Pubdate: Sun, 29 Jul 2001
Source: Spokesman-Review (WA)
Copyright: 2001 The Spokesman-Review
Contact:  http://www.spokesmanreview.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/417
Author: John Leland, New York Times

DRUG MAKERS, DRUG CULTURE JOIN FORCES

Viagra sponsors funk band's tour to promote pill to baby boomers

There's the thumping, utopian music; the hordes of bliss-seeking baby 
boomers; the drug that enriches all experience. The sex. It could be 
the Autumn of Love, made possible by a corporate sponsor and a 
prescription.

This summer, Viagra, the enormously profitable blue pill, is the 
official sponsor of a concert tour by the funk band Earth, Wind & 
Fire. Ads for the tour have already appeared in newspapers, including 
The New York Times.

The drug culture, in other words, is making friends with the drug culture.

For popular music, as for the pharmaceutical industry, this is a 
symbiosis long coming.

"At first we thought it was going to be a joke or whatever," said 
Philip Bailey, one of the group's singers. "Then we sat down and 
discussed the facts about men's health and erectile dysfunction. It's 
not something to be ashamed of, and that's part of the message."

Besides blizzards of promotional literature, Viagra and its 
manufacturer, Pfizer, will offer screening tents at concerts, where 
fans can be tested for high levels of blood pressure, blood sugar and 
cholesterol, all factors in male sexual problems. As part of the 
sponsorship contract, the band will encourage fans to hit the tents, 
but will not flog the pills from the stage.

Pfizer is "making a subtle psychological pun on the drug culture," 
said Nick Bromell, a professor of American studies at the University 
of Massachusetts and author of "Tomorrow Never Knows: Rock and 
Psychedelics in the 1960s."

Bromell added, "Of course, they can't explicitly say, `All you who 
smoked marijuana 30 years ago are now about to get another drug that 
allows you to live your life more fully."'

Historically, rock concerts have been test markets for the drug 
culture, places where new pharmacologies are marketed via word of 
mouth to the unresisting masses. The infamous brown acid at 
Woodstock, source of so many bad trips, did not make the grade. But 
Ecstasy, which fueled the all-night rave parties of the early '90s, 
now courses through your local high school. Drugs that enhance sexual 
opportunities have always held the upper hand.

For the new drug culture, illegal drugs have been replaced by 
pharmaceuticals prescribed by doctors, yet their purpose remains in 
kind -- not extending life but enhancing it. As the 76 million baby 
boomers bring their sense of entitlement into their declining years, 
drug companies have invested heavily in quality-of-life products like 
Viagra, Zoloft, Prozac and other substances that offer what used to 
be called attitude adjustment.

The generation that once defined itself by its appetite for sex, 
drugs and rock and roll has decided what it wants when it grows up, 
and the answer is: sex, drugs and rock and roll.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Kirk