Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston
Globe
August 30, 2000, Wednesday ,THIRD EDITION
SECTION: OP-ED; Pg. A23
LENGTH: 795 words
HEADLINE:
DERRICK Z. JACKSON;
PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY SHOULDN'T BE USING KIDS AS
BILLBOARDS. EXPLOITING CHILDREN
BYLINE: By DERRICK Z.
JACKSON, Globe Staff
BODY:
The difference between
capitalism and communism is that under capitalism, man exploits man; communism
is the opposite. So goes a joke from the Cold War. You can say the same thing
about exploiting children.
Under communism, we were told, children
behind the Berlin Wall or in the shadows of the Great Wall trudged forlornly to
school in drab shades of gray, green, and brown. We were told these children
were allowed no individuality or freedom of expression; they were ground into a
mindless monotony. To underscore the bituminous haze through which we saw those
children, Richard Nixon said, "What are our schools if not for indoctrination
against communism?"
Today, capitalism is the opposite.
A reminder of this was in The Boston Globe sports section last Thursday.
Red Sox outfielder Darren Lewis was photographed with a group of children. Lewis
was pointing to a new ballfield at the Roxbury Boys and Girls Club.
Far
more striking was that nearly every one of the children in the picture wore
exactly the same T-shirt. The T-shirt was for the allergy drug
Claritin, an official sponsor of Major League Baseball.
The caption
under the photo said Lewis offered a "helping hand" to the youths. As the
children's chests blared "Claritin (loratadine)," "Claritin (loratadine),"
"Claritin (loratadine)," "Claritin (loratadine)," it was clear that it was the
children who were the helping hands - as unwitting billboards for the
pharmaceutical industry.
We seem to have trouble investing in public
schools so these kids can think for themselves, but we have no problem producing
a proletariat that possesses neither capital nor the means of production but
offers mobile spaces of 12 inches by 16 inches to drum "Claritin (loratadine)"
into the heads of anyone they meet.
Claritin is a particularly ironic
case: It finds the time to play urban savior at the very time it is under attack
for gouging the kids' parents and elders. This week on the presidential campaign
trail, Vice President Al Gore singled out Claritin, made by Schering-Plough, for
using its patents to pile up profits. Pharmaceuticals are the
most profitable companies in the world, and Schering-Plough, with Claritin as
its flagship drug, had a profit of $2.1
billion in 1999 on sales of $9.2 billion. The 23 percent return
on revenues was four times higher than the average return, for example, for
airlines.
According to a Wall Street Journal feature last month,
drug companies spend more money on sales people than on
scientists. Schering-Plough, instead of working with Congress to make
drugs more affordable, now spends more on advertising Claritin
than Coca-Cola spends on Coke or Anheuser-Busch spends to push Budweiser and its
Super Bowl lizards.
Instead of seeking compromise with politicians on
Capitol Hill who note that 20 pills of Claritin cost $44 in the
United States while they cost $8.75 in a more
universal-health-care Europe, Schering-Plough has reportedly tripled its
lobbying budget to $6.6 million. It has hired former US
representative Bob Livingston to lobby for patent extensions
and the license to further gouge.
But this is far greater than just
singling out Claritin. This is about the use of our children as billboards,
period. Coca-Cola may lag behind Claritin in overall advertising, but Coke is
leading the race to turn public schools into one giant billboard. Soda
companies, one of the biggest contributors to our national epidemic of child
obesity, are throwing cash at struggling school systems to gain exclusive
vending machine rights, to plaster their name along the hallways, on
scoreboards, on school buses,and on rooftops.
Once we let Channel One
into schools a decade ago, with its 12-minute home room show, which contained
two minutes of fast-food commercials, the floodgates were open. For all the
pious things we say about how precious our children are and how priceless is
their childhood, we have allowed capitalism to put a price on their heads and on
their chests.
Not one of these companies cares whether standardized test
scores rise, but I bet you would see the greatest rise in scores in the history
of the Western world if you took out a few of the questions on Charlemagne and
asked things like:
"Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods are associated
with: (a) humanitarian causes; (b) politics; (c) choking in big matches;
(d) swoosh."
Why, after a few more Claritin sports clinics, kids might
even be able to spell loratadine. Communism has faded into feeble caricatures,
but there are still children being indoctrinated. They are told they are
individuals, but capitalism is doing its best to convince them otherwise. What
are our schools if not to turn children into mindless, monotonous billboards?
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, Darren Lewis of the Red Sox points to a
new ballfield at the Roxbury Boys and Girls Club./ GEORGE STAFF PHOTO / GEORGE
RIZER
LOAD-DATE: August 30, 2000
