Philip Seymour Hoffman July 23, 1967 – February 2, 2014 according to news reports that I’ve read died of a self administered heroin overdose. Because he was Philip Seymour Hoffman and not some un-famous person, you know an average human being, extraordinary measures have been taken to place the blame for Mr. Hoffman’s death on someone. Anyone.
Here’s a thought: Place the blame for heroin overdose deaths on the United States government’s ill-advised war on drugs. Why? Because drugs are only illegal because a government makes a law against the drugs use. Human beings are sent to jail because the government makes a law that says if you use this chemical, we will remove your freedom.
But how can a chemical be so bad that it rises to the attention of government oversight? I mean recently in the news Charleston, West Virginia suffered the contamination of its municipal water supply after a local company called Freedom Industries spilled a 7,500 gallons of 4-methylcyclohexylmethanol into the elk river from its riverside tank farm. In response to this spill the speaker of the house, John Boener commented that there was already too much government regulation. But the chemical,4-methylcyclohexylmethanol has never been thoroughly tested for its effect on human life. Why? Because since the environmental laws that cleaned up our air and water were passed in the 1970s, new chemicals have not been tested. Eastman Chemical did some testing on its own but only to gain an idea of the necessary lethal dose. So right now the citizens of Charleston, WVA and anyone downstream can consider themselves lab rats.
What’s this got to do with Mr. Hoffman? Well, our government sees fit to regulate chemicals that go into our bodies when we choose to use them. But if Heroin wasn’t listed as evil, if Mr. Hoffman had access to a source of regulated Heroin of a know purity and strength, maybe Mr. Hoffman wouldn’t have overdosed himself.
But it’s okay to store an untested potentially lethal, carcinogenic and birth-defect causing chemical in an un-monitored tank, on a riverbank up-stream from more than one city’s water supply. Because that’s business as usual.
