The topic of drugs and what society and government should be doing to control their use and trade has been a hot topic for the past 30 years, especially since the beginning of ‘The War on Drugs’, started by the Reagan Regime in the 1980’s. Since then, Prohibition and drug control have been an agenda at the top of international Government policy priorities. Psycho-active drugs have entered public debate more so this past 5-10 years with exposure to the David Nutt government sacking controversy, programmes like ‘Drugs Live’ and the use of mind-altering substances being medically and therapeutically experimented with. The ideological and physical warfare of drug prohibition has been fought through the media, governmental policy, on violent city streets, in education, and in homes. But how do we actually define a ‘drug’ and its ‘illegality’? A medical definition describes – a ‘substance that affects the processes of the mind or body’, Medical-Dictionary (2012). Therefore, this includes all substances from coffee, to pharmaceutical medicines, to club drugs like ecstasy. In everyday terms we do not think of all these substances as ‘drugs’, because some are normalised in society and some are not. What most define as a drug, is of the illegal variety, which are illegal at the government’s discrepancy and punishable by offence if found in possession, sale or production. The ‘illegal drugs problem’ is the negative consequences that come from their use, to their prohibition – from violent warfare in the drug lands of Mexico, to desperate Heroin addicts on the U.K streets. We will explore if drugs are the source of these social problems or, the policy. Primarily investigating whether change in policy towards legalisation would rid drug problems or create new ones?
Drug law in the U.K, has been centralised around an ABC classing system, one supposedly harm based. A, being the ‘most dangerous’ and most punishable by offence, including Amphetamines (MDMA), Heroin and mushrooms. Class C being the ‘least dangerous’, still illegal, but the least punishable by offence, drugs used also for medical purposes are placed here, like Ketamine. This system obviously seems obscured to any drug user, why is a natural psychedelic fungi, which grows wild all over the U.K and has been used traditionally by many cultures, in the same class as the highly chemically toxic and addictive Heroin?
David Nutt, previously the chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) for the U.K government, was sacked in 2009 after publishing his alternative ‘Drug scale of harms’ with The Lancet, Nutt (2009). The scale was released with much controversy, as it showed alcohol, our society’s most favoured drug, to be the one of the most dangerous to society, the self and other individuals – it demonstrated that marijuana and MDMA were among the lowest of harms. This being controversial to the public with high profile cases in the media, such as the death of Leah Betts in the 90’s being pinned on the drug. From 1997-2000, statistics on MDMA usage and subsequent deaths were recorded in the U.K by BJM (2003). 81 deaths were considered ecstasy related, while Sessa (2012) points out that only 6 of these deaths were attributed to MDMA alone – a record low for any type of drug.
Former home secretary Jacqui Smith recently regretted pushing Cannabis from class C to a class B drug, stating ‘Knowing what I know now, I would resist the temptation to resort to the law to tackle the harm from cannabis’, 1 – The Independent (2012:19). Even the policy makers hardest on drugs are beginning to change their minds on the tactic of prohibition, displaying the arbitrariness of classification. Harm surrounding drug use, is often subjected to hyperbole and inaccurate reporting in the media and government, when compared to statistical data. Harm is dependent on the drug of course, but those proven to be least harmful of the illegal drugs are also the most popular, yet most criticised – Cannabis and Amphetamines have the highest use worldwide, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2012). Where does the harm caused by the illegal drug problem come from, if not primarily the drug itself?
Baird (2012:14) argues “Drugs have little intrinsic value. It’s prohibition that gives an astronomical ‘price support’ to traffickers. The profits are extreme and so are the violence and corruption needed to protect them.” This outlines the argument that prohibition causes the most harm concerning drugs, where values of drugs are pumped up due to the illicit nature of the trade. Violence and profits are driven up in the unregulated hierarchical market. Drugs produced under prohibition cause the most harm because they are commonly available in their most concentrated forms, as risk in trade becomes higher, small concentrated forms become the easiest to transport and hence most available. Healthy drug use is difficult under prohibition, because the most dangerous concentrated drugs, and not the weaker and more natural form of the plant (like poppy tea or natural strains of cannabis), are the most available. As the common saying termed by Freud goes, ‘prohibition creates desire’ – the laws have only fuelled drug use. The U.S prohibition of alcohol was a prior warning to the effect of drug prohibition, as rates of use soared, Mafia violence and control surged, created a mass decline in tax revenues and caused on average a 1000 deaths from tainted liquor a year under the law, Lerner (2012). The harms created around prohibition are endless, from 500,000 currently imprisoned in the U.S for drug offences, Transform (2012), to 56,000 people dead from the Mexican drug wars beginning in 2006, Transform (2012).
