Here's a nice conspiracy theory to tide you over until I get around to posting the goodies I've been saving up. Enjoy!

The Ritalin Conspiracy:

I don’t really know if taking acid at age 13 was the wisest move to make, but for whatever reason, I did, often, and now have the legacy of seeing a shadow world behind everything in the real world. I think this is what I find attractive about science fiction, conspiracy theory, mainstream history, and so-called “people’s” histories. There are always figures who are there making sure things get steered one way or the other. Now the religious may tell you it’s god’s will, but there is a sect of humans who take it upon themselves to be god and impose their quite human will in such a way that it seems to the peons that the power is godlike and immense, predestined, if you will (what was once called usury and what now goes by the name of finance comes to mind). So for me, in an attempt to prove my own genius and godlike ways, I seek to influence humans with communications. This may amuse some of my readers, especially those who happen to be acquainted with the bag of bones wherein the author resides; just yesterday I was admonished for my quite overbearing manner of handling communications while moving heavy equipment. But I digress. Conspiracy theory and rumors to me are closely linked. I take (what I consider) an enlightened approach to rumors. I explain it like this: hearken back to the days of childhood when you were at a birthday party or other such function. Sometimes we’d play a game called Telephone. You’d all get into a circle and someone would start with a phrase and had to whisper it into the ear of whoever’s next to her and so on around the circle. The joy of the game is that the message was invariably so garbled by the time it got back that it was really funny. What I always wondered was, how much of what people wanted to hear influence what they did hear? And how often did kids deliberately change it to be spiteful? Anyway, so I used to like to start rumors, nothing slanderous or libelous, mind you, more of the order of tall tales. This one time I misunderstood someone who was talking about Billy Corgan, singer for the Smashing Pumpkins. I got it into my head that the child actor who starred alongside the robot on the television program, Small Wonder, was in fact a young Billy Corgan. I promptly told this to whomever I could, and actually heard it back later, much to my glee. As an aspiring writer I figure that writing is really nothing more than story telling, with some homespun wisdom (or otherwise) thrown in for good measure. So I decided to practice my storytelling on captive audiences here and there at some of our town’s notorious sausage parties. Being particularly fond of the malt liquor Private Stock, I soon found ample fodder for my imagination right there on the bottle, “Haffenreffer’s Private Stock, the Malt Liquor with the imported taste.” Word. I actually can’t remember if the name is really Haffenreffer’s, but let’s assume for now that it is. Anyway, the titles have changed (long gone are the days of Baron von) and so did the investment strategy, but here’s the Private stock rumor, as I last told it, here and now:

The young man who would be Marquis of Haffenreffer was in graduate school for electrical engineering concentrating on radio design when he heard news of his inheritance; his father had passed on while quail hunting near the highlands of his estate. After a bit he took a wife, a chess master from the “beautiful part of Magyar,” as she would say, who was an avid amateur economist. This seemed like a match made in heaven, his wife was free and worthy to manage the estate which left him time to add on to the already sizable brewery his grandfather had established on the estate going on two centuries ago, when kegs were delivered on horse cart, and men were paid in bread, beer and a dry room. As well as pursue work on his speaker design (which was trying to mimic Bose as closely as possible without infringing on patent rights) and various other projects that occupy the frivolity of the super rich. These were the 80’s after all, a jubilant period of massive stock price inflation and a beautiful bubble of wealth to boast of it. Under ordinary circumstances the Marquis would have nothing to worry over such trifling ripples in that silly market as he held most of his holdings in real estate and quite considerable assets in the realm of personal property as well. The only problem is that with such considerable assets, the banks were only too eager to extend credit to the Marquise which she eagerly made use of to the tune of two mortgages per building on the estate as well as a considerable sum on personal recognizance with most of the Marquis’s precious metal holdings as collateral. She threw this into what would later be called “junk bonds.” The rest is history, as they say. When Black Thursday hit, it felt like someone had thrown the entire earth at the Marquis’s balls. With murder in his heart, but the good sense of a long and noble line, he sued for divorce. Bereft of his holdings, he seized possession of what baubles had escaped the Marquise’s clutches as well as his entire inventory of beer and headed to auction. The merchants at the sale were only too eager to get a hold of some of Haffenreffer’s famed ale, which had previously only been had by personal friends of the Marquis’s, and employees of the estate (a hold-over from olden times). And they showed their appreciation by the heights to which their bidding climbed. They all joked the Marquis that it was his Private Stock that had saved him, private from his wife, thank God, and the ephemeral “stock” he held, being a master brewer, and the real stock he held, the beer (being a master brewer). And so with the money he raised selling off his private stock, Haffenreffer bought up a small brewery nearby that the bank had apparently foreclosed on. Got a great price on it too.

In some versions a conglomerate comes in and makes it into a “micro brewery,” allegedly a local creation, but really part of an international syndicate to corner the market on “gourmet” brewing supplies and squeeze out “mom and pop” operations. But that’s only if I’ve been drinking heavily and some kid seems to be buying some of what I’m saying.

The Ritalin Conspiracy:

I know that last chapter should not have been called the Ritalin Conspiracy, since it had nothing to do with Ritalin at all, and in fact didn’t even mention it, except in the title, but all that sets up the spirit in which I spin the yarn of why the US consumes 90% of the world’s Ritalin supply.

