Global tide turning against the War on Drugs
- Author:
- Michael Gormly
- Posted:
- Thursday, 3 September 2009
OPINION
Except for the occasional glimmer of light, consumers of Australian media can be forgiven for thinking the dark age of drug prohibition is not only justified but securely incumbent.
While our media, most politicians and even some health experts continue to regurgitate an evolving panoply of drug myths usually traceable to ultra-conservative US elements, truth will out and the international tide is on the turn against prohibition.
One of these myths is the one about cannabis and psychosis. New strains of ‘skunk’ are X times stronger than the weed baby-boomers smoked in the ’60s, and it’s sending today’s teenagers crazy, right?
Wrong. The perpetrators of this myth have funded a swag of dodgy research to link cannabis and psychosis, and our media faithfully regurgitate the moral panic. But they fail to explain why rates of psychosis have not significantly risen since pot became popular in the West over the past four decades; and anyone who thinks the drugs of the 1970s were not potent either wasn’t there or had no personal experience of them.
Yet ‘research’ still shows ‘links’ between cannabis and psychosis. It drives horror headlines variously claiming that smoking pot results in a 40 or even a 200 per cent increase in the risk of mental illness, depending on the shrillness of the source. But what they don’t tell you is that this dramatic increase in risk is limited to far less than one percent of smokers. While a 40 percent increase in risk sounds alarming, 40 per cent of nearly nothing is no reason for a worldwide War on Drugs which directly kills countless thousands of people each year.
Other recent marijuana myths claim that it shrinks your brain, makes your teeth fall out and gives you cancer. Horrid little Frankensteins are still injecting people and rats with pure THC (an active ingredient of cannabis) to prove it is toxic, even though no-one has ever died directly from cannabis.
Locally we now have the lavishly funded National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre (NCPIC) to foment panic. It published a minor study claiming that cannabis makes people violent – pure Reefer Madness nonsense. It has now conducted an evidence review to support a new campaign claiming that driving stoned is the same as driving drunk. But this is not backed up by NCPIC’s own report, which concludes that “great variations and inconsistencies” in the findings “detract from the likelihood of a clear synthesis of results”.
None of these cannabis plagues actually show up clearly in population studies, which is why authoritative bodies like the British Government’s Scientific Advisory Panel advised against reclassifying pot into the more serious Category B. This was ignored by Gordon Brown, who went ahead anyway in a desperate pursuit of political points. The privately funded Beckley Commission recognises dangers of cannabis but concludes that prohibition is disproportionate and ineffective.
A recent Cato Institute study assessed Portugal’s progress since it decriminalised all drugs including the hard ones in 2001. Cannabis use is down among teens and HIV transmission has been slashed.
This is awkward stuff for prohibitionists who always assert that going ‘soft on drugs’ will unleash a tsunami of drug abuse and mental illness. They also have trouble with solid world-wide evidence that liberal harm minimisation practice – needle exchanges, supervised injecting centres and the like – is the best way to reduce HIV transmission among injecting drug users and does not increase drug use.
It is this HIV factor which is turning the United Nations away from the US-driven War on Drugs towards a new approach based on harm minimisation.
This is despite the still-powerful influence of Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and a keen prohibitionist.
In 1998 his organisation declared it would make the world ‘drug-free’ by 2008. Despite the spectacular failure of this ambition, he has recommended another ten years of War on Drugs. Given that the global illicit drug market rivals the oil industry in size, and any kid can still score pot in any town in Australia, his defence is reduced to nonsense sound-bites such as “Drugs are not harmful because they are controlled, they are controlled because they are harmful.” Sounds neat, except that drugs are not controlled and prohibition clearly makes them more harmful — as we are repeatedly told by police who warn against buying ecstasy pills because “you never know what’s in them”.
Costa ignored a recent global email campaign urging him to explain why, if prohibition was effective, cannabis usage in the Netherlands (where it is freely available) is around one-third the rate in the prohibitionist US, which jails more people for possession than any other country. The US has five per cent of the world’s population but 25 per cent of its prisoners, most of them black or Hispanic. No-knock raids on homes by armed para-military police are common there, frequently resulting in the death of innocent people because information was wrong or police just got the wrong house.
Fortunately for the world, Costa is outranked by UN General Assembly resolutions in support of harm minimisation, echoed by WHO.
The election of Barak Obama is also significant. While he is not dismantling US prohibition, he has stopped Federal law enforcers busting people for medical marihuana use in the growing number of states which have legalised it.
Mexico has just decriminalised personal possession of most drugs with nary a peep out of the Obama Administration, in sharp contrast to the last time Mexico tried this route only to backtrack under intense pressure from the Bush administration. Now Argentina has also decriminalised cannabis, and the cocaine-producing nations of South America are calling for a change of strategy as their countries are being ripped apart by drug cartel warfare without any reduction in cocaine production which is fuelled, ironically, by the huge profits to be made in the US market..
Respected journal The Economist is campaigning against prohibition while the idea of regulated supply is making the opinion pages of leading newspapers including The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian.
