The little man is sick these days -- not the-sniffles-and-a-cough sick, but full-on can't-hold-food-down sick. He's got some sort of stomach bug, and it was coming out both ends all day yesterday. (Cleanup was not particularly enjoyable.) We've been following the instructions of his doctor, and he's doing much better today, but he's still not 100%. It's one of the hardest things to do -- be helpless while you watch your child ail. And I imagine it would be even harder if I actually had feelings. He will get better soon though. And in the meantime, I might as well take advantage of the off-day (I took a sick day to tend to him), and crank out a post while he sleeps.
The topic of today's entry is a fascinating book I just finished: Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari. It is about the epic failure of the War on Drugs, as perpetuated mostly by the U.S. government. I thought it was excellent and extremely moving -- so much so that I feel compelled to spread the word. I highly recommend reading the book, but if you don't, here are the highlights. (And here is a website where you can find out more and get involved.)
1. The War on Drugs, Like All Prohibitions, Fosters Organized Crime
You don't have to be a master logician to make this connection. When you make something illegal, you create a black market, and this black market is necessarily controlled by criminals. Because these criminals have no legal way to enforce the rules of their market they use violence. (Remember on Breaking Bad when Skinny Pete got held up at knife-point by those junkies? It led to an ATM getting dropped on a man's head.) Prohibition thus rewards the most amoral and ruthless among us -- and the rewards are so vast that there is no legal deterrent. And eventually the gangsters amass so much wealth and power that they can buy off elected officials and the police. They go from being a destructive anti-establishment force to being the establishment. This happened in the US during Prohibition with Al Capone and Arnold Rothstein. And it's happening right now with various drug cartels in Mexico. If drugs were legal (like alcohol now), these crime syndicates would have much less money and wield substantially less influence. In fact, the relatively small act of legalizing pot in a few places in the U.S. is helping to prove this theory.
By the way, this, I think, is the best argument for legalizing drugs when you are talking to conservatives who are "tough on crime" (which generally means "stupid on crime," but that's another story). Prohibition = Crime. It's a very simple identity that most people understand regardless of their politics.
2. Decriminalizing and/or Legalizing Drugs Would Not Lead to a Massive Rise in Drug Use
The fear that legalizing drugs leads to a massive explosion in use has proven to be mostly unfounded. The book gives the statistics on places -- Portugal, for example -- where drugs have mostly been decriminalized. It also gives a quote from a man named João Figueira, the chief of the Lisbon Drug Squad, who was staunchly against decriminalization before was enacted: "The things we were afraid of didn't happen." And the reason they didn't happened is people, by and large, don't use drugs for the reasons we have long thought they do.
3. People, By and Large, Don't Use Drugs for the Reasons We Have Long Thought They Do
The story about drugs that I, and everybody within two or three generations of me, learned growing up is that drug use is almost completely about physical addiction. If you try heroin, you will become physically addicted, and this dependency will take over your life and put you in the thralls of the devil substance forever. That's more or less what I learned in D.A.R.E. But studies and common sense belie this simplistic narrative.
Let's start with the latter. As pointed out in the book, millions upon millions of people -- the majority of the population -- have tried heroin or something akin to heroin. I have and you probably have too. It's called an opiate-based painkiller, and it is very useful if, say, you need to have knee surgery or you badly strain your upper back (which is why I needed it). And yet very few of us actually become heroin addicts because of our use. How can that be, if heroin enslaves us through physical addiction?
In fact, physical dependency, appears to be a small -- not completely negligible, but small -- percentage of drug addiction. (The book posits around 15% or 20%.) The overwhelming factor in drug addiction is life -- circumstance. If you have a life you like, you are not likely to do drugs heavily; if you don't, you probably will. That's why I didn't keep doing painkillers after my injuries healed (in fact, I rarely took more than a pill or two). I have a life. I would rather be with my family and friends or do math or read or play Scrabble or make a crossword puzzle than zone out in an opiate-induced stupor.
In the book, Hari illustrates this idea through a very interesting study carried out by a researcher in Canada. What the researcher did is add a twist to the famous rat-drug study, in which a rat in a cage is given access to a powerful drug like heroin or cocaine by pushing a lever, and then it does nothing but push the lever until it ODs and dies. The twist is that instead of keeping the rat in a barren cage, the researcher made "Rat Park," a virtual paradise for rats -- other rats to hang out with, rat activities, good rat food, etc. -- and put the rat in there. In Rat Park, the vast majority of the rats tried the drug, but did not go back and did not OD. They had better things to do. The author sums this up by saying it's not your physiology, it's your "cage."
