My son, all six foot one gorgeous inches of him, has to be among the laziest creatures on earth. This is not hard to believe, given my own proclivities. My firmly Republican and White supremacist grandfather repeatedly reminded me--I "was the laziest White man(that he) knew."
Unfortunately, my boy combines this lackadaisical approach to life with another trait, also possibly inherited. He's not the luckiest young fellow; "if it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all," he might say. Both of these qualities are particularly pertinent in the context of his just passed 18th birthday, when he found himself under the auspices of Georgia's probation system because a police officer found him with a little less than an ounce of pot during a traffic stop to examine a broken license-plate illumination bulb.
To establish the tone and lay the basis for the text to follow, folks might want to look at the following lovely YouTube video that the Marijuana Policy Project produced. This diary is long, but at least many of the points that it develops show up in miniature on the small screen.
I have been hesitant about writing this diary--maybe more bad luck will follow any tendency to examine things too closely. But I have researched the species-wide homicidal madness of the 'War on Drugs' for thirty-odd years now, and I've been threatening to begin some disciplined thinking and writing about it, to supplement the occasional piece of journalism that I've been able to produce.
This is a first installment of that process, bookended by the procedural disposition of matters with my own child. His laziness aside, losing him would be a tragic blow, not only to me, but also to our collective community, which so sorely needs such good-hearted and well-intentioned sorts as my number one kiddo; and we should not fool ourselves--the primary victims of drugs are not the people who use them but the 'criminals' whom we lose in a hundred different ways when we allow the police state to attack our children, our brothers and sisters, or any of our other cousins because they are in possession of one sort of plant or another that causes some psychotropic experience.
This first chapter of my 'Annals of the Drug Wars' examines three issues closely. The first concerns an introduction to our pscyho-physical propensities. The second examines marijuana--its history, more or less contemporary patterns of use, and its impact on criminal justice. Finally, I deal with alcohol--following a similar pattern of assessment as what I use in regard to cannabis. I then conclude by returning to the personal nature of this issue, proffering a precis of upcoming materials in the porcess.
INTRO
Before I begin the substantive parts of this diary, I want to make clear my predispositions in this matter. My own observations and inclinations lead me to certain premises and assumptions. I briefly present those here, as well as a part of the evidentiary basis for my believing them defensible.
People possess both a biochemical need to alter consciousness and a pleasurable proclivity to seek such alteration. The literature of ethnobotany (Vincenzo de Feo, et al.), of cognitive science(Stephen Pinker, et al.), of mythological studies(Joseph Campbell, et al.), of psychology(Julian Jaynes, et al.)either support directly or imply this conclusion. Alduous Huxley wrote powerfully about this aspect of the human condition in The Doors of Perception.
To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large— this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual.
In considering this utterly universal human attribute, one cannot help but recognize the overarching role that plants and herbs play in attaining these states of ecstatic transformation. The voluminous literature ranges from the precisely clinical to the orgiastically enthusiastic. In "The Leaves of the Sheperdess," ethnobotanist and shamaness Kat Harrison speaks of her life's calling to bring this awareness of what we are back to a humanity cut off from its nature and hence capable of massively self-destructive behavior and ideation as a result.
There is this enduring memory of my own face gazing out of a plant, and the dark but not unfriendly presence of the woods nearby. As (the goddess in the leaves) faded from view and I returned to a sense of the present, I heard the words repeatedly, in both Spanish and English: 'Show them the edge of the garden. Les muestra el borde del jardín.' That is my work.
We thus confront a battle of nature versus statute, for all of these widely available and inherently irresistible botanical companions are illegal, except for the ones of which the State is so far ignorant, or which our forefathers have already demonstrated to be egoistically mad in attempting to suppress. The results of any such prohibitional enterprise, predictably, will always be disastrous: precious treasure vomited into prisons and police; millions of lives tainted by corruption and criminality or lost entirely to black market violence; lying and duplicity as the most basic response to other human beings, and especially to anyone in authority; the list of destructive consequences is almost incalculably huge. Laughably, but for the tragedies so blithely embraced, such campaigns always fail--miserably and completely, at least in terms of their stated objectives, which is to say to turn us against natural tendencies so basic as to be coterminous with our 'coming of age.'
