Reflections on Drugs

Prof.Dr. N. Christie

(as published in drug policies in Western Europe, Albrecht et al 1989 Max Plancke Institut)

Cigarettes, liquor, coffee, cannabis, heroin, butter, they have two features in common. First, they are all potentially extremely dangerous substances. Secondly, most states make attempts, or have made such, to control them.

Cigarettes: we had a total ban in large parts of Europe. We had special police; in Russia traffickers in the substance were heavily punished, flogging and even death-penalty were applied. Coffee: Germany had a special police to control the problem, mostly to hinder tax evasion. Alcohol: many nations have had their prohibition, some still have it, and most have some sort of regulation. Cannabis and heroin, I will soon turn to that. And then to butter: health authorities beg the population to lay off. Animal fat is dangerous for the coronary system. Sicknesses here are a major source of death. But economic interests are against too strict regulations. The Common Market has its butter mountain. Through economic incentives for export the mountain has been reduced just this last year. The problem is exported away.

They are all dangerous. But it is the drug problem which at present is seen as the problem. Only here a panic rage.

Why?

Stated very simply:

Not because drugs are a more dangerous substance than the others. But because what we presently define as illegal drugs, up to now has been a more suitable target for both panic and for strict punitively based counterattacks than any other of these substances. It is only here that states declare a total war against the substance.

Why?

It is of course a reality behind the declaration of war. Drugs are dangerous. For many people. In many situations. Particularly in dry and gray societies as ours which have forgotten ecstasy and celebrations. But dangerous are also cigarettes and alcohol and butter.

The basic difference, for our purposes, is that drugs are quite extraordinarily useful as the major enemy in a war situation.

This is so for several characteristics of drugs.

First: drugs are perfect In their explanatory power. The basic characteristic of human beings is need for understanding. One of the most helpful features of drugs is that they give us all an explanation of human misery. And they explain the continuation of misery. A part of the explanation is the idea of being captured by the dnug. What else is addiction? An overpowering force.

This explanation is perfect to the addict himself. He cannot change. That is the message in so many of the preventive educational messages. Addiction. The power in these substances must be enormous since those selling them are punished to such extremes. One of my students is awaiting trial with the prospect of a prison sentence close to 21 years, which is the maximum for any crime in Norway. Drugs must be extremely strong since such arnolint of pain is needed to keep people away.

But this explanation is also perfect to the population in general and to politicians in particular. Welfare states should -according to their own theory- not exhibit misery. Many of them have been run by socialists for years. Street children, drop-outs, run-down people, according to theory they cannot exist. So, either the theory is wrong, or some unbeatable forces are in operation. Again drugs are perfect, they make the impossible understandable and they drug down any bad consciousness directed towards social inequalities and defects in societies which would have been perfect if only these drugs had not destroyed it all.

The war against drugs also has other advantages. A war makes you forget about the minor details. My estimate is that the alcohol situation has deteriorated dramatically in my country during the last ten years. All attention has been given to drugs. So, the drugs not called drugs have been left in peace, to the benefit of the liquor industry. A similar reasoning can be elaborated vis-à-vis the pharmaceutical industry. This is most clearly seen within the prisons. While the living conditions of prisoners are steadily deteriorating due to extreme measures to prevent the smuggling of illegal drugs into the prisons (a hopeless project), truck-loads of pharmaceutical products of the same basic type are legally provided within most prison systems.

Not only the general population is united, but also the politicians. In my country drugs have been a major factor in creating cohesion among politicians. The drug policy is an arena for the most extreme forms of overbidding in the introduction of stern measures. And it is mortally dangerous to show any softness. So, at last a topic where they can be friends. My impression is that this is also the case on the international arena: on drugs most industrialized nations unite in one concerned family

A last point on suitability: drugs are perfect for law and order. So dangerous a substance has to be tightly controlled. Usually bothersome restrictions based on civil rights concern become of negligible importance in a war situation. The use of drugs is correlated with other criminal activities. In a war situation carriers of "multi-devianceX can all be swept into the net. In a crisis situation the military forces get a sort of absolute power. This is close to what has happened to the police in the war against drugs.

Up to now drugs have been close to a perfect enemy. But recently things are changing. These changes will make drugs less suitable as major enemy and eventually create a situation where the drug problem is on its way out. This is my prediction and my belief. And I hope to increase the chances to make my prediction true by making my predictions public.

The grounds for my prediction are twofold. First:

No soclal system seems abl~to accommodate more than one panic at a time. I have lived through many panics, particularly moral ones. The panic over youth behaviour, over hippies, over car thefts, over street violence, over youth hooliganism. But I musf,confess -at least in peace-time- none has been greater than the drug-panic.

The first reason why this panic now comes to its end, can be expressed in four letters: AIDS. The modern plague. Nothing can compete. In danger, in suitability. It is dangerous - as drugs also were. It has a potentiality for illness. And it is particularly suitable for a large sector of the establishment which up to recently has had a rather small role on the public arena. I have the moral entrepreneurs in mind. The Christians, the close-knit family protagonists, the anti-homosexuals, maybe also the basically anti-sexuals. All these combined with the medical establishment. It is an unbeatable alliance. They will take over the panic and keep it for some time. The drugs are losing priority to the plaque. It is fascinating to see the fight between the two types of moral entrepreneurs carried out in Scandinavia just now. The question of free needles to drug addicts is here still a big question, particularly in Sweden. The drug establishment perceives free needles as a moral defeat, as a sign of acceptance of drugs. Better AIDS than acceptance of needles and thereby drugs. Prisons function as a magnifier of irrationality. In prisons everywhere authorities still confiscate needles. In prisons, these cradles of AIDS, authorities are still doing their utmost to confiscate the very equipment which is the protection against AIDS. The alternative policy was of course to have big boxes of syringes and condoms all over all prisons. But they are not. Maybe it relates slightly to a teeling that when it comes to criminals, it was not bad if they passed away. But these are exceptions. By and large the AlDS-panic steals the public arena. We have been discussing during the seminar that mass-media cannot accomplish to keep several panics running at the same time -or bring the old panic back every third week. My belief is that such panics do not have the same mobilizing effect. The same dish is not that good 10 days later.

