by Bruce Han­ify Here is the short answer to the War on Drugs: there is no short answer.  Whichever side you fall on this issue, you will be blinded by prej­u­dice.  Why?  Because if you sup­ply a yes or no answer, you will likely neglect one of two nec­es­sary prin­ci­ples at play in how law and gov­ern­ment work.  Which one you’re blind to tells me whether you’re for or against the legal­iza­tion of recre­ational drugs.

Before we get started, let me con­fess that I have been per­son­ally and pro­fes­sion­ally involved in the entire imbroglio of illicit drug use for what now seems like my entire life.  I pros­e­cuted drug cases for 15 years, and defended them for 10.  What fol­lows is an hon­est account of the bat­tle thus far, as I under­stand it.

Here are the two principles:

First, gov­ern­ment is force.  It is sheer lunacy to expect gov­ern­ment to work like a fine instru­ment in, say, the hands of a Leonardo.  Gov­ern­ment, ulti­mately, is about tak­ing your money and throw­ing you into jail — or worse.  And the big mys­tery about gov­ern­ment isn’t really such a mys­tery.  When and where and how peo­ple want gov­ern­ment to use force is an out­growth of cul­tural dynam­ics that are some­times dif­fi­cult to spot up close.  It usu­ally takes at least a cen­tury of sep­a­ra­tion before peo­ple can hon­estly assess what was going on in some spe­cific period.  And then there are those notable excep­tions, like the “War Between the States” and the Fall of Rome, where no two his­to­ri­ans have ever agreed on much of any­thing.  The War on Drugs is equally per­plex­ing.  When­ever these things are researched in detail, they fail to yield easy answers.

Gov­ern­ment does not solve prob­lems cre­atively.  Never has, never will.   What gov­ern­ment does is wipe out the com­pe­ti­tion.  Gov­ern­ment is not a nanny or an art teacher or your Aunt Rose.  It is the biggest, dullest boy on the block, and when you get in the way, it whomps you.  The ques­tions addressed by the Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion are never the legit­i­macy of force, but when, where and how force ought to be applied — and to what end.  Cre­ativ­ity can only occur when absolute free­dom of choice is allowed to oper­ate.  In the case of pol­i­tics and law, cre­ativ­ity is more an ado­les­cent indul­gence than an event we can all look for­ward to.  Hence, the first prin­ci­ple forces us to con­clude that no mat­ter which course of action we choose, it won’t be pretty.

The sec­ond prin­ci­ple peo­ple are likely to miss derives from the Equal Pro­tec­tion clause, found in the 14th Amend­ment — a major Civil War era mod­i­fi­ca­tion to the constitution:

.… No State shall .… . deny to any per­son within its juris­dic­tion the equal pro­tec­tion of the laws.

Put sim­ply, you can­not equally enforce laws unless there is a gen­eral social agree­ment about what it is you’re try­ing to do.  If you doubt how crit­i­cal this is, com­pare a mostly homoge­nous pop­u­la­tion like Japan’s to our het­ero­ge­neous nation.  A Japan­ese pretty much under­stands where he or she is, what’s going on, and what’s expected of him, whether he’s at a wed­ding, or in a court­room.  We don’t have much of that in the United States.  The first big ques­tion on the table is, then:

Define ‘drug.’

You can see the prob­lem imme­di­ately.  If you passed a drug law in Japan, chances are most Japan­ese would under­stand what the law intended.  Here it is not so clear.  What a drug is to a Chris­t­ian Sci­en­tist is not the same thing as a drug to your physi­cian, and so on.  It is extremely unlikely that we will ever have much agree­ment as to the fed­eral government’s proper role in the reg­u­la­tion of drugs because few of us could agree on what what is being reg­u­lated: meth, or aspirin?  Even my sub­ti­tle, “the 45-Year-Old War on Drugs”, is mean­ing­less.  Younger read­ers would think the War on Drugs began with Reagan’s coro­na­tion of it as such, but for old folks like myself it started in ’67, after Art Linkletter’s daugh­ter fell (?) out a win­dow and died; and for the Reefer Dudes it started in the 20s; and for the purist Lib­er­tar­ian types, it started with the  .… .