On a personal note, I once had a friend who did more drugs than Leonardo DiCaprio in Basketball Diaries. After he went on a huge coke bender one weekend, I asked him, "What if you took too much and your heart just stopped?" His blasé response: "Eh ... I don't have much going on anyway."
4. Criminal Prosecution and Stigmatization are the Worst Things We Can Do to Reform Addicts
With Rat Park in mind, it's easy to see whats wrong with our currently system. We take large amounts of people, many of them black and brown, many of whom had unmanageably stressful and traumatic upbringings, most of whom are using drugs to escape their shitty lives -- and we respond by making their lives shittier. That's our solution? We give them criminal records so they can't get decent employment; we stigmatize them so that they don't fit in socially; we make them feel worthless -- and then we expect them to not use drugs anymore? We expect them to not do the one thing that gives them relief, the one thing takes away their pain? It makes absolutely no sense.
If you were devising a drug policy from scratch with the intent of ensuring as few addicts as possible could get clean, our system, sadly, would be a very good one. We should take all of the money we spend policing and prosecuting nonviolent drug offenders -- 100% of it -- and use it to provide actual help for addicts -- safe housing, counselling, support groups, job training, etc.
And even if you don't buy into the compassion angle, even if you think people make choices to do drugs and have to live with the consequences, even if you think it's not your problem, I would point out that it very much is your problem. Drug addicts are also drug customers, and they are the best types of customers because there is almost nothing they won't do to get their fix, including committing acts of theft and violence -- possibly on you, if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Also, drug customers means drug sellers, which means all sorts of bad things (see Item 1). Our broken system is your problem, because it's everybody's problem.
5. Legalizing and Regulating Drugs Would Lead to Safer Use, Particularly Among Kids
One obvious thing that I never really thought about before reading this book is that prohibition incents sellers of illegal substances to only hock the most potent forms of their products. During Prohibition, for example, beer was hard to come by. Why? It takes up too much space. If you have to smuggle hooch across state lines in the hutch of a horseless carriage, you don't have room for the weak stuff. It's the same principle with heroin or meth or what have you: to maximize the reward to risk ratio, a smuggler has to put the most potent form possible into the smallest package. This, along with the fact that street drugs aren't monitored by the FDA, lead to far more dangerous drug use than if drugs were legal.
As for the kids, there is a strong case that drugs would be more difficult for kids to get if they were legal. Why? Dealers don't check IDs. When I was in high school, getting pot was no more difficult than getting booze, and oftentimes it was much easier.
6. There is Hope
Changing drug policy is a monumental task politically, for all the usual reasons changing something
is a monumental task politically. For one thing, a lot of people make money off the current system, not just gangsters, but also the makers of legal recreational drugs -- rich and powerful corporations. And when rich and powerful people make money off something that something is difficult to change. Indeed, whenever the legalization of marijuana comes up for debate, big alcohol is on the front lines against it. They don't want the competition.*
But the bigger issue, I feel, is a change would require a lot of people who currently support and administer the Drug War to admit they are wrong. And admitting they are wrong means admitting they are, in part, responsible for a disastrous policy that has facilitated untold suffering on untold numbers of people. This is not an admission people usually allow themselves make.
But eventually people retire and are replaced by other people who don't necessarily hold the same views as the first people, and over time things can change. And what helps bring about change in policy is change in public opinion, and we are already seeing the change in public opinion. Despite being against federal law, pot is now legal in Washington and Colorado and Washington D.C. (maybe). This would have seemed far-fetched to me 20 years ago.
In a way, legalizing drugs is an issue of personal liberties, and for all its faults, the U.S. has a very good track record of doing the right thing on personal liberties -- eventually. Just look at where we are with gay rights. Can't drug legalization be the new gay marriage? I don't see why not. It might take a while, but I think the Drug War will end this century. And if it doesn't, well, it's not going to matter much anyway, once global warming takes us all out.
And on that note: until next time ...
