Drug Biases Reflect a Society's Values

Cirrhosis, liver cancer, delirium tremens, Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.  Drunk driving, domestic violence, heart disease, fatal withdrawals, suicide, pancreatitis, breast & colon cancer.  These are just SOME of the real-world complications of excessive alcohol consumption.  Yet due to its widespread legality & social acceptance, alcohol is hardly considered a drug at all as evidenced by the maddening phrase "drugs and alcohol".  It's marketed on television, online, splashed across giant highway billboards, flashing all over sprawling signs in Vegas and Times Square... you can't escape it.  Most people consider it just another drink option like juice or soda as opposed to a mind-altering drug.  The phrase "adult beverage" implies that you need alcohol to be a REAL adult, or that drinking makes you more mature and cool.  

Excellent film about alcohol marketing "Calling the Shots" (1982)

In fact our culture creates countless flowery terms to dance around the ugly realities of alcohol addiction.  "Social drinker, day drinker, problem drinker, lush, alcoholic."  All of these are meant to describe different degrees of alcohol use/abuse, yet ethanol--the active substance in booze--is interpreted by the brain & body as toxic in any dose, and there's no safe type or amount at any time during pregnancy.  (It's now believed that a man's alcohol consumption near the time of conception can cause Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder in the offspring due to epigenetic DNA mutations).  There are no such words to describe people who use other so-called "hard" drugs... only "addict" (even if they're not addicted).  Maybe "junkie" or "tweaker" which aren't exactly complimentary.  You never hear these people referred to as "cocaine connoisseurs" who "dabble in diamonds" or "take a toke of Tina on the (t)weekends".  💎💨

Man with oral cancer due to smokeless tobacco, aka "snuff".

Except that's how a majority of people who ingest these illegal drugs use them--once or twice in their lives or only in moderation on social occasions, never going on to become addicted.  Even heroin, a drug society overwhelmingly associates with hopeless and instant addiction, only causes addiction in 10-20% of users.  Meanwhile tobacco, another legal and widely available drug, has been known since 1988 to be harder to quit than some of the most maligned drugs including cocaine & heroin according to Surgeon General Everett C. Coop.  Its long-term health effects are far more detrimental to the body than those of opioids when said opioids are of pharmaceutical-grade quality & taken orally in safe doses or with clean equipment (cotton, syringes, etc), which is how most developed nations offer them to addicts in their treatment programs.  Amphetamines can also be used safely by healthy people for years or even decades in medicinal doses*, but tobacco begins destroying the body upon the first dose.  I can't think of a single other recreational substance that will leave you talking through a hole in your neck or missing the lower half of your face due to cancer. 

Well, unless it would be alcohol which is also a Group I carcinogen. 

Partnership for a Drug-ee America

Don't do drugs, kids!  Well, not those other untaxed ones.

One of the most insidious aspects of the drug war is that these two industries (alcohol & tobacco) in conjunction with Big Pharma have teamed up to push anti-"drug" propaganda in the form of Partnership for a Drug-Free America ads.  You know the ones:  the melodramatic life-and-death ads featuring beautiful young people ruining their lives forever with one toke of pot or a razor thin line of coke.  Here are a few examples to refresh your memory:

Rolled up

Did their estates approve this disrespectful mess?

Cooler than booze.

...and their most (in)famous offering.

While there's a grain of truth here, the ads are not only misleading but do nothing to educate people on safer use of said drugs.  Wonder why?  Could it be because their true purpose is to prevent use of these drugs, not to keep people safe but to keep the profits flowing into THEIR pockets by eliminating the competition?  It's not a "War on Drugs," it's a War on SOME Drugs--a competition between the black drug market & these legal drug industries.  Which "drugs" become targets has nothing to do with safety/medical benefits and everything to do with whether a given substance has lobbyists protecting it in D.C. (see: kratom vs. all the other substances that have been placed in Schedule I in the time regulators have been trying to ban kratom).  The question of whether a drug is patent-able or whether it grows out of the ground so that any idiot could cultivate it is a key factor in deciding its legal fate.  If the latter, into the CI or CII bin it goes while pharma companies rush to patent its active ingredient(s) or make a reasonable synthetic facsimile.  (See:  cannabis/Marinol, opium poppies/opioid pills, coca/cocaine, khat/cathinones, peyote/mescaline, psilocybin mushrooms/psilocybin & Mimosa Hostilis root bark/DMT).  