The Food and Drug Act, passed in 1906.  That gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple had wit­nessed one of the largest pop­u­la­tions of opium addicts ever seen in this coun­try.  Between opium-laced con­sumer prod­ucts and wounded Civil War vet­er­ans, the United States expe­ri­enced a wide­spread, chronic prob­lem with seri­ous drug addic­tion.  You could argue — many do — that noth­ing needed to be done, but if you put your­self in that time and think about peo­ple mak­ing money sell­ing dope-laden con­sumer prod­ucts to preg­nant women, you can under­stand why it seemed advis­able for the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to step in, i.e., poi­so­nous foods and poi­so­nous drugs are in the same cat­e­gory, socially speak­ing.  Aren’t they?

Con­sider: do you want to repeal the Food and Drug laws?  The first time someone’s baby dies from bad for­mula, we’re right back where we started.

The com­plex­i­ties mul­ti­ply expo­nen­tially.  You don’t have to be a rocket sci­en­tist to under­stand that relax­ing the fed­eral government’s cur­rent reach and finan­cial take might reju­ve­nate many tor­pid areas of our coun­try. When you look at the enor­mity of power and the finan­cial drain rep­re­sented by the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, you can say, “They should get out of drugs.”  But then someone’s baby dies, and every­one says, ‘Why doesn’t some­one stop them?’  That’s the real­ity of hav­ing a huge coun­try, a het­ero­ge­neous pop­u­la­tion, and a dis­tant, abstract, often dis­mally stu­pid national gov­ern­ment.  There is never going to be one easy answer because the answer will change with the ques­tion.  You can take that same obser­va­tion and apply it to any of the other thou­sands of things our fed­eral gov­ern­ment is doing.  There will always be folks stand­ing in line say­ing, “Look at these good things”, and then folks in the other line, say­ing, “Tsk, tsk, such a waste!”

So let’s start from the out­side and work our way back.  Let us argue, as many do, that “treat­ment is the right answer.”  Okay.  I agree.  Treat­ment is a bet­ter answer than pun­ish­ment.  Now let’s look at three fac­tors which com­pli­cate that pic­ture entirely:

1)  Pre­sum­ing we are going to man­date treat­ment, which will require tax­a­tion and gov­ern­men­tal reg­u­la­tion, we are still fight­ing a War on Drugs.  We may be fight­ing more like a Peace Corps engage­ment than a U.S. Army Search and Destroy mis­sion, but we’re still in a War.  Peo­ple will have to be arrested.  Force will be nec­es­sary.  Do you doubt this?  How would you expect to enforce laws that are sweetly writ­ten but don’t carry the force of law?  What you’re really doing is shift­ing the use of force, so let’s be hon­est about that.

2)  The assump­tion is that once we move the empha­sis from pun­ish­ment to treat­ment the drug car­tels will dis­ap­pear and the cost of the War will drop.  Where is the proof for this?  The fact is, you will still need to expend a great amount of money to treat addic­tion on a national scale, and you will still have com­pe­ti­tion.  In other words, there is no legit­i­mate rea­son to expect that things will sud­denly improve.  Prob­a­bly we would have to expend even greater effort than before because now you are argu­ing against some­thing you have given tacit approval to.  Maybe not.  I’m just throw­ing that out there.

3) The other assump­tion is, once you legal­ize drugs, mar­ket prices will drop, but I ask again: where is the proof of this?  Per­haps the only way to do that is to get rid of the com­pe­ti­tion alto­gether and give peo­ple their drugs, but .… given the gen­eral inef­fi­cien­cies of gov­ern­ment (and government’s well-documented resis­tance to any­thing like facts), you know as well as I do they’d screw that up so badly, we’d prob­a­bly spend three times what we’re spend­ing now.  Besides, this option works best when you have the option of wip­ing out the com­pe­ti­tion.  Back to where we started.

