THE SECRET OF WORLDWIDE DRUG PROHIBITION

The Varieties and Uses of Drug Prohibition

What percentage of countries in the world have drug prohibition? Is it 100
percent, 75 percent, 50 percent, or 25 percent? I recently asked many
people I know to guess the answer to this question. Most people in the
United States, especially avid readers and the politically aware, guess 25
or 50 percent. More suspicious individuals guess 75 percent. The correct
answer is 100 percent, but almost no one guesses that figure. Most readers
of this paragraph will not have heard that every country in the world has
drug prohibition. Surprising as it seems, almost nobody knows about the
existence of worldwide drug prohibition.

In the last decade of the twentieth century, men and women in many
countries became aware of national drug prohibition. They came to
understand that the narcotic or drug policies of the United Sates and some
other countries are properly termed drug prohibition. Even as this
understanding spread, the fact that drug prohibition covers the entire
world remained a kind of "hidden-in-plain-view" secret. Now, in the
twenty-first century, that situation, too, is changing. As "global drug
prohibition" becomes more visible, it loses some of its ideological and
political powers.

In this article, I briefly describe the varieties and uses of drug
prohibition and the growing crisis of the worldwide drug prohibition regime.

Drug Prohibition Is a Continuum from Heavily Criminalized to Decriminalized

Every country in the world has drug prohibition. Every country in the world
criminalizes the production and sale of cannabis, cocaine, and opiates
(except for limited medical uses). In addition, most countries criminalize
the production and sale of other psychoactive substances. Most countries
also criminalize simple possession of small amounts of the prohibited
substances (Bewley-Taylor 1999; Nadelmann 1990; and many publications at
the International Narcotics Control Board Web site at: http://www.incb.org ).

In Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice (1997), Craig Reinarman
and I suggested that the varieties of drug prohibition can be seen as a
long continuum. In this article, I suggest that the most criminalized and
punitive end of the continuum be called criminalized drug prohibition and
the other end be termed decriminalized drug prohibition.

U.S. drug policy is the best-known example of criminalized drug
prohibition. This form of drug prohibition uses criminal laws, police, and
imprisonment to punish people who use specific psychoactive substances,
even in minute quantities. In most places in the United States, drug laws
prohibit even supervised medical use of cannabis by terminally ill cancer
and AIDS patients. U.S. drug prohibition gives long prison sentences for
possession, use, and small-scale distribution of forbidden drugs.

Most U.S. drug laws explicitly remove sentencing discretion from judges and
do not allow for probation or parole. The United States now has nearly half
a million men and women in prison for violating its drug laws. Most of
these people are poor and from racial minorities. Most of them have been
imprisoned just for possessing an illicit drug or for "intending" to sell
small amounts of it. The mandatory federal penalty for possessing five
grams of crack cocaine, for a first offense, is five years in prison with
no chance of parole. Criminalized prohibition is the harshest, most
punitive form of drug prohibition (Reinarman and Levine 1997).

The cannabis policy of the Netherlands is the best-known example of the
other end of the drug prohibition spectrum - a decriminalized and regulated
form of drug prohibition. Several United Nations (UN) drug treaties -
especially the Single Convention on Narcotics of 1961 - require the
government of the Netherlands to have specific laws prohibiting the
production and sale of particular drugs. Therefore, Dutch law explicitly
prohibits growing or selling cannabis. This regime is still formally drug
prohibition, and the Netherlands does prosecute larger growers, dealers,
and importers (or smugglers) as required by the UN treaties. In the
Netherlands, however, national legislation and policy limit the prosecution
of certain cafés, snack bars, and pubs (called "coffee shops") that are
licensed to sell small quantities of cannabis for personal use. The coffee
shops are permitted to operate as long as they are orderly and stay within
well-defined limits that the police monitor and enforce. The coffee shops
are not allowed to advertise cannabis in any way, and they may sell only
very small amounts to adults. Like other formally illegal activities,
cannabis sales are not taxed. Without a change in the Single Convention and
other international treaties, this is probably as far as any country can go
within the current structures of worldwide drug prohibition (Reinarman and
Levine 1997).

The prohibition policies of all other Western countries fall in between the
heavily criminalized crack-cocaine policies of the United States and the
decriminalized and regulated cannabis prohibition of the Netherlands. No
Western country and few Third World countries have ever had forms of drug
prohibition as criminalized and punitive as the U.S. regime, and since the
early 1990s drug policy in Europe, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere clearly
has shifted even farther away from the criminalized end of the prohibition
continuum. All these countries, however, are required by international
treaties to have - and still do have- real, formal, legal, national drug
prohibition (Andreas 1999; Bewley-Taylor 1999; Reinarman and Levine 1997).

