Tidbits on Drug Policy

In our mainstream cultural framework, illicit “drug use” and “drug addiction” have become practically synonymous. Addictiveness is viewed as an inherent property of an illicit drug, similar to such internal properties as its texture or taste. Placing of addiction with a drug rather than with a user of a drug is one of the rhetorical fallacies that both sides in the drug policy discussion often commit. Of course, if nobody would be ingesting a drug in question, there would be no addictive property to speak of.

To look at addiction (and, subsequently at drug use) from a rather different angle, let us first consider what addiction actually means. “Addiction” as a term was first introduced in the beginning of the century in reference to opium use. It has subsequently evolved to mean dependence, a state in which a body/individual needs the drug for “normal” functioning. Addiction can be physical or psychological, although there exists a lively debate about the definitions of various types of addiction and even about what constitutes addiction itself. To illustrate, consider the following hypothetical:

After a hard day’s work, Mr. Smith likes to have a glass of scotch. This has become somewhat of a tradition - hardly a day goes by when Mr. Smith doesn’t have his usual drink. The alcohol amount is hardly sufficient to inebriate Mr. Smith, but a drink is a welcome soothing cap to a hectic day. One day, Mr. Smith run out of scotch and went to bed without his usual drink. His mood soured, he had trouble falling asleep and developed a headache.

Is Mr. Smith addicted? If yes, is his addiction physical or psychological? What if, instead of alcohol, Mr. Smith had a habit of listening to classical music for half-an-hour before going to bed, to calm his nerves? He could have easily developed the same symptoms (sour mood, insomnia, headache) if deprived of this little treat. Does it mean that Mr. Smith is addicted to classical music?

Some maintain that addiction is simply a medical term for a habit. I would venture to say that if most of us are suddenly deprived of our long-standing habits, we would exhibit certain signs of distress. So, can we actually claim that regular drug use is simply a drug habit? Mr. Smith likes to listen to classical music before going to bed and Mr. Jones prefers to roll himself a small marijuana joint. Did we simply create a new disease out of behavioral condition?

Whether addiction is actually a disease or simply a very hard to kick habit is irrelevant - after all, even most mundane undesired behavior can be looked at as a disease and thus, medically treated. What I wanted to demonstrate by discussing it is that addiction as something inherent to an individual, just like a preference, habit or a predilection, and not primarily a quality of a drug. Some people may like scotch, others - marijuana, yet others prefer to smoke opium. Some people may like scotch so much that they become alcoholics; others can go through life drinking a couple of glasses of wine per day and never have any problems arising out of their alcohol consumption. Or, consider a “harder” drug: contrary to the popular belief, there is a large number of recreational users of heroin, known as “chippers”, who regularly use the drug, but seem not to run into problems normally associated with heroin use. Does it mean that those people are addicted? Of course, there are plenty of others who get habituated with heroin (or, more conventionally, addicted to heroin) to a detrimental extent. So, it seems that some people are addicted to some drugs more than others. Well, some people like classical music (or wine, or scotch) more than others.

Addiction is primarily a function of a user, not substance. Before drug use reaches the level of addiction (if ever), it is merely a drug habit. Just like with any habit, there are some people who may prefer a drug more than others. Speaking of addiction as a demon inside a particular substance that is sure to destroy anybody who ingests it smacks of medieval ideas of persons possessed by devil.

admin :: May.09.2008 :: Rants, Social Policy :: No Comments »

Scott Morgan, in his post on StopTheDrugWar.org, writes:

I learned of a marvelous ancient document which sets forth in basic terms the fundamental strategies that have long been employed to destroy the drug war debate. “Themes in Chemical Prohibition” by William L. White was published in 1979 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. A review of chemical prohibitionist literature reveals eight themes which appear to emerge from the tactics of most such movements.

Here they are:

THE PROHIBITIONIST THEMES

1. The drug is associated with a hated subgroup of the society or a foreign enemy.

2. The drug is identified as solely responsible for many problems in the culture, i.e., crime, violence, and insanity.

3. The survival of the culture is pictured as being dependent on the prohibition of the drug.

4. The concept of “controlled” usage is destroyed and replaced by a “domino theory” of chemical progression.

5. The drug is associated with the corruption of young children, particularly their sexual corruption.

6. Both the user and supplier of the drug are defined as fiends, always in search of new victims; usage of the drug is considered “contagious.”

7. Policy options are presented as total prohibition or total access.

8. Anyone questioning any of the above assumptions is bitterly attacked and characterized as part of the problem that needs to be eliminated.

