How to Win the War on Drugs In 1994, John Ehrlichman, the Watergate co-conspirator, unlocked for me one of the great mysteries of modern American history: How did the United States entangle itself in a policy of drug prohibition that has yielded so much misery and so few good results? Americans have been criminalizing psychoactive substances since San Francisco's anti-opium law of 1875, but it was Ehrlichman's boss, Richard Nixon, who declared the first "war on drugs" and set the country on the wildly punitive and counterproductive path it still pursues. [continues 6943 words]
From a 1996 conversation between "drug czar" Barry R. McCaffrey and A.M. Rosenthal, then a New York Times columnist, just after California and Arizona passed referendums legalizing the medical use of marijuana. A tape recording of this conversation was an exhibit in the matter of Dr. Marcus Conanat, et al. v. Barry R. McCaffrey, et al., a lawsuit that sought to block the government's stated intention to prosecute doctors who discussed with patients marijuana's potential benefits; on Sept. 7, a federal judge ruled that such prosecutions would violate the First Amendment. According to his office, McCaffrey routinely recorded telephone conversations with journalists, often without their knowledge, to ensure that he was not misquoted. [continues 2114 words]
From an interview with a soldier in the Colombian military published in the January/February 2000 issue of the Index on Censorship. Last July, at President Clinton's behest, Congress authorized a $ 1.3 billion aid package for the Colombian government that includes military equipment, intelligence resources, and hundreds of U.S. military advisers. What are your memories of your first days in the army? We were trained in counter-guerrilla tactics. They told us that anyone involved in human rights was a guerrilla. Anyone who was a peasant was also a guerrilla as far as we were concerned. They trained us to kill. Whenever you went into operations, you took a rifle de cuadre. [continues 1409 words]
In a free society, the rights of individual autonomy are inevitably dependent on the principle that members of minorities must be protected from the tyranny of the majority. The greatest failing of drug prohibition is not, as the authors suggest, the abuses relating to its enforcement but that large numbers of citizens - a sizable minority - are being punished for activities that they honestly believe are their own business and within their rights. Peter Webster, International Journal of Drug Policy, Holland Related: The Harper's article "This Is Your Bill of Rights, On Drugs" is at: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n1252/a01.html [end]
To the editor: Graham Boyd and Jack Hitt's anti-drug-war screed is so full of error and hyperbole that it's fair to ask what Harper's Magazine was smoking prior to publication. For example: The authors state that Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey "threatened to arrest any doctor who merely mentioned to a patient" that marijuana might reduce pain. McCaffrey, however, threatened only to revoke prescription powers for doctors who recommended or prescribed marijuana, based upon the obvious clash between state and federal law (a fact Boyd should know, since he represented California doctors who sued in San Francisco feder-al court in 1997). [continues 844 words]
I applaud Graham Boyd and Jack Hitt for detailing how the drug war has made a mockery of the Bill of Rights ("This Is Your Bill of Rights, on Drugs," December). One important point, however, was left out. The fundamental principle of liberty on which our Constitution is based was expressed by Thomas Jefferson in his "Notes on the State of Virginia": "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others." Hence, whenever the government seeks to prevent a person from doing some alleged injury to himself, it acts illegitimately. It is a great tragedy of American political history that this principle was considered so axiomatic by Jefferson and the other drafters of the Constitution that they neglected to articulate it explicitly there. Had they done so, misguided federal campaigns to criminalize private behavior, such as Prohibition and the war on drugs, would have encountered stiffer resistance. William Fusfield Pittsburgh [end]
The fundamental failure of our government's policy on drugs is that prohibition has made criminals of a conscientiously dissenting minority. It has not merely restricted members of that minority to practicing their whim only at certain times, places, and frequencies (which might be justified in the public interest) but criminalized them outright, with penalties often more severe than those levied for major crimes against complaining victims, such as manslaughter, rape, arson, and armed robbery. In a free society, the rights of individual autonomy are inevitably dependent on the principle that members of minorities must be protected from the tyranny of the majority. The greatest failing of drug prohibition is not, as the authors suggest, the abuses relating to its enforcement but that large numbers of citizens - a sizable minority - are being punished for activities that they honestly believe are their own business and within their rights. Peter Webster International Journal of Drug Policy Holland [end]
The "war on drugs" began as a rhetorical flourish used by Richard Nixon to contrast his tough stand on crime with LBJ's "war on poverty." But as the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations poured billions of dollars into fighting drugs, the slogan slipped the reins of metaphor to become just a plain old war - with an army (DEA), an enemy (profiled minorities, the poor, the cities), a budget ($17.8 billion), and a shibboleth (the children). As in any war, our political leaders have asked us citizens to make some sacrifices for this higher cause. When George Bush entered office, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 62 percent of Americans "would be willing to give up a few of the freedoms we have" for the war effort. The have gotten their wish. Initially applied only to the buyers and sellers of drugs, exceptions to our fundamental rights have been quickly enlarged to include every one of us. Bill Clinton's legacy is not the drug-free zone he wanted but a moth-eaten Bill of Rights. [continues 1998 words]
Public reaction to the misguided and failed Prohibition movement of the earlier part of this century teaches us that humans will go to great lengths to alter their consciousness in spite of the law. For thousands of years, mankind has been ingesting, injecting, snorting, smoking, and drinking just about anything we can get our hands on, and that habit is not likely to change soon, however strong the desire of our lawmakers for it to be otherwise. Doug Fawley Chicago [end]
