CORNER-STORE DRUGS? IT WORKS FOR ME

My favourite cousin-in-law loved little more than hearing his wife and I
chorus, in tones of disgust and despair, "Oh Bob!" His eyes would twinkle
and his suggestions would become even more outrageous. A research
geneticist and biophysicist, he had a route into knowledge unfamiliar among
my acquaintance and he taught me a great deal (aside from how to drink six
hours in a row and still be able to move my mouth and have sound come out).

Like, for instance, Quebec might as well go ahead and separate, for in
fewer than two generations they'll be begging to get back in, because kids
always rebel against their elders' most cherished notions.

Or, that there is no way any elite can breed a superior class because
genius, a freak event if there ever was one, is distributed evenly, and the
drive necessary to bring genius to fruition tends to be limited to the
have-nots. And that drugs should be decriminalized, and sold cheaply, in
every corner shop.

Bob ended his career as head of Canada's Royal Society, so his suggestions
cannot be dismissed as the ravings of a loony, though that suggestion did
elicit a very loud, "Oh Bob!!" at the time. Especially when he said that if
we did so, the genes that produced serious drug addiction would be bred out
of the human race in double quick time.

Well, yikes.

And no, his heart wasn't that hard. But while his superbly rational legal
scholar of a wife would still disagree with him, I'm weakening.

Practically no one with all of his screws fully operational thinks
marijuana should be anything but decriminalized and controlled, but the
hard drugs?

Heroin? Crack? Yup, I think so. There are sound reasons for
de-criminalization of all drugs.

And with great ferocity, producing reams of paper, smart people on both
sides of the political spectrum are making the argument, based on their
core political beliefs.

But the convincing reasons, the reasons wherein the rubber meets the road,
are finally, entirely inspired by pragmatism.

First of all, the drug war? We lost. We spend billions of dollars a year
virtually financing the activities of thousands of criminals and cops and
entire countries of drug producers, while waging a war against our own
citizens.

We've glamourized a criminal class by directing our resources toward them,
and we're courting anarchy by being stupid about it. Some of our
neighbourhoods are war zones, an unthinkable fact in these days of
undreamed of prosperity. In many parts of many cities, you cannot walk
alone at night.

In Vancouver, a city which even a decade ago, with the exception of a few
corners, was gentle and benign to the point of boredom, has immigrant drug
gangs, many of whom arrived claiming refugee status, working the streets,
killing people.

Our entertainment celebrates corrupt police and ethnic demons (which no one
seems to call racist) bent on destroying us. Overall we tolerate a level of
criminal activity that would have seemed unimaginable 30 years ago.

Aside from losing control of our streets, as many as 90% of prison inmates
are there because of drugs.

The U.S. prison population is growing at such a rate that by 2053, if the
trend continues, more people will be in prison than out.

Deaths from drugs have never been higher, more than double the drug-related
deaths reported in 1979. In 1998, teenagers reported that heroin, marijuana
and crack cocaine were easier to get than at any time in the past decade.

If you want it, it's available, but if it's poisoned, too concentrated, or
will destroy your nasal passages, tough.

I took heroin once. It was unrelievedly awful and I threw up for weeks.
These days I don't even like to drink, and I haven't smoked marijuana or
used any other recreational drug for years, but like any curious child of
the '70s, I experimented. And by the time I was in my early 30s I was done
with it. I think drugs make you stupid, and that, for me, is the convincing
argument.

In point of fact, 70% of drug users are like I used to be -- occasional,
recreational users.

I once sat saucer-eyed across the table from one of New York's great
editors, a man whose life had been a tale of one astonishing accomplishment
after another, while he told me that one thing he had left to do was try crack.

But I also have three friends who are heroin addicts, in various stages of
recovery.

One is a viscount, another the son of an army priest, the third a working
class hero. Their addiction is an illness; despite privilege, brains,
talent and desire, heroin has bitten large chunks out of their lives, for
the most part because they had to break the law to get it, the stuff too
pure or cut with strychnine, the needles dirty, and the money unattainable
by legal means.

This, too, is normal.

Some of us are genetically condemned to addiction; the only hope, treatment.

Treatment over and over again, for as long as it takes. Jail augments the
disease or kills.

In Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Zurich, and in a small area of Vancouver,
enlightened officials are trying controlled experiments in drug addiction
management. Shooting rooms, controlled doses for addicts, clean needles,
decriminalized activity, immediately available treatment on demand (in
North America you have to be Matthew Perry to get treatment on demand) are
the several routes they are exploring. There are dozens of early reports on
the success of these programs, and what is becoming clear is that, best
case, these kinds of attempts shed the only light on a dark world.

Legal drug-taking strips the activity of its sickly glamour and shows it
for the seedy, desperately sad activity it is. Controlled substances can be
doled out and taxed. The money can be used for treatment of the sick. We
must own the source of supply.

We must face this Armageddon we've created, lie down in the dirt with our
ill fellows, and find a way, together, through this hell.