A DRUG-FREE STATE JUST ISN'T NORMAL

The war on drugs is unwinnable, based on false premises and puritanism. But
begin from a different assumption and we might solve the problem.

No one can envy the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, and his drugs tsar, Keith
Hellawell, in their "struggle" against drugs. Law-makers, like physicians,
must be seen to be decisive even in the absence of robust data, and what an
awesome thing to have to legislate on matters so intransigent and
intricate, and yet so significant. Whatever they do will lead to trouble of
one kind or another and they, in the end, will take the blame. They deserve
our sympathy.

But they would deserve it more if they gave any sign of open-mindedness.
The "war" against drugs has been waged as forceful as any since the
Crusades but in no sense is it being won. Indeed it is unwinnable" it is
impossible even to imagine what "victory" would look like. What is
obviously needed more than anything else - legislation, policemen, or
"drugs education" for four year olds - is to rethink all our beliefs about
drugs from first principles, and our attitudes towards them. Once we truly
put our preconceptions up for grabs and ask on what they are founded, the
drugs "problem" starts to look very different.

To be sure, the heavyweight drugs are frightening. They take us on a
Faustian journey of dreams in which we can lose sight of "reality," with no
apparent guarantee of return. Yet it is naive and biologically odd to
suppose that it is normal, or natural, for the brain to be free of
psychotropic agents. It is not sophistry to point out that the body itself
constantly assails the brain with such substances: adrenaline,
testosterone, progesterone, endorphins. These agents are the stuff of
emotions.

Of course we cannot feel without them but also, more intriguingly, we can
hardly be said to think without them. because the emotions are the ultimate
arbiters of truth, and without emotion our thoughts have no guidance. We
are swayed by evidence, but in the end we believe what we "feel" is right.
Computers are stupid not because the cannot calculate - of course the can -
but because the have no emotion and so do not know or care what is true.
The substances that assail our brains are part of the thinking process.
Without them we can have no concept of truth.

Surely, though, we can distinguish between the self-generated agents that
our bodies and nerves produce for their own purpose and those that we
introduce from outside? In practice the distinction is not so obvious.
Human beings, like all other living creatures, are evolved, an we carry the
physiological inheritance of our ancestors. Our primate forebears were
largely herbivorous, and the plants they ate were wild. Wild plants are
shot through with pharmacologically powerful agents, most of which evolved
to repel importunate herbivores and many of which focus on the nervous
system. Most drugs of all kinds, and virtually all psychotropic agents,
derive from plants or fungi. Many of these seep through the blood-brain
barrier - otherwise they would have no effect.

In other words, the brains of our ancestors evolved over 50 million years
in the presence of psychotropic agents. If we were not adapted to them, we
would not have survived. Typically, in evolution, such adaptation first
takes the form of detoxification, for these agents (teleologically
speaking) are intended to poison. But evolution is nothing if not
opportunist: the things that creatures at first learn to dispose of, they
later learn to use; and when they use, they soon come to depend on. this is
why our bodies now require the bizarre shortlist of agents known as
vitamins - extraneous materials produced in nature by plants and microbes,
to which we have adapted, and on which we have come to rely.

The agents we call "drugs" can be seen as vitamin analogues that happen to
be focused on the nervous system. When our ancestors became full-time
farmers, they produced crops that were high-yielding and therefore bland -
for high yields and fancy chemistry each require energy and so are in
conflict. Nowadays we consider a diet free of psychotropic agents to be
"normal," and any addition as an imposition. Yet evolution suggests the
reverse: that modern, civiliised, people are in a constant state of
pharmacological impoverishment. The condition we consider normal is one of
deprivation. Our bodies know this. That is why the desire for drugs is so
hard to contain. Their absence is against our nature.

Of course, the notion that constant assault by psychotropic agents is
"natural" does not imply that it is right. As David Hume observed in the
18th century: "'Is' is not 'ought.'" Yet such a realisation encourages a
shift in our attitudes. To ban drugs is not, as we commonly perceive, to
revert to the norm. It is a positive act of asceticism, Puritanism in
action. I tend to be rather puritanical myself, and am no druggie, sating
myself with brisk walks and the occasional Bell's whisky. But such
Puritanism seems odd in this otherwise most unpuritanical age.