The simple advice, "follow the money," allows us to come to terms with at least part of the paradox, hypocrisy, and self-destruction that ineluctably accompany this criminal attack on humanity, what our leaders, beginning with Nixon, self-servingly call a "War on Drugs" while their agents, inevitably and uniformly, end up supplying us with the contraband that they also use to imprison and murder our children, our friends, and if we're a bit careless with our company or our habits, all of us. The political economy of this system finds its most economical expression perhaps in Kurt Vonnegut's gem, Hocus Pocus.
I proffer no further documentation here, or in the previous two paragraphs, because the source material is ubiquitous, on the one hand, and because my next several posts on this topic will give plenty of 'authority' to all of those who cannot trust their senses or their intellects to tell defensible assertion from nonsense. As to what we need to do--each day that we permit the excrescence of the 'drug war' to continue is another day in which we are viciously stupid, cretinously irresponsible, and hopelessly ineffectual in achieving our social goals--I can only intone my grandmother's words when she would admonish me for any particularly stubborn foolishness: "A word to the wise is sufficient."
MARIJUANA
Criminalizing pot has provided the basis for hilarious and uplifting satire since "Reefer Madness" at the least. Were the consequences of this policy less brutal, we might all just enjoy a hearty chuckle and go on about our business, whether or not that included taking the occasional surreptitious toke. Unfortunately, this most humble of plants, 'weed' its most enduring moniker perhaps, as a matter of statutory declaration carries such a huge and heinous cost that every giggle feels as if we are laughing at our own suicide, as if we are Bill Murray's character in "Groundhog Day," our plight made all the worse by the realization that we allow this to happen to ourselves, our families, our communities, our hopes of democracy and progress.
For confirmation that this assessment rests on a firm reality-based foundation, one need only turn to an investigation commissioned by Richard Nixon, that discovered evidence starkly opposed to what its Republican sponsors hoped and expected it to find, one of the half-dozen or so empirical compilations over the past sixty years or so that have utterly eviscerated any concept of marijuana as, comparatively or absolutely, a 'dangerous drug.' Lynn Zimmer and John Morgan introduce their monograph on marijuana with this summation.
The Shafer Commission reviewed claims about hemp's dangers dating back to the 1920's, some of which were still widely believed in the 1970's(and which continue as intellectual currency today, despite this and copious additional proceedings which indicate their bankruptcy). The Commission hired consultants to review the scientific evidence. Where important evidence was missing, the commission funded original studies. It also held hearings around the country, at which lawyers, physicians, researchers, educator, students, and law enforcement officials presented their opinions about marijuana, its effects, and the laws prohibiting its sale and use. The Shafer Commission found no convincing evidence that marijuana caused crime, insanity, sexual promiscuity, an amotivational syndrome, or addiction...
The place of cannabis in history, far from indicative of menace, accompanies the rise of civilization; it was clearly a gateway plant, even if it is not a 'gateway drug.' The documentation for this is voluminous, but folks can check here(http://www.marijuanaaddiction.com/...)for starters. Of course, the 'euphoric' qualities of pot tie in to the original point of this diary, that if we are not potheads, then we are at least likely to search for boosts of one different kind or another now and again. The history of cannabis merely demonstrates the unequivocal role that psychoactive plants have played, and will continue to play, in human evolution.
In general, however, folks have less interest in the past than they do in matters medicinal, practical, and 'recreational.' A prototypical characteristic of humanity's relationship with plants has been tapping the healing, balancing, or otherwise restorative properties available botanically. So few people seem now to realize that until the past fifty years, the source, practically speaking, for nearly all medicines has been the green kingdom. For at least four millennia and a few centuries, the primary purpose for imbibing cannabis has been therapeutic. For much of that documented stretch of medicinal usage, of course, users have also turned to 'mary jane' for solace or succor or other entertaining treatment. When we criminalize hemp, at best, we paternalistically maintain that people should not be able to 'medicate' themselves, even though we may insist that they partake of much less salubrious prescriptions. Among the many science-based resource compilations that dispose of the notion that pot is a 'dangerous drug,' perhaps the Drup Policy Alliance Networks' materials in this regard, "Myths and Facts About Marijuana," are the most accessible. Whatever the rationale for maintaining marijuana use as possibly felonious, such reasons simply do not follow rationally from the desire to protect either our society or its individual citizens.