And just where are the scare ads warning kids about the numerous horrific ways alcohol can kill you?  Alcohol deaths alone dwarf illicit opioid deaths each year in the U.S. but the media is silent except when it's glorifying/normalizing drinking.  We're talking only about the deaths caused directly by alcohol, not the car crashes, suicides, homicides & other deaths indirectly triggered by its abuse.  Rates of alcohol abuse were on the rise even before the pandemic, with roughly 29.5 million Americans suffering from Alcohol Use Disorder according to the APA. 

Likewise, I see no such ads warning that egregious, unnecessary drugs like the legal fentanyl lollipops known as Actiq, or Hysingla--which contains a mind-blowing 120 mg of hydrocodone compared to the 5, 7.5 or 10 mg in Vicodin & Lortabs--or Mydayis, a redundant long-acting stimulant containing 2 types of dextroamphetamine and 2 forms of amphetamine; and Desoxyn, which is just straight up meth--could maybe, possibly, potentially result in hopeless addiction or overdose in some users. 

Also, these substances are never referred to by the media as "designer drugs" or "Frankenstein chemicals" the way new psychoactive drugs are when they come from the grey or black market, which is pure hypocrisy.  They're every bit as experimental as the so-called "research chemicals" that pour in from China, it's just that pharma manufacturers are exempt from legal consequences when people die from their products.  They're literally "too big to fail" when you or I would be locked up for the same thing on a much smaller scale.  (See: all the street dealers getting 25-to-life when some schmuck OD's on illicit fentanyl).

 

Fentanyl lollipop (Actiq).  Fucking WHY?

The Real Causes of Addiction & the Drug War

For most of this nation's history we were #1 in education & healthcare.  By 1990 we were #6.  Now we're #27 & rapidly falling.  Names like "Steel City, Rubber City, Motor City, Flour City & Brew City" were proudly used to describe Northern cities like Pittsburgh, Akron, Detroit, Rochester & Milwaukee--all U.S. locales known for their manufacturing prowess.  Now Detroit resembles a bombed-out 3rd world country & Pittsburgh is home to Kensington Ave, an open-air drug market where people come from miles around to record the "fentanyl zombies" for online content in what's being called "tranq tourism".

These things taken together & combined with a person's everyday surroundings are referred to as 'environment', and they play the single largest role in our addiction epidemic.  Bigger than "mental health" or "childhood trauma," both of which get a disproportionate amount of attention in the media.   Could that be because it's more convenient to place the onus for this scourge on individuals rather than policymakers?  On psychology rather than sociology?   Why address festering societal problems like wealth inequality when you can charge it to private insurance, amirite?  

Alas, burden- and blame-shifting are the one thing our government truly excels at:  pushing "therapy" and "meds" on victims of trauma after the fact rather than investing in prevention by doing things like incentivizing family planning & locking up violent predators before they can harm more people.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and while the U.S. sucks at cures they're criminally bad at prevention.  It would be painfully easy to offer addicts, teenagers, the severely mentally ill, people living in severe poverty & those with violent criminal records a small cash incentive to use a reversible form of contraception that lasts 3-5 years like an IUD or Depo-Provera type shot.  Making birth control of all kinds as well as abortion available everywhere on demand along with evidence-based Sex Education for students whose parents want them to have it would also go a LONG way toward preventing unwanted pregnancy, suffering & future crime.  The benefits would pay for themselves many times over.

