "and generate discussion around what it means to be in a relationship; what it means to have safe and positive sex. For instance, we would look at situations where you have had sex with someone before, or if you've kissed somebody; does that mean youhave to go on and have sex? Also it's about taking responsibility for consent, so making it clear it's not just the person who has the responsibility for saying 'yes'. Young men should actively be seeking consent."

It isn't just about the words, she says. "We'll explore what 'yes' does, and doesn't, look like."

"Often people don't say 'no' but they'll say 'that hurts', or 'not yet', or 'I don't like it'. Or it might be in their body language," she adds.

Then there are the assumptions about timing, she says. "A lot of the young people I have met are shocked that you can revoke consent – you might have had sex with somebody before, or started a sexual act, but that doesn't mean the sex can't stop at any time.

"I've spoken to young people who have said they didn't really want to do it, but they didn't know how to say 'no' or 'stop'."

Whitney Iles, a community activist, agrees. She thinks many young people are confused by "so many different messages. On one side, you're told about how you should have sex within a loving relationship, on the other side you can see how pop culture is highly sexualised. It's a real confusion over identity and value of self, which then makes it harder to know what you want and where the line is. There is a blurred line of what is normal, or what has become normalised, and what is crossing a line."

Earlier this year, the government launched an online and TV advertising campaign to educate teenagers about rape, and consent, but it seems a poor substitute for good sex education in schools. The problem, says Simon Blake, chief executive of Brook, is that sex education "is incredibly patchy, and what young people have been saying for a really long time is 'too little, too late, too biological'."

The Labour government failed to do enough to make personal, social, health and economics education (PSHE), of which sex and relationships education (SRE) is a part, a statutory requirement for schools. "Although secondary schools have to teach some SRE, virtually nothing is specified and there is no agreed curriculum for it, so schools can teach what they like," says Jane Lees, chair of the Sex Education Forum.

The government's review of PSHE, which ended last year, is still to report, but things could get even worse, Lees fears. "Our concern is that it is likely to slim it down much more, or reduce the expectation that schools will teach it," she says. "When the coalition came in and started the review of PSHE, one of the issues that they raised was about consent, so it is on their minds but we still have no final outcomes from it. We're in limbo at the moment."

"A lot of young people are growing up without really knowing what consent means," says Whitney Iles. "But then I think a lot of adults don't really know either."

Big pharma is cut out by India's plan to bring medicine to masses

Ambitious $5bn push deals blow to global firms with focus on generic alternatives above branded drugs

NIKHIL KUMAR 

 

 

FRIDAY 06 JULY 2012

India is planning a multibillion-dollar push to bring free medicines to the hundreds of millions of its citizens who, despite the country's economic revival, still languish without access to the very basics of health care.

The $5bn initiative, which is slated to be rolled out by the end of this year, will offer 348 essential drugs to patients across the country. In a blow to the West's big pharmaceutical firms, the planned scheme will largely cut out branded drugs, opting instead for cheaper generic alternatives.

News of the plan comes as the Congress-led administration in Delhi attempts to shore up public support after a raft of corruption scandals and crushing electoral losses in state polls. A recent report confirming a slowdown in economic growth has only served to sharpen criticism of the government.

Now, Delhi is plotting a multi-billion dollar health-care drive, using its network of government-funded hospitals and clinics to deliver free drugs across a country where, despite the much-vaunted boom of recent years, more than two million young children die every year from preventable infections, according to Unicef.

Infant mortality stands at 63 per 1,000 live births, while a recent paper in the Lancet medical journal said that of the nearly five million children under five who succumbed to preventable diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria in 2010, almost half had come from five countries: Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan and, notably, China and India.

All the while, the Indian state spends so little on health care as a proportion of GDP that only a handful of countries fare worse, according to the OECD.

The bulk of the cash for the free medicine plan will come from central coffers, while state governments will be asked to shell out an additional third of the required funds. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said it had put forward proposals worth around $3.64bn. The additional funding – from the states – will boost the investment to around $4.9bn, signalling, if approved, "a giant step in vastly expanding the access to medicines", the Ministry said. A template already exists in the western state of Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu in the south, where health schemes are reported to have been successful.

The focus on generic medicines chimes both with the need for affordability and the dynamics of India's pharmaceutical market. Generics – or cheaper copies of expensive branded medicines whose patents have run out – accounted for around 90 per cent of the total drug sales in the country in 2010, according to Reuters data.

The gulf between the cost of branded drugs and generic alternatives is often vast. The Rajasthan state government, for instance, buys the generic version of a popular cholesterol drug for just over 6 rupees (7p) for a strip of 10 tablets, according to official figures quoted by India's Economic Times newspaper. In contrast, consumers opting for a branded alternative face costs of 103 rupees.

Although reports indicate that doctors participating in the planned scheme will be able to use 5 per cent of the sanctioned funds to buy medicines absent from the approved list of 348 generic drugs, the initiative presents a fresh challenge for global pharmaceutical giants such as GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer.

Big pharma, as that end of the industry is known, is already struggling to forge new avenues for growth. Being locked out of a major initiative in a key emerging market won't help.