So .… what is the answer?  I believe I started this post by say­ing “There is no one answer.”  And I stand by that, with this pro­viso: treat­ing addicts like they’re mon­sters is not a good idea.  Addic­tion, like finan­cial chaos, like obe­sity, like men­tal ill­ness, is a weak­ness many peo­ple suf­fer from that is rooted in brain chem­istry, devel­op­men­tal dynam­ics, social pres­sures, and so on.  The answer — if we’re forced to resort to force — lies some­where in pro­vid­ing suit­able train­ing struc­tures and med­ical treat­ments that address men­tal ill­ness and dietary chal­lenges.  Pul­ver­iz­ing a person’s self-image to make a point is likely to rein­force the neg­a­tive behav­ior, in my view, which is the real moral dif­fi­culty with our War on Drugs.

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Two Thoughts About Pro­hi­bi­tion  Almost always peo­ple resort to the tired and incon­gru­ent anal­ogy of Pro­hi­bi­tion: “We tried it dur­ing Pro­hi­bi­tion and it didn’t work.  Ha Ha Ha!”  Well, here are two thoughts about Pro­hi­bi­tion you might want to consider:

#1  Socially, Pro­hi­bi­tion was feminism’s first major elec­toral vic­tory after obtain­ing the right to vote.  Women rebelled against drunken, abu­sive men.  Guess what?  It served them (the men) right.  Since they couldn’t con­trol them­selves, they shouldn’t whine about some­body knockin’ ‘em around.  By the way, this has a direct bear­ing on whether or how a free peo­ple can reg­u­late them­selves.  The fact is, drunk­en­ness and drug abuse are incon­sis­tent with free­dom.  Most peo­ple resent being reminded of that.  Eas­ier to bray.

#2  The very idea that you can ban alco­hol is, on its face, absurd.  Pro­hi­bi­tion was eas­ily one of the most ill-conceived legal maneu­vers in the his­tory of man .… and it has a direct bear­ing on how we should treat addicts: pun­ish them, or help them?

In related news, some­thing that I would like to see more of: Gen­uine dis­cus­sion of how cer­tain drugs, like psy­che­delics, ACTUALLY HELP PEOPLE.  Vic­to­ria Har­ris pro­vides a rea­son­ably inter­est­ing primer on how chang­ing social views affect how we treat ques­tions of what ought to be legal, but com­ments like THIS ONE are bet­ter than the arti­cle.  MDMA and var­i­ous other sub­stances actu­ally do pro­mote psy­cho­log­i­cal insight.  Blan­ket pro­hi­bi­tions against cer­tain drugs aren’t sci­en­tific.  They’re hys­ter­i­cal and imprac­ti­cal and .… cruel.

Some peo­ple are call­ing Obama’s stance on drugs Disin­gen­u­ous.  Wow.  Where have I heard that before?

Child­hood chum Mar­tin Shaugh­nessy wrote: “Actu­ally, there is a short answer. All drugs should be legal, high qual­ity, priced to mar­ket con­di­tions, and read­ily avail­able. What hap­pens when you give a junkie all the dope they want? Prob­lem Solved. Damn, you think too much, Bruce.”

UPDATE  While I am grate­ful for Martin’s feed­back, he makes my point for me.  The posi­tion, “legal­ize drugs”, pro­duces the same result as “abol­ish the FDA.”  Sounds great over Sun­day fried chicken, but I’ll guar­an­tee you will NEVER win a national elec­tion on it.  Everyone’s lib­eral about drug use till they think about tak­ing their grand kids to Tar­get and hav­ing to dodge ston­ers.  Or, like I tell my Lib­er­tar­ian friends, “Two weeks after drugs are legal­ized, there’ll be a bounty on you guys.  Twenty bucks a scalp.”  No one seems to think polit­i­cal and social real­i­ties are rel­e­vant to the dis­cus­sion — which was the point of my post.