In the contemporary period prior to 1937, cannabis was therefore a part of the medical pharmacopoeia in many nations, including the United States. Another dominant aspect of the marijuana story, however, was its parallels with the more or less unregulated growth of international trade and the competition among far flung empires. Hashish in particular played a part at the margins of the Chinese, Ottoman, and British global control zones, especially at the boundaries of India. Though often completely outlawed--Napoleon in Egypt, the Greeks at the end of the nineteenth century, among many other instances--production and use flourished and governments--as with Britain in mid-nineteenth century India and domestically until 1928, and in numerous other cases around the globe--sought to benefit from controlling and taxing this lucrative, and weedy, source of exchange. Literally, hemp circled the globe with explorers, ending up a cash crop, and perhaps more, for the likes of founding fathers such as Washington and Jefferson, and for former slave owners in the post-Reconstruction South.
After waves of prohibition swept Europe and the mid-East during and after WWI, the United States became a lead actor in this international scheme of criminalization, with the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, a legislative and political history of which provides a useful initiation to our present pass in regard to pot. Jack Herer, in his monograph, The Emperor Wears no Clothes, produces an analytical tour-de-force in regard to the interests underlying the prohibition of marijuana and the formation of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics to enforce that proscription.
He provides an assessment of USDA Bulletin No. 404, for example, a clear implication of which was that vast industrial investments--in forestry, paper production, and chemicals--were at risk in a context of legal hemp production. This Ag-Department report, based on a process by which USDA scientists produced high quality paper, noted that
one acre of hemp, in annual rotation over a 20-year period, would produce as much pulp for paper as 4.1 acres (17,000 m2) of trees being cut down over the same 20-year period. This process would use only 1/4 to 1/7 as much polluting sulfur-based acid chemicals to break down the glue-like lignin that binds the fibers of the pulp, or even none at all using soda ash. The problem of dioxin contamination of rivers is avoided in the hemp paper making process, which does not need to use chlorine bleach (as the wood pulp paper making process requires) but instead safely substitutes hydrogen peroxide in the bleaching process. ... If the new (1916) hemp pulp paper process were legal today, it would soon replace about 70% of all wood pulp paper, including computer printout paper, corrugated boxes and paper bags.
Herer argues that significant interests of the DuPont chemical company would have suffered large setbacks in head-to-head competition with hemp,and that similar problems would have confronted William Randolph Hearst, whose investments in forestry paralleled his newspaper empire, which editorialized stridently in favor of harsh measures against hemp. DuPont's interests received protection from an early head of the F.B.N., Harry Anslinger, appointed by DuPont's financial backer and Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, before Anslinger married into the DuPont family as he led the fight against Marijuana until the early 1960's. Even during this headlong rush in favor of criminal sanctions against hemp, opponents did question the choices of the Federal authorities, as in the case of the LaGuardia Commission, which, a well documented Wikipedia article makes clear, completely contradicted the hearings prior to the 'Tax Act,' which in turn relied significantly on Hearst Media reports of disastrous consequences of a marketplace for marijuana.
Other elements of the drive for a uniform national policy disallowing any use include simple bigotry. In a 1936 letter from F.B.N. chief Anslinger to the Secretary of the treasury, DuPont's nephew-in-law implored,
I wish I could show you what a small marihuana cigarette can do to one of our degenerate Spanish speaking residents. That's why our problem is so great; the greatest percentage of our population is composed of Spanish speaking persons, most of whom are low mentally, because of social and racial conditions.
In any event, whatever the complex of White supremacy and economic defensiveness and other factors that underpinned its passage, 1937 marked the final culmination of a trend to ignore science and common sense and to make substantial numbers of citizens into criminals who might at any moment find themselves imprisoned and marked for life as felons, addicts, and so on.
The functional aspects of this prohibition have included decimating social costs, though for several decades primarily among more 'marginalized' communities, as well as typical growth of bureaucratic and police power. For at least the first half of the period from 1937 until now, law enforcement focused on Hispanic and inner city Black communities. The Boggs Act in 1951, and the Narctics Control Act of 1956, mandated stiff minimum sentences for both possession and sale of pot, but the numbers of arrestees remained relatively small, stable, and concentrated among national minorities.