"Without a doubt, it is a considerable blow to an already beleaguered industry, recently the subject of several disadvantageous decisions in India," KPMG's European head of chemicals and pharmaceuticals, Chris Stirling, told Reuters.

"Pharmaceutical firms are likely to rethink their emerging markets strategies carefully to take account of this development, and any similar copycat moves across other geographies."

EU closer to India trade deal

By Bari Bates in Asia Times Online

BRUSSELS - Behind closed doors, a trade deal affecting a fifth of the world's population has been quietly in the works for years. But while details of the free trade agreement (FTA) between the European Union and India remain ambiguous to the general public, concerns continue to mount over the effects such a deal could have on an unsuspecting third party: the affordable drug market of the developing world.

Negotiations have been underway for five years, with details on issues such as India's generic drug market sending delegates from both the EU and India through multiple rounds of deliberations in the hopes of settling on an FTA that would be "mutually beneficial and sustainable", especially given Europe's current economic climate.

Finally, the five-year ordeal seems to be moving toward a conclusion, according to the European External Action service. The latest EU-India summit took place on February 10 and was hailed by Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, president of the European Commission, as a "significant step forward".

The European Union is already India's primary trade partner and largest source of foreign direct investment (FDI), according to Barroso.

EU-India trade doubled to more than 67.9 billion euros (US$89.5 billion) in 2010 from 28.6 billion euros in 2003, while EU investment has tripled to three billion euros since 2003.

Barroso says the final agreement will be reached this autumn and, if passed, would signal the implementation of the world's largest trade agreement in the world, opening the doors for research and innovation, job creation, and countless business opportunities.

But some experts and activists are fiercely opposed to the deal, which they say will stunt the availability of affordable medicine in the developing world.

'Hands off our medicine'
These concerns aren't new; the issue has been on the radars of several organizations for years, with growing concerns over how the trade agreement is being reached and what it means for organizations who work to supply low-cost medicines to those in need.

As the FTA has evolved, certain measures such as data exclusivity have been taken off the table, though other potentially harmful provisions remain.

Initial opposition to the trade deal centered on issues of intellectual property rights and market access for large European businesses, with the not-for-profit group Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) at the helm with a petition to halt the trade agreement altogether. The petition had the signatures of over 100 organizations as of December 2010, just prior to the 11th EU-India summit.

One of CEO's biggest concerns is that new trade rules could stall the distribution of generic drugs, thus keeping patented medicine prices high and increasing the overall cost of healthcare for households. According to Oxfam International, generic competition lowers medicine prices by 90-99%.

Most significantly, generic competition in India has lowered prices for first line antiretroviral drugs to US$100 per year for a single patient, down from $10,000 just 10 years ago for the same treatment.

Doctors Without Borders (known in French as Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF), an independent international medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid, has also been steering opposition to the FTA's impact on generic drugs.

The organizations's campaign called for Europe to keep its "hands off our medicine" and issued a statement outlining risks associated with the widening net of enforcement provisions, which have serious implications for the availability of medicines.

If certain enforcement provisions related to intellectual property are included in the FTA, they could give large pharmaceutical companies the right to sue not only generic drug manufacturers but also generic drug suppliers and customers, MSF said.

Such measures could deter treatment providers from buying or supplying generic drugs, leaving the far more expensive brand drugs as the only option for people in desperate need.

The organization rallied in New Delhi on February 10 along with HIV-positive community members to call attention to the remaining provisions in the FTA that put the generic drug market in serious jeopardy.

Nearly 2,000 people strong, the protests included remarks from MSF president Unni Karunakara, who said, "We have watched too many people die in places where we work because the medicines they need are too expensive. We cannot allow this trade deal to shut down the pharmacy of the developing world."

Given that Europe posits itself as a world leader in development aid, the potential hypocrisy of the situation isn't lost: if these provisions are, in fact, included in the FTA, the EU stands to undermine its own large-scale aid efforts by limiting access to life-saving medications.

Besides the petition, CEO also launched legal action against the European Commission early last year, claiming that corporate lobby groups were given privileged access to information on the EU-India trade talks.

The organization alleged that 17 documents were released to industrial players but withheld from CEO because it would "undermine the EU's international relations".

CEO requested the documents in order to monitor the trade deal, which the organization believes leans much heavily towards the interests of large corporations at the expense of trade unions, non-governmental organizations and small enterprises.

CEO's Pia Eberhardt said that she expects a hearing within the first half of this year, though no formal date has been set. From that point, it will take roughly six additional months to reach a conclusion. But while the case circles the justice system, the FTA could slip through the cracks.

Sugar: it's time to get real and regulate

The consumption of fructose and sucrose is on the increase – and so are preventable diseases such as Type 2 diabetes

• 
• • Jacqueline Windh
  • guardian.co.uk, Monday 13 February 2012

Last week, a trio of American scientists led by Robert Lustig, professor of clinical paediatrics at the University of California, published an article in the journal Nature, outlining the toxic effects that sugar has on humans and arguing for governmental controls on its sale and distribution. While the authors come short of labelling sugar a "poison" outright, in a 2007 interview with ABC Radio about excess sugar consumption, Lustig said: "We're being poisoned to death. That's a very strong statement, but I think we can back it up with very clear scientific evidence."