*There is a part in the book about the mayor of Denver, who previously made his living off of owning and operating a brewery, who was against the legalization initiative in Colorado, so one of the main pro-pot advocates challenged him to a "duel": for every shot of alcohol the mayor would take, the pot advocate would take a hit off a joint, and they would see who dies first. The mayor, as you might guess, declined. But eventually he did kinda sorta come around on the issue.
The topic of today's entry is a fascinating book I just finished: Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari. It is about the epic failure of the War on Drugs, as perpetuated mostly by the U.S. government. I thought it was excellent and extremely moving -- so much so that I feel compelled to spread the word. I highly recommend reading the book, but if you don't, here are the highlights. (And here is a website where you can find out more and get involved.)
1. The War on Drugs, Like All Prohibitions, Fosters Organized Crime
You don't have to be a master logician to make this connection. When you make something illegal, you create a black market, and this black market is necessarily controlled by criminals. Because these criminals have no legal way to enforce the rules of their market they use violence. (Remember on Breaking Bad when Skinny Pete got held up at knife-point by those junkies? It led to an ATM getting dropped on a man's head.) Prohibition thus rewards the most amoral and ruthless among us -- and the rewards are so vast that there is no legal deterrent. And eventually the gangsters amass so much wealth and power that they can buy off elected officials and the police. They go from being a destructive anti-establishment force to being the establishment. This happened in the US during Prohibition with Al Capone and Arnold Rothstein. And it's happening right now with various drug cartels in Mexico. If drugs were legal (like alcohol now), these crime syndicates would have much less money and wield substantially less influence. In fact, the relatively small act of legalizing pot in a few places in the U.S. is helping to prove this theory.
By the way, this, I think, is the best argument for legalizing drugs when you are talking to conservatives who are "tough on crime" (which generally means "stupid on crime," but that's another story). Prohibition = Crime. It's a very simple identity that most people understand regardless of their politics.
2. Decriminalizing and/or Legalizing Drugs Would Not Lead to a Massive Rise in Drug Use
The fear that legalizing drugs leads to a massive explosion in use has proven to be mostly unfounded. The book gives the statistics on places -- Portugal, for example -- where drugs have mostly been decriminalized. It also gives a quote from a man named João Figueira, the chief of the Lisbon Drug Squad, who was staunchly against decriminalization before was enacted: "The things we were afraid of didn't happen." And the reason they didn't happened is people, by and large, don't use drugs for the reasons we have long thought they do.
3. People, By and Large, Don't Use Drugs for the Reasons We Have Long Thought They Do
The story about drugs that I, and everybody within two or three generations of me, learned growing up is that drug use is almost completely about physical addiction. If you try heroin, you will become physically addicted, and this dependency will take over your life and put you in the thralls of the devil substance forever. That's more or less what I learned in D.A.R.E. But studies and common sense belie this simplistic narrative.
Let's start with the latter. As pointed out in the book, millions upon millions of people -- the majority of the population -- have tried heroin or something akin to heroin. I have and you probably have too. It's called an opiate-based painkiller, and it is very useful if, say, you need to have knee surgery or you badly strain your upper back (which is why I needed it). And yet very few of us actually become heroin addicts because of our use. How can that be, if heroin enslaves us through physical addiction?
In fact, physical dependency, appears to be a small -- not completely negligible, but small -- percentage of drug addiction. (The book posits around 15% or 20%.) The overwhelming factor in drug addiction is life -- circumstance. If you have a life you like, you are not likely to do drugs heavily; if you don't, you probably will. That's why I didn't keep doing painkillers after my injuries healed (in fact, I rarely took more than a pill or two). I have a life. I would rather be with my family and friends or do math or read or play Scrabble or make a crossword puzzle than zone out in an opiate-induced stupor.
In the book, Hari illustrates this idea through a very interesting study carried out by a researcher in Canada. What the researcher did is add a twist to the famous rat-drug study, in which a rat in a cage is given access to a powerful drug like heroin or cocaine by pushing a lever, and then it does nothing but push the lever until it ODs and dies. The twist is that instead of keeping the rat in a barren cage, the researcher made "Rat Park," a virtual paradise for rats -- other rats to hang out with, rat activities, good rat food, etc. -- and put the rat in there. In Rat Park, the vast majority of the rats tried the drug, but did not go back and did not OD. They had better things to do. The author sums this up by saying it's not your physiology, it's your "cage."