Drug Prohibition Has Been Adopted Throughout the World

Drug prohibition is a worldwide system of state power. Global drug
prohibition is a "thing," a "social fact" (to use sociologist Emile
Durkheim's term). Drug prohibition exists whether or not we recognize it,
and it has real consequences.

For many decades, public officials, journalists, and academics rarely
identified any form of U.S. drug law as "prohibition." Instead, they
referred to a national and international "narcotics policy." The
international organization that still supervises global drug prohibition is
called the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB).

National drug prohibition began in the 1920s in the United States as a
subset of national alcohol prohibition. The first U.S. drug prohibition
enforcement agents were alcohol prohibition agents assigned to handle
"narcotics." American prohibitionists had always worked hard to convince
other nations to adopt alcohol prohibition laws. During the 1920s, some
savvy prohibitionists (notably an obscure U.S. prohibition commissioner
named Harry A. Anslinger) realized that the success of U.S. alcohol
prohibition depended on support from other countries. However, the campaign
to spread American alcohol prohibition to other nations was an utter failure.

After 1929, the impoverishment, dislocation, and despair caused by the
Great Depression further weakened support for alcohol prohibition. In 1933,
unprecedented state referendums repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, ending
national alcohol prohibition. The question of alcohol policy was turned
back to state and local governments to do with as they wished. A few states
retained alcohol prohibition for years, and many U. S. counties today still
have forms of alcohol prohibition (Blocker 1989; Kyvig 1979; Levine 1984,
1985; Levine and Reinarman 1993; Musto 1987).

Drug prohibition took an entirely different course. Since the early
twentieth century, the United States has recognized that European
governments are far more willing to accept antinarcotics legislation than
antialcohol laws. The founding Covenant of the League of Nations explicitly
mentions the control of "dangerous drugs" as one of the organization's
concerns. In 1930, Congress separated drug prohibition from the
increasingly disreputable alcohol prohibition and created a new federal
drug prohibition agency, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, headed by the
committed alcohol prohibitionist Harry A. Anslinger. In the 1930s, the
United States helped write and gain acceptance for two international
antidrug conventions or treaties aimed at "sup-pressing" narcotics and
"dangerous drugs." In 1948, the newly created UN made drug prohibition one
of its priorities, and the UN Single Convention of 1961, supplemented by a
series of subsequent antidrug treaties, established the current system of
global drug prohibition (Bewley-Taylor 1999; Epstein 1977; King 1978;
McAllister 1999; Musto 1987).

In the past eighty years, nearly every political persuasion and type of
government has endorsed drug prohibition. Capitalist democracies took up
drug prohibition, and so did authoritarian governments. German Nazis and
Italian Fascists embraced drug prohibition, just as American politicians
had. Various Soviet regimes enforced drug prohibition, as have their
successors. In China, mandarins, militarists, capitalists, and communists
all enforced drug prohibition regimes. Populist generals in Latin American
and anticolonialist intellectuals in Africa embraced drug prohibition. Over
the course of the twentieth century, drug prohibition received support from
liberal prime ministers, moderate monarchs, military strongmen, and
Maoists. It was supported by prominent archbishops and radical priests; by
nationalist heroes and imperialist puppets; by labor union leaders and
sweatshop owners; by socialists, social workers, social scientists, and
socialites - by all varieties of politicians practicing all brands of
politics in all political systems (see the INCB and United Nations Drug
Control Program UNDCP publications, especially "Bulletins on Narcotics"
from 1949 to the present, at http://www.undcp.org/odccp/bulletin_on_narcotics.html ).

Over the past eighty years, every nation in the world eventually adopted
drug prohibition. National drug prohibition was one of the most widely
accepted, reputable, legitimate government policies of the entire twentieth
century. Why?

Drug Prohibition Is Useful to All Types of Governments

There is no doubt that governments throughout the world have accepted drug
prohibition because of enormous pressure from the U. S. government and a
few powerful allies, but U. S. power alone cannot explain the global
acceptance of drug prohibition. Governments of all types, all over the
world, have found drug prohibition useful for their own purposes, for
several reasons.

The Police and Military Powers of Drug Prohibition

Drug prohibition has given all types of governments additional police and
military powers. Police and military narcotics units can go undercover
almost any-where to investigate - after all, almost anybody might be in the
drug business. More undercover police in the United States are in narcotics
squads than are in any other branch of police work. Antidrug units within
city, county, and state police departments are comparatively large and
often receive federal subsidies. Police antidrug units have regular contact
with informers; they can make secret recordings and photographs; they have
cash for buying drugs and information. In the United States, police
antidrug units sometimes are allowed to keep money, cars, houses, and other
property that they seize. Top politicians and government officials in many
countries may have believed deeply in the cause of drug prohibition, but
other health-oriented causes could not have produced for them so much
police, coast guard, and military power (Baum 1996; Gray 1998; Duke and
Gross 1993).

