Pubdate: Tue, 31 Jan 2017
Source: Penticton Herald (CN BC)
Copyright: 2017 The Okanagan Valley Group of Newspapers
Contact:  http://www.pentictonherald.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/664
Author: David Bond
Page: A6

DEAL WITH ISSUES IN PLAIN LANGUAGE

I have noticed of late that various public commentators are using
terms that mask rather than clarify the true meaning of what they are
saying. Whether intentional or not, such obfuscation is not helpful to
meaningful discussions of some important issues.

Consider the current plague inflicting that portion of the population
who use "recreational" drugs that contain fentanyl or carfentanyl
which, even in extremely minute quantities, can cause death. How
risking one's life is be considered to be recreation is beyond me, so
maybe it's time to revive an old-fashioned term: illegal drugs.

Further, these deaths are euphemistically referred to as "drug
overdoses." They are no such thing. The dose the victims took were not
overdoses; they were doses laced with a fatal poison.

Drug dealers have been adding these drugs to the product they are
selling because they are cheap, not easily identified by users and
they produce huge profits.

Now, just for a moment suppose that, instead of these poisons being
associated with the use of drugs for "recreational" purposes, they
were put in common food products such flour, or cereal or sugar. Would
the resulting fatalities be referred to as overdoses? Hardly.

So why not call a spade a spade and treat the vendors of the
contaminated drugs as murderers? Why not sentence any person caught
selling contaminated "recreational" drugs to 25 years in prison with
no parole?

I bet that would stop this public health crisis dead in its tracks. No
pun intended.

At the same time, we need to cut down the demand. That means spending
public funds to educate people, particularly young people, on the true
dangers associated with illegal drugs. Death is a high price to pay
for getting high.

We should also institute a program where any victim who has to be
assisted by public health personnel in dealing with a crisis involving
fentanyl and carfentanyl is required to undergo a rehabilitation treatment.

We won't eliminate the problem entirely but we can certainly do better
than we are at the moment. Another term that drives me batty was used
by Kellyanne Conway, counsellor to U.S. President Donald Trump when
she referred to the made-up statistics used by his press secretary
regarding numbers of people attending the inauguration as "alternative
facts."

They were simply lies and they should be so labelled. Some media in
the U.S., probably fearing reprisals by Trump and his supporters,
don't want to use the "l-word," but Trump himself seems unwilling or
unable to distinguish truth from lies.

Unless the media are careful to make the distinction consistently,
such fudging may become widely acceptable among people who should know
better as well as among those using lies to advance their agendas

My third bug-a-bear is the term "fake" news. It's not
"fake."

It's an outright fiction aimed at achieving a precise result and its
real name is propaganda.

It's exactly the same kind of misinformation put out by the government
of Nazi Germany in the 1930s or by state-controlled media in Russia or
China today.

The New York Times recently carried an article about one item of
"fake" news that claimed to show a vast cache of fraudulent
presidential ballots pre-marked for Clinton.

The news item was seen by over 100,000 people within 24 hours of being
posted. The author, a self-described "ardent young Republican," was
apparently trying to gain the attention of Republican leaders and, not
incidentally, make some money.

He saw nothing wrong with producing and disseminating misleading
material, especially if it contributed to Trump's victory.

The political process in America or any other democratic nation needs
to guard against the use of propaganda.

It behoves the elected government, yes even Trump's, to put in place
severe penalties for both the authors of such garbage as well as those
who enable its distribution. Words and numbers matter.
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MAP posted-by: Matt