Instead we reward irresponsible breeding with tax breaks, special welfare incentives (TANF, Family Support Assistance payments, daycare assistance, preferential treatment in housing programs, WIC, SNAP & more) plus free breakfast/lunch AND multiple snacks at public schools that now serve as little more than free daycare centers for kids who often are too behaviorally disturbed to learn or contribute.  Meanwhile violent crime is treated as petty crime, IF that.  But God help you if you try to earn tax-free income by selling drugs or your own body.  

If you disagree, it's because of emotional bias--not rational fact.

Never mind that billionaires skirt federal income taxes by squirreling their hoards in offshore Swiss bank accounts & the like.  Now the IRS is also watching your "side hustle" under the guise of the "American Rescue Plan".  Just which "Americans" are being "Rescued" by this "Plan," exactly?  The same ones who have been bailed out ad nauseam for tanking their businesses and gambling OUR investments away on Wall street while coked out of their skulls & living the high life.  Here's a list of JUST THE BANKS bailed out in ONLY 2008/2009.  It got much worse during COVID, which prompted the biggest bailout in the nation's history (most of which was used to lay workers off & fatten CEOs' bank accounts.  Imagine!) 

What kind of society sentences domestic abusers, rapists & child molesters to "anger management," community service and probation while incarcerating non-violent drug dealers/sex workers/under-the-table workers for years or sometimes decades?  The same society that lets the Sacklers, Jeff Epstein & large-scale environmental polluters like the CEO of BP Oil off with menial fines or a "sweetheart" deal.  Somehow the monsters who literally initiate the drug epidemics the black market goes on to support & poison generations with their toxic sludge & radioactive weapons never see the inside of a prison cell while the rest of us live in fear of cop sirens.  Prisons aren't for the rich, they're for poor people aspiring to get out of poverty.  As per the 13th Amendment, they will get their pound of flesh from you one way or the other, either by "voluntary" labor or by slavery inside a cell.  Take your pick. 


Purpose of the Drug War

Like racism, the drug war in its current iteration is an outgrowth of capitalism... of a for-profit medical and prison system.  If we were truly fighting the drug scourge to save lives & improve society, profit wouldn't factor into it at all--drugs would be scheduled according to their actual safety/risk & potential medicinal applications, nothing else.  Drug education would employ evidence-based models like harm reduction rather than abstinence-only fear mongering.  

But that's not the purpose of the drug war.  

Like most of America's other wars, the drug war exists to make certain entities filthy rich:  bail bonds companies, drug test manufacturers, private prisons, companies that use inmates for free labor, small police forces that fund their departments with civil asset forfeiture/drug raids, the DEA & the multi-billion dollar per year drug treatment industry to name a FEW.  And as already mentioned, it allows others to maintain their total monopoly on the market (the tobacco, alcohol & pharma industries).  These entities have a vested financial interest in keeping certain drugs illegal that has nothing to do with their relative risks or benefits.  Need proof?  Simply look at which drugs are in Schedule I (most restrictive) vs. Schedules II-IV.  You'll quickly see that it's not based on medical or safety consideration like we've been told.  

Capitalism: An Inherently Amoral System

We live in upside down world where money is God, banks are church, poorly-made junk is a sacrament, the rich are saints, the poor are sinners, wealth is Heaven & poverty is Hell.   We're told by hypocritical religious leaders that "money is the root of all evil" as they pass around the collection plate & hop aboard their private jet from their megachurch to their mega-mansion, never being taxed a dime for the privilege.  Our counterproductive laws & the bogus sentences handed down by our pedophile enabler judges are the strongest reflection of our country's morals--or lack thereof.  The amount of effort people exert fighting to uphold this system is astounding, even those with no money who should know better.  Apparently they've never heard the saying "Not my father's farm".  

The work ethic = your value as a human being propaganda has infected the country's collective psyche like a virus--perhaps the most effective form of brainwashing ever employed (and the most deadly "virus" ever contracted).  And we're all paying the price.  We'll continue reaping the harvest long after we're gone, or at least our children and grandchildren will.  Sorry, kids.  Not all of us are like this.  We tried to speak out and were repeatedly told we were "idealistic," "unrealistic," "lazy" or "America-hating commies" by people who can't even read or spell at an 8th grade level for the most part.  It's in this conformist wealth-driven society that drug users/dealers are viewed as lower than violent criminals because drug use is associated with laziness, uncleanliness, hedonism & anti-establishment views, untrue as those views may be.

