reconsiDer: TIDBIT
A historical look at drug
use is always useful to some of us even though Santayana's advice is too often
ignored by most. In this article from Great Britain's The Economist we see a
long-term view of drug use and a prediction for the
future.
CHOOSE YOUR
POISON
"THE abuse of tea has taken on the
characteristics of a plague" it is not
only confined to men, but has even
spread to women and children. The
situation is becoming very dangerous. Tea
abuse...takes the form of an
imperious and irresistible craving." Thus a
Tunisian physician, horrified by
the effects of tea when it first arrived in
his country in the 1930s. Thus,
does society's view of what constitutes a
dangerous drug depend on fashion,
familiarity and the way the drug is
used.
Will the hysteria about heroin one day seem equally quaint? Tom
Carnwath, a
senior doctor working with drug users, and Ian Smith, a former
heroin user
turned social worker, certainly think so. In their level-headed,
informative
and witty book, they point out that opium was seen until a
century ago as a
huge benefit. Like aspirin, it cured many ills with mild
side-effects.
Indeed, by coincidence, both heroin and aspirin were isolated
within a
fortnight of each other in 1897 by the same team of German
researchers"who
thought heroin the more medically useful
product.
Today, say the authors, heroin remains "a medicine without
superior". But,
thanks to the international war on drugs, the "God-given
benefits of the
poppy", once accessible to the poorest sufferer, are now
unavailable in most
countries even to those suffering the pain of terminal
cancer.
And why? The war on heroin is based on a view of the drug as
misguided as
the Tunisian physician's view of tea, argue the authors. Most
heroin users
are occasional, and most of the rest survive for long periods on
regular
doses. There is, they insist, no evidence that heroin taken in these
ways
shortens lives or threatens health. It is mainly the aggressive
behaviour of
junkies, a minority of users, that gives heroin its demonic
reputation.
Moreover, as heroin becomes an increasingly middle-class drug,
more and more
people will discover that the popular hysteria is
baseless.
The authors can be too accepting: their figures for the world
drug trade are
probably far too high. But their book, which should be read by
every
politician, parent and physician, is full of common sense. Only
the
conclusion seems over-optimistic: they predict that, as heroin
moves
upmarket, it will be legalised relatively soon. Their optimism may
reflect
the fact that they are British, and Britain has recently begun to
adopt a
saner approach to drugs.
But international policy on drugs is
dictated by the United States, and for
a taste of American attitudes, turn to
Douglas Husak, a philosopher who is
infuriated by his country's draconian
drug laws. The sheer scale of
incarceration of drug users "makes prohibition
the worst injustice
perpetrated by our system of criminal law in the 20th
century," he argues.
The figures bear out his horror: nearly one prisoner in
four in America is
locked up for a non-violent drug offence, and drug crimes
now often receive
harsher punishments than violent assaults, rapes or
murders.
Such disproportion rightly infuriates Mr Husak. Step by step, he
destroys
many of the arguments used by the law's defenders. Sometimes,
demolition is
easy, as in the case of William Bennett, America's first drug
tsar, who
said: "The simple fact is that drug use is wrong. And the moral
argument, in
the end, is the most compelling argument." Even if moral truths
were simple
and we could all agree on them, it is a glaring non sequitur to
insist that
immorality should therefore be criminalised.
Mr Husak's
destruction job is elegantly argued and philosophically informed.
Will common
sense win? Will drugs one day be as available as tea? Mr Husak
reminds us of
Senator Morris Sheppard's jut-jawed prediction, three years
before
prohibition's repeal, that the re- legalisation of alcohol sales was
as
likely as a humming bird's flying to the planet Mars "with the
Washington
Monument tied to its
tail."
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