As a small-town psychiatrist, I see folks every day whose marriage, job, education, or ability to parent is threatened if not destroyed by alcohol, methamphetamine, marijuana, and the like. I have seen death, suicide, homicide, rape, sexual and physical abuse of children, and lives wasted as a result of these "recreational" drugs. I have never seen one instance of Prozac causing this kind of devastation. Regardless of the treatment they choose, most patients need only to talk, to clarify their understanding of themselves and their problems. Anything else may be helpful but shouldn't be confused with a cure. Joel Rice La Grande, Oreg [end]
Joshua Shenk correctly diagnoses America's war on drugs as state-sanctioned hypocrisy, a war on certain drugs only. Why? Because it's hard to manufacture Prozac with dirt and water, whereas marijuana can be produced at home, virtually for free, which explains why one citizen can legally carry a briefcase full of Percodan, Phentermine, and Valium, while another can be arrested for carrying less than one cigarette worth of marijuana. David Johansson Melbourne Beach, Fla. [end]
Thomas B. Roberts Northern Illinois University Dc KaIb, IL. [end]
The same type of causality holds true for the slightly less alarming but still dreaded disease advanced by Listerine advertisements, "halitosis," otherwise known as bad breath. When mass marketing of pharmaceuticals is commonplace, increasingly, invention is the mother of necessity. Stephen Sweet Ithaca, N.Y. [end]
No one knows the long-term effects of Ritalin, the pills prescribed for attention deficit disorder. The drug doesn't work for everyone. There is no consensus on how it relieves symptoms. Reports of non-prescription use by people seeking a high are increasing. But the act of filling a prescription for a child just out of kindergarten is met with a sympathetic nod from the government. Seek a prescription for marijuana, and the same government is aghast: The long-term effects are unknown! It doesn't work for everyone! We don't know how it relieves symptoms! People use it to get high! [continues 139 words]
I applaud Joshua Wolf Shenk's report on the hypocrisies of America's attitudes about drugs ["America's Altered States," May]. "Just say no" proponents argue that the line that divides "good" and "bad" drugs should be drawn between drugs that return one to a normal state, whatever that is, and those that provide hedonistic pleasure. Following this logic, alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine should be outlawed, since they offer no medically therapeutic benefits. Public reaction to the misguided and failed Prohibition movement of the earlier part of this century teaches us that humans will go to great lengths to alter their consciousness in spite of the law. For thousands of years, mankind has been ingesting, injecting, snorting, smoking, and drinking just about anything we can get our hands on, and that habit is not likely to change soon, however strong the desire of our lawmakers for it to be otherwise. Doug Fawley Chicago [end]
Joshua Shenk's insightful analysis would have been even more resonant had he considered the way in which so many of our current diseases are socially constructed. A classic study by the sociologist Peter Conrad suggests that the maker of Ritalin marketed to physicians "hyperkinesis" as a disease before marketing their cure to the same audience. The medicalization of rambunctiousness has proven to be a tremendously profitable business, with profound consequences on how schools respond to inattentive children. The same type of causality holds true for the slightly less alarming but still dreaded disease advanced by Listerine advertisements, "halitosis," otherwise known as bad breath. When mass marketing of pharmaceuticals is commonplace, increasingly, invention is the mother of necessity. Stephen Sweet Ithaca, N.Y. [end]
A colleague and I submitted a funding proposal to a foundation in order to study the causes of illgal drug use. We maintained that realistic drug policy cannot be written until the makers of that policy know why people use drugs. The proposal was rejected, confirming our suspicion that no one in the antidrug complex wants to learn that the choice to do drugs is for most people a rational one, that users see themselves, rightly or wrongly, as benefiting from doing so. Thomas B. Roberts Northern Illinois University Dc KaIb, Ill. [end]
Joshua Shenk's report is illuminating, but he largely ignores the value of the distinction between legal drugs and illegal drugs as a form of social control. Compare, for example, marijuana and Ritalin. No one knows the long-term effects of Ritalin, the pills prescribed for attention deficit disorder. The drug doesn't work for everyone. There is no consensus on how it relieves symptoms. Reports of non-prescription use by people seeking a high are increasing. But the act of filling a prescription for a child just out of kindergarten is met with a sympathetic nod from the government. [continues 180 words]
THE WAR ON (SOME) DRUGS, 2ND OF 8 Joshua Shenk seems to advocate the practice of medicating angst with pharmaceuticals and recreational drugs, neither of which work for this all too human condition. The latter, in fact, can be quite harmful. As a small-town psychiatrist, I see folks every day whose marriage, job, education, or ability to parent is threatened if not destroyed by alcohol, methamphetamine, marijuana, and the like. I have seen death, suicide, homicide, rape, sexual and physical abuse of children, and lives wasted as a result of these "recreational" drugs. I have never seen one instance of Prozac causing this kind of devastation. Regardless of the treatment they choose, most patients need only to talk, to clarify their understanding of themselves and their problems. Anything else may be helpful but shouldn't be confused with a cure. Joel Rice La Grande, Oreg. [end]
Joshua Shenk's attempt to group illicit drugs with psychotropic drugs - because both alter the mind and body - is harmful in its simplicity and contributes to the already existing stigma suffered by the clinically depressed. The purpose of illicit drugs is to produce a good feeling, a high. The purpose of antidepressants is to restore to "normal," or at least to acceptable, one's ability to function. The desire for sleep and appetite, and energy and concentration enough to make it through the day, is not the same as the desire to get high on alcohol or cocaine. [continues 67 words]