Drug Peace: A Requirement for A Prosperous Society

This.

I believe a society's drugs of choice are a reflection of its values, and ours is no exception.  Our entire childhood is wasted sitting in a classroom & doing homework as they indoctrinate us for what's to come.  If they have to pump us full of Ritalin to get us to sit still & shut up, so be it.  As adults we're allowed to consume sugar-laden caffeinated drinks--a shitty adrenergic stimulant--to push through the work day with periodic tobacco smoke/vape breaks in the hopes that we die before retirement age so they don't have to fund the back-end of our shitty lives after they've used us up.  We guzzle booze in a desperate attempt to pack a bunch of loud, ignorant "living" into our increasingly few days off, praying we black out long enough to forget the Hell our lives have become.  Rinse, repeat.  

It doesn't have to be this way.  Imagine how beautiful life could be if consenting adults could purchase any drug they wanted in its pure form with no worry about adulteration, no artificially inflated price due to prohibition & no concern about the violence that can happen when dealing with black market drug dealers.  Would this cure our national debt crisis?  No.  Would it magically transform our shitty neighborhoods into clean utopias?  Ehh, no.  But one thing is certain:  a helluva lot less people would be abusing shit like fentanyl, alcohol, meth, crack, tranq dope & Benadryl, and those who did abuse drugs would do so out of public view.  Property crimes & shoplifting would decline, as addicts would no longer need to steal or commit other low-level crimes to finance their habits.  Legalizing drugs would open the door to a lot of other good things--as many good things as states & cities were willing to try:  affordable housing programs, universal basic income, jobs in the addiction & harm reduction education industry for recovering addicts.  The possibilities are limitless.  

Plant drugs = a good starting point for legalization.

We could start by legalizing all plant-based drugs like opium poppies, coca leaves, cannabis, psilocybin mushrooms, khat & DMT-producing plants, moving into popular staples like amphetamine, LSD, cocaine, MDMA & codeine at pre-determined schedules--say over a 5-to-7-year period.  These options alone would cut down so dramatically on the abuse of deadlier drugs we could probably stop there.  But why would we?  Showing favoritism to certain chemicals is how we got in this mess.  "Harder" drugs like morphine, methamphetamine, crack, heroin & Dilaudid would be sold only at designated safe sites with trained medical professionals on site along with educational materials, clean gear like syringes and information about rehabilitation services.  Addicts would come at designated times, say 3 times per day, to get their doses.  This is how it's done in countries where drugs like heroin are legal & it completely eliminates deaths due to accidental overdose & adulteration of the drug supply.  Which is the whole point.  Addicts are able to work & carry on normal lives in many cases.  

Practical and honest harm reduction education would immediately commence in schools & elsewhere & would be readily available at drug consumption sites.  Abstinence would still be taught to children because that's the only 100% effective way to avoid all risk associated with drugs, but as with driving a car or doing other things that come with risk, most people are going to use at least one substance at some point either medicinally or recreationally, so everyone needs to know how to do so more safely.  Profits from sales of certain substances would be put toward funding evidence-based addiction treatment centers in all 50 states for those ready to get clean.  These centers will be free to the public but if an addict wants to attend a 12-step or faith-based center, they can pay out of pocket since these are not science-backed.  States could decide how they wanted to use the tax revenue from the profits of drug sales, but I could definitely see many of them using it to rebuild roads, bridges & other structures in desperate need of repair.  

