UnNews:Teenager admits to having fun; D.E.A. moves to classify 'fun' as a Schedule I drug
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This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation. |
8 March 2012
THORNWARBLER, Nebraska — 15-year-old James McPhalluster has garnered international media attention after confessing to U.S. authorities that he had fun and that it made him feel good. Several of his peers have since come forward and sobbingly admitted to having had fun at least once within the past year. This has caused concern over a possible "fun epidemic" in American schools which has prompted the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to consider classifying "fun" as a Schedule I drug.
In its official press release on the matter, the D.E.A. explained its reasoning for trying to criminalize fun. "Thousands of people die each year from having fun," said the release. "Fun is all fun and games until it isn't anymore."
The criminalization of fun has been a contentious issue ever since it was discovered that having fun releases endorphins which give a person a "high." The dangers of seeking the "fun high" are well-documented, and it is believed that there is no safe level of fun to have without taking some risk. In fact, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) reports that fun is highly addictive even with just one exposure.
Nathan Edelmann, founder of the Fun Policy Alliance, has argued against this classification of fun and points out what he says are the hypocrisies of this idea. "The government wants to illegalize fun while at the same time allowing some people to have it," he explained, "like when Medicaid paid for its recipients’ Viagra." Edelmann also argues that it is not possible to overdose on fun, that criminalizing it would prevent valuable research into how "fun" may be beneficial to AIDS and cancer patients, and that the government should look instead to taxing fun and providing rehabilitative Zen music to adrenaline junkies.
The NIDA, which currently holds a monopoly on "fun research" (the name being somewhat of a misnomer, as it is actually very boring research), claims that it has found no evidence that fun is beneficial to people who are sick. In fact, Norman Johnson, an unpaid intern at NIDA’s AIDS Research Program, recommends that terminally ill persons avoid fun altogether because, “…dying isn’t supposed to be ‘fun.’ ... It may be a slippery-slope fallacy, which I am not fond of because slippery-slopes can be fun, but I’m pretty sure if AIDS and cancer patients were prescribed ‘fun’, people would be lining up for miles to get AIDS and cancer."
