The War on Drugs: We Have Met the Enemy and They are Us!

“Shall I tell you what real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.”
-- Seneca, “Letters to Lucillius,” 1st century A.D.

Last night, at the end of George Bedard’s set at TOP of the Park, my friend and physician, Dr. D. (I’ve spoken of him before in terms of Suboxone and the UM pain management clinic), came up to the apron of the stage to say hi and wish me well. This got me thinking I should write, once again, on drug addiction (I recently blogged about the Florida Medical Examiner’s report on the unprecedented rise in prescription drug fatalities). Substance abuse sounds too nice, so let’s call a spade a spade, drug addiction.

As is my wont, I had squirreled away an editorial from the Wednesday, July 2, 2008 New York Times. After citing a number of reliable statistics that outline the expansion of coca leaf production in South America, and the record opium poppy harvest in Afghanistan, the Times finds “serious problems with a strategy that focuses overwhelmingly on disrupting the supply of drugs while doing far too little to curb domestic demand,” and this has to do, in my view, with treating drug addiction as a criminal behavior, rather than a public health problem. Just as prohibition stopped no one from drinking, the war on drugs stops no one from getting high.

What has happened instead is that we’ve created a violent, black market, criminal industry, and wasted billions of dollars attacking the wagging tail of a vicious dog (sorry Shadow). The current administration has spent “$7 billion on drug-related law enforcement and interdiction efforts at home and abroad. It spent less than $5 billion on education, prevention and treatment programs at home to curtail substance abuse.” As Anthony Papa, communications specialist from the New York City Drug Policy Alliance, points out, “Instead of flawed government hype, we need policy alternatives to the drug war that uphold the sovereignty of individuals over their minds and bodies and are grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights.”

Back to the Times Ed.: we need to be “spending more on treating drug addicts and less on putting them in jail. Drug courts, which sentence users to treatment, still deal only with a small minority of drug cases and should be vastly expanded. Drug-treatment programs for imprisoned drug abusers, especially juvenile offenders, must also be expanded.” It’s no accident that we have the largest prison population in the world. In a nutshell, if we don’t find ways to curb demand, someone will always be there with a needle in hand. It is simple good old-fashioned American free enterprise economics, supply and demand rule the day.

What the failed policy of ignoring the demand and warring on the suppliers indicates is this: we can’t legislate morality from the top down. My telling the students that I’m for legalizing ALL drugs always results in a class uproar. I qualify this, and cut to the chase, by saying I’m not talking about weed, or alcohol (that’s already legal) but hard drugs, heroin, coke, speed etc. One reaction is that if all drugs were legal, people would seek them out. To this, I offer a series of questions. Is there any of you that can’t get drugs if you want them? Aren’t they available in the dorms? Do any of you not take drugs because they’re illegal? If, say, God forbid, your son or daughter were hopelessly addicted, would you want them in a supervised program where their habit was monitored, or, would you want them scoring blow in Detroit’s Cass Corridor? Doesn’t your not doing drugs have to do with your family, educational, and religious backgrounds more that the government’s forbidding you to do so? These questions are a way of framing the discussion of morality coming from the bottom up rather than top down, a thoroughly Marxist idea.

Perhaps the most ominous development in the war on drugs is the shift in demand. Heroin and cocaine are becoming more and more old school. The fly in the ointment, these days, has to do with the wildfire-like growth of the prescription drug problem. Oxycontin, Vicodin, Fentanyl, are much more powerful, cleaner, and lethal than organic opiates. It’s not just homeless junkies chewing the patch, it’s lawyers, doctors, teachers, and, yes, even broadcasters and church dudes. Recall Ted Haggard’s purchase of meth from a male prostitute, Rush Limbaugh’s Vico-psycho-rama, and Amy Winehouse’s pathetic shenanigans. It’s everybody and anybody. The “Man” who profits is no longer some gangster in a trench coat, it’s the pharmaceutical companies. And the same war profiteers who make money fighting drugs and terrorists own these companies. And since we know they won’t turn their guns on themselves, get ready for the saddest and most widespread drug epidemic this country has ever seen.