Government officials throughout the world have used antidrug squads to
conduct surveillance operations and military raids that they would not
otherwise have been able to justify. Many times these antidrug forces have
been deployed against targets other than drug dealers and users - as was
the case with President Richard Nixon's own special White House antidrug
team, led by former CIA agents, which later became famous as the Watergate
burglars. Nixon was brought down by his squad's mistakes, but over the
years government antidrug forces all over the world have carried out
countless successful nondrug operations (on Nixon and other U. S. uses of
antidrug forces, see Baum 1996; Cockburn and St. Clair 1998; Epstein 1977;
Gray 1998; King 1972).

The Usefulness of Antidrug Messages and of Drug Demonization

Drug prohibition also has been useful for governments and politicians of
all types because it has required at least some antidrug crusades and what
is properly called drug demonization. Antidrug crusades articulate a moral
ideology that depicts "drugs" as extremely dangerous and destructive
substances. Under drug prohibition, police departments, the media, and
religious and health authorities tend to describe the risks and problems of
drug use in extreme and exaggerated terms. "Drugs" are dangerous enemies.
"Drugs" are evil, vile, threatening, and powerfully addicting. Politicians
and governments crusade against "drugs," declare war on them, and blame
them for many unhappy conditions and events. Antidrug crusades and drug
scares popularize images of "drugs" as highly contagious, invading evils.
Words such as plague, epidemic, scourge, and pestilence are used to
describe psychoactive substances, drug use, and moderate, recreational drug
users (Baum 1996; Epstein 1977; Reinarman and Levine 1997).

Government officials, the media, and other authorities have found that
almost anyone at any time can blame drug addiction, abuse, and even use for
long-standing problems, recent problems, and the worsening of almost
anything. Theft, robbery, rape, malingering, fraud, corruption, physical
violence, shoplifting, juvenile delinquency, sloth, sloppiness, sexual
promiscuity, low productivity, and all around irresponsibility - anything
at all - can be and has been blamed on "drugs." Almost any social problem
is said to be made worse - often much worse - by "drugs" (Reinarman and
Levine 1997).

In a war on "drugs," as in other wars, defining the enemy necessarily
involves defining and teaching about morality, ethics, and the good things
to be defended. Since the temperance or antialcohol campaigns of the
nineteenth century, antidrug messages, especially those aimed at children
and their parents, have had recognizable themes. Currently in the United
States, these antidrug messages stress individual responsibility for health
and economic success, respect for police, resistance to peer-group
pressure, the value of God or a higher power in recovering from drug abuse,
parents' knowledge of where their children are, sports and exercise as
alternatives to drug use, drug testing of sports heroes, low grades as
evidence of drug use, abstinence as the cause of good grades, and the need
for parents to set good examples for their children. Almost anyone -
police, politicians, schools, medical authorities, religious leaders - can
find some value that can be defended or taught while attacking "drugs."
(See the U. S. government - sponsored antidrug Web site at
www.theantidrug.com).

In the United States, newspapers, magazines, and other media have long
found that supporting antidrug campaigns is good for public relations. The
media regularly endorse government antidrug campaigns and favorably cover
antidrug efforts as a "public service." For doing so, they receive praise
from government officials and prominent organizations. No doubt many
publishers and editors deeply believe in the "war on drugs" and in
defending the criminalized, prison-centered tradition of U. S. drug
policies. But few of the other causes that people in the media support can
be turned so easily into stories that are good for public relations and,
simultaneously, that are very good for attracting customers and business.

Since at least the 1920s, top editors in the news media have recognized as
an economic fact of their business that an alarming front-page antidrug
story will likely increase sales of magazines and newspapers, especially
when it is about a potential drug epidemic threatening to destroy
middle-class teenagers, families, and neighborhoods. Editors know that a
frightening story about a new, tempting, addicting drug attracts more TV
viewers and radio listeners than most other kinds of news stories,
including nonscary drug stories. In short, whatever their personal values,
publishers, editors, and journalists give prominent space to scary antidrug
articles because they know the stories attract customers (Baum 1996;
Epstein 1977; Reinarman and Levine 1997).

Consider the case of crack cocaine and the still active U. S. war on drugs.
In the 1980s, the media popularized the image of crack cocaine as "the most
addicting drug known to man." Politicians from both parties then used that
image to explain the deteriorating conditions in America's impoverished
city neighborhoods and schools. Front-page stories in the New York Times
and other publications warned that crack addiction was rapidly spreading to
the suburbs and the middle class. In the election years of 1986 and 1988,
politicians from both parties enthusiastically voted major increases in
funding for police, prisons, and the military to save America's children
from crack cocaine.