That evidence has been growing – particularly in the western world, where consumption of sugar is increasing rapidly. Globally, sugar consumption has tripled in the past 50 years. But, it turns out, the greatest threat to human health is one type of sugar in particular: fructose.

In the US, per-capita consumption of fructose, a common food additive there – mainly in the form of high-fructose corn syrup – has increased more than 100-fold since 1970. Although fructose is not a common added sweetener in the UK and other countries, sucrose is; sucrose contains 50% fructose. Lustig and his co-authors note that last year, the United Nations announced that non-communicable diseases (NCDs) had, for the first time, overtaken infectious diseases in terms of the global health burden. Non-communicable diseases now account for 63% of all deaths, and that total is expected to increase by a further 17% over the next decade.

The scientists cite growing evidence that our increasing consumption of sugar is partly responsible for the growth of NCDs: diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and the suite of symptoms known as metabolic syndrome. And they argue that, as for substances known to cause NCDs such as tobacco and alcohol, sales and distribution of sugar should be controlled, and products with added sugar should be taxed.

I used to be a sugar addict. And yes, for those who haven't found out first-hand, sugar is addictive; perhaps not to the same degree as alcohol and tobacco, but a recent study has shown that sugary foods, or even just the expectation of eating sweets, can trick the brain into wanting more. When I decided to cut my sugar consumption 12 or so years ago, I had no idea of the serious health concerns that excess sugar consumption brings. I only wanted to avoid the so-called "empty calories" that sugar provides. I had noticed that eating cookies and desserts was making me feel lethargic.
Sugar, and in particular fructose, affects metabolism. Unlike glucose, fructose can only be metabolised in the liver. Some of its effects on the human body include increasing levels of uric acid, which raise blood pressure; increased fat deposition in the liver; and interference with the insulin receptor in the liver. This inhibits ability of the brain to detect the hormone leptin, which regulates appetite. So beyond the empty calories that fructose provides, eating it makes you want to eat more.

When I started reducing my sugar intake, I had no intention of cutting it out completely. Reducing my consumption was a gradual process, over many years. Sugar had been used as a reward when I was a child, and sweets were still a comfort food for me. But I found that the less of it I ate, the less I craved it. Today, I barely eat sweetened foods at all. If I were to eat what to most North Americans or Europeans is an "average" dessert serving, I would feel sick. Avoiding sugar is no longer an exercise in willpower; I have developed a revulsion for it. I feel that I have brought my body back to its original state. Sugar, in anything other than small quantities, feels like a poison to me.

Illnesses related to dietary choices do not affect only the individuals who become sick; they affect us all, as a society. The US alone spends $150bn on healthcare resources for illness related to metabolic syndrome. Of course, I would like to think that governmental regulation of a food-item such as sugar is not necessary. I do place value on an individual's right to choose, and on personal responsibility. But in the case of sugar, it's time to get real. The incidence of preventable diseases such as Type 2 diabetes is increasing and many health authorities have expressed concern that our current youth may be the first generation that does not live as long as their parents.

Most of us have known for some time that excess sugar is not good for us, but education and knowledge are clearly not enough. Regulation is required. This is no longer an issue of personal responsibility, but one of public expenditure and public health.

The case for the legalisation of drugs

• By Alexander Wickham
• Opinion
• Thursday, 2 February 2012 at 4:15 pm

Sir Richard Branson is a fascinating figure. His politics are surprisingly convoluted for a billionaire businessman; at times he has resembled a Thatcherite neo-classical and at others he has been a Labour-supporting proponent of humanitarian issues and environmentalism. Last week the Virgin Group boss addressed the home affairs select committee on another issue he has championed down the years, calling on the government to implement a liberalisation of drugs policy. Interestingly, what he had to say made a lot of sense.

Branson began, naturally, with cannabis. He insisted that the decriminalisation, regulation and taxation of the drug libertarians have traditionally seen as a start-point for reform would reap widespread rewards for society as a whole. Responsibility for drugs policy should shift from the Home Office to the Department of Health, he argued, quite compellingly enquiring of his inquisitors whether, upon finding out that their own son or daughter had a drug problem, would they rather seek medical help or be having to deal with the police? Tellingly, they offered no answer. In Portugal, where even heroin addicts are hospitalised rather than arrested, drug use has fallen by 50% as a result of legalisation. Each year some 75,000 young Britons have their futures ruined by receiving criminal records for minor drugs offences. Treating drug users as patients rather than criminals would be an important first step to a more effective drugs policy.

Following decriminalisation, Branson admitted that regulation would inevitably be required. I have previously argued that carefully regulating the legal sale of drugs would do more than anything else to save lives. Last November two young men died after taking a fatally potent form of ecstasy (MDMA) at a London music venue. Due to the covert nature of acquiring drugs they had no way of knowing what they were buying; drug dealers are not thoughtful enough to label their products with an ingredients sticker. At present drug users are clueless about whether they are actually taking what they think they are, the extent to which it has been cut with other noxious substances, or even if they have been given a new and untested form of drug. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out why people are dying. Legalisation and regulation would require sellers – licensed by the state – to only offer a genuine product with clear guidelines for safe usage. It may have saved the lives of the two young men last November, and would save countless more in the future.