10 years ago, 90% of Cannabis used in the UK was sourced overseas; nowadays it averages 30% – the rest being UK grown, stopthedrugwar.org (2005) and majoritively strong skunk varieties. This decline was due to harsher measures enforced in drug trafficking, prohibition has caused production to be displaced to our own shores. Aljazeera (2011) investigated UK cannabis production by Vietnamese youth who had been enslaved due to family debts back home; slaves in the UK show to manage much of the marijuana production. Prohibition actively supports these unethical methods of production, it ignores those exploited by the drugs trade labelling all involved as criminal, while placing power and profits into corrupt hands – giving drug users no choice but to use amoral sources.
The economic impacts of prohibition, are also startling, the US alone has spent in total $1 trillion dollars funding prohibition, Transform (2012). It is estimated that ending drug prohibition policies would save the US $41.3 billion dollars annually and generate $46.7 billion in tax revenue, if taxed in the same way as alcohol and tobacco, Miron and Waldcock (2010). This pattern follows the world over as countries invest heavily into drug wars; yet still manage to cut public services in the name of austerity. Prohibition has proven a failed method in solving the illegal drugs problem. Diverse societal realms have spoken of its failure. Beginning with the average citizen, for example the newly voted marijuana legalisation laws in Colorado and Washington State, Caroll (2012) and MyNorthWest.com (2012), demonstrate public desire to end prohibition. Prohibition is called to an end in academic spheres, Kent professor Alex Stevens for example, exclaimed in the Daily Mail that personal cannabis growth should be legalised, Malm (2012). Even police and government spheres show dissent, as 75% of MP’s in Britain agree that current drug laws are not working, Doward (2012). It is clear that radical change, in the system of drug control, needs to take place. A reform in various institutions such as education and healthcare need to synchronise, to support the law change and keep people safe. What needs to be questioned is what form of change will legalisation bring forth? Investigation into the different driving forces is needed, the desire for legalisation comes from many perspectives; hence there are many different paths legalisation could take.
Much of the legalisation movement has originated from the ‘freedom’ perspective, sprouted by the 60’s counter cultural movement and branching out to human rights and cognitive liberty stances, Walsh (2012). Along with the freedom to decide how to best treat your body, Waldstein (2012). But much current research aiding the movement has been from a reductionist scientific orientation, where technologies such as brain scanning, are common to experiment on drug use – instead of techniques such as case studies. Waldstein (2012) discusses the source of the movement and the effects it could have. As a legalisation movement, it makes sense to adopt the methods of positivistic and reductionist scientific evidence collection, because it is the methods familiar to those in power, it is under these methods that the law will most likely change. They follow the regulations of government standards. However, as has been discussed, government drug law and scientific reasoning have often proven to be arbitrarily linked. The clinical trials that have taken place on such substances, mostly in the psychedelic category, have been used to experiment with therapy and clinical treatments, such as MDMA aided Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder psychotherapy, MAPS (2010). The experiments are under strict regulation and must obtain highly expensive small amounts of trial substances from ‘proofed’ manufacturers; it is not permitted to hire chemists for such purposes. For the MAPS (2010) initial PTSD MDMA assisted psychotherapy pilot study it cost $1,200,000 to be carried out, a large sum spent on pharmaceutically sourced MDMA. Resultantly, funding mostly comes from politically and economically motivated sources. Pharmaceutical companies are beginning to profit off these trials and begin to have a stake in the drugs and the trials. This investment, Waldstein (2012) argues, could shape the very nature of drugs legalisation. Are these alternative politically motivated trials inadvertently becoming consumed by the dominant political and economic forces of our society and are beginning to be used for the advantage of those at the top?
Waldstein (2012) explains the concept of ‘sovereignty’, meaning the right and power for an individual to regulate the self optimally, particularly relating to health and what you put into your body. Waldstein (2012) argues the powers of individual sovereignty have been removed in our society, especially in the realm of drugs and medicines; pharmaceutical companies and governments have sovereign control over what we do or do not subject our bodies to. The capacity for sovereignty over individual drug use is not a new concept, the era of illegalisation and prohibition of drugs has been short, we must remember, in relation to our human past. Barton (2003) notes, in the early 1800’s, the medical profession was still not well established in the U.K, there was little access to doctors and their treatments. Self-medication was the most popular form of healing; opium derivatives at the time were abundantly used as a ‘cure all’ and could be found at the local grocers. Could it be argued that, even as little far back as the 1800’s, people had more access to a wider range of medicinal drug cures and more individual sovereignty than we do today? Each drug/medicine we take must be prescribed by the medical industry where it may not suit individual health needs.
Big business and regulation bodies have been aware of the money to be made in natural herb remedies for a while. They have invested into the business and made it harder for smaller companies to sell herbal products. New laws springing up have established herbal medicines to be regulated in the same way food is, meaning difficult and expensive to attain regulation stamps from the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive (THMPD), explains the Natural Health Alliance (2012). Is it obscure to think such companies as these, would do the same with new legalised drugs to centralise the profit made from them and to maintain the control and supply of substances in a few hands? The outcome of legalising drugs in this way would be positively beneficial for mass profits and power for the directors of the ever-dominating capitalist economic system.
