Tower and Town, February 2019

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Drugs: Doing Less Harm: Part 1

Of late there have been signs of a public interest in reviewing how we think about and address the issue of addictive drugs in our society. This is the first of two T&T articles. It covers the history and international consequences of 'The War on Drugs'. The second, in March, will look at the impact of current UK drugs policy, and possible ways of 'Doing less Harm'.

World-wide production

The drugs we are talking about are mind-altering substances, some legal like alcohol and tobacco, and some illegal, used by humans for thousands of years to meet a variety of needs; to reduce physical, mental or social pain, to unwind, to stimulate or to inspire. And some are taken because of addiction. Where do they originate? Opium drugs are produced in the Golden Crescent of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, and in the Golden Triangle of Thailand, Burma and Laos. Cocaine and most of the cannabis comes mainly from Latin America. Synthetic and designer drugs are produced in secret laboratories everywhere.

All these drugs in most countries are covered by a policy of 'prohibition'.

Prohibition in the USA

This is a historical case study of a policy that lasted and failed for thirteen years. By making the supply of alcohol illegal, the production and/or smuggling was put into the control of criminal gangs. For years warfare raged in Chicago and other U.S. cities. Corruption pervaded all levels of justice. Intimidation made it impossible to get witnesses into court. When the most famous gangster, Al Capone, was finally convicted it was on charges not of murder and illegally supplying liquor, but of tax evasion! Thousands of Americans died from drinking industrial alcohol, deliberately poisoned by the federal authorities attempting to deter its consumption. The political system was brought into disrepute by the continued drinking of politicians. Loss of tax revenues from alcohol sales was huge. In 1920 Democrats and Republicans both had majorities favouring Prohibition, but in 1933 FDR was elected President on a vow to end Prohibition.

Forty years later, 'The War on Drugs' was declared by President Nixon, and half a century later it has claimed countless thousands of lives. Nixon himself resigned over the Watergate Scandal, but afterwards his chief White House aide, Ehrlichman, said about the 'War on Drugs' :

"You want to know what this was really all about. The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying?

We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.

Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

So those venal objectives of President Nixon saddled the world with this Drugs War policy that still engages dozens of countries in criminal violence. In Mexico in just one decade drugs violence killed over 100,000 people. Although the outright Civil War in Colombia has ended, armed violence continues between cartels and the corrupted police and paramilitaries. Mexico, Colombia and Afghanistan are also big producers of illegal cannabis, as are Nigeria, Jamaica and Paraguay. Wholesale intimidation and corruption of provincial and national governments by criminals is reducing transit countries in Central America, the Caribbean, and West and North Africa to the condition of failed states. Profits from drugs fund armed groups in many conflicts, for instance during 'the Troubles' in Ireland and today in Afghanistan. The violent death count includes extrajudicial killings in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, and probably more than ten thousand in the Philippines, and perhaps even higher numbers in Brazil. We don't have figures for drug-related deaths in China and India. But perhaps the main slaughter of the War on Drugs is the toll resulting from the absence of regulatory protection for drug users. These are the deaths from overdoses, from the exacerbation of psychiatric illness, from use of infected needles, from the poisonous additives used to cut plant-based drugs and in the processing of synthetic drugs.

The gains all go to the criminals. Drugs are a very profitable business. In 2005 production value of illegal drugs was estimated at $13 billion. Final retail value (tax free) was $320 billion.

The cost of this war is too high. There must be a better way?

Barney Rosedale and Bill Yates

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