These themes are great focal points for addressing the arguments usually put forth by the advocates of the prohibition. In subsequent posts, I hope to discuss each one of them. Stay tuned.

admin :: Apr.22.2008 :: Social Policy :: No Comments »

In Morse v. Frederick (2007), a.k.a. the “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS” case, Justice Stevens, in his dissent, delivered the most remarkable quote, that, a few years ago, would have been virtually impossible to hear from someone that high up in the Establishment:

Reaching back still further, the current dominant opinion supporting the war on drugs in general, and our antimarijuana laws in particular, is reminiscent of the opinion that supported the nationwide ban on alcohol consumption when I was a student. While alcoholic beverages are now regarded as ordinary articles of commerce, their use was then condemned with the same moral fervor that now supports the war on drugs. The ensuing change in public opinion occurred much more slowly than the relatively rapid shift in Americans’ views on the Vietnam War, and progressed on a state-by-state basis over a period of many years. But just as prohibition in the 1920’s and early 1930’s was secretly questioned by thousands of otherwise law-abiding patrons of bootleggers and speakeasies, today the actions of literally millions of otherwise law-abiding users of marijuana, and of the majority of voters in each of the several States that tolerate medicinal uses of the product, lead me to wonder whether the fear of disapproval by those in the majority is silencing opponents of the war on drugs. Surely our national experience with alcohol should make us wary of dampening speech suggesting — however inarticulately — that it would be better to tax and regulate marijuana than to persevere in a futile effort to ban its use entirely.

Lets see whether we see this kind of talk make its way into the Court’s majority opinions.

admin :: Apr.03.2008 :: Marijuana, Rants, Social Policy :: No Comments »

In a wonderfully informative primer, Why is Marijuana Illegal? A brief history of the criminalization of cannabis, Pete Guither writes:

Many people assume that marijuana was made illegal through some kind of process involving scientific, medical, and government hearings; that it was to protect the citizens from what was determined to be a dangerous drug.

The actual story shows a much different picture. Those who voted on the legal fate of this plant never had the facts, but were dependent on information supplied by those who had a specific agenda to deceive lawmakers.

Pete has touched upon a very important issue: way too often, our legislatures pass laws that are based on faulty data. The Drug War is just the most glaring manifestation of this phenomenon. Our elected representatives have no clue about many of the issues that they are called upon to regulate. As the result, we get a bunch of nonsensical laws - laws that we have to abide by, laws that govern our daily lives, laws that can send a person to prison for many years for doing something that likely doesn’t cause any major harm to himself or the society anyway.

Laws can be overturned if they are deemed unconstitutional; however, the Supreme Court exercises extreme deference to legislative opinion in most challenges. And, there is really no effective mechanism that would prevent legislatures from legislating on the basis of misinformation, hysteria or political agenda. As a result we are stuck with a plethora of laws and regulations that do more harm than good, and - most of these laws will be with us for a long, long time, simply because there is no mechanism that would evaluate them on the basis of effectiveness.

Well, you might ask, but what about the political leverage? If the society doesn’t like some law, its elected representatives will be forced to repeal or amend it, simply because they would like to get reelected. Ideally - yes, that’s how it should work. However, too often, the people simply don’t care or are just as misinformed about the issue as their legislators. The Drug War amply demonstrates that the society may welcome the most egregious and punitive laws even when credible information is available that proves that these laws do more harm than good.

The mere list of ideas on how to insure that we are governed by laws enacted on the basis of the most accurate information available can balloon this post to a barely readable length. I will try to outline a few of them in later posts and I encourage you to also think about how our system may be improved. Think about this: if Congress enacted laws based on the best available information the whole Drug War quagmire might have been avoided.

admin :: Jan.06.2008 :: Laws, statutes, regulations, Rants, Social Policy :: 1 Comment »

“America needs to reconsider its punitive approach to “the so-called war on drugs,” presidential candidate John Edwards said here today.”

Source: DesMoinesRegister.com: Edwards: War on drugs too punitive

Something like this coming from a (somewhat) viable presidential candidate twenty years ago would be sufficient to bury his chances of being elected. It seems that we’ve come a long way since the “Casual drug users should be taken out and shot. Smoke a joint, lose your life.” pronouncement by the former Los Angeles Police Chief and the founder of the D.A.R.E. program Daryl Gates on September 5, 1990. Thankfully, today we don’t hear diatribes like this too often.

