......he turned the subject round and talked, not specifically about the use of drugs but the role of the doctors and their institutions in dealing with the problems arising from the use of drugs. He berated them for the narrow perspectives they had imposed on people who suffered addiction, pointing out their own addictive potential. In defining the "addict" they had arrogantly placed themselves above the human condition. This was a fundamentalism in which they were like the mullahs, the evangelical Christian hacks who assumed a monopoly on knowledge and understanding. A posture, behind which they assumed the right to define the world and the people who inhabited it. These were the inhabitants of the upper slopes, who breathed the rarefied air of academia and privilege. Their dictates came crashing down the hillside, crushing the valley dwellers with the weight of their oppression. by Rob Ollis