In this context, for a time, F.B.N. leaders recommended reducing emphasis on marijuana propaganda. Director Anslinger in 1938 wrote as follows:
Our present policy is to discourage undue emphasis on marihuana for the reason that in some sections of the country recently press reports have been so exaggerated that interest in the subject has become almost hysterical and we are therefore trying to mold public opinion along more conservative and saner lines.
As reefer 'broke out' of the ghetto and assumed the trappings of a popular culture fad in the mid-1960's--Timothy Leary took a case to the Supreme Court that in 1969 overturned the Tax Act as self-incriminatory--a dialectical dance took place, with official statements again focusing on pot as a 'gateway drug' that led to sexual madness and general plunder while new statutes reimposed draconian penalties for the crime of getting high, simultaneously as more and more scientific evidence indicated that such perspectives were, at best, no more experimentally valid than hogwash. The Shafer Commission, appointed by 'Tricky Dick,' went so far as to recommend decriminalization of cannabis, and although this never took place nationally, the U.S. statutes in 1970 removed mandatory minimum sentences, which Reagan's minions returned as S.O.P. in 1986, after many states, such as Massachussetts, and even more metropolitan areas, had minimized or removed criminal penalties for possession and personal use.
While overall opinion, about cannabis in particular, clearly mellowed in the 1970's, Nixon oversaw several reorganizations of drug enforcement and policy development, which in 1975 yielded the Drug Enforcement Administration as the coordinated expression of a "War on Drugs" that continues to drag on, to little effect other than social carnage and hypocritical profiteering, to this day. Although a more thorough examination of the purposes and policies of the D.E.A. await a later diary, we can see, if we even glance at the situation, that many jurisdictional and turf conflicts over drugs have plagued U.S. practice, especially prior to, but also continuing after, the Nixon mandates creating an independent drug attack force that purported to unify all enforcement.
Meanwhile, current data on criminal justice look bleaker, year after year. Policy personnel admit this deteriorating condition, but ascribe it to random or otherwise uncontrollable forces. Carnegie Mellon criminology expert Jonathan Caulkins, for example, said a few years ago,
There's been a major change in what's going on in drug enforcement, but it clearly isn't something that someone set out to do. It's not like anyone said, 'We don't care about cocaine and heroin anymore.' . . . The simple answer may be that police are now taking opportunities to make more marijuana arrests than they were when they were focused on crack cocaine in the 1980s.
The empirical background to which Caulkins refers is that, while drug arrests overall have risen by a modest amount since 1990, marijuana arrests have skyrocketed. In fact, a Washington Post article, that both the the VaultsofErowid.org and the SchafferDrugLibrary.org. crossreference, points out that a recent
study of FBI data by a Washington-based think tank, the Sentencing Project, found that the proportion of heroin and cocaine cases plummeted from 55 percent of all drug arrests in 1992 to less than 30 percent 10 years later. During the same period, marijuana arrests rose from 28 percent of the total to 45 percent.
Last year, 2007, just shy of 900,000 Americans ended up in the criminal justice Marijuana dragnet, over 800,000 of whom faced no other drug charge than simple possession. While only a minority of this number spent time in jail, almost all now have criminal records, many of which stem from felony charges.
Thus, even though pot incarceration as a percentage of all drug indictments has fallen since the worst days of the early 1980's, arrest and imprisonment for smoking or selling weed now accounts for nearly half of all drug busts--which yielded over a million convictions in 2006--almost 40% of which result from possession alone. Moreover, of these 'cleared' arrests, over 35% were Black, and the total Black and Hispanic tally exceeds 50%. The annual "Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics Online" presents the raw numbers year after year, in which an aggregate of ten million Americans, or more, in each generation face the burden of arrest and conviction for choosing to get stoned, and our democracy faces the multifarious social and economic costs of dealing with this incarceration nation.
And, since at the present moment these problems are worsening, many people ask, "What will the incoming Mr. Holder do about this at his new post as Attorney General?" A more pertinent issue might be at what point the citizens of this nation insist on democracy in this arena. Vast numbers of organizations now provide punctilious documentation that criminalized marijuana is indefensible, that, at least on occasion, sizable majorities of adults want criminal sanctions on pot removed, that in fact we have a reasonable basis to believe that cannabis has medicinal and therapeutic uses that indicate its prescription in some cases. Nevertheless, the hideous viciousness of the Black Market and criminal injustice continue.