I hope that the changing nature of drug policy discourse is reflective of the changing social attitudes towards the punitive approach to the drug issues. Even, such admittedly obscurantist entity as the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy lists the “balanced drug control policy” as its main national priority - instead of stressing slash-and-burn tactics in the War on Drugs that it has continued to promote. It is good to see the menacing approach a la William Bennet or Daryl Gates go out of fashion - at least as far as the drug policy debate is concerned, albeit is still hasn’t translated into real action.

I wonder whether we are going to reach a tipping point where all these shy harbingers of common sense would saturate into a mass breaking of the flood gates that would allow the common sense voices to permeate drug policy discourse and, finally, result in real change.

admin :: Nov.23.2007 :: News, Social Policy :: No Comments »

Just got back from a month-long stint in Eastern and Western Europe(s). Of course, because of my interest in the field, I took some time to study the drug policy on the ground - talked with some people from both sides of the barricades and read some studies.

Of course, one cannot bundle together the drug policy approach of Eastern European countries such as Russia, Ukraine or Georgia and say, Netherlands. The law enforcement in Russia and Ukraine use the extremely punitive drug legislation as a tool in ensuring that they would be able to arrest anybody at any time simply by planting some “evidence” on an (un)desired person. The harm reduction approach is virtually dead. I will write a bit more about drugs and Russia/Ukraine sometime later.

Now, I mainly want to point out one thing that the drug policies of countries such as Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and Netherlands have in common: the absence of any moral component in decisions involving drug policy. The stress is made on harm reduction. That’s why Netherlands doesn’t persecute simple possession and its heroin addicts can safely shoot up in specially designated places (often located at or near police precincts).

If you, the reader, are from the United States, you might feel, if not indignation, but maybe, a certain discomfort, a feeling that there might be something wrong with that scenario. That’s your morality talking. We’ve been conditioned to believe that drug use is simply wrong - and, unfortunately, it largely colors the public discourse in this country concerning recreational drugs and recreational drug use. After all, when something is wrong, morally wrong, it is really beside the point whether or not it is good or bad for you. The objective reasons don’t matter.

The Dutch approach may have resulted in a marked decrease in overdoses and a general decrease in young hard drug addict population (the average age of a Dutch heroin addict has risen to 37!) - but it is morally wrong and thus, is completely unacceptable on our shores. Unfortunately, I am not being sarcastic. Until the public learns not to view drug use as one of the “vices,” we are bound to be hindered in our common sense judgments by our righteousness.

admin :: Oct.25.2007 :: Rants, Social Policy :: No Comments »

Heroin maintenance programs have been used in some European countries (notably, Switzerland and Great Britain) with relative success for many years. The gist of these programs is providing an addict with a dose of pure heroin and a supervised setting in which to inject it. But this post is not about the relative merits or drawbacks of heroin maintenance, but rather about an ethical concern regarding heroin maintenance best expressed by Robert J. MacCoun and Peter Reuter wrote in their wonderful RAND study, Drug War Heresies. I will quote the passage in full:

Feasibility [of heroin maintenance programs] is not desirability. Heroin maintenance has a contradiction at its heart. Having chosen to prohibit the drug, society then makes an exception for those who cause sufficient damage, to themselves and to society, as a consequence of their violation of the prohibition. Society’s decision is setting the damage level that entitles a user to access. It can require that an addict cause a lot of damage to gain access, which is expensive (in terms of crime and health risks) and inhumane. However, if it sets the barrier low, then access to heroin becomes too easy, and the basic prohibition is substantially weakened. That contradiction alone does not make maintenance bad public policy, but it does raise a fundamental ethical concern.

Obviously, this is not the only precedent when our society ultimately rewards an individual for a persistent violation of its laws. Take illegal immigration: migrants who are enterprising enough to overcome the obstacles (physical and otherwise) that the United States erects around its borders are often able to naturalize. Illegal immigration is a perfect example of an extra-legal status-quo: illegal aliens are tolerated because the U.S. is addicted to cheap labor.

Similarly, heroin maintenance programs involve a trade-off: despite general prohibition, some addicts who are “persistent in their addiction” are allowed access to heroin. In return, the society receives the aggregate benefits of lower health costs (no more diluted black-market heroin, no needle-sharing, not as much overdosing), lower crime-fighting costs (addict doesn’t have to resort to crime to finance his habit at black market prices) and a possibility of social re-integration of an addict back into the community.

But wait! Despite the benefits of the program, the ethical dilemma is still there! But only until one realizes that an exception to the rule does not always involve a compromise with ethics. This particular case involves a prohibition regime that is largely detrimental both to addicts and to the society at large. Any hole punched in this regime that moves it towards harm reduction and more sensible drug policy can be considered ethically suspect only on a purely logically-abstract level, insofar as it represents a contradiction with the existing policies.

