The Bopst Show: “Drugs” (Episode 62)

by Chris Bopst

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• The Bopst Show — Episode 62

Title: The Bopst Show: “Drugs ‘(Episode 62)
Rating: PG-13 (Adult Situations)
Intent: To showcase the scrooge of drugs (unless they are cigarettes)
Quality Diversion: ”Ha, Ha, Ha”.
Suggested Absurd News Story Reading by Geographical Region: Mexico City, Mexico.
Request Line: (804) 767-2550
Construction Date: Thursday July 2nd, 2009
Equipment: Mac G4, Free Audio Editor & Recorder Software from Audacity, Frontier US-122 USB Audio/MIDI Interface, Shure SM57 Microphone
Posted: Monday July 6th, 2009
Artists and Groups in order of appearance: Michael Gwynne & Carl Esser, Chris Bopst, Jack Webb & Harry Morgan, Various Sources & Rick McNamara, Glen Langen & Adele Jurgens, Johnny Price
Mixed by: Chris Bopst
Art: Chris Bopst

Liner Notes:
“Ladies and gentlemen: the story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.”

This week’s installment of the Bopst Show is different than the previous (as of this writing) 61 hours currently available here for your listening (and downloading) pleasure. Other than the last tune by Johnny Price, there isn’t any music in this show. What you hear when decide to click play (and I hope you do) are two radio serials from yesteryear (Dragnet & Stand By For Crime) with stories concerning drug use and the effects there of. I was always a fan of the blind movies that once were a staple of American radio programming (my favorite being, “The Shadow”) and that love of radio story telling is why I gravitated later in life to the audio college assemblages of Dickie Goodman, The Tape-Beatles, Negativland and others. It was such a great way to tell a story and besides a few various shows carrying on the tradition today (most notably, “This American Life” & “Prairie Home Companion”), nobody is really doing it anymore. For the same reasons the big bands of 1930’s & 40’s gave way to the smaller jazz groups of the 1950’s, simple finance was the main culprit in the demise of the radio serial as putting together these shows together required a functioning team of writers, actors, musicians, engineers and producers that all needed to get paid. Playing records with a DJ was far cheaper and the rise of television made the art of storytelling a visual exercise that effectively killed the acting radio star.

I love these shows for many reasons, but the fact that both tell tales about the scrooge of illegal drug use while both are sponsored by companies promoting & glamorizing legalized drug use really gets to the root of the hypocrisy that is our never-ending war on drugs. I know I sound like a broken record on this, but until any semblance of sanity concerning intoxicants is part of our national discussion on drug use, I will continue to make the point that drugs aren’t the problem; prohibition is. Simply put, all drugs such be legal. Some say that only marijuana should be legalized, but that’s pussy, leftist hippie talk as far as I’m concerned. Legalize all the highs, tax the living fuck out them and fund national health care. Sure, legalizing cocaine or heroin will most definitely kill a lot of people, but anything worth anything is always painful at first. Once the initial thrill of their legalization wears off (with the added bonus of forcing an untold amount of criminal, non-taxpaying businesses to diversify their portfolios), we can finally start dealing with drug use in the manner befitting rational minds. There has been 80-plus years of anti-drug propaganda and drugs are still being consumed which is proof positive that these well financed and time consuming efforts are and have always been in vain for this one simple reason: People like to get high. Complain all you want about our current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (I’m right there with you), but the real war that is a total and complete waste of time, money and effort is our war on drugs.

And today’s drug problems aren’t the illegal highs; the real problem is the over the counter, legalized buzzes proscribed by doctors. For some reason, if you have a script, it isn’t considered drug use; it is medicine even though these pharmaceutical drugs being doled out to the masses are powerfully addictive, can cause death if overused and whose long term effects are unknown. Imagine the horror if Michael Jackson or Heath Ledger died of heroin overdoses instead of accidentally overdosing on prescription medications. It would be a whole different story. Spared the cultural stigmas thrust upon their illegal brethren, pill poppers are free to consume with an impunity that secures the deep in the black profit margins of the people that make them. These drug dealers (and their enabling friends in the Insurance Industry) are the number reason why a national health care, something that the vast majority of Americans want, is meeting with such resistance. Just like any drug dealer, they concern themselves only with maintaining and increasing profits. The user is nothing more than a bank deposit. Given the gross potential for profit and the greed that accompanies such grotesque financial opportunity, the power and influence of these companies shapes public policies and perceptions to their advantage. And they don’t even have to be sneaky about it. They own the legislative process and have the receipts to prove it. I try to remain optimistic about national health care, but when the dealers own the cops, nothing good will come of it.

NEXT SHOW: 7/13/09

The set list for this week’s show is posted here. All previous show set lists (62 as of this writing) are on my blog.

2 hours of Bopst Show programming airs Sundays, 10AM-12PM (EST-USA), on KAOS Radio Austin.

Until Next Time:

Stay Clean,
BOPST

Previous Episodes

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61

July 06, 2009 1