Mathanxiety - here we go again.
Am I contesting the proposition that obeying the law is a good idea? No, but I am contesting the proposition that laws should be obeyed BECAUSE they are fundamentally beneficial to society.
After 50 years of global prohibition, drugs are cheaper, more available and widely used than ever before; a $300bn (£190bn) a year - and still growing - trade has been gifted to organised criminals and unregulated dealers - creating vast costs for those least able to bear them - undermining public health and human rights, fuelling crime, corruption and conflict, and destabilising entire regions.
So, why has this war not been ended mathanxiety? Why do politicians continue to support it? The fundamental answer is disturbing. Prohibition clearly does not work. However, it meets the needs of the world's superpowers, who can resource and engage their military, police and criminal justice systems, all justified in the war against the global "drug menace".
And at the same time it meets the needs of global financial markets who launder the billions in illicit profits. As an example HSBC was recently fined $1.9bn for, among other things, laundering $881m of drug cartel money.
We can all agree that over-use of many drugs leads to health and social problems. Over 150,000 people die from alcohol and tobacco related illnesses each year in the UK. Very few people will argue that painkillers should be illegal, but paracetamol (or acetaminophen in US) toxicity is one of the most common causes of poisoning worldwide. In the US and the UK it is the most common cause of acute liver failure. Despite this, these drugs are regulated, and taxed, which allows the profit made from drug use to go towards better causes, such as rehab and scientific research, health care and policing.
Do I fundamentally believe that total legalisation is the solution? To be honest really I don’t know, but prohibition sure ain’t working, and we are remiss if we do not at least consider the alternatives.
Consensus is growing that prohibition has not only failed to deliver its intended goals, but has also been counterproductive. Evidence is mounting that this policy has not only exacerbated many public health problems, but has created a much larger set of secondary harms associated with the criminal market.
In the UK, these conclusions have been reached by a succession of committees and reports, including those commissioned by central government.
As for the US, a report sponsored by the New York County Lawyers' Association, one of the largest local bar associations in the United States, argues on the subject of US drug policy:
“Notwithstanding the vast public resources expended on the enforcement of penal statutes against users and distributors of controlled substances, contemporary drug policy appears to have failed, even on its own terms, in a number of notable respects. These include
- minimal reduction in the consumption of controlled substances;
- failure to reduce violent crime; failure to markedly reduce drug importation, distribution and street-level drug sales;
- failure to reduce the widespread availability of drugs to potential users;
- failure to deter individuals from becoming involved in the drug trade;
- failure to impact upon the huge profits and financial opportunity available to individual "entrepreneurs" and organized underworld organizations through engaging in the illicit drug trade; the expenditure of great amounts of increasingly limited public resources in pursuit of a cost-intensive "penal" or "law-enforcement" based policy;
- failure to provide meaningful treatment and other assistance to substance abusers and their families; and
- failure to provide meaningful alternative economic opportunities to those attracted to the drug trade for lack of other available avenues for financial advancement.”
Pretty strong stuff from a bunch of lawyers, eh?
An argument commonly used by prohibition supporters is "what about crack users, heroin users, what about their children". Firstly, alcohol and tobacco clearly ruin more children’s lives that crack cocaine and heroin combined. But would legalising these hard drugs significantly increase their use? Would either of us take heroin if it were legalised tomorrow, mathanxiety? No. Do you truly believe that the law is preventing most would-be heroin and crack users from choosing to use the drugs? I doubt it. Drug users use drugs regardless of laws and people abstain from drugs regardless of legality.
Let’s move to my (x 1000 worse) “execrable assessment that because I find appalling the sight of a devastated neighbourhood that functions as an open air market for controlled substances and prostitution, my opinion is somehow lacking in balance.”
That’s not why I think you lack balance, and did not state or imply as such. I just think you lack balance overall. But I digress. Then you pose me the question,
“If you are trying to assert that dire poverty is going to inevitably result in drug use then what is your excuse for using?”
Presumably, this is in response to my (pretty reasonable) statement,
“You provide a hard-hitting description of the issues faced in the vicinity of your neighbourhood (not your own, I understand that) but with respect, deprivation leading to habitual drug use is not news.”
Your related question is just presumptuous and irrelevant. There remains a strong association between poverty, social exclusion and problematic drug use. I think most people would accept that. But there is little or no correlation between whether people have ever tried illegal drugs (with the possible exceptions of heroin and crack cocaine) and deprivation. I think most people would accept that, too.
Then, you continue:
“You are entirely wrong in your understanding of statistics about risk of death from cocaine. You have the same risk of death by misadventure when you put a mystery powdered substance into your nose each and every time you use it, whether that is once a week or once a year. Frequency of use is not a key factor. Use is the only factor. You play Russian roulette every single time. Same goes for ecstasy.”
Now I’m no statistician, but here’s a patent example of why you lack balance. I never stated that my choices were entirely free of risk, but for you to state that doing something that contains an element of risk once every year carries just the same risk as doing it 52-fold is just absurd. Please, let’s keep this in perspective.
Onto our respective parenting: .
“They have heard the message about drug use since they were knee high to a duck. They are not going to come to me at this late stage of their moral development to ask for my advice about drugs because they know what my answer is going to be, and they demonstrate by their habits and attitudes that they have accepted the wallpaper I have created for their lives.”
Great, I’m genuinely glad it has worked for you. But you seem to be assuming that your ultra-conservative zero-tolerance approach to drugs is a model which should be extrapolated across the entire parenting spectrum with inevitable success. Again, that just does not lend itself to a balanced perspective and it pains me to explain why.
Then we get into the nitty-gritty around my family upbringing which, on the basis of a few lines on a forum (no pun intended), you appear to have nailed.
My parents were “derelict in their duty to supervise you, and you and your siblings took advantage of their dropping of the ball by deceiving them.”
We did what millions of young people do (but not your own of course).
“I would not consider this a solid family background.”
Which family background is that, then? The one you have invented to suit your unusually puritanical cause? Or the one that involved me (yawn, but for example) being an altar boy at church for 8 years, to swimming competitively at national level, to playing the flute at the Albert Hall, to working voluntarily for a learning disabilities charity, to frequent offshore sailing via a youth project, to gaining my Queens Scout Award, to gaining an honours degree, to working in the far east to improve the lives of deprived marginalised communities, to building a subsequent successful career in the environmental sector which involves making a tangible difference on a good wage? Sorry to disappoint you, but as you can see it was quite a different upbringing to your own which involved “most of their time outside of school was/is spent doing homework and studying”.
You then say
“What you seem to have learned from your upbringing is a sense of invincibility and personal privilege that puts you above the law and makes you immune from the statistics, and blind to the suffering caused by the business whose product you buy.”
Presumably your own consumer decisions (albeit currently considered ‘legal’ at your own point in the supply chain) have no broader negative consequences - you buy Fair Trade goods, you actively avoid products from unsustainable sources, you ensure that your family’s clothing isn’t sourced from factories employing child labour, your engagement ring didn’t contain a ‘blood diamond’ etc. etc.
Then you say loads of other stuff which is entirely unrepresentative of my personal situation, or my perspective on life, or my approach to bringing up my children. I don't take offence because I can no longer take your opinion seriously. Your own blind absolutism is wearing me down now. I’ve lost the will to respond.
But I had to look up the word midden. You learn something new every day.