I
saw this guy (J Hari) on Maher last night and was pretty impressed with
his reporting on the Western approach to the drug war, and how we
totally botched it. It's pretty well-established that the US method of
heavy-handedly attacking the supply and harshly punishing the consumers
is an utter, expensive failure. We need to address demand, but what is
the right approach - education, medical treatment, intervention?
Hari
is saying that those responses could help, but they don't get at the
root cause. Drug abuse is mostly driven by psychological distress due to
environmental-social factors. Racism, violence, lack of economic
opportunity, low self-esteem, alienation, and other negative influences
lead an individual to turn to drugs for escapism, pleasure, release,
etc. If a person has a comfortable home, decent job, loving family and
community, and safe/positive surroundings, there is a very low chance
that they will abuse drugs (unless they happen to be the minority of us
who truly have an addictive biology, but then they would likely become
addicted to something legal like booze or shopping).
Why is
it that US drug abuse is highest in lower-income, at-risk communities
and the youth? I think Rx drug abuse (which is a much bigger problem
than illegal drug abuse) could be a different story, because that might
be driven by over-prescription of those drugs by our health system. And
since they're synthetic compounds, it's possible that the drug companies
have engineered them to be very potent (and potentially addictive). But
I'm not sure. Heroin is unanimously seen as the most addictive illegal
drug, yet people get it legally all the time in the form of medical
morphine. Anyone who has had an operation doesn't become a heroin
addict, so the drug itself is not inherently the problem.
Portugal
used to be the European nation with the worst drug problem (an
estimated 1% of the adult pop. using). It is also a fairly poor and
underdeveloped nation by EU standards. They tried the "US way" for
fighting drugs, and it failed of course. So in 2001 they decided to
scrap it - decriminalize ALL drugs and use the law enf. money on rehab
and social development instead. Of course the conservatives predicted
that all hell would break loose. But a decade later, needle drug use was
down 50%, and so were OD deaths and drug-related HIV infections.
Abusers were given medical rehab, but also given access to jobs,
education, housing, etc. The former abusers were treated like humans and
given a life, not like American convicts who are labeled as junkies and
thrown in with the murderers and rapists. The Portuguese who employed
and housed addicts were compensated by the gov't. It can work. A lot of
the previous detractors came around and admitted that they were dead
wrong.
Look at the countries with the
worst substance abuse problems:
- Iran (heroin) - crippling sanctions and a repressive, fundamentalist gov't
- Russia
(booze) - huge wealth inequality, corruption, and poor life prospects
for many (interestingly the UK is also a big booze abuser)
- Latin America (meth) - huge wealth inequality and gang-police violence
- Afghanistan (heroin) - war, poverty, corruption, and fundamentalism
- US (mixed) - fairly large wealth inequality, some communities with racism/violence
So
maybe the solution for winning the war on drugs has nothing to do with
drugs. Just fix society to be more just, inclusive, safe, and prosperous
- even for the most lowly among us. Actually I think a lot of ills
could be indirectly fixed with that approach.
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