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January 27, 2011
The Impact of Tabu on Belief, Behavior, and Policy
Tabu (taboo) is a Polynesian term for something so off-limits that even discussions about it are forbidden. US drug policy is best understood as our government's attempt to render both use of certain drugs and any questions about the policy itself equally taboo. What recent experience shows is that if a prohibited item was- like alcohol- already well known and popular, its criminal prohibition is unlikely to succeed, primarily because of the profits that become available to those willing to defy the law. The most familiar example is our failed experiment with Prohibition between 1920 and 1933.In retrospect, the chronic failure of laws against prostitution should have been a warning to those who predicted, in 1919, that Prohibition could not be repealed and would soon lead to a new Utopia. As we now know, our 14 year experiment left us a legacy of organized crime which then used its profits to become institutionalized as an American version of the Mafia and, after Repeal, quickly shifted its focus to labor racketeering, protection rackets, illegal gambling, and illegal drugs.
The basic lesson of Prohibition, that criminal bans inevitably create new opportunities for crime, seems permanently beyond the comprehension of certain moralistic types who can't wait to pass new laws that also fail for the same reason. It was probably no accident that Harry Anslinger's uncle transferred him from the Treasury's Prohibition unit to take over as Director of a brand-new Bureau of "Narcotics" in 1930. That the new agency began existence under an archaic name is an indication of how the ambient ignorance of that day has persisted: "Narcotics" remains code for "illegal drugs" to this day.
Two features make America's failed experiment with "marijuana" prohibition unique; one is that it was an attempt to ban a relatively unknown product for which the potential demand had been essentially unknown when it was made illegal through devious legislation in 1937. There is no way Anslnger could have foreseen the enthusiasm with which Baby Boomers (who wouldn't begin arriving for another ten years) would, as Sixties adolescents, give his "reefer madness" fantasy an aura of verisimilitude with their enthusiastic reception of "marijuana," or that the main reason would be its most characteristic pharmacologic effect: an immediate, brief, and easily managed anxiolytic state (but only when smoked). A final irony is that the key reasons for pot's commercial success and user loyalty would remain beyond the awareness of self-appointed cognoscenti in both camps and would then be disbelieved by most; even after being pointed out.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at January 27, 2011 09:45 PM