Even if crack was as bad as Republicans, Democrats, and the media said, it
still probably could not have caused all the enduring problems they blamed
on it, but the truth about crack cocaine is as startling as the myths.
Crack cocaine, "the most addicting drug known to man," turned out to be a
drug that very few people used continuously for long. Many Americans tried
crack, but not many kept on using it heavily and steadily for a long time,
mainly because most people cannot physically tolerate, much less enjoy,
frequent encounters with crack's brutally brief and extreme ups and downs.
Nor has crack become popular anywhere else in the world. Heavy, long-term
crack smoking appeals only to a small number of deeply troubled people,
most of whom are also impoverished. Because frequent bingeing on the drug
is so thoroughly unappealing, it was extremely unlikely that an epidemic or
plague of crack addiction would spread across America to the middle class
and the suburbs.

Nonetheless, the contradictions between the drug war's myths about crack
and the reality of crack cocaine's very limited appeal have not undermined
the credibility or usefulness of antidrug messages, news stories, or
political statements. In this respect, drug war propaganda is like the
propaganda from other wars: the claims often remain useful even though they
are patently false or do not make logical sense (Reinarman and Levine
1997). In the 1990s, when crack cocaine finally ceased to be a useful
enemy, American politicians, media, and police did not acknowledge their
exaggerations and falsehoods about crack cocaine. They simply claimed
victory, stopped discussing crack, and focused on other scary drugs, most
recently MDMA (ecstasy) and prescription narcotics.

Additional Political and Ideological Support for Drug Prohibition

In many countries, popular and political support for drug prohibition also
has been rooted in the widespread faith in the capacity of the state to
penetrate and police many aspects of daily life for the "common good." This
romantic or utopian view of the coercive state became especially strong and
pervasive in the twentieth century. Unlike, say, the dissenters who
insisted on the U. S. Bill of Rights in the eighteenth century, and unlike
the members of many nineteenth-century political movements, in the
twentieth century liberals, conservatives, fascists, communists,
socialists, populists, left-wingers, and right-wingers shared this vision
of the benevolent national state - if they controlled it. Drug prohibition
was one of the few things on which they could all agree. Drug prohibition
has been part of what I think it is appropriate to call the twentieth
century's "romance with the state."

Because politicians in many countries, from one end of the political
spectrum to the other, have shared this positive view of the powerful,
coercive state, they could all agree on drug prohibition as sound
nonpartisan government policy. In the United States during the 1980s and
1990s, Democrats feared and detested Presidents Reagan and Bush, and
Republicans feared and detested President Clinton, but the parties united
to fight the war on drugs. They even competed to enact more punitive
antidrug laws, build more prisons, hire more drug police, expand antidrug
military forces, and fund many more government-sponsored antidrug messages
and crusades for a "drug-free" America. Opposing political parties around
the world have fought about many things, but until recently they have often
united in endorsing efforts to fight "drugs" (Baum 1996; King 1972;
Reinarman and Levine 1997).

Finally, drug prohibition has enjoyed widespread support and legitimacy
because the United States has used the UN as the international agency to
create, spread, and supervise worldwide prohibition. Other than the U. S.
government, the UN has done more to defend and extend drug prohibition than
any other organization in the world. The UN currently identifies a
"drug-free world" as the goal of its antidrug efforts
(http://www.odccp.org/adhoc/gass/ga9411.htm).

The Spread of Drug Prohibition in the Twentieth Century

In the twentieth century, drug prohibition spread from the United States to
every country in the world, for a number of reasons. First, drug
prohibition spread so successfully because of the enormous economic,
political, and military power of the United States. Second, many different
kinds of governments throughout the world supported drug prohibition
because they found that police and military resources marshalled on behalf
of drug prohibition could be used for many nondrug-related activities.
Third, drug prohibition also gained substantial popular support in many
countries because drug-demonization crusades and antidrug ideology were
rhetorically, politically, and even financially useful to many politicians,
the media, schools, the police, the military, religious institutions, and
some elements of the medical profession. Fourth, the spread of drug
prohibition was aided by the twentieth century's romantic or utopian
ideologies about coercive state power, making the fight against "drugs" the
one topic on which politicians of all stripes could usually agree. Finally,
drug prohibition gained great legitimacy throughout the world because it
was seen as a UN project.

All forms of drug prohibition, from the most criminalized to the most
decriminalized, probably have involved at least some explicit drug
demonizing. In general, drug demonization and drug prohibition reinforce
each other. It is important to recognize, however, that drug demonization
existed before global drug prohibition, and drug demonization certainly
will continue long after worldwide drug prohibition has passed away.

[ part 1 of 2 parts - part 2 is at http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02.n1993.a06.html ]


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