If the practical case for a more liberal drugs policy is fairly straightforward, the economic argument is somewhat more complex. Branson convincingly articulated the basics last week. Home Office figures show that £535 million of taxpayers’ money is spent each year on the enforcement of laws relating to the possession or supplying of drugs. Conversely, only 3% of total expenditure on drugs is through health service use, and just 1% on social care. A staggering 20% of all police time is devoted to arresting drug users and sellers. The balance between policing and treatment clearly seems skewed, but in this age of austerity these figures are especially unforgivable. At a time when the Coalition is controversially cutting welfare, why do we accept huge spending on a law and order policy that has failed to reduce the prevalence of drugs in society? As Branson succinctly puts it, the money saved through decriminalisation and taxation would surely be better spent elsewhere: ‘it’s win-win all round’.

Now on to the more technical side of things. While the supply-side economist Milton Friedman is of course celebrated for his writings on neo-liberalism, his less well-known contribution to the debate on drugs was also quite brilliant. Friedman argued that the danger of arrest has incentivised drug producers to grow more potent forms of their products. The creation of crack cocaine and stronger forms of cannabis (and evidently MDMA as shown above) is, he claims, the direct result of criminalisation encouraging producers to strive for a more attractive risk-reward ratio. Moreover, drug prohibition directly causes poverty and violent crime. Supply is suppressed by interdiction and prosecution therefore prices rise. Users are forced by their addictions to pay the going rate, then turn to crime to fund their habit as they are plunged into poverty. Finally, and perversely, the government effectively provides protection for major drug cartels. Producing and selling drugs is a risky and expensive business so only serious organised crime gangs can afford to stay in the game. All the money goes to the top. It is, as Friedman notes, ‘a monopolist’s dream’.

The deleterious and unforeseen economic consequences of criminalisation are, one you get your head round them, pretty persuasive. There is, however, one last point worth considering: the moral perspective. You may hate the idea of drugs, most people do. Yet what right does the state have to tell someone what they can and cannot do in the privacy of their own home? John Stuart Mill, the great liberal philosopher, famously declared that ‘the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant’. The act of taking drugs is an entirely personal choice that affects no one but the individual himself. Can the state therefore justify impinging upon his personal liberty? Mill would say no. This is a question that deserves serious thought.

Sir Richard Branson is a maverick. A week ago most people would have been against a liberalisation of drugs policy. After listening to what Branson had to say many will have changed their minds.

Top Ten Jokes at Edinburgh Fringe This Year

The top 10 festival funnies were judged to be:

1) Nick Helm: "I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves."

2) Tim Vine: "Crime in multi-storey car parks. That is wrong on so many different levels."

3) Hannibal Buress: "People say 'I'm taking it one day at a time'. You know what? So is everybody. That's how time works."

4) Tim Key: "Drive-Thru McDonalds was more expensive than I thought... once you've hired the car..."

5) Matt Kirshen: "I was playing chess with my friend and he said, 'Let's make this interesting'. So we stopped playing chess."

6) Sarah Millican: "My mother told me, you don't have to put anything in your mouth you don't want to. Then she made me eat broccoli, which felt like double standards."

7) Alan Sharp: "I was in a band which we called The Prevention, because we hoped people would say we were better than The Cure."

8) Mark Watson: "Someone asked me recently - what would I rather give up, food or sex. Neither! I'm not falling for that one again, wife."

9) Andrew Lawrence: "I admire these phone hackers. I think they have a lot of patience. I can't even be bothered to check my OWN voicemails."

10) DeAnne Smith: "My friend died doing what he loved ... Heroin."

Drugs companies have lost far more than their health

 

By John Kay
Published: February 8 2011 23:03 | Last updated: February 8 2011 23:03