Like all good conspiracies the roots of the Ritalin conspiracy grow out of the myths of prehistory, out of lore that certain herbs and plants had magical powers of transportation and transformation, that one decoction would give you energy, that another would settle you down, calm the nerves as it were. Various herbs and the chemicals they create by their very nature, affect different parts of the brain. Magic mushrooms stimulate different areas of the brain than do say hemp, or opium. And coca stimulates an area of the brain wherein lies the very chemical means of paranoia and violence. School shootings, anyone?

You’re not tweaking if you’re on pot, you’re not tweaking if you’re on dope, but you are tweaking whether you’re on coke, crystal, or Ritalin. Adderal is just the brand name for amphetamine. Aside from a few hallucinogenic manifestations, eating a bunch of the old favorite gas station speed, ephedrine, will twist you up as thoroughly as will a few fat lines off the toilet at the bar.

So why, pray tell, would we as a society commence to drugging our children with the very analogues of the top street market drugs? I know, everyone will say “you’re not a doctor, what do you know?” I don’t. I come at it from the viewpoint of a market analyst. How have public policy decisions affected street availability, supply; and market share increase, demand? If one were to analyze the use of Ritalin and other such stimulant ADHD treatment meds versus the number of those kids as measured against the general population who tend to stimulant abuse as adults what would the results show? Dr. Peter Breggin holds that ADHD meds given to children are a gateway to stimulant and nicotine abuse by early adolescence. If analyzed in terms of socialized medicine one sees the public health liability of long-term generational “training-wheel” drugging of children. (Which may explain the rest of the “civilized” world’s reluctance to adopt massive drugging of their school children.)

So now who to blame it on? In order to garner a certain amount of credence with the conspiracy buffs, it is crucial to tie it in with the CIA, the mafia, the Illuminati, the Priory of Sion, and maybe even the (dormant?) reptilian part of our brains. I’m kinda out of the loop on which conspiracy is ahead (geez, I still like Behold a Pale Horse), so I’ll just take the easy way out--most likely a conjunction of the CIA and Mafia (with unspoken connections to several alien banking/wildcatting operations based out of a nearby wormhole allegedly controlled by interests tied to Sirius, of course). I won’t even mention the teachers’ unions cause that would make me a wacko (regardless of the “fact” that the “symptoms” of ADHD correspond to the behaviors that cause conflict and disturbances in classrooms—like individual personality for instance).

Here’s the scenario, the liberals who control the two houses of congress have maliciously and cruelly slashed the CIA’s budget. In order to cover the shortfall and raise money to provide top-notch service to the president (and a little empire-building on the side), the CIA arranged a deal with several large-scale organized crime networks. For a certain consideration, the mafia would move the mass quantities of raw product into the standard markets: poor and blighted areas of the city, and to the always bored always in need of something rural denizens outside the confines of the suburbs. The inner city would become the market place, with consumers mainly found nearby, the unemployed, uneducated leftovers from the flight of manufacturing jobs. In keeping with the free-market capitalist model, drug dealers would become the new employers in these blighted areas. Unfortunately for society, even as conservatives began to assume power in the houses and executive positions, and the CIA budgets grew accordingly, there was still increased demand for new markets for the drugs that were funding clandestine operations international policy wouldn’t allow “us” to fund outright.

This is where Ritalin as the training wheels of the Cocaine bicycle comes in. I’ve even seen a study showing how kids who took brand name ADHD meds gravitated to cocaine, while kids who took the generic analogues went for meth. (It’s Soothe vs. Pepto, it’s all about the precursors. If you are a name brand, you can afford to get good tasting natural sources and you will. If you’re a generic, it’s all chemistry stew. This is crucial, brand loyalty is critical to building up an oligarchopoly (similar to a monopoly, but with the cheese spread a little thinner, and more difficult to trace, like the world divided between Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man, and kids thinking that cigarettes are reeeeealy good candy or somesuch).

The simple fact of the matter is, that whichever side of the consolidation good/consolidation bad debate you fall on, consolidation is happening at an ever more rapidly increasing pace. Contrast Altria with the all too human Phillip Morris. Only a surrealist would associate Boca Burgers with an ashtray, yet I encountered that daily when I purchased my Coca-Cola and Atomic-Fire Balls at the company store.

Money is power. See who “owns” our money and see the superpower shift in the next twenty-five years. Does the average American even know what a T-Bill is?

The next question is, could those who are in control be so shortsighted as to inflict a mass addiction on our population for no other reason than a fundraiser? (At least the Opium Wars were against another country/race) Probably not, but it is important to bear in mind that there is always lurking that deadly combination, Murphy’s Law, and the Law of Unintended Consequences. Not that all consequences are unintended. In fact, in light of crime statistics that show crime is on the downturn (contrary to the fear mongering news channels), a ready-made pool of addicts who by definition cannot live without the substances, make a ready-made slave labor pool when sentenced to so-called mandatory minimums. By taking the discretion away from judges, the management of slave labor pools becomes institutionalized. In ultra PC times, there is still little stigma about segregation based on powder vs. rock consumption even if skin color is no longer the fashion of the day. (Small matter if the demographics still reflect skin color as the most easily recognized difference between prisoners and the general public.)