Another, fairly straightforward way of removing the contradiction would be either shutting down heroin maintenance programs (not a correct choice, in my humble opinion) or legalizing heroin. Of course, the problem with that solution (in addition to the obvious political ones) is that nobody is really sure what’s going to happen: some say that if we legalize, we just might end up with a much greater number of addicts. It is a valid argument - there is no firm basis on which one could confidently argue that a spike in addiction won’t happen. On a theoretical level, one trick to avoiding mass heroin addiction in a legalization regime is a fine line between making access to heroin hard enough so that only the determined seekers of the drug would bother, but not making it so hard that it is easier or cheaper to obtain it in the black market. Drawing that fine line would not be easy; however, we did it with illegal immigration: the amalgam of border patrols, fences, regulations and penalties makes sure that we are not flooded with migrants; however the restrictions are not draconian enough to prevent our economy from getting its regular injection of cheap workforce.

admin :: Aug.25.2007 :: Opiates, Social Policy :: 2 Comments »

Our current Prohibition isn’t very successful at stopping drug use, for many obvious and not-so-obvious reasons. However, in order to sharpen our focus on this issue it is helpful to list the social effects that prohibitionist policies have on drug use. Here we go:

• Deterrence or the fear of legal sanctions
  This mostly concerns expected legal risks (Example: the likelihood of the punishment for the prohibited activity in the eyes of a typical Joe Public.)

• Informal self and social controls
  (a) Morality or legitimacy; (Example: Many people won’t try drugs if the society considers drug use to be something shameful and despicable.)
  (b) Forbidden fruit effects; (Example: Teens rebelling against the authority might be tempted to try drugs simply because the mainstream tells them not to.)
  (c) Community norms; (Example: Very religious rural communities create an environment that is less conducive to drug use than, say, a large cosmopolitan urban area.)
  (d) Informal or extra-legal social sanctions. (Example: The fear of being ostracized or being labeled a drug addict by friends and neighbors.)

While the economic laws of supply and demand make sure that the prohibitionist action-based policies are bound to fail, the prohibitionist propaganda (that was so prevalent during the Bill Bennett years) that tries to frame drug use as a social and moral taboo can be more successful. If the society believes that drug use is immoral, any rational argument for or against it becomes pretty irrelevant. Notice how in the list above, every type of social control mechanism (except the forbidden fruit effect) would work towards hampering activities associated with drug use in a drug-intolerant society.

admin :: Jul.27.2007 :: Social Policy :: No Comments »

The government may sincerely be trying to protect us from the harms of drug use. This is something that is known as legal paternalism. Legal paternalism is a belief that “[I]t is always a good reason in support of a prohibition that it is necessary to prevent harm (physical, psychological, or economic) to the actor himself.” (Joel Feinberg) The State sees itself as a concerned parent vis-a-vis its citizens. It views its citizens not as responsible adults, the subjects who possess independent free will, but merely as children, objects in the State’s care, which need to be protected from harm, especially from harm that they may inflict upon themselves. Concerned with the alleged harms of drug use (it doesn’t matter whether they are real or merely perceived), the State feels justified in punishing its children for conduct that it feels is more harmful than the punishment.

Consistent with the parenting role, is the notion of legal perfectionism, the idea that laws should play a role in positively shaping citizens for their individual benefit. The current militantly prohibitionist legal system may not be very effective in reducing drug use and trafficking; however, its role in cultivating “healthy” attitudes towards drug use amongst the constituency makes it ultimately justified.

Legal paternalism is a very prominent aspect of our legal framework. And, it seems that most citizens don’t mind. They want to feel protected, even from themselves, if need be. If Big Papa sometimes misguidedly causes more damage by punishing its children than can result from harm he protects them against - well, no system is perfect, right?

admin :: Jun.14.2007 :: Rants, Social Policy :: No Comments »

Drugs cannot be forced out of existence; they will be with us for as long as people find in them the relief or satisfaction they desire. But the harm caused by drug abuse can be reduced. We cannot talk in absolutes - that drug abuse will cease, that no more illegal drugs will cross our borders - because if we are honest with ourselves we know that is beyond our power. But we can bring together the resources of the Federal Government intelligently to protect our society and those who suffer.

Federal Strategy for Drug Abuse and Drug Traffic Prevention 1979, Strategy Council on Drug Abuse.

Yes, this came from the Federal Government of the United States. Obviously, the sensible attitude expressed in the quote above hasn’t really stuck.

admin :: Jun.04.2007 :: Social Policy :: No Comments »