Pfizer's decision to close its research laboratory at Sandwich is widely seen as a setback for recovery in Britain, a country that played a leading role in the development of the modern research-based pharmaceutical industry. In the last century, high profitability characterised the industry, founded on blockbuster drugs that would typically relieve, but not cure, the ill-effects of affluence – depression, hypertension, stomach acidity and arterial degeneration.
George Merck, president of the eponymous company from 1925 to 1950, famously expressed his corporate philosophy: "We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear. The better we have remembered it, the larger they have been." For many years Merck topped Fortune magazine's list of most admired companies. Johnson & Johnson's 308-word credo captures similar sentiments. In a classic business school case on ethics and corporate reputation, the company's executives applied the credo to implement a speedy product recall.
The drugs industry has thus had an implicit contract with public and government. It was permitted extraordinary profitability in return for companies behaving as exemplary corporate citizens.
Pfizer was always an odd man out. While Merck was lecturing doctors on his commitment to social responsibility, John McKeen, his Pfizer counterpart, was assuring his shareholders: "So far as humanly possible, we aim to get profit out of everything we do." In a 1994 business book by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, Built to Last, Pfizer is Merck's ugly sister. More assertive but less profitable, it epitomised the profit-seeking paradox – the most profitable companies are not the most aggressive in pursuit of profit.
But in the 1990s the supply of new blockbuster drugs diminished. Perhaps the low-hanging fruit had been picked, while able scientists from the academic world could more easily access venture capital to do their own thing. The industry was criticised for its focus on the minor ailments of the rich rather than the life-threatening diseases of the poor. Drug companies came under pressure from Wall Street to demonstrate commitment to shareholder value. The pay-off from marketing is immediate, the pay-off from research delayed, and their strategy reflected that. They also spent a great deal on buying each other. The greatest modern achievement of pharmacology – the cocktail of drugs that controls Aids, with public research leading the way – may be a model for future innovation.
As Pfizer jumped ahead in this environment, Merck stumbled – it would feature again in Mr Collins's 2009 book, How the Mighty Fall. A new blockbuster painkiller, Vioxx, was promoted not just for the minority of patients who derived a unique benefit but for many who might as well have taken an aspirin. Merck withdrew the product amid recrimination and lawsuits. Even the revered J&J would find its reputation tarnished by the regulator's discovery of bad practice – and dubious management responses – at the company's McNeil consumer products group.
An industry that once seemed to exemplify a constructive relationship between private enterprise and public benefit is now widely detested. US customers face spiralling drug costs. Development groups believe the industry's contribution to the world's poor is grudging and inadequate. Medical professionals view its ethics with mistrust. Its response has been a lobbying effort rivalled only by that of the financial services industry.
Such lobbying may delay, but not ultimately prevent, reversion to profit margins that reflect the new nature of the industry in returns appropriate to consumer products rather than innovative research. The future of pharmacology will probably look more like the peer-reviewed open process of incremental development based on public and philanthropic funding found elsewhere in medical science.
Pfizer has decided to attempt to meet its earnings growth targets – the patent on its popular cholesterol drug, Lipitor, is about to expire – by cutting its research budget, correctly observing that its productivity has declined. Rival Merck, in contrast, has lowered earnings projections to maintain research spending. The market's immediate verdict was that Pfizer was right. For its shareholders, perhaps. When an industry model is broken, the best business strategy may be to manage its decline.

How to beat depression – without drugs

 

• Jake Wallis Simons
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 19 July 2010 22.00 BST

Up to 20% of the UK population will suffer from depression – twice as many as 30 years ago, says Steve Ilardi. Photograph: Rob Lewine/Getty/Tetra

Dr Steve Ilardi is slim and enthusiastic, with intense eyes. The clinical psychologist is 4,400 miles away, in Kansas, and we are chatting about his new book via Skype, the online videophone service. "I've spent a lot of time pondering Skype," he says. "On the one hand it provides a degree of social connectedness. On the other, you're still essentially by yourself." But, he concludes, "a large part of the human cortex is devoted to the processing of visual information, so I guess Skype is less alienating than voice calls."


Social connectedness is important to Ilardi. In The Depression Cure, he argues that the brain mistakenly interprets the pain of depression as an infection. Thinking that isolation is needed, it sends messages to the sufferer to "crawl into a hole and wait for it all to go away". This can be disastrous because what depressed people really need is the opposite: more human contact.


Which is why social connectedness forms one-sixth of his "lifestyle based" cure for depression. The other five elements are meaningful activity (to prevent "ruminating" on negative thoughts); regular exercise; a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids; daily exposure to sunlight; and good quality, restorative sleep.


The programme has one glaring omission: anti-depressant medication. Because according to Ilardi, the drugs simply don't work. "Meds have only around a 50% success rate," he says. "Moreover, of the people who do improve, half experience a relapse. This lowers the recovery rate to only 25%. To make matters worse, the side effects often include emotional numbing, sexual dysfunction and weight gain."


As a respected clinical psychologist and university professor, Ilardi's views are hard to dismiss. A research team at his workplace, the University of Kansas, has been testing his system – known as TLC (Therapeutic Lifestyle Change) – in clinical trials. The preliminary results show, he says, that every patient who put the full programme into practice got better.
Ilardi is convinced that the medical profession's readiness to prescribe anti-depression medication is obscuring an important debate. Up to 20% of the UK population will have clinical depression at some point, he says – twice as many as 30 years ago. Where has this depression epidemic come from?


The answer, he suggests, lies in our lifestyle. "Our standard of living is better now than ever before, but technological progress comes with a dark underbelly. Human beings were not designed for this poorly nourished, sedentary, indoor, sleep-deprived, socially isolated, frenzied pace of life. So depression continues its relentless march."


Our environment may have evolved rapidly but our physical evolution hasn't kept up. "Our genome hasn't moved on since 12,000 years ago, when everyone on the planet were hunter- gatherers," he says. "Biologically, we still have Stone Age bodies. And when Stone Age body meets modern environment, the health consequences can be disastrous."


To counteract this Ilardi focuses on the aspects of a primitive lifestyle that militate against depression. "Hunter- gatherer tribes still exist today in some parts of the world," he says, "and their level of depression is almost zero. The reasons? They're too busy to sit around brooding. They get lots of physical activity and sunlight. Their diet is rich in omega-3, their level of social connection is extraordinary, and they regularly have as much as 10 hours of sleep." Ten hours? "We need eight. At the moment we average 6.7."