Even police in the US have a 16,000-member organization, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which has erected roadside billboards announcing “Drug abuse is bad – the Drug War is WORSE”
But here in backward Sydney, the Miranda Devines, Fred Niles and the Christian Right keep singing from the same old songbook and this supposedly global city is embarrassed when travellers from progressive countries are confronted by the sight of police with sniffer dogs searching people in the street like a scene from some hardcore American cop show or an Iron-Curtain police state. This is no longer the free country we have fought so many wars to defend.
All inner city residents suffer the fallout from prohibition – from syringes in the street to muggers, beggars and burglars feeding addictions, to less obvious problems such as police focusing on easy drug busts instead of, say, high-visibility policing in late-night entertainment precincts where a stronger presence would reduce actual violence.
It’s time we got real.
by Michael Gormly
PS The latest study to question the cannabis-schizophrenia link, and a host of other current Drug Law Reform information, is blogged on my Kings Cross Times site.
Foot-soldiers in a pointless war turn our streets into a battleground
September 4th, 2009 @ 4:57 pm
[...] Global Tide Turning Against The War On Drugs. [...]
September 4th, 2009 @ 9:33 pm
Gosh, Its been a long time since I heard anyone argue that freedom to take drugs was a “progressive” cause. It was probably back in 1972.
But of course, Michael, you are dead right. The war is a sham and causing massive misallocation of resources, billions wasted all round. Almost as much as the drug cartels – those ones now taking over entire states like Mexico and Afghanistan – are pocketing from our stupidity.
But please, stop wasting time arguing that cannabis is just dandy. Who cares? You really should have spent that part of your argument extolling the mental health benefits of crystal meth. And as for shooting down imaginary enemies like Miranda Devine and Fred Nile, well, I mean why bother?
But it was your call to “get real”. So Michael, tell us what you have in mind? Something like Holland – the capital of organised crime in Europe?
Which drugs will be OK “personal use?” What quantities? How much will they cost? Which drugs? Who decides? You can’t be half pregnant, can you? Tell us Michael, who do you imagine is going to be selling us our daily dose of meth, and to whom?
I’m not arguing against a free market. Its actually the only solution we have left. But the reality will NOT be be that progressive paradise you have in your very old fashioned, conservative (and dare I say, reactionary) 70s style imagination.
There will be monolithic, gigantic multi national drug corporations keeping us sedated and “party-ing”, and they’ll be not unlike like the one your publisher was ranting against in City Hub this week.
Progressive? Michael – get real!
September 5th, 2009 @ 6:36 am
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September 5th, 2009 @ 9:07 am
Russell Edwards said: “Which drugs will be OK “personal use?” What quantities? How much will they cost? Which drugs? Who decides? You can’t be half pregnant, can you? Tell us Michael, who do you imagine is going to be selling us our daily dose of meth, and to whom?”
Good questions indeed, and a thoughtful take on the problem. I imagine the amphetamines and other chemical drugs would be sold by pharmacists, like they used to, with sales logged on to a database to prevent serial purchase which would also prevent abuse of prescription drugs. Addictive drugs would require a prescription after so many purchases in a week. Pot could be sold in cafés like Amsterdam and in bottleshops where a proof-of-age system is well in place. The prices would be low enough to cut the legs from the illicit market and to make it unnecessary for addicts to mug, steal or prostitute themselves.
This unglamourous process would not significantly increase drug use, I believe. It would reduce alcohol consumption. Problem users would automatically be in contact with doctors. Overdoses would be almost non-existent. No system would be perfect but this scenario is better than the untaxed criminal mayhem we currently endure.
If that’s the product of a ’70s imagination, so be it!
September 5th, 2009 @ 9:18 am
Another thing — if you agree the War is a sham, how is it right or just to be locking drug offenders up for longer than many murderers and child abusers? Twenty years in jail is effectively a life stolen, pretty harsh for a victimless crime. The fact that so many of these prisoners are black (and in the US, Hispanic), and so many prisoners already suffer mental illness, makes our current system all the more barbaric.
If Holland is the centre of organised crime it’s because no country has yet legalised and regulated. Even where decriminalisation exists, the prohibition on selling and wholesaling makes the international illicit drugs industry possible. A huge amount of black market drugs money supports arms sales and the resulting carnage. That’s why we need to ‘get real’ and go all the way.
September 8th, 2009 @ 2:32 pm
“There will be monolithic, gigantic multi national drug corporations keeping us sedated and “party-ing”…”, writes Russell Edwards.
Really Russell? And are you a hopeless alcoholic and dead keen smoker also, gasping due to COPD. Morbidly obese and diabetic thanks to fast food chains, pumping what’s left of your wage into the pokies and at the last, just can’t wait to wash down a few Prozac, morphine analgesics, benzodiazapines, amphetamine type medications then watch the next “Psychic investigators judge fat bottoms on ice”.
Correct? Or, do you actually make a choice. Think it over – I don’t want to control your answer of course. Plainly, the “getting real” request is better off in your direction my misguided friend.
