Kronic Escapism.

It isn’t new to anyone that we can now buy synthetic marijuana from stores down the street. Essentially it could be seen as an example as to what the effects of legalising marijuana would be. First hand I have seen people buy Kronic and all the other brands every night, spending more money than they have on getting high. As we are currently seeing with Kronic, if marijuana became legal, it would become openly accessible to people who would normally not use it. Kronic’s effects seem to be harsher than marijuana’s but little is known for the moment other than it causes “vomiting, drowsiness, chest pain, palpitations and dissociation from reality”, the ODT reports. OGNA is not against the use of marijuana or “synthetic cannabinoids”, however we are interested in the reasons why these drugs are being used.

The government profits from selling cigarettes and alcohol, undoubtedly it must profit from selling Kronic, and the fact that so little information is known and that Kronic packets aren’t labelled with contents or precautions implies the government is earning a lot of money on them. It is in the governments benefit to have the working class, or students as the future one, hooked onto drugs. They benefit economically but they can also use drugs to keep the working class under check. Why do workers drink or smoke pot? Is in search of happiness? While there are social aspects involved with drinking and smoking, the addiction to these drugs fool people into thinking that they are being liberated from the stresses of day-to-day life. Thus people use them more often, at the expense this entails, to escape in search of happiness. What are people fleeing though? If they are fleeing the stresses of education we must look into that, if they are fleeing the bad work conditions they have to submit themselves to at low wages, we must look at that too.

It is true that workers and students have stressful lives. For workers, the low-paid salaries we receive in New Zealand forces us to work longer hours in order to have enough to pay for rent, groceries, education, children etc. Having to balance this with our social lives, children... is definitely not an easy job. For students the increased workload and obligations to succeed that have been put onto us force us to slave away behind books so that we can come out the other end of the manufacturing line with a diploma and a couple of letters in our hand. Then we have to add to the mix the stress of part-time work, student loans and finding jobs. It is no wonder workers and students seek to release themselves and find fleeting instances of happiness through drugs. Here we can see employers shovelling on another duty onto us. We are constantly threatened to work hard so we don’t lose our jobs or in order to be competitive, and then do so again the next day and the next while employers or ministers reap the benefits of our toll.

Employers, under laws such as the ninety day bill, can easily sack workers who are being less and less represented by passive unions. The key to decreasing our dependency on alcohol and marijuana is to build stronger unions that can improve conditions in the work place and gain benefits for students. This can only be achieved through the initiative of the average worker or student. We have to build strong unions that won’t back down, unions concerned with the membership and run democratically from bottom-up. This way we can gain pay increses and improve work conditions which will make our lives outside the workplace happier and more fulfilling.


D. F. Benson-Guiu