Mexican cartel violence would drop dramatically--dealers, manufacturers, smugglers & others in these organizations would be forced to find another product to traffic, and fast.  They've already been pushed out of the cannabis business as more states have moved to legalize.  As cartel violence drops, so will illegal immigration to the U.S., something conservatives are constantly complaining about.  Prison cells will open up so more violent and large-scale white collar criminals can be incarcerated, making our towns & cities safer.  Tax revenue from the sale of these substances could be put to much-needed use by states instead of 100% of it funding violent gangs & cartels.  New jobs would be created within the legal drug education, treatment, manufacturing & sales industries--literally everyone wins.  Instead of putting our resources toward tackling people to the ground & locking them in cells for minor drug possession, we could funnel those resources to extend compassion, educate & uplift those same people, helping keep them alive until they're ready to get clean.

As for the laws surrounding irresponsible drug use (driving intoxicated, selling to kids, etc), nothing would change.  These things are still crimes because they put innocent lives at risk.  Just because a drug is legal doesn't mean society condones its abuse.  In fact more energy and police resources could be dedicated toward these ends once drugs are legal because there will be more time & prison space available for these offenders.  Legalization isn't a free-for-all, it's about taking the profits and control away from violent forces in the black market & investing them in our communities.  These substances can only legally be used in PRIVATE by consenting ADULTS.  They're already being used 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by Americans of all races, ages & backgrounds out in the open.  Can't get any worse than that.  

Will cartels and other criminals cease to exist?  No.  And addiction/overdose won't either.  But that's not the deal.  Nobody's promising a perfectly safe utopia in which nobody ever does anything dangerous or stupid again.  It's about significantly reducing harm, crime, violence, addiction & death.  Giving people hope & a reason to live so they don't feel that drugs are the only thing standing between them and suicide.  And for those who still feel hopeless, at least they won't have to resort to using adulterated drugs controlled by violent criminals.  In a perfect world our governments would help people meet their basic survival needs too--food, shelter, clothing--so nobody ever had to worry about homelessness or starvation again.  But that's another topic for another day.

Less crime, addiction, overdose, disease & death is a much more realistic goal than a 100% "drug-free society," something that's never existed as long as humans have roamed the earth.  And our lawmakers know that.  The fact that it's unobtainable is a blank check to keep stealing from future generations to fight this "war" into perpetuity, which is criminal.  All that's required to turn this ship around is for Americans to grow the Hell up and stop viewing this as a moral issue...  To admit that what we've been doing isn't working and is in fact killing people, most of whom are in their creative and productive prime & many of whom aren't even opioid addicts but got poisoned by fentanyl-adulterated drugs just the same.  You can't have a War on an inanimate object like "drugs" or "terror"--you're wasting money & resources drafting legislation that removes rights from PEOPLE:  consenting, taxpaying adult citizens like you and me.   Alcohol prohibition was an utter failure for all the same reasons, but lawmakers saw it and said "Hey, that was an embarrassing dangerous nightmare, let's expand it to include hundreds of other substances!"  

And if we go to war against another nation for real, like a real WWI/WWII-type war that's NOT about oil & geopolitical BS, we won't be fit to fight because all our best and brightest will be dead or addicted.  We already lack affordable higher education & universal healthcare--things other developed nations take for granted.  That puts us far behind the pack in terms of strength, fitness, strategy, mental agility & stamina on the battlefield.  Combined with America's obesity epidemic, this could be the final nail in our coffin.

While there will never be a 100% drug-free society, we can do a helluva lot better than this.  Striving to create a world in which people don't feel like they have to escape by doing hard drugs would be a good start.  A nation that competes with other countries rather than a divided nation in which the citizens fight amongst themselves about every little issue.  A place that's clean, safe, laid-back & inviting--somewhere you'd want to visit if you were traveling the world.  Not a giant strip mall full of frantic Chicken Littles on the way to their next shift, armed to the teeth with homeless people under every poorly-maintained bridge.

*Ayn Rand, mathematician Paul Erdos, Judy Garland & poet W.H. Auden were all long-term amphetamine users who died of causes unrelated to their amphetamine use.  (Garland was started on the drugs when she was too young to consent and remained addicted throughout her life, though her drug overdose was caused by barbiturates).  Amphetamines are prescribed long-term for narcoleptics and people with ADHD, including children.