Just Say No

Way back in history—back in the 1980s—Nancy Reagan became associated with the phrase “Just say no.” In her context, she was referring to children’s recreational drug use, inferring that kids could resist peer pressure simply by refusing to partake. The campaign that followed was simplistic in its viewpoint, and ignored the reality of inner-city drug abuse and associated social issues that lead to that abuse. The “Just Say No” campaign effectively reduced the drug issue to a catch phrase that pretty much went nowhere. It became coupled with the government’s “War on Drugs”, another ongoing failure.

And yet… there is a validity and efficacy to saying no to things that are harmful to ourselves and others. All religions teach the discipline of refraining from harm—of avoiding dangerous activities. There is a lot to be said for refusing to play along, for choosing a moral and healthy lifestyle that rejects hatred, violence, and greed.

What might happen, for example, if tomorrow morning a large number of well-to-do people (not the addicts in the inner city, but the cocaine-sniffing, white collar workers in those nearby tall buildings) quit buying drugs from the cartels of Mexico and Colombia? What might happen if tomorrow morning a large number of people quit demanding so much electricity, which is mostly generated through the use of global-warming, coal-fired power plants? What happened last year when the price of gasoline soared past $4 a gallon? People trimmed their gas usage and oil futures plunged.

Rather than discipline ourselves, we consumers tend to look to the government to make laws that will check harmful activities—from personal crimes to corporate abuses. But if governments were at all effective at improving our lives in these areas, might the War on Drugs have had a few victories by now? How about the War on Poverty? The War on Global Warming? I don’t think we can count on the government; it seems unable and even unwilling (given deep-pocket lobbying) to curb these problems. Furthermore, it really is up to us—the consumers… we who buy all these harmful things.

In a recent Mother Jones magazine article, a mogul in the exploding African biofuels industry was asked by an American journalist, What could stop the devastation of his country’s old-growth forests, as they continue to get cut down for palm oil plantations? He immediately replied, “People like you, who wear cotton shirts that take 25,000 liters of water to make—you like to wear them, because they’re comfortable. People like you who drive private cars and like to fly around the world in airplanes. The consumer. That’s who determines what happens.”

That response keeps rolling around in my head. It has a ring of truth. Who’s going to stop the insanity of environmental destruction and other harmful practices? The consumer. You and me. If only we could just learn to say no.