Thus, despite the fact that reforming agencies; political leaders including mayors, heads of state outside the U.S., and more; and movements of activists undoubtedly constitute an organized and powerful opposition to the continuation of marijuana laws that are at best criminally idiotic, democracy has yet to yield the elimination of these noisome statutes. While the next diary on this topic will examine the basis for why this continues to happen, a USC law professor's opinion provides a fitting ending for this examination of the socio-economic and political pathology of marijuana in America.
Would we be outraged if the California State Police came barreling through the door and arrested us for violation of California's prohibition on gambling? Of course we would. Because, who is not supposed to gamble? Oh, you know who is not supposed to gamble -- them poor people, that's who. My God, they will spend the milk money. They don't know how to control it. They can't handle it. But us? We know what we are doing.
That's it. Every criminal prohibition has that same touch to it, doesn't it? It is enacted by US and it always regulates the conduct of THEM. And so, if you understand that is the name of the game, you don't have to ask me, or any of the other people which prohibitions will be abolished and which ones won't because you will always know. The iron law of prohibitions -- all of them -- is that they are passed by an identifiable US to control the conduct of an identifiable THEM.
And a prohibition is absolutely done for when it does what? Comes back and bothers US. If, at any time, in any way, that prohibition comes back and bothers us, we will get rid of it for sure, every doggone time. Look at the alcohol prohibition if you want a quick example. As long as it is only THEM --- you know, them criminals, them crazy people, them young people, them minority group members --- we are fine. But any prohibition that comes back and bothers US is done for.
Let's just try the marijuana prohibition as a quick one. Who do you think was arrested 650,000 strong two years ago for violation of the marijuana laws? Do you think it was all minority group members? Nope. It was not. It was some very identifiable children of US -- children of the middle class. You don't have to answer my opinion. No prohibition will stand -- ever-- when it comes back and penalizes our children -- the children of US who enacted it. And in fact, do you have any real doubt about that? Do you know what a fabulous sociological study we will be if we become the first society in the history of the world to penalize the sons and daughters of the wealthy class? Unheard of.
And so, yeah, we will continue the War on Drugs for a while until everybody sees its patent bankruptcy. But, let me say that I am not confident that good sense will prevail. Why? Because we love this idea of prohibition. We really do. We love it in this country. And so I will tell you what I predict. You will always know which ones are going out and which ones are coming in. And, can't you see the one coming right over the hill? Well, folks, we are going to have a new prohibition because we love this idea that we can solve difficult medical, economic, and social problems by the simple enactment of a criminal law. We adore this, and of course, you judges work it out, we have solved our problem. Do you have it? Our problem is over with the enactment of the law. You and the cops work it out, but we have solved our problem.
ALCOHOL
Because habitual drink is so much more prevalent than is habitual pot-smoking, I am less thorough documenting the contentions in this section, although every fact that I assert has authoritative support should any readers be interested in such. In general, most people find imagining booze as a 'bad' drug a lot easier to countenance than thinking evil thoughts about pot. "Please, daddy, don't get drunk this Christmas" was not just soppy, sentimental song and dance. Alcohol, for all of its salubrious effects in moderation and on occasion, for all its ancient lineage as a human sidekick, can rot us inside and out, liver and guts and pancreas on the one hand, family and relationships on the other.
Some archaeologists conceive of fermented food as the original 'sugar rush' or something similar. Scholars of pre-history even ponder whether something akin to beer preceded dining on bread. Using rot advantageously certainly sounds like many of the dietary 'eurekas' of human history, from cheese to kimche. In any event, all early texts and other representations contain evidence of the festive, mystic, and inherent presence of alcoholic beverages wherever humans spread. Many sources, virtual and actual, give both detailed and simple-chronological data about the parallel expansion of the human tribe and fermented spirits, in many ways analogous to the relations among human clans and whatever plants might allow occasional trips from the consciousness of the everyday to the contemplation of the divine and the transcendent. Joseph Campbell, in all four volumes of The Masks of God, and herbal healers such as the late Bill Mitchell proffer countless sorties into psyche's realm that demonstrate the role of drink and drugs in human spirituality and our traditional modes of healing. Thus, any across-the-board condemnation of these aspects of human experience inevitably runs afoul of ten thousand, or more likely tens of thousands, of years of cultural and individual evolution and adaptation.