Regrettably you’ve responded to an excellent argument with what is of course, the well rehearsed indoctrinated moral panic of the prohibitionist mindset. Fear, panic, immediate harm, loss of control – indeed being controlled no less, strange unseen powers who remain inexplicably malignant, and have been poised to enslave us at their whim at every democratic leap since 1778. Them That Is They, They Who Are Them: TITTing, and TWATing Russell, and you’re welcome to surrender yourself to paranoia and learned helplessness if you so wish.
One notes immediately the leap from Michaels argument which is demonstrably based in evidence, to an entirely irrelevant accusatory tone – complete with impossibly shocking scenarios – all over the final two words. Indeed, one must confess to confusion as to why Russell is asking questions of a topic not even mentioned in the article. Unless we count asking unrelated questions and providing fallacious answers. How often does the word “meth” appear in Michaels piece?
Why bother? Who cares? Sorry Russell, those of us in policy application and community health care quite a lot. Cannabis is easier to access than tobacco, and soon to be cheaper. Without any health warnings, and erroneous media panic we must do better. It holds splendid medicinal potential, has not yet been shown to “cause” psychosis and contrary to the memetic conservative chorus is not a drug that produces “addicts”. In fact, actual cannabis related harm is being ignored in favour of sensationalism.
Ironically, no medicinal cannabis patients ever complain of dependency. They do complain of euphoria, and the “monolithic, gigantic multi national drug corporations”, who strive to market a synthetic non intoxicating medication are attacked by right wing conservatives for attempting “legalisation by stealth”. Predictably, the same accusation is levelled at harm reduction. We’ve shouldered the new buzz word, “harm prevention” and if you can really read the future I’m sure you can see what civil rights must by definition fall like dominoes if we allow Prevention to override Reduction.
As for lying journalists with reader support, only a defeatist stands by mutely witnessing their insouciant and dangerous championing of ideological divides, when human health is at stake. From denying anthropogenic climate change, the value of sex education, the success of prisoner rehabilitation indeed any compassionate and progressive approach, these ignorant vigilantes scoop the cream without so much as a second thought of the damage their tantrums cause.
All this ultimately serves to keep everyday people – like yourself – ignorant, unaware of legislative obligations and sadly almost entirely science illiterate. Said another way, you already appear to be controlled to the extent your thoughts, and by extension argument here, are a house of cards relying on worst case and impossible scenarios.
Michael has again shown his professional approach in calmly offering a genuine response to what I consider mischievous and frankly silly challenges complete with ridiculous predictions. Imagine instilling such non critical analysis in children. You could keep going for pages and pages and never approach the damage we do on our roads minute by minute.
The hard fact that prohibition has failed is based in a clear top down explanation of observable dynamics. These falsehoods become more absurd every year. To note the damage of this barbaric abuse of everyday Australians is not to ipso facto claim the legalisation of drugs is the solution, nor indeed to be seen to advocate for same. Recovering from the present problems will not be simple and by necessity must involve a bottom up – and no doubt imperfect approach.
Some drugs may well be “legalised” but strictly regulated. In managing this, we may well see no profit to sustain any need for “meth” and designer drugs. At the least, we remove users of narcotic drugs and stimulants away from ruthless crime. It is prohibition that sustains the rewards for such junk. Contrary to your assumption chronic use is not ubiquitous but correlates to criminal intention and execution.
It is ironically due to prohibition that your argument even takes form. We’ve been raised on the breast of this nonsense, indoctrinated with its false success and rank bigotry until almost incredibly, we slice our throats with the other side of this two edged sword. Mainly, that the world will surely end if this USA blight on foreign policy is exposed and deconstructed for what it is.
Therein lies the cruelty. We’re “addicted” to logical fallacies almost to a person, to sustain “faith” in killing ourselves, when drug addiction rates have remained stable at 1.1 – 1.3% for well over a century. Only use has increased, along with profit for crime and corruption, misery and death. The “meth” you find so fascinating is proof positive prohibition fails. Organised crime doesn’t need the meds that narrow minded conservatives wanted to tax in 1914, – which upon failing led to prohibition in 1919.
Thanks to this blind approach the demand for drugs – and certain dizzying profit – is theirs for the taking. Criminals care not for voter gullibility, nor religious pressure, nor consumer health, nor much at all except profit. Yet, strangely you argue for this to continue.
The real question Russell, is from whom would you prefer loved ones to access any medication or “drug” – a criminal or a medical professional with skill in addiction recovery and minimising the harm of drug use/abuse?
September 17th, 2009 @ 1:44 pm
We have different perceptions and words can be misinterprited, so may be instead of “Get real” – “Get honest”.
Substances inducing non-ordinary consciousness (such as DMT) are found abundantly everyone in nature, including our own body (in pineal gland), but we dont go around waging wars on trees, frogs, herbs and people themselves…Or do we?
It is a recent step of pepople to super size and magnify potency of substances we come across. Destroying ancient culture of interaction with nature and cosms.