HIGH TIME TO COOK UP A FRESH IDEA

THROUGHOUT history, noble experiments of prohibition intended to rid
the world of the "immorality of intemperance" and the "scourge of
addiction" have repeatedly failed.

Our modern version of this folly has left us with overwhelming prison
populations, a criminal industry whose proceeds comprise more than ten
per cent of world trade, general disrespect for law and government,
and increasing use of the prohibited substances by younger and younger
people.

It becomes obvious yet again that prohibition, when logically
analysed, does not control drugs nor their use, but is an abandonment
of control to black market forces.

The continued pursuit of prohibitionism today in a manner more fanatic
and pernicious than ever before - the so-called "Drug War" championed
by the United States - is of major consequence to the very future of
civilisation.

Yet curiously, a merely realistic stress on the importance of
resolving the problem tends itself to sound like a fanaticism. Talk of
legalisation or repealing prohibition has often placed one amongst the
lunatic fringe of conspiracy theorists and alien abductees. The
necessary hypotheses for rational debate have thus been a little-heard
current in the media, and practically absent in the halls of government.

The roots, facilitations and justifications for prohibition run deep
into the fabric of modern civilisation. For example, there are
numerous economic incentives for promoting prohibition as viable
policy: the momentum of cash-flow involved with interdiction and its
agencies, with prison-building, drug-testing, manufacture of Drug War
material, and forfeiture. The situation is a major obstacle to any
change of policy at the international level or in the leading
prohibitionist nations such as the US.

Surely the reasons and mechanisms which allowed drug prohibition to
become the worldwide fiasco it is today are many, and the roots of the
prohibitionist attitude grow strongly from unexamined and obsolete
assumptions and prejudices of our times.

The question today is that as the philosophy of prohibition is finally
exposed as bogus, as its goals are shown to be self-defeating in their
pursuit, as it is revealed as one of the greatest crowd-madnesses of
all time, at what point will the absurdity of our collective folly
lead to a general abandonment of prohibition?

We must finally realise that not only has prohibition failed to
deliver the benefits it promised, but that it is the culprit we will
eventually have to blame for the greater part of the problems we now
attribute to the use of drugs.

So how do we proceed? It is obvious that after many decades of
prohibition it will be no easy task to design and implement such
policy. Thus it is perhaps impossible to say, and risky to recommend,
for instance, that this or that drug simply be "legalised", or that
the Government or industry should undertake to supply any and all
drugs that are in demand.

A general and absolute decriminalisation of all drug use and
possession should be instituted, first in the nations already
considering policy reform, and later worldwide, mandated by United
Nations and international agreements.

Much leeway to allow and overlook casual exchange and small-scale
sales of drugs will also be necessary until the issue of manufacture
and supply of drugs is settled. These ideas have already been partly
implemented with some notable success in various countries in Europe.

Decriminalisation is certainly merited and when fully implemented will
make possible for the first time much more accurate research
concerning drug use, its harms and possible benefits. Drug users who
are under absolutely no threat of penalty are obviously much more
reliable as research subjects than those who fear reprisal for their
chosen activities.

DRUG policy must be designed so that it recognises inevitabilities
concerning all aspects of drug use, drug production, and supply. So,
for example, it will be pointless to try to prevent people from
growing their own cannabis and distributing it to friends, collecting
magic mushrooms, or buying the occasional ecstasy pill at party.

Whatever the prevailing moral views say about such activities, insofar
as they attempt to interfere with the inevitable, they are useless as
guides for constructing effective policy.

Drug policy must, on the contrary, be pragmatic and attempt to guide
the inevitable toward situations manifesting the least aggregate and
individual harm and most collective benefit to society.

Drug policy may not legitimately have as a goal the minimisation or
attempted overt discouragement of drug use. This may sound drastic,
but when analysed fully, becomes obvious. The great majority of drug
use today already is undertaken responsibly. Yet legal and medical
authorities suffer from a certain illusion concerning the nature of
drug use and the general characteristics of drug users because they
uniformly see only the problem cases.

Thus drug policy must recognise that the use of a given drug will find
its own equilibrium in a society, and this equilibrium will depend on
the balance between risk and benefit that people find in the use of
the substance. Trying to convince people that "government knows best"
when it comes to such personal choices is counter-productive, and
anti-democratic.

Government and medical authorities may not transgress the line between
education and coercion, between supplying all possible information
concerning a drug and its use and attempting to use that information
as propaganda designed to narrow the legitimate choices of citizens.
Although such a view will be widely labelled as libertarian, in
reality it is merely pragmatic.

FINALLY, perhaps I may suggest a golden rule for future drug policy.
It is of obvious benefit to society that access to all drugs that
present significant risks to the user should be regulated in one way
or another. Drugs with greater potential for harmful use must be more
closely regulated. How shall we know whether such regulation achieves
its goals?

Here is a simple rule of thumb: Every individual drug, according to
its dangers, shall be subject to a regulatory scheme as restrictive as
seems merited, yet not so restrictive as to produce a black market in
the substance.

Once a significant illicit trade in a substance appears, we can be
sure that regulatory policy is a failure and bound to contribute to,
rather than minimise the harms of the commerce and use of that
substance. The appearance of the black market will be the litmus test
for policy.
~~~~~~~~
Peter Webster is review editor of the International Journal of Drug
Policy