Aldous Huxley’s’ (2003) novel, a ‘Brave New World’, explores the concept of a society, which normalises and culturally enforces the use of Soma, a Psychedelic drug, in order to socially control the population. Soma is deemed a mandatory aspect of their modern lives; drug taking is a naturalised act in Brave New World. One enforced by social expectations and the institutions of society – much like you might say excessive alcohol consumption is a prevalent norm in our society. The hallucinogenic drug is produced by the World State and is described as providing a holiday experience to its users. Individuals use it as a sort of self-medication, for senseless and meaningless pleasure to distract them from distress or discomfort in their lives; this self-medicating use is politically very powerful.
If a state manages to find a method to enjoyably distract individuals from the negative aspects of their reality within a specific place in a given society, while reaping massive profits from the created desire, then that state has immense power. In the state of addiction, you become a slave, a slave to an external object, a product; individuals begin to biologically and psychologically need the products that alter the way their minds work. Such as the addictive Tobacco or the way people find it hard to be socially comfortable without drinking alcohol in our society; companies and the state are reliant on this need, for profit and control.
Drugs become a self fulfilling act as Huxley demonstrated, the people of a Brave New World work so they can survive and so they can consume Soma, the very thing which is distracting them from their turmoil, is what they crave. Again, easily applied to our society, with the most abundantly used and easily attained drug, alcohol, being a depressant of the mind. Huxley’s work heeds a warning to us, in the process of legalisation; we must consider if the wrong groups or institutions gain sovereignty over these substances, the outcomes could be disastrous.
The use of drugs as a tool of mind control and warfare is not just a concept taken from the pages of a fictitious novel. Our very own cultural history in the U.K has a dark past in respect to this. As discussed earlier, Barton (2003) points out that in the early 1800’s opium use was normalised, it was not seen as problematic, this was partially because of Britain’s investment in the global opium trade. By the 1830’s, Barton (2003) elaborates; Britain had become the largest drug trafficking organisation in the world, larger than we can imagine any drug cartel’s power and income. The British importation of opium to China had exploded; the U.K had literally turned an entire country into a land of opium addicts, they did so by illegal importations. The figure of estimated opium addicts ranged from 4-12 million users at the time in China. The British state’s reasoning, according to Barton (2003), was to destabilise China and its economy, establishing British control and trade, by keeping its workers hooked on opium, and distracted from reality. War in China eventually took fruition, as the Chinese began arresting those for opium use and Britain stepped in. They were victorious and opened up legal trade routes and Western merchants to China. So we can see drugs use can be devastating if motivated by the wrong source, the idea of drugs as a form of social and psychological warfare, is not new.
David Jay Brown (2012) draws our attention to the experiments carried out by the U.S military in the 60’s, testing the use of LSD in ‘psychedelic warfare’. The experiments at the time were highly top secret and much of the evidence was destroyed because of its highly contentious political nature. First, there was the well-known ‘MK-Ultra’ project where, unknowing American citizens, were administered LSD to test its capacity as a weapon of mind control. Less well known were the military trials involving soldiers being administered LSD to test the effects of the military skills of the participant. ‘Chemical warfare’ was the name of the game, finding out LSD’s effectiveness in stunning and incapacitating large groups of people was the main goal. Brown (2012) points to the irony, during the same time of these warfare trials, the 60’s hippie movement took LSD into open arms for mind-expanding purposes. This demonstrates the different realms of the legalisation movement.
It is not necessarily far off that current illegalised drugs could be legalised for primarily economic reasons. Many large pharmaceutical and drug corporations have begun to officially patent and create brand names for drug products, such as in the case of Marijuana, Scheck (2010) points out the beginning to be patented trademark names for future marijuana companies, such as ‘Budtrader’ and one selling psychoactive sodas named ‘Canna Cola’. Antonio Costa (2012) claims this demonstrates the legalisation of drugs will only come around for the benefit of the ‘1%’ (speaking in Occupy equality terms). He points out the amount of legal drugs sold by big business kills enough people; do we want them to have the power to do so even more? Could Marx’s (1976) ‘opium of the people’ theory, soon be reconceptualised as describing the phenomena for literal substances to control and mask the reality of our lives, instead of religious institutions? Is it possible to consider that drug legalisation, to be met in a way which would positively effect a majority of society, is only possible under a whole new societal framework? Where substances are the source of wisdom and enjoyment, something for the people, and not solely the source of economic and political purposes or boundless hedonism (fitting in neatly with consumerism). Mind-altering drugs have been used throughout human history and are found in almost every single society, Luke (2012), we find the traditional use of mind altering plants to be used for beneficial life purposes such as the healing of various illnesses in the case of Ayahuasca in the Brazilian Rainforests, or toad poison used for an advantage in hunting in the Amazon. Would the legalisation of drugs in a postmodern commodity fetishized era bring on a new sense of meaninglessness and anomie? Pleasure may begin to be mediated by these drugs, where as Sacks (2012) describes is often pleasure experienced without context, pleasure without emotional source or content, and one with a high craving. Perhaps drugs legalisation slots into our consumer and commodity fetishized society more than we may think.