On a personal note, I once had a friend who did more drugs than Leonardo DiCaprio in Basketball Diaries. After he went on a huge coke bender one weekend, I asked him, "What if you took too much and your heart just stopped?" His blasé response: "Eh ... I don't have much going on anyway."
4. Criminal Prosecution and Stigmatization are the Worst Things We Can Do to Reform Addicts
With Rat Park in mind, it's easy to see whats wrong with our currently system. We take large amounts of people, many of them black and brown, many of whom had unmanageably stressful and traumatic upbringings, most of whom are using drugs to escape their shitty lives -- and we respond by making their lives shittier. That's our solution? We give them criminal records so they can't get decent employment; we stigmatize them so that they don't fit in socially; we make them feel worthless -- and then we expect them to not use drugs anymore? We expect them to not do the one thing that gives them relief, the one thing takes away their pain? It makes absolutely no sense.
If you were devising a drug policy from scratch with the intent of ensuring as few addicts as possible could get clean, our system, sadly, would be a very good one. We should take all of the money we spend policing and prosecuting nonviolent drug offenders -- 100% of it -- and use it to provide actual help for addicts -- safe housing, counselling, support groups, job training, etc.
And even if you don't buy into the compassion angle, even if you think people make choices to do drugs and have to live with the consequences, even if you think it's not your problem, I would point out that it very much is your problem. Drug addicts are also drug customers, and they are the best types of customers because there is almost nothing they won't do to get their fix, including committing acts of theft and violence -- possibly on you, if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Also, drug customers means drug sellers, which means all sorts of bad things (see Item 1). Our broken system is your problem, because it's everybody's problem.
5. Legalizing and Regulating Drugs Would Lead to Safer Use, Particularly Among Kids
One obvious thing that I never really thought about before reading this book is that prohibition incents sellers of illegal substances to only hock the most potent forms of their products. During Prohibition, for example, beer was hard to come by. Why? It takes up too much space. If you have to smuggle hooch across state lines in the hutch of a horseless carriage, you don't have room for the weak stuff. It's the same principle with heroin or meth or what have you: to maximize the reward to risk ratio, a smuggler has to put the most potent form possible into the smallest package. This, along with the fact that street drugs aren't monitored by the FDA, lead to far more dangerous drug use than if drugs were legal.
As for the kids, there is a strong case that drugs would be more difficult for kids to get if they were legal. Why? Dealers don't check IDs. When I was in high school, getting pot was no more difficult than getting booze, and oftentimes it was much easier.
6. There is Hope
Changing drug policy is a monumental task politically, for all the usual reasons changing something
is a monumental task politically. For one thing, a lot of people make money off the current system, not just gangsters, but also the makers of legal recreational drugs -- rich and powerful corporations. And when rich and powerful people make money off something that something is difficult to change. Indeed, whenever the legalization of marijuana comes up for debate, big alcohol is on the front lines against it. They don't want the competition.*
But the bigger issue, I feel, is a change would require a lot of people who currently support and administer the Drug War to admit they are wrong. And admitting they are wrong means admitting they are, in part, responsible for a disastrous policy that has facilitated untold suffering on untold numbers of people. This is not an admission people usually allow themselves make.
But eventually people retire and are replaced by other people who don't necessarily hold the same views as the first people, and over time things can change. And what helps bring about change in policy is change in public opinion, and we are already seeing the change in public opinion. Despite being against federal law, pot is now legal in Washington and Colorado and Washington D.C. (maybe). This would have seemed far-fetched to me 20 years ago.
In a way, legalizing drugs is an issue of personal liberties, and for all its faults, the U.S. has a very good track record of doing the right thing on personal liberties -- eventually. Just look at where we are with gay rights. Can't drug legalization be the new gay marriage? I don't see why not. It might take a while, but I think the Drug War will end this century. And if it doesn't, well, it's not going to matter much anyway, once global warming takes us all out.
And on that note: until next time ...
*There is a part in the book about the mayor of Denver, who previously made his living off of owning and operating a brewery, who was against the legalization initiative in Colorado, so one of the main pro-pot advocates challenged him to a "duel": for every shot of alcohol the mayor would take, the pot advocate would take a hit off a joint, and they would see who dies first. The mayor, as you might guess, declined. But eventually he did kinda sorta come around on the issue.
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