Until recently, because fermentation required a process in addition to the sun and seed and soil working their magic, prior to industrialization, inherent limitations existed on excessive enjoyment of liquors. Thus, when Plato and other classic thinkers of the Mediterranean and Asia railed against drunkenness, they were almost certainly criticizing others of their own station and not any mass tendency to wildness or binging. The exception to this, of course, would be celebratory occasions that invited the most orgiastic sorts of explosive inebriation, which was at least occasionally apparent in ancient Greek Dionysian cult holidays, and elsewhere under similar circumstances.
Joseph Rumbarger, whose Power, Profits, and Prohibition one historian refers to as "an underground classic," has much to offer DailyKos readers about the nature of the more contemporary relationship between booze, or drugs, and class conflict. The preface notes that
Rumbarger clearly views temperance ideology as based on fantasy and delusion about both the capacities of American capitalism and the effects of drink and abstinence.
This perspective leads Rumbarger to concern himself with issues of working class culture and pursuit of power, especially with
questions about America's dominant classes and in particular with their utopian dream that temperance reform could help bring about a perfectly harmonious capitalist social order...argu(ing)that wealthy and powerful Americans played critical roles in helping to establish, support, and lead the temperance and prohibition movements(as part of )larger efforts to reform America into an industrial capitalist social order.
Thanks to recent efforts in social history and the study of popular culture, work such as Rumbarger's now represents 'best practice' in social history, suggesting powerfully, if not unequivocally, that such social expressions as temperance movements and prohibition, whether directed against the consumption of alcohol or drugs, stem in some significant degree, perhaps overarchingly, from the perquisites and programmatic desires of the ruling elites.
Although many of the assumptions of prohibitionist thinking remain powerfully embedded in American culture--Nancy Reagan, the pharmaceutical heiress, prattling "Just Say No!" from every pulpit, for example--for the most part, a transition from proscription to prescription has occurred in relation to alcohol. The Kennedy family could not remake its fortune in bootlegging today, unless it turned to less industrialized substances that continue on the official shit-list. While not nearly as conspicuous and prominent as the major drug companies, alcohol-connected businesses, from production to distribution, have become a real part of the establishment that would be almost unthinkable to attempt again to root out.
In this context of acceptance and even occasional promulgation, however, the recognition is impossible to refute that drunkenness and other abuse of 'spirits' is widespread. Thus, fermented liquids stay in the shadow of criminal justice, in particular as regards the political economy of DUI, and major fetishes have become big business--worth billions in total--that promise to reform, or rehabilitate, alcoholics and others for whom alcohol represents an ugly and malicious habit.
To gain a sense of the magnitude of the extent of the border at which alcohol intersects with criminal justice, one need only return to the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, which contains a plethora of data about alcohol-related arrests and incarceration. Since before Nixon's D.E.A. reorganization, and the concomitant viciousness and farce of the "War on Drugs," "Alcohol-Related Offenses" and "Driving Under the Influence" have overshadowed drug offenses collectively, on the one hand, and marijuana arrests individually, on the other.
These are extremely important points that, for a variety of reasons, we will only examine briefly here. Most critically, very few observers would ever want to argue that the harm of DUI is negligible, or that society should permit such behavior. That acknowledged, however, most scholars, policy-makers, and citizens would nonetheless admit that, despite the carnage that annually results from drunk-driving and other incidents of profound violence in which drink plays a role--which individually and collectively are vastly more significant than anything attributed or attributable to cannabis--the notion that we should outlaw alcohol is at best an absurd fantasy. This is not to accept that the present DUI paradigm is fiscally efficient or socially fair: on the contrary, the final posting in this series will outline comprehensive reformulations that might elicit a sounder, safer, and less stressful society in innumerable ways. But in relation to proportionality, even a brief study of the criminal justice aspects of drink make the strictly criminal approach to pot seem suspect.
Perhaps in connection with young people's attitudes toward and behavior with alcohol, the investigator can see in the U.S. something akin to the madness of the present social patterns that prevail with pot, especially in relation to 'minor-in-possession' and its willing suspension of reality-based policies. Unlike cannabis--which only a small minority of nations have decriminalized, although this trend may show substantial increases soon--only a small number of States, especially among Islamic populations, disallow alcohol altogether. In the substantial majority that permit liquors, the U.S. has among the most draconian penalties for disobedience of regulations, and its age limits are among the most restrictive. These choices have effected negative outcomes similar to, if not altogether on a horrid par with, those that attend the 'War on Drugs,' especially concerning marijuana.