So what kind of legislation could be more effective? What policy could transition us to a world where drug use is safer and better understood, and not just for the benefit of the 1%? Decriminalisation is an alternative that, at least, could start to forge the path. In 2001, Portugal was the first country to decriminalise every type of drug, since prohibition. The policy changes the state’s vision of drug users from guilty criminals to harmless recreational users or ill citizens.
It is legal to possess 10 doses or less of any substance while trafficking and distribution remain illegal, Blackstone (2012). Users are not punished but may have possessed drugs removed, or are brought to a panel where discussion of their drug use and guidance is offered, therapy and workshop sessions also become available, Blackstone (2012). Harm reduction strategies have soared since the law change, where education, therapy/treatment, needle exchanges, etc, are far more abundant and easily accessed. Impressive statistical data has been collected since the law change, such as a 50% decrease in hard drug addicts, New Internationalist (2012:14). Users sentenced to prison went from 1,200 in 2001 to 0 in 2002, Greenwald (2009:15) – reducing government spending on prisons and focusing it on education and treatment. Newly infected HIV drug users also went down, from over a 1000 in 2001 to less than 400 in 2006, Greenwald (2009:16).
Portugal and the astoundingly positive statistics gathered from their change in drug policy can teach us many things. Decriminalisation can allow a society to treat drug problems more fairly and successfully. Instead of treating the user as the problem, it focuses on the drug itself, allowing people to get much needed help where prohibition isolates people and their needs.
Decriminalisation opens up the floor, for a more sensible policy to drugs in general. As drugs are decriminalised, more intercourse is opened up. The platform for drugs to be expanded upon in practical use and education is opened up. One of the main problems of prohibition is education; some users are highly uninformed, as government policy does not allow for the realistic education toward substances. We see this with the lack of drug education in the UK and the highly biased education sources like TalkToFrank. Decriminalisation would enable citizens to become better informed on drugs and their effects, and so if they do use them, will use them in a less harmful way. Much of the harm caused by drugs today could be explained by the poor education of their uses.
Research would also be easier to conduct, expanding public knowledge on drugs and exploring practical uses. Such as to treat the terminally ill for anxiety with LSD, Gasser (2012), and marijuana to lessen pain, or MDMA’s use to treat PTSD, MAPS (2012). Decriminalisation would remove concerns of legalisation and its possible negative uses for economic and power gain, while allowing millions to benefit health wise from these substances. The policy has the potential to greatly lessen the societal harm from drugs and promote their safe use, while granting citizens more freedom, sovereignty and cognitive liberty.
Although, some criticise that decriminalisation does not reach far enough, as the problems involved in supply and trade are still prevalent, as Portugal shows. Is it not contradictory to give freedom from punishment to users but not the suppliers who provide them? Problems of drug safety may still be prevalent, as the supply cannot be checked for purity, like with legalisation, and cannot be taxed to benefit societies economically. Although, decriminalisation has been an affective strategy in Portugal, we cannot say that the policy would have the same effect in another country. However, decriminalisation would be a step in the right direction, a point where a more plausible, positive and successful form of legalisation could be considered from.
The positives of legalising or decriminalising far outbalance any argument to keep the current set of laws retaining prohibition across the world, our problematization of drug use is highly Western centric. The pain and suffering out-laid on populations of non-users the world over is tremendous. The high rates of death and violent tensions in entire countries and communities as a result of drug illegalisation, cannot, on a scientific, rationalistic, economic, statistical, political or human empathetic basis be justified as the only option. The prohibition of drugs, we must remember, is a very short history in that of humanity, an experiment of sorts. We can now see that prohibition undeniably does not solve societal drug problems that remain today. Prohibition can be seen as a betrayal of human rights, where sovereignty over the body and cognitive liberty is no longer permitted, but controlled by governments, corporations and dealers. We must ask, why are some drugs legal and others not? What we think of as a ‘drug’ is ignorantly narrow, we get drugs from the corner shop, the pharmacist, the café, the bar, the hospital – the only difference is government approval, not the approval of scientists, citizens or realistic scales of harm. If we continue to see the harm of current legal pharmaceutical and social drugs, we must carefully consider the power they behold, whom it belongs to and whom the power could shift to with legalisation.
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