Surely, though, such musing is dwarfed by the facts: the deaths, the
addiction, the sheer misery? Well, I have children, too, and am as anxious
as anybody to reduce the dangers. But what are these "facts"? Of course
people become horribly addicted to heroin, and die from it. But is this
really typical, or even particularly common? American soldiers in Vietnam
took "serious" drugs in the perfectly reasonable belief that for them there
might be no tomorrow; yet most of them, when they got home, simply stopped
taking them in the way that any of us might give up tequila after a holiday
in Mexico. Tequila is what we drink abroad; at home we drink beer.

Brian Jones of the Stones died of too many drugs, but Johnny Rotten, world
champion of punks, simply gave up. He says he was lucky - but perhaps it is
truer to suggest that Jones was unlucky.

Of course all this is anecdotal, but that is precisely the point. For so,
disgracefully, is the evidence which says that addiction and the horrors
that ensue is the norm. We simply do not know how often, or how inevitably,
drug-taking turns bad. This could indeed be the norm, but equally probably
it is rare. By the same token, relatively few drinkers become alcoholics.
If we saw only the down-and out boozers, alcohol would seem as bad to us as
heroin does now.

But is there really no good evidence? Surely there are hundreds of studies
of heavy drugs and many thousands of cases? Indeed so, but all are deeply
flawed by what statisticians call confounding variables. If medicinal drugs
were judges so sloppily, nothing could ever be prescibed.

Because the street drugs are illegal, they are unregulated: what is outside
the law is beyond its reach. All the refinements that make doctors' drugs
relatively safe are missing from street drugs. They are impure, not to say
adulterated. The dose of active components can easily vary by a
thousandfold. Preparation and presentation are left to hazard. Every
pharmacologist knows that content is only half what matters, and the other
half is formulation: the refinements that modify absorption and metabolism.
this is why medicinal drugs are expensive. The drugs that doctors prescribe
are heavy-duty and they would be horrific, too, if they were not so pure
and administered in beautifully regulated structure and dose. So what do
the studies that affect to show the horrors of street drugs actually
signify? Are they better than the anecdotes from Vietnam? Is it sensible to
wage "war" on such a basis? Shouldn't we at least have some proper data?

Then again, because the street drugs are illegal they are unsocialised.
although the influence of socialisation is hard to judge, it is clearly
crucial. We might all drink ourselves into pleasant oblivion at any time,
and high among the reasons that most of us do not is shame. Our friends
wouldn't talk to us if we got ourselves drunk too often or unpleasantly.
Social control, in short, is finely tuned. But on the street there isn't
any - just pressure to take more. What would alcohol be like without
socialisation? Would it be better than heroin?

So what should we do? Well, to legalize all existing drugs overnight would
obviously be precipitate, although we should, to set the ball rolling, lift
the nonsense that surrounds marijuana. this does not mean removing legal
restraint, but imposing it: the same kinds of regulations that restrict
alcohol. We should, however, declare intent. Begin by framing the
principle: that, in general, it is better to allow than to prohibit and
that proscription is a mark of failure. the we could approach the principal
drugs case by case. First we have to find what they actually do to people -
the vital knowledge which at present is entrusted to anecdote. We need to
know more pharmacology, to find out exactly what each part of each molecule
contributes, and to make adjustments: perhaps enhance those parts that
bring sweet dreams and remove the parts that promote addiction, for there
is no reason to assume a priori that the two are ineluctably linked. Modern
pharmacology could transform the picture: it is a high-class act. Image
would be important though, for we are talking of social drugs. Bass
Charrington might be a more appropriate manufacturer than say, Glaxo Wellcome.

Then, in a few decades, we would be able to see how the drugs that at
present excite such terror behave when they are well-made, sold in
respectable places and socialised. we would of course eliminate huge areas
of organised crime, as only the very stupid would pay a fortune for junk
when they could get the real McCoy for the price of a beer. The results of
such an initiative could hardly be worse than the present scenario. When we
have some proper facts we could take stock.

Jack Straw and Keith Hellawell are facing their respective tasks
heroically. but it would be better, and a great novelty, to base political
endeavor on ideas that were true.