Rob DeWitt wrote:  “You right­fully employ the image of a national opium prob­lem in the early 20th cen­tury. Imag­ine if there had been tele­vi­sion and movies every­where in 1900, sub­tly explain­ing to every­body who passed by that see­ing a prob­lem with opium addic­tion and the casual use of opium and cocaine in patent med­i­cine was just an indi­ca­tion that you were an uptight ass­hole who’d never get laid. There would not only not have been a great­est gen­er­a­tion, there would likely not have been their fathers fight­ing WWI, either.”

Hard-hitting stuff.  And way beyond what Deniers are able to grasp, I know.

Also, this, at Vanderleun’s:

mjazz: If meth was legal, the “tweaker next door” wouldn’t care if Mr. Han­ify was spy­ing on him. It would be like the lady next door shoot­ing you for watch­ing her grow toma­toes.

I replied:

“Spy­ing”?

That’s funny. And paranoid.

If you were ratio­nal, you’d real­ize I’m not tak­ing a spe­cific posi­tion. I’m talk­ing about soci­ety, and human nature.

UPDATE:  I was asked to give the Keynote speech last night at Mike Maki’s gala ben­e­fit din­ner and silent auc­tion Olympia Women’s Club, Abi­gail Stu­art House.  Mike and some friends were arrested in Octo­ber for grow­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing psilo­cy­bin mushrooms.

Mike and I are vet­er­ans of the West End of the Olympic Penin­sula, circa 1970s.  I was com­ment­ing that things were sure mel­low back in those days.  Peo­ple who came to see the national parks in the sum­mer used to always say, “You Pacific North­west peo­ple sure are friendly!”  Yes, we were.  And then polit­i­cal oper­a­tives invaded, and started cor­rect­ing thoughts and words.  Hasn’t been the same since.

Of sin­is­ter his­tor­i­cal note: the mania to cor­rect people’s thoughts has not come from tra­di­tion­ally con­ser­v­a­tive insti­tu­tions, like the Catholic Church, say.  It has come from mod­ern day “church­men” who have all but destroyed the indi­vid­u­al­ism that was inher­ent in my Pacific North­west.   It has all the fea­tures of a sci­ence fic­tion plot.

We see this neg­a­tive pat­tern played out in dis­cus­sions about top­ics like drugs.  If you have an opin­ion that dif­fers from the self-righteous, they cru­cify you.

What is that about?

All in all a very inter­est­ing evening.  Mar­tin Shaughnessy’s reply and the hys­ter­ics demon­strated by some com­ments at Amer­i­can Digest betray a com­plete inabil­ity to even con­sider that other peo­ple don’t agree with you.  They regard peo­ple who are opposed to legal­iz­ing drugs as “unin­formed.”  Here’s a news­flash for you guys: Mar­i­juana causes sig­nif­i­cant men­tal health impair­ment in many peo­ple.  I can’t help but notice that my friends who still smoke are .… oh.  Not cur­rent.  The rest of us see it.  We’re wait­ing for you to fig­ure it out.

And why and how are you so anx­ious to see peo­ple die?  Eh?  Just a question.

Inter­ested read­ers may enjoy my Pros­e­cu­tor Series.

This inter­view of Jerry Gar­cia is prob­a­bly the sin­gle best sum­ma­tion of the Six­ties I have ever seen.  Please note there was a very spe­cific kind of moment in which there was clar­ity, but .… “It went away as soon as it was publicized.”

[video mp4=“http://www.brucehanify.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Grateful-Dead-Jerry-Garcia-Interview-1994.mp4” poster=“http://www.brucehanify.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/jerry-garcia-ripple-rose-ben-upham.jpg” preload=“yes” autoplay=“no” loop=“no” width=“575” height=“422”]

Inter­view of Jerry Garcia

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BRUCE HANIFY 2012