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October 16, 2009
Lessons Learned: Historical Context
Any serious attempt to evaluate the impact of America’s “War on Drugs” on the world at large should begin with an appreciation of the depth and complexity of our drug policy’s dishonest federal roots and the degree to which all three branches of American government have been cooperating for nearly a century to shield it from objective scrutiny. That statement isn’t intended as an allegation of conspiracy; rather it's an invitation to think seriously about how substance prohibition, a policy with an unbroken record of failure, both here and abroad, remains the global standard for dealing with the "drug problem."The policy’s original key assertion— that federal agents should be empowered to arrest physicians for the way they were prescribing certain pharmaceuticals— was affirmed by a medically ignorant Supreme Court in the course of interpreting the deceptive 1914 Harrison Narcotic Act at a time when the science of Pharmacology was still in its infancy and there had been very little clinical experience with “addiction.” Harrison was passed in December 1914, the same year lurid special editions on heroin and cocaine had been published in the New York Times ten months earlier. Finally, the federal agents arresting physicians under the new law often didn’t bother to distinguish between those trying to treat "addicts" and those simply profiting from them; thus the new policy had an immediate and chilling effect on legitimate research while giving credence to the false, but resilient belief that addiction is a “disease” for which patients bear criminal responsibility. In a real sense, the underlying injustice has only intensified over the intervening ninety years as a failing and irrational policy has evolved into a major cause of felony arrest that has brcome responsible for increasing human misery every year it is in effect.
Over that same interval, the police powers awarded under Harrison have been increased several times in the absence of any relevant pharmacological or clinical research that would justify their expense or collateral damage. Heavily armed SWAT teams now routinely conduct raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in California while non-medical federal agencies pretend to an expertise on human drug use, a practice already evident when the first director of the FBN attempted to discredit an academic for criticizing his agency's tactics. The FBN's successor agency was later empowered (under the CSA) to block scientific studies of specific drugs; ironically because they were illegal and thus any use for research had been placed under the agency's sole control!
The adverse impact of a failing policy worsened significantly after the largest generation in history began coming of age in the mid-Sixties. As they discovered several newly available psychedelics and acquired a taste for “reefer,” their drug use and other disaffected behaviors frightened their parents into electing a feckless president for whom intensification of America’s policy of criminal prohibition made perfect sense; as may be inferred from his misplaced confidence in Operation Intercept in September, 1969.
Even after his own commission recommended a different approach in the Spring of 1972, Nixon buried their report and proceeded with his drug war. Unfortunately, the ensuing surge in pot arrests was all American police needed to become avid supporters of the intensified policy. A decade later, increased Congressional and public support "just say no" stimulated by a crack "epidemic" helped push our scientifically flabby "Behavioral" Sciences into an orgy of complicit guilt-by-association research in support of the never-validated Gateway theory. In many respects, Gateway became for cannabis prohibition what Eugenics theory had been to Nazi racial doctrine: superficially plausible, but terribly misleading.
The grotesque failure of the "War on Drugs" is certainly not the only such example of collective human cruelty and dishonesty; but it is a convenient example of several of our species' key failings. Ironically, the pattern established since our discovery of the cornucopia of wealth enabled by Science has been one of even more repressive control of their greatly expanded populations by fiercely competitive national governments.
The outcome of the Disaster Movie we are now living through will depend on how quickly well we are able to recognize the problems we have created for ourselves and how efficiently we can deal with them.
Doctor Tom
The adverse impact of a failing policy worsened significantly after the largest generation in history began coming of age in the mid-Sixties. As they discovered several newly available psychedelics and acquired a taste for “reefer,” their drug use and other disaffected behaviors frightened their parents into electing a feckless president for whom intensification of America’s policy of criminal prohibition made perfect sense; as may be inferred from his misplaced confidence in Operation Intercept in September, 1969.
Even after his own commission recommended a different approach in the Spring of 1972, Nixon buried their report and proceeded with his drug war. Unfortunately, the ensuing surge in pot arrests was all American police needed to become avid supporters of the intensified policy. A decade later, increased Congressional and public support "just say no" stimulated by a crack "epidemic" helped push our scientifically flabby "Behavioral" Sciences into an orgy of complicit guilt-by-association research in support of the never-validated Gateway theory. In many respects, Gateway became for cannabis prohibition what Eugenics theory had been to Nazi racial doctrine: superficially plausible, but terribly misleading.
The grotesque failure of the "War on Drugs" is certainly not the only such example of collective human cruelty and dishonesty; but it is a convenient example of several of our species' key failings. Ironically, the pattern established since our discovery of the cornucopia of wealth enabled by Science has been one of even more repressive control of their greatly expanded populations by fiercely competitive national governments.
The outcome of the Disaster Movie we are now living through will depend on how quickly well we are able to recognize the problems we have created for ourselves and how efficiently we can deal with them.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at October 16, 2009 02:04 AM