TREATMENT MODEL MORE DANGEROUS THAN INCARCERATION

Politics: The Ceaseless Argument Over Who Gets To Do What To Whom, For How
Long, And Against What Degree Of Dissent.

A few days ago, a South Dakota senator and I ran into each other. He said
he'd been wanting to talk to me.

"Bob, you know I will support hemp and medical marijuana as soon as the
federal government endorses them."

Wondering what, exactly, brought this up, I said, "That's brave."

"Thanks," he said. (Two checkmarks in the "moron" column so far , none in
the "sane" or "intelligent" columns.)

"But I don't want kids being able to have drugs," he added.

"Then why do you support policies which assure kids' access to drugs, and
which assure profits for those who sell drugs to kids?" I asked.

"I don't even think juveniles should be allowed in bars," he said.

(Two more checkmarks under "moron".) "What's this about?" I asked.

"I've been reading what you're writing about me," he said. "I heard those
medical marijuana users you brought to Pierre [to testify in committee on
the medical cannabis bills]. I don't want to keep anybody from having
medicine, but the federal laws are in the way."

"You should say publicly they're bad laws," I said.

"I don't know enough about the subjects," he said.

"All right. I'll start educating you, if you promise me that, once you're
convinced, you'll go public. I've already wasted a lot of time using the
truth and reason at the legislature."

"It won't do any good. The federal laws . . ."

"All that's necessary for the forces of evil to win is for good people to do
. . ."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah . . .," he said. "But now that you know I'm on your side,
will you stop writing those things about me."

"With you on our side, we don't need enemies," I said.

As I was running up against the deadline for this column with nothing in
mind but the preceding conversation, and with the dread common to those of
us who know we've already told you more than we know ourselves, some
excerpts from a C. S. Lewis essay arrived electronically, resulting in some
of the following thought on my part.

Confronted by increasing evidence of the absurdity and cruelty of jailing
people for using marijuana (or any illicit substance) with no evidence that
such use can in any way be thought of as a crime, a growing number of morons
like the one above are referring to a "rehabilitation" model as a
replacement for the punishment model.

Unable to bridge the gap between current policy and a realistic way of
looking at the ways and whys of consciousness alteration, legislators are
left wringing their hands and whining, "We can't just let people smoke
marijuana," unable to articulate a single reason for their position.

Public policy says, generally, that any use of an illicit substance is
"abuse". Generally, first-offender users and petty dealers are given a
choice of "treatment" or jail. Public policy is moving more in the direction
of treatment, with the treatment lobby growing quickly as the
prison-building boom might be tailing off. Public policy will be ever more
influenced by the treatment lobby during the next few years.

No rational human being can seriously think that a person needs treatment
for the sole reason that he or she smokes pot. Yet, the
psychologist/treatment toadies need to sell that presumption in order to
thrive on coerced treatment. Legislators are willing buyers of any rationale
which presumes they know better what's good for us than we do. So, even as
we move inexorably towards a South Dakota where medical cannabis users will
fear less that they will be cuffed and stuffed for merely trying to feel
better (with a doctor's recommendation), we need to be aware of what likely
lies in store for those South Dakotans who merely want to feel better
(without a doctor's recommendation).

The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment was originally published in "20th
Century: An Australian Quarterly Review" in 1948, and recently re-published
in "God in the Dock: Essays in Theology and Ethics" edited by Walter Hooper,
published in 1970, reprinted in 1995. Excerpts follow, in the form of a
condensation of the entire C. S. Lewis essay.

According to the Humanitarian theory, to punish a man because he deserves
it, and as much as he deserves it, is mere revenge, and, therefore,
barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives for
punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the
criminal. When this theory is combined, as frequently happens, with the
belief that all crime is more or less pathological, the idea of mending
tails off into that of healing or curing and punishment becomes therapeutic.

My contention is that this doctrine, merciful though it appears, really
means that each one of us, from the moment he breaks the law, is deprived of
the rights of a human being.

The first result of the Humanitarian theory is, therefore, to substitute for
a definite sentence (reflecting to some extent the community's moral
judgment on the degree of ill-dessert involved) an indefinite sentence
terminable only by the word of those experts who inflict it. Because
therapeutic techniques intended to cure the criminal are "treatment", not
punishment, they can be criticized only by fellow-experts and on technical
grounds, never by men as men and on grounds of justice. Which of us, if he
stood in the dock, would not prefer to be tried by the old system?

To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard
as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the
age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants,
imbeciles, and domestic animals. But to be punished, however severely,
because we have deserved it, because we "ought to have known better", is at
least to be treated as a human person made in God's image.

It is important to notice that my argument so far supposes no evil
intentions on the part of the Humanitarian and considers only what is
involved in the logic of his position. My contention is that good men
consistently acting upon that position would act as cruelly and unjustly as
the greatest tyrants. They might in some respects act even worse. Of all
tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be
the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under
omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep,
his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own
good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their
own conscience.

In reality, however, we must face the possibility of bad rulers armed with a
Humanitarian theory of punishment. The practical problem is living under
rulers who will never be perfectly wise and good and who will sometimes be
very wicked and very foolish. And when they are wicked the Humanitarian
theory of punishment will put in their hands a finer instrument of tyranny
than wickedness ever had before. For if crime and disease are to be
regarded as the same thing, it follows that any state of mind which our
masters choose to call "disease" can be treated as crime; and compulsorily
"cured".

Armed with pop psychology and a simulated holistic view of society, upcoming
legions of lawmakers will grasp eagerly at the thought that legions of
treatment specialists will provide progress towards a "drug-free America".
In turn the treatment specialists will publicly support the legislators who
vote to provide legal methods by which the courts can order people to
treatment, and order them to pay for it. The courts and the specialists will
confer on who's cured and who isn't, and what the evidence of being "cured"
is.

Politicians (especially the senator whose wisdom graces the opening lines of
this column), prosecutors, judges, and treatment specialists will all toast
each other in the press as "great humanitarians". It is, after all, "for the
children".