So we should all burn our possessions and head out into the forest? "Of course not," Iladi shudders. "That would be like a lifelong camping trip with 30 close relatives for company. Nobody would recommend that."


Instead we can adapt our modern lifestyle to match our genome by harnessing modern technology, such as fish oil supplements to increase our intake of omega-3. All well and good. But I can't escape the feeling that the six-step programme seems like common sense. Isn't it obvious that more sleep, exercise and social connectedness are good for you?
"The devil is in the detail," replies Ilardi. "People need to know how much sunlight is most effective, and at which time of day. And taking supplements, for example, is a complex business. You need anti-oxidants to ensure that the fish oil is effective, as well as a multivitamin. Without someone spelling it out, most people would never do it." Ilardi practises the programme himself. He's never been depressed, he tells me, but it increases his sense of wellbeing and reduces his absentmindedness (his college nickname was "Spaced").
It all makes sense, but will I try it myself? I don't suffer from depression, but wellbeing sounds nice. I'm not so sure about the fish oil, but I might just give it a go.

Enjoy the sunshine, get plenty of sleep – and be sociable

▶ Take 1,500mg of omega-3 daily (in the form of fish oil capsules), with a multivitamin and 500mg vitamin C.▶ Don't dwell on negative thoughts – instead of ruminating start an activity; even conversation counts.
▶ Exercise for 90 minutes a week.
▶ Get 15-30 minutes of sunlight each morning in the summer. In the winter, consider using a lightbox.
▶ Be sociable.
▶ Get eight hours of sleep

---

Get a new e-mail account with Hotmail – Free. Sign-up now.

Modern Indian Spirituality

I am quite sure ladies and gentlemen, that in this august assembly nobody would envy my position at this moment. Speaking after such a charismatic and formidable personality like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is like coming out of the pavilion to play after Tendulkar has made a sparkling century. But in some weak moment I had committed myself.

There are certain things that I would like to make very clear at the very outset. Dont get carried away by my name Javed Akhtar. I am not revealing a secret, I am saying something that I have said many times, in writing or on TV, in publicI am an atheist, I have no religious beliefs. And obviously I dont believe in spirituality of some kind. Some kind!

Another thing. I am not standing here to criticize, analyze, or attack this gentleman who is sitting here. We have a very pleasant, civilized relation. I have always found him to be an extremely courteous person.

One is talking about an idea, an attitude, a mindset. Not any individual. I must tell you that when Rajeev opened this session, for a moment I felt that I have come to the wrong place. Because, if we are discussing the philosophy of Krishan and Gautam and Kabir, Vivekanand, then I have nothing to say. I can sit down right now. I am not here to discuss a glorious past of which I suppose every Indian is proud, and rightly so. I am here to
discuss a dubious present.

India Today has invited me and I have come here to talk of spirituality today. Lets not be confused by this word spirituality, you can find two people with the same name and they can be totally different people. Ram Charit Manas was written by Tulsidas. And the television film has been made by Ramanand Sagar. Ramayan is common but I dont think it would be very wise to club Tulsidas with Ramanand Sagar. I remember, when he had written Ramcharit Manas, he had faced a kind of a social boycott. How could he write a holy book in such a language like Avadhi? Sometimes I wonder fundamentalists of all hues and all colors, religions and communitie show how similar they are. In 1798, a gentleman called Shah Abdul Qadir, in this very city, for the first time translated Quran in Urdu, and all the ulemas of that time gave fatwa against him that how could he translate this holy book in such a heathen language.

When Tulsi wrote Ramcharit Manas and he was boycotted, I remember a chowpai that he had written.

*Dhut kaho abdhut kaho rajput kaho ki julawa kohu*
*Kohu ki beti se beta na biahab, kohu ki jaat bigaar na chahu*
*Mang ke khaibo, mehjid ma raihbo, lebe ka ek na debe ka dohu*

Ramanand Sagar, when he made his television serial, he made millions. I am not undermining him, but obviously he is much lower in the rung. I will give you another example. Perhaps it would be more direct and more appropriate. Gautam came out of a palace and went into wilderness to find the truth. But nowadays we see, the modern age gurus, come out of the wilderness and wind up in the palaces. They are moving in the opposite direction. We cant talk of them in the same breath. So let us not hide behind names which are dear and respectable for every Indian.

When I was invited to give this talk, I felt that yes, I am an atheist, try to be a rationalist in any given situation, Maybe thats why I have been called. But suddenly I have realized that there is another quality that I share with Modern Age gurus. I work in films. We have lot in common. Both of us, sell dreams, both of us create illusions, both of us create icons, but with a difference. After three hours we put a placard 'the end'. Go back to reality. They dont.

So ladies and gentlemen, let me make it very clear that I have come to talk of this spirituality that has a supermarket in the world. Arms, drugs and spirituality these are the three big businesses in the world. But in arms and drugs you really have to do something, give something. Thats the difference. Here you dont have to give anything.