The other reason for the prediction that the drug-problem is on its way out, is an economic-political one. But let me from the outset underline: I am predicting that the drug-problem is on its way out. Not drugs. Not necessarily. It is the meaning given to the substance I am talking about. Not the substance itself, even though I have to add that I also believe that reduced attention to the problem will reduce the use of the substance.

What I have in mind is that the costs of the present system of drug control gradually will become visible and thereaftter unacceptable to the economic-political establishments within the Western world. I do not have in mind the direct control costs; policemen, judges, prison guards, nurses, treatment homes. Nor do I have in mind lost manpower by those using drugs in excesses. No, I have other costs in mind. Direct costs of two types. ‘

First: the present drug control system increases an already existing tendency with two types of economies functioning at the same time. It is an official economy and one unofficial. This is nothing new. Italy is an old, established case for it. But drugs render it more visible, more strongly felt. The official money stream is heavily upset by the drug money. This will probably get the business establishments of the world to get really concerned and start questioning if the present methods are not slightly outdated - or rather irrational.

But not only the economy is being upset. So are also state politics. It is seen more and more clearly how politics and drugs are interlinked. In Burma, in Latin-America, in the old war in Vietnam. Drugs become tools for oppressors as well as freedom-fighters. The dangers to the generally established systems become visible, and again we might expect that centrally situated powers will take a fresh view on the problem.

And what will they see?

An answer to this brings me to a second general prediction, which runs as follows:

The economic-political establishment will -when they observe that drugs are really important for money and power - move the property right to the drug problems away from Ministries of Social Welfare, Health and even Justice, and into the more important sectors of society. Those are the Ministries of Economy and Foreign Affairs. In this move they will receive full support from the business establishment. Liberal or radical reformers who for years have been fighting for drug reforms will - with some ambivalence - find themselves embraced by the far right. Social affairs, doctors and nurses, and the penal law establishment will get sour, but slowly be forced out of their having the monopoly in the ownership of the drug arena.

And what comes next?

Business will do what business is able and accustomed to do. They will treat drugs as a commodity. They will ask - and if they hesitate, we ought to help them to ask: what happens if we move the whole problem from the moral arena of total prohibition carried out through the institution of law and order and punishment, and instead tried to regulate both production and consumption as we do with other products of somewhat similar nature? They will soon conclude that we ought to get the whole problem converted from a hidden existence in the second economy intoan open inthefirst- orordinary- economy. Tothosewiththe present hegemony within this war arena, this will sound as a profanity. I agree. It is. Let that be quite clear- by comparing drugs with butter.

We have severe problems with butter in Europe. Doctors tell we ought to reduce the intake. Large consumption is extremely unhealthy. Heart and circulation troubles are a major cause of death. Drugs mean nothing, comparatively. But farmers have vested intereSts. They produce frenetically. The result is the butter mountain within the Common Market. We sell off to the Soviet Union. Not for military reasons, I hope. And the mountain is attached by economic-regulatory measures which in the long run, hopefully, will reduce the production of this highly dangerous substance.

The possibilities ot success are not my point. My point is only the model. We have within the ordi nary economic system thousands of regulatory mechanisms tor coping with unwanted situations of unbalance. Drug researchers as well as drug politicians ought to turn to these areas to acquaint themselves with both the basic principles behind and with details in how it is done. And we might also activate our knowledge trom fields very close to drug control. The battle around smoking is filled with interesting material - successes as well as defeats - on how to regulate that enormously dangerous substance. The pharmaceutical industry has for years been an object of study. BRAITHWAITE’S book (1984) on crime in the pharmaceutical industry is filled with insights on control possibilities. So is also the book by BRUUN and collaborators (1973) on the same topic. But most relevant is the fight around alcohol. Here, I can assure you, the Scandinavian countries can offer an abundance of examples of successes as well as defeats in regulating the substance. Maybe of particular relevance is our ability to create systems for sale of these products which makes it difficult to get them, but not impossible, and which indicates that it may be morally wrong, but not heroic to break with the regulations. I am not agitating for Scandinavian alcohol regulations all over the world, but if drugs were to be brought slowly into the normal economy, then our alcohol-regulatory system might prove to be a good blue-print, at least in a stage of de-dramatization.

What would be the role of the international bodies which are today established to regulate drugs?

My suggestion is that they by and large migM be dissolved. If drugs were treated as a product on a market, most of the money would leave the trade. Usual mechanisms fortrade could be activated. It would be a need for high taxes on dnugs. To reduce use. But not so high that organized crime once more got interested. Custom officers would keep control, as with alcohol. Attempts of smuggling would have to be punished, - as with diamonds or breach of currency regulations. So, police and courts would still work with some drug cases. Some would fly airplanes or drive cars under the influence of cocaine. They should be punished - as today with drunken drivers.

But international bodies would stop telling individual states what their menu of drugs ought to be. The cultural imperialism of the West in preserving our drug alcohol - and prohibiting drugs foreign to us in these foreign countries would come to an end.

We would enter a slightly more sane society.

References

Braithwaite, J.: Corporate crime in the pharmaceutical industry. London. Boston 1984.

Bruun, K et al.:The gentleman’s club. U.S.A. 1973.