"Minor-in-Possession" is inherently a losing battle that can only result in the criminalization of youthful parties, a shifting of revenue streams from one section of society to another, and, at least occasionally, the attachment to individual youngsters of a record, which, in turn, can be the basis for required 'treatment programs,' and pharmaceutical modalities much more damaging than permission to serve beer and wine at young people's social activities. Although I researched this final issue less than anything else in this diary, I will let my common sense guide me in asserting that the only rational basis for such statutes is to raise revenue.
The hidden costs of these regulations, in the meantime, while not as ugly or stupid or invidious as are the felonies attendant on pot prohibition, nonetheless run in tandem with the brutal social disadvantages of proscribing cannabis. In the times that we confront, with economic implosion and political mayhem threatening at every junction, to continue to promote our present policies in relation to drugs and alcohol is a disorder of possibly genocidal magnitude. An onlooker can only ask, "How long Lord, how long?" and hope for sense to replace insanity before 'the jig is up,' as it were.
AND, AGAIN, MY SON, WITH AN INITIAL PROFFER OF EXPLANATION
I have an intense intuition that my boy would implode if he ever developed an SSRI habit, and that he would gobble up Ritalin like candy canes. I mention this feeling because, in marching him through the halls of justice for his marijuana charges, implicit within the language of much of his paperwork were possibilities of 'rehab' programs that might easily involve antidepressants or methamphetamine analogs as 'therapy.' Having begun this process on the basis of this recent personal experience, I will next turn to an overview of the modern unfolding of what we might loosely term the narcotic nexus, everything from alcohol to opiates to stimulants to hallucinogens. Following that, in turn, I examine the pharmaceutical industry, and then the classes of controlled substances as a group, before I turn to a closer examination of some of the real underpinnings of our penchant for prohibition, finishing with a diary that imagines a world without such ludicrous policy choices.
While I was hacking away at writing this essay and lining up sources that supported my arguments, my son encountered even more dispiriting news, which, as things transpire, ties in to this diary. A few days ago, as I was dotting 'i's' and crossing 't's' here, he was at a party with his sister. Having stepped outside the very high-rent property at which the revelers had gathered, my young man returned from smoking a cigarette to a scene straight out of 1984 or A Clockwork Orange, in which a SWAT-team outfitted officer barked at him to "get in line for your breathalizer," to which his response was a non-plussed confusion and desire to avoid such an eventuality. Before anything else happened, he found himself in cuffs and on his way to a night at the county jail, along with two other kiddos who opened their mouths to say anything other than 'yessir' to the police. Sixty-odd kids--this included my daughter, my son's little sister--received tickets that will necessitate a fine of $50-500, depending on the judge, so I'm told.
I've been writing and speaking and persuading(or trying to)about this matter for forty years now, occasionally donating to NORML and other heroic groups such as the Sentencing Project, the Vaults of Erowid, the Marijuana Policy Project, among others. DailyKos regulars talk about 'wingnuts,' and about our insistence on reality-orientation in our policy presentations. Until we manifest an elimination of the travesties that our laws represent in regard to the matters discussed here, however, we will always be behind the curve, all of our attempts to achieve rationality will fall short, the necessity of retreating to fight a 'defensive action' will be one sensationalistic story away. In winning the battle for reform here, on the other hand, we set the stage for unifying the troops necessary to attend to all manner of additional--and arguably more important, especially to policy wonks--matters that entail the economy, international affairs, and war and peace.
Depending on whether one listens to the FBI and the Treasury Department, or more independent sources, the annual tariff that accompanies our "War on Drugs" amounts to between a half a trillion and a trillion and a half dollars. And none of these estimates include the costs of imprisonment, 'rehabilitation,' and so on. Can we imagine more productive uses of this energy and treasure? Do these expenditures benefit us in any tangible, rational, or defensible way? When will we take charge, then, and demand an end to this ludicrous psychosis that happens, so long as we allow it, in our name and to our children? Inquiring minds would certainly like to know.