In this supermarket you get instant Nirvana, Moksha by mail, a crash course in self realization, cosmic consciousness in four easy lessons. This supermarket has its chain all over the world, where the restless elite buy spiritual fast food. I am talking about this spirituality.

Plato in his dialogues has said many a wise thing, and one of them is before starting any discussion decide on the meanings of words. Let us tryto decide on the meaning of this word spirituality. Does it mean love for mankind that transcends all religion, caste, creed, race? Is that so? Then I have no problem. Except that I call it humanity. Does it mean love of plants, trees, mountains, oceans, rivers, animals? The non-human world? If that is so, again I have no problem at all. Except that I call it environmental consciousness. Does spirituality mean heartfelt regard for social institutions like marriage, parenthood, fine arts, judiciary, freedom of expression. I have no problem again sir, how can I disagree here? I call it civil responsibility. Does spirituality mean going into your own world trying to understand the meaning of your own life? Who can object on that? I call it self-introspection, self assessment. Does spirituality mean Yoga? Thanks to Patanjali, who has given us the details of Yoga, *Yam, Yatam, aasan, pranayam*We may do it under any name, but if we are doing pranayam, wonderful. I call it health-care. Physical fitness.

Now is it a matter of only semantics. If all this is spirituality, then what is the discussion. All these words that I have used are extremely respectable and totally acceptable words. There is nothing abstract or intangible about them. So why stick to this word spirituality? What is there in spirituality that has not been covered by all these words? Is there something? If that is so then what is that?

Somebody in return can ask me what is my problem with this word. I am asking to change it, leave it, drop it, make it obsolete but why so? I will tell you what is my reservation. If spirituality means all this then there is no discussion. But there is something else which makes me uneasy. In a dictionary, the meaning of spirituality is rooted in a word called spirit. When mankind didnt know whether this earth is round or flat, he had decided that human beings are actually the combination of two things. Body and spirit. Body is temporary, it dies. But the spirit is, shall I say, non-biodegradable. In your body you have a liver and heart and intestines and the brain, but since the brain is a part of the body, and mind lies within the brain, it is inferior because ultimately the brain too shall die with the body, but dont worry, you are not going to die, because you are your spirit, and the spirit has the supreme consciousness that will remain, and whatever problem you have is because you listen to your mind. Stop listening to your mind. Listen to your spirit - the supreme consciousness that knows the cosmic truth. All right. Its not surprising that in Pune there is an ashram and I used to go there. I loved the oratory. On the gate of the lecture hall there was a placard. Leave your shoes and minds here. There are other gurus who dont mind if you carry your shoes. But minds? Sorry!

Now, if you leave your mind what do you do? You need the Guru to find the next station of consciousness. That hides somewhere in the spirit. He has reached the supreme consciousness, he knows the supreme truth. But can he tell you. No sir, he cannot tell you. So can you find out on your own? No sir, you need the guru for that. You need him but he cannot guarantee that you will know the ultimate truth and what is that ultimate truth? What is the cosmic truth? Relating to cosmos? I have really not been able to understand that. The moment we step out of the solar system the first star is Alpha Centuari. It is just four light years away. How do I relate to that!! What do I do!!

So the emperor is wearing robes that only the wise can see. And the emperor is becoming bigger and bigger. And there are more and more wise people who are appreciating the robe.

I used to think that actually spirituality is the second line of defence for the religious people. When they get embarrassed about traditional religion, when it starts looking too down-market, they hide behind this smokescreen of cosmos and super consciousness. But that is not the complete truth. Because the clientele of traditional religion and spirituality is different. You take the map of the world, you start marking places which are extremely religious, within India or outside India, Asia, Latin America, Europe wherever. You will find that wherever there is lot of religion there is lack of human rights. There is repression. Anywhere. Our Marxist friends used to say that religion is the opium of poor masses, the sigh of the oppressed. I dont want to get into that discussion. But spirituality nowadays is definitely the tranquilizer of the rich.


You see that the clientele is well heeled, it is the affluent class. Alright, so the guru gets power, high self esteem, status, wealth (which is not that important), power and lot of wealth too. What does the disciple get? When I looked at them carefully I realized that there are categories and categories of these disciples. Its not a monolith. There are different kinds of followers. Different kinds of disciples. One, who is rich, successful, doing extremely well in his life, making money, gaining property. Now, since he has everything he wants absolution too. So guru tells him - whatever you are doing, is *niskaam karma *you are playing a role, this is all *Maya*, the money that you are making everyday and the property that you are acquiring, you are not emotionally involved with it. You are just playing a role. You come to me because you are in search of eternal truth. Maybe your hands are dirty, but your spirit and soul are pure. And this man, he starts feeling wonderful about himself. For seven days he is exploiting the world, and at the end of the seven days when he goes and sits at the feet of the guru, he feels I am a sensitive person




There is another category. That too comes from the affluent class. But he is not the winner like the first one. You know winning or losing that is also relative. A rickshaw-wallah if he is gambling on the pavement and wins hundred rupees will feel victorious, and if a corporate man makes only 300 million dollars, while his brother is a billionaire, he will feel like a failure. Now, what does this rich failure do? He needs a guru to tell him
who says that you have failed? You have other worlds, you have another vision, you have other sensibility that your brother doesnt have. He thinks that he is successful, wrong. The world is very cruel, you know. The world tells you honestly, no sir, you have got three out of ten. The other person has seven out of ten. Fair. They will treat you that way and they will meet you that way. There he gets compassion. There he plays another game.

