ANOTHER UN-WINNABLE WAR

THE WAR ON DRUGS

Drugs! What an emotive subject drugs are. Everyone has a view, an opinion, an ‘answer’ to the the problem of ‘drugs’.

What constitutes a drug? Is it a mood altering substance that is disapproved of by society? Is it anything which is ‘addictive’? Is it any medication so strong that it should be controlled by the prescription of a doctor?

Recently the British Government fired a Scientific Advisor who put forward the observation that tobacco and alcohol are more dangerous than heroin or ecstasy. They fired him because the subject is so emotive it has become impossible to have an objective public discussion of the matter.

So, let's try and define what a drug is.

A drug is any substance that may be introduced into the human metabolic system that has an observable effect? A drug is any substance that may be ingested that is both addictive and bad for the health of the body? A drug is?

It would appear that the word ‘drug’ is a very woolly word indeed. It seems that a drug is anything we want to call a ‘drug’. Insulin, morphine, penicillin, alcohol, aspirin, sugar, sex, gambling??

So, we are fighting a war on something so ethereal it defies definition.

One may say , that a useful definition of an undesirable drug is: ‘any substance whose repeated ingestion has a deleterious effect on society’. A useful drug is one that improves the quality of life. Does this get us anywhere? Cannabis is illegal, can cause psychosis, and should’t be used while driving or operating machinery. A glaucoma sufferer can benefit greatly from a good spliff. Where does the judgement come down? That depends on where you’re placed and your own experience of life.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, all drugs were legal and could be purchased from the local apothecary. For some, one had to sign the Poisons Register, but they were all ‘legal’. Nowadays, many of us define a ‘drug’ by its legality. If you think about it, what’s ‘legal’ or not, is quite accidental. Opiates and cocaine (the original active ingredient in 'Coca-Cola') were made illegal, tobacco and alcohol (both undoubted killers) were not. In the nineteen-twenties, the United States decided that alcohol should be illegal. Prohibiting alcohol proved to be unworkable as it was too easy to make and too easy to pour down one’s throat. One legacy of this particular prohibition was the rise of the American Mafia and organised crime. Prohibition was temporary. The organised crime it spawned is still with us.

That’s an important lesson: When things are illegal, bad people see there’s money to be made and evil empires get built. The illegality of cocaine has built the Colombian Cartels, whose wealth and power are now crossing over into other areas of nastiness. The heroin trade finances the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Prohibition is a very good thing for crime and criminals.

The other thing one may observe about outlawing the trade in drugs, is that the trade does not stop. In fact it tends to flourish. Illegality fosters drug-taking. Oh dear!

I’m not a proponent of drug taking. Nor am I an opponent. It is none of my business how you care to pollute your body, and none of your business how I care to pollute mine. There are very, very few who do not pollute themselves in some way. The Tory lady, wearing the obligatory silk scarf and holding forth in the media about the ‘dangers of drugs’ almost certainly goes home to a stiff gin and tonic. The hypocrisy lies in approving her own drug-taking while condemning the drug-taking of others. She will, of course, maintain that what she does is legal. We have already established that the legality or otherwise, of any drug is an historical accident.

The problem with illegal drugs is the undoubted social consequence of their illegality. Illegal drugs pass through the hands of many greedy, dangerous and unscrupulous people. This inflates the price, reduces the purity and gives rise to crimes of theft and violence.

If all of these drugs were legal, the bandits would be out of business. The quality and purity could be assured by responsible providers, and they could be taxed quite heavily (just like alcohol and tobacco). The junkie would no longer need to commit an endless succession of petty crimes to feed his ‘habit’. A massive part of any country’s gross national product would no longer be disappearing into a black-hole of organised crime.

Those who want to be junkies will still be junkies. Those who don’t, wont. Alcoholism in America went up when prohibition came in and went down when it went out. Why? Because the life-style and subculture of a drug-driven illegal activity has a strange attraction. Many junkies are as addicted to the junkie life-style as they are addicted to the junk itself. Remove the law-breaking and you remove the romance.

There is no single example in history of a prohibition ever working. The war on drugs is unwinnable. Let’s face it, we have never won so much as skirmish in this war, let alone a battle. The whole idea is futile and doomed to fail.

Legalise everything, tax the hell out of it all, put the gangsters out of business and life will be much better for everybody.

Every parent has experienced the horror of a child bombed-out on sugar. It’s a drug! Sugar does a lot of harm, perhaps it should be banned? Or, perhaps, we should learn to live with the fact that, sometimes, drugs cause bad behaviour and there’s nothing we can do about it.