America really is crazy when it comes to drugs. Think about our global drug war not as any sort of rational policy, but as an international projection of a domestic psychosis.
There’s probably never been a drug-free society. Virtually every society has ingested psychoactive substances to deal with pain, increase our energy, socialize, even commune with God. Our desire to alter our consiousness may be as fundamenta as our deries for food, companionship and sex. Our true challenge is how to live with drugs so they cause the least possible harm and in some cases the greatest possible benefit. The reason why some drugs are legal and others not has almost nothing to do with science, health , or the relative risks of drugs and almost everything to do with who uses and who is percieved to use particular drugs. In the late 19th century, when the drugs that were now illegal were legal. The principle consumers of opioids were primarily middle-aged white women using them to alleviate aches and pains when few other analgesics were available. Nobody thought of criminalizing them back then because nobody wanted to put grandma behind bars. But when hundreds of thousands of chinese immigrants working in the railroads and mines started using opiods, that is when the first drug prohibition laws were implemented. The first cocaine prohibition laws were similarly prompted by racist fears of black men using cocaine and forgetting their white place in society. As for the first marijuana prohibition laws, all about fears of mexican migrants in the west and southwest. What was true all around the world with both the origins of these laws and their implementation… if the principle smokers of cocaine or affluent older white men and the principle consumers of viagra were poor young black men, then smokable cocaine would be easier to get with a prescription from a doctor and selling Viagra would get people 10 years behind bars.
The US contains Less than 5 percent of the worlds population but almost 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population. People have been lost to drug loited violence, prison, drug overdose or aids because us’ drug policies populize criminalization over health. It is good people who have lost their jobs, homes, and even their children. To the state not because they hurt anyone but solely because they chose to use one drug over another. Is legalization the answer? lAGALLY REGULATING AND TAXING most of the drugs that are now criminalized would radically reduce the crime violence and the crime violence corruption and black markets, and the problems of adulterated non regulated drugs, improve public safety, and allow taxpayer resources to be developed to more useful purposes. The markets in marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamine are global commodities markets.just like the global markets in alcohol, tobacco, coffee, sugar, amongst other products. Where there is a demand, there will be a supply. Eliminate one source, and another inevitably emerges. People Tend to think of prohibition as the ultimate form of regulation, when in fact it represents the abdication of regulation with criminals filling the void. Which is why putting criminal laws and police front and center in trying to control a dynamic global commodities market, is a recipe for disaster. What we really need is to bring the underground drug markets above ground as much as possible and regulate them as intelligently as we can to minimize both the harms of drugs and prohibition policies. With marijuana, this obviously means legally regulating and taxing it like alcohol. The benefits of doing so are enormous, the risks normal, Will more people use marijuana? Maybe. But it won’t be young people because it’s not going to be legalized for them and quite frankly they already have the best access to marijuana. It would mostly be older people around their 40’s and 60’s. Those who prefer a little bit of marijuana to that drink in the evening or the sleeping pill or that it helps with their arthritis or diabetes. That just might be a net public health benefit. As for the other drugs, look at Portugal where nobody goes to jail for possession of drugs. The government has made a serious commitment to treating addiction as a health issue. Switzerland, Germany, Netherland, Denmark, England where people have been addicted to heroin for decades and have repeatedly tried to quit and fail can get pharmaceutical heroin and helping services and medical clinics. The results are in. Illegal drug use and disease and overdoses and crime arrests go down, health and well being improve, tax payers benefit, and many drug users even put their addictions behind them. In New zealand recently enacted a law allowing certain recreational drugs to be sold legally provided their safety had been established. In brazil and other countries where remarkable psychoactive substance, ayahuasca, can be legally bought and consumed provided it’s done so in a religious context. Look at bolivia and peru, where all sorts of products made from the coca leaf, the source of cocaine, are sold legally over-the counter with no apparent harm to people’s public health. Coca cola had cocaine in it until 1900, and so far as we know was no more addictive than coca cola is today. Conversally, think about cigarettes. When researchers ask herion addicts whats the toughest drug to quit, most say cigarettes. Yet in the US and other nations, half of the people addicted to cigarettes have quit without anyone being arrested, being in jail, or sent to a “treatment program” by a prosecutor or judge. What did it were higher taxes and time and place restrictions on sale and use and effective anti-smoking campaigns. Now, could we reduce smoking even more by making it totally illegal, probably. But just imagine the drug war nightmare that would result. So the challenges we face today are two folds. The first is the policy challenge of designing an d implementing alternatives to ineffective prohobtionist polices even as we need to get better at regulating and living with the drugs that are now legal. But the second challenge is tougher because it’s about us. The obstacles to reform lie not just out there in the power of the prison industrial complex or other vested interests that want to keep things the way they are but within each and every one of us, it is our fears and our lack of knowledge and imagination that stand in the way of real reform. Ultimately, it boils down to the kids and every parent’s desire to put our baby ina bubble and the fear that somehow drugs will pierce that bubble and put our young ones at risk. That sometimes it seems like the entire war on drugs is just defined as one big child protection act. To building an organization and movement of people who believe we need to turn our backs on the failed prohibitions of the past and embrace new drug policies grounded in science, compassion, health, and human rights. Where pople com from across the political spectrum and every other spectrum as well. Where people who love our drugs, people who hate drugs, and people who dont give a damn about drugs.but every one of us believe that this war on drugs, that is backwards, heartless, disastrous war on drugs has got to end.
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