Another category. And I will talk about this category not with contempt or with any sense of superiority, not any bitterness, but all the compassion available one that is a very big client of this modern day guru and todays spirituality, is the unhappy rich wife. Here is a person who put all her individuality, aspirations and dreams, and her being at the altar of marriage and in return she got an indifferent husband. Who at the most gave her a couple of children. Who is rather busy with his work, or busy with other women. This woman needs a shoulder. She knows that she is an existential failure. There is nothing to look forward to. She has a vacuous, empty, comfortable yet purposeless life. Its sad, but it is true.

Then there are other people. Who are suddenly traumatized. They lose a child. The wife dies. The husband dies. Or they lose the property, they lose their business. Something happens that shocks them and they ask why me? So who do they ask? They go to the Guru. And the guru tells him that this is Karma. But there is another world if you follow me. Where there is no pain. Where there is no death. Where there is immortality. Where there is only bliss. He tells all these unhappy souls follow me and I will take you to heaven, to paradise, where there is no pain. I am sorry sir, it is disappointing but true that there is no such paradise. Life will always have a certain quota of pain, of hurts, a possibility of defeats. But they do get some satisfaction.


Somebody may ask me if they are feeling better, if they are getting peace then what is your problem. It reminds me of a story that I have read. Its an old Indian story told by a sage, that a hungry dog finds a dry bone and tries to eat it and in the process bites its own tongue. And the tongue is bleeding and the dog feels that he is getting nourishment from the bone. I feel sad. I dont want them, these adults, to behave like this because I respect them. Drugs and alcohol are also supposed to give mental peace and serenity, but is that kind of piece or serenity desirable or advisable?


The answer is no. Any mental peace that is not anchored in rational thoughts is nothing but self-deception. Any serenity that takes you away from truth is just an illusion a mirage. I know that there is a kind of a security in this which is like the security of a tri-cycle. If you are riding a tri-cycle you cant fall. But adults do not ride tricycles. They ride bi-cycles. They can even fall. It is a part of life.

There is one more kind. Like everybody who is the member of the golf club is not fond of golf. In the same way everybody who is seen in an ashram is not a spiritual person. A film producer who is an ardent follower of a guru, whose ashram is about two hours from Delhi once told me that you must go to my Guru. You will see the whos who of Delhi there. Let me tell you my Guruji is another Chandraswami in the making. Now this is a contact point
for networking. I have great respect for people who are spiritual, or religious, and in spite of this they are good people. And I have a reason. I believe that like every emotion or feeling, you have a limitation.
 
You can see up to a point. And you cant see further. You can hear up to a point, but beyond that you wont be able to register sounds. You can mourn up to a point and then you will get over your mourning. You will feel happy up-to a point and then you will be through with your happiness. Same way, I am sure that you have a certain capacity for nobility also. You can be as noble and no more. Now suppose if we count this capacity for nobility in the average man as ten units, now anybody who goes to pray in a mosque five times is consuming his five units, there anybody who goes to the temple or sits in the feet of the Guru, he is consuming his quota of nobility there. And in a totally non-productive manner. I dont go to pray. I dont pray. If I dont go to any guru, or mosque or temple or church, what do I do with my quota of nobility. I will have to help somebody, feed somebody, give shelter to somebody. People who use their quota in worshipping, praying, adoring religious figures and spiritual figures, in spite of that, if they are left with some nobility, hats off to them.

You may ask me, that if I have this kind of ideas about religious people, why should I show such reverence for Krishan and Kabir and Gautam? You can ask me. Ill tell you why I respect them. These were the great contributors in the human civilization. They were born in different points of time in history, in different situations. But one thing is common in them. They stood up against injustice. They fought for the downtrodden. Whether it was Ravana, or Kansha or the pharaoh or the high priests or the British Samrajya in front of Gandhi or the communal empire of Firoze Tughlaq in the times of Kabir, they stood against that.
 
And what surprises me, and confirms my worst feelings, that today, the enlightened people who know the cosmic truth, none of them stand up against the powers that be. None of them raises his voice against the ruling classes and the privileged classes. Charity, yes, when it is approved and cleared by the establishment and the powers that be. But I want to know which was that guru which took the dalits to those temples which are still closed to them. I want to know which was that guru who stood for the rights of the Adivasis against the thekedaars and contractors. I want to know which was that guru  who spoke about the victims of Gujarat and went to their relief camps. They are human beings too.

Sir, It is not enough to teach the rich how to breathe. It is the rich mans recreation. It is the hypocrites pretension. It is a mischievous deception. And you know that in the oxford dictionary, mischievous deception is a term that is used for a word, and that word is HOAX.


Speech by JAVED AKHTAR at India Today Conclave  *


 

---

Get a new e-mail account with Hotmail - Free. Sign-up now.