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Drugs and Freedom
Collection StructureFiring Line broadcast records > Episode guide > Drugs and Freedom
Item Title Drugs and Freedom
Guest Lobenstine, Clark
Guest Simmons, Paul D.
Guest Grayson, Deborah
Guest Szasz, Thomas Stephen (1920-)
Host Buckley, William F., Jr. (1925-2008)
Date CreatedMay 16, 1973
Description

Another round in the drug fight, this time with a man who has made his name arguing that there is no such thing as mental illness. The audience may feel at times that we're behind the looking glass, but the conversation does help us clarify our own thoughts about human motivation. TS: "Drug addiction, Mr. Buckley, is a metaphor.... The phenomenon we are talking about, in my opinion, is best described by the good old English word 'habit.'..." WFB: "Okay. How can we conveniently distinguish between, for instance, my habit, firmly consolidated, of requiring peanut butter for breakfast and somebody else's habit of requiring a heroin shot at breakfast time?" TS: "Why should we?" WFB: "I want you to help me terminologically because I think that unless your prisms are acute enough to distinguish between peanut butter for breakfast and heroin for breakfast, you may very well be being frivolous in a dangerous sense." TS: "... Excuse me, no, there's nothing frivolous about this, Mr. Buckley. The question is ... why you want to make the distinction, because in my view the only reason to make the distinction is to persecute somebody."

Language(s)
Country of Origin
Place RecordedLouisville, Kentucky, United States
DimensionsDuration: 60 minutes
FormatText
Medium television programs
Aspect Ratio
4:3
Color
color
Soundtrack
sound
Hoover IDProgram S0098
Record Number80040.337
NotesVideo available through special order.
RightsCopyright held by Stanford University. This copy is provided for educational and research purposes only. No publication, further reproduction, or reuse of copies, beyond fair use, may be made without the express written permission of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives on behalf of Stanford University.

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