>Sender: >To: >X-Original-Message-ID: <140601befff5$3401dbc0$9acf69cf@pacbell.net> >From: "Peter McWilliams" >Subject: Clear thinking on the Drug War front >Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 20:40:21 -0700 >X-Mozilla-Status: 8001 >X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 > > >Pubdate: Sun, 12 Sep 1999 >Source: New York Times Magazine >Copyright: 1999 The New York Times Company >Contact: letters@nytimes.com >Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ >Forum: http://www10.nytimes.com/comment/ >Author: Michael Pollan >Note: Michael Pollan, a contributing writer for the magazine, last wrote >about the politics of sprawl. > >A VERY FINE LINE > >The same week that a Republican candidate for President spent struggling to >compose ever more tortuous nondenials of his drug use as a young man, a >former Republican Presidential candidate could be seen in full-page >advertisements forthrightly acknowledging his own use of another drug. > >Oh, I know: two completely different and incomparable situations; how >unfair to Robert Dole and the Pfizer pharmaceutical company even to mention >them in the same paragraph as George W. Bush and cocaine. One concerns an >illegal drug that people take strictly for pleasure. The other concerns a >legal drug that people take . . . well, also strictly for pleasure, but >(almost) always with a prescription. The ability to draw and patrol >distinctions of this kind becomes critical in a society like ours, with its >two thriving multi-billion-dollar drug cultures. Everyone understands that >licit and illicit drugs are not the same. > >How much easier things would be if, instead of having to lump them all >under the rubric of "drugs," we had one word for the beneficent class of >molecules to which Viagra and Prozac belong, and another for the pernicious >class that contains cocaine and cannabis. > >The problem is that there is a long history of molecules getting switched >out of one drug culture and into the other. Alcohol, for instance, has >spent time in both cultures in this century. For part of the time that >alcohol resided in the bad drug culture, opium, now evil, occupied a >prominent place in the good drug culture, where it was dispensed by >reputable pharmaceutical firms. > >More recently LSD and MDMA (a k a ecstasy), both born in the good drug >culture, have found themselves exiled to the bad. Occasionally the drug >traffic flows in the opposite direction. > >After spending the last few years firmly ensconced on the demon side of the >drug divide, cannabis has lately got a toehold on the therapeutic side, at >least in the half-dozen states that have legalized medical marijuana. >Earlier this year the Institute of Medicine announced that for a small >class of patients, cannabis did indeed have therapeutic value. > >What we have here, then, is a drug war being fought on behalf of a set of >distinctions -- a taxonomy of chemicals that, far from being eternal or >absolute, has actually been shaped by historical accident, cultural >prejudice and institutional imperative. > >You can imagine an alternative history in which Viagra wound up on the >other side of the line -- had it, say, been cooked up in an uptown drug lab >and sold first on the street under the name Hardy Boy. > >You would be hard-pressed to explain the taxonomy of chemicals underpinning >the drug war to an extraterrestrial. Is it, for example, addictiveness that >causes this society to condemn a drug? (No; nicotine is legal, and millions >of Americans have battled addictions to prescription drugs.) > >So then, our inquisitive alien might ask, is safety the decisive factor? >(Not really; over-the-counter and prescription drugs kill more than 45,000 >Americans every year while, according to The New England Journal of >Medicine, "There is no risk of death from smoking marijuana.") > >Is it drugs associated with violent behavior that your society condemns? >(If so, alcohol would still be illegal.) Perhaps, then, it is the promise >of pleasure that puts a drug beyond the pale? (That would once again rule >out alcohol, as well as Viagra.) > >Then maybe the molecules you despise are the ones that alter the texture of >consciousness, or even a human's personality? (Tell that to someone who has >been saved from depression by Prozac.) > >At this point our extraterrestrial would probably throw up his appendages >and ask, Can we at least say that the drugs you approve of all have a >capital letter at the beginning of their names and a TM at the end? > >Historians of the future will wonder how a people possessed of such a deep >faith in the power of drugs also found themselves fighting a war against >certain other drugs with not-dissimilar powers. > >The media are filled with gauzy pharmaceutical ads promising not just >relief from pain but also pleasure and even fulfillment; at the same time, >Madison Avenue is working equally hard to demonize other substances on >behalf of a "drug-free America." > >The more we spend on our worship of the good drugs ($20 billion on >psychoactive prescription drugs last year), the more we spend warring >against the evil ones ($17 billion the same year). We hate drugs. We love >drugs. Or could it be that we hate the fact that we love drugs? > >To listen to the storm of comment surrounding George W. Bush's >"irresponsible youth," one might reasonably conclude that no upstanding >American has taken an illicit drug since 1974 or so. > >Illegal drugs have been so thoroughly demonized that the only way a person >can talk about his drug use in public (in private is a different matter) is >by drawing bright lines in time: it was a different moment, I was a >different person. Thus we have a tortuous taxonomy of self to go along with >our tortuous taxonomy of chemistry. > >Every time a politician finds himself personally ensnared in the drug issue >-- finds himself, that is, on the wrong side of the drug war's battle line >between Us and Them -- an uncomfortable truth threatens to burst into >public view: in this war there is no Them. > >The enemy in the drug war is Us -- our faith in the power of drugs to bring >us pleasure, to alter the given textures of consciousness, even to gratify >the (unspeakable) wish to get high. > >These are qualities hard to accept in oneself, despite the fact that we >humans have indulged these desires since time immemorial. It's much easier >to talk instead about political hypocrisy or youthful indiscretion. And so >these scandals invariably devolve into dramas about the virtue of the >candidate rather than that of the drug war itself. Candidates come and go; >the war must go on. > >[sidebar;] > >HEROIN: THE WONDER DRUG OF 1898 > >Heroin, which was distributed in small boxes with a lion and a globe >printed on the label, was hailed as the new wonder drug. . . . It was >promoted primarily as a nonaddictive treatment for respiratory illnesses >and the suppression of coughs. . . . It could be produced cheaply and >relatively simply with a high degree of purity and quality control. > >Only small amounts were required per dose, and it could be given by >hypodermic injection, although it was usually administered orally, as >pastilles -- heroin cough lozenges were popular -- or tablets, or as an >elixir in glycerine solution. Within two years, it was widely used across >Europe and the U.S.A. > > >From "Opium: A History," >by Martin Booth > >__________________________________________________________________________ >Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in >receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. >--- >MAP posted-by: Richard Lake > > > > > >================================================================ > >This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to > the mailing list . >To unsubscribe, E-mail to: