Tom Swiss
Engl 391H
4/4/1991
The War on Drugs is taking its toll on the state of the
nation. The Bill of Rights is dying a slow and ugly death; police
are breaking down more and more doors in drug raids - and
breaking down the Fourth Amendment in the process. In Denver, for
example, one half of all narcotics raids fail to produce any
drugs [Quick Flashes, High Times, Dec '90]. The attempt by the
DEA to shut down anti-drug war magazines such as Sinsemilla Tips
and High Times by harassing businesses advertising in them
[Marijuana McCarthyism, The New York Times, Dec 30 '89], and
"anti-loitering" laws that allow police to arrest anyone who
gathers in a group of two or more people on charges of "failure
to move on," [Powerful arms of drug war arousing concern for
rights, The New York Times, Oct 16 '89] ignore the First
Amendment's guarantees of freedom of assembly and of the press.
In the government's zeal to lock up the millions of U.S. citizens who sell or use unsanctioned psychoactive drugs, the U.S. has achieved the highest per capita incarceration rate of any nation in the world. And still the rate of violent crime continues to rise.
Before we can begin to solve this problem, we must ask: how did we manage to end up in this situation?
We might think that there's something unique about this time and place that has lead us to this crisis. But there's nothing new about overzealous prohibition of drugs. In the appendix to his Ceremonial Chemistry, Thomas Szasz presents a history of drug promotion and prohibition that dates back seven thousand years. In the 17th century, we begin to see the first widespread demonization of a drug. It was prohibited in Bavaria, Saxony, and Zurich; in Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Germany, its users faced the penalty of death. The drug? Tobacco. In 1792, China passed its first laws prohibiting opium, decreeing death by strangulation for keepers of opium shops. And of course we have the shining example of our own attempt at alcohol prohibition to show us the problems that anti-drug laws can cause.
Our drug war is really just a skirmish in a battle that goes back as far as history. It's a battle between two deeply rooted human drives: the drive to seek intoxication, and the drive to create taboos.
Humans have a strong drive to seek out altered states of consciousness, whether drug-induced or not. Infants rock themselves into bliss; children whirl or spin (a behavior also found in adult behavior such as dancing) or roll down hills (a time-honored recess pastime when I was in elementary school). Many children also experiment with hyperventilation followed by asphyxiation. Many adults seek out such "natural" highs in sensory deprivation tanks, "thrill" sports, and meditation classes. Drug taking simply provides a short-cut to these highs.
And such behavior is not an artifact of human civilization; its basis is a psychological or biological drive that we share with other animals. Many other animals will deliberately seek out intoxicating plants or alcohol-containing fermented fruits. Bighorn sheep in the Canadian Rockies nibble on a narcotic lichen that grows on the bare rocks. The hallucinogenic properties of mescal beans makes them popular with many creatures who inhabit the Texas desert. Drunken elephants have been responsible for deaths in West Bengal. Every February, migrating robins in south California gorge themselves on ripening firethorn and toyon berries and go on a rampage. In the Andes, animals of all sorts eat the cocaine-containing leaves and seeds of the coca plant. [High Times in the Wild Kingdom, Newsweek, Jan 1 '90] And it is possible that some animal behavior such as tail- chasing, is an analog to the child running in circles.
Other animals share man's desire for intoxication; but it seems that none share our habit of building taboos around it. The building of taboos is a byproduct of our survival-oriented need to classify things. It is, for example, very useful for us to bifuricate the objects in our world into categories such as "edible" and "inedible". But often such divisions are made based on arbitrary criteria, without logical reasons to back them up, or made on the basis of a situation which later changes. Many religions have food taboos, made centuries ago, that have no logical basis in today's world; but to its followers, these rules have the force of physical law.
Tension results whenever members of a society begin to question its taboos. If only a small minority of people doubt the validity of the taboo, the majority can, and feels it must, keep the deviants in check by threat or by force in order to preserve their society. Only when a significant number of people begin to question the validity of that taboo will change result.
Drugs have always had strong taboos involved with them., largely because of their ceremonial significance. From the use of peyote in Native American religion, to after-dinner drinks, to marijuana smokers passing a pipe, to the use of wine in church services, drugs are involved in many of the ceremonies and rituals that bind us socially.
While these taboos still hold force over the mainstream, they are increasingly being questioned - as are many ancient, strongly held taboos, as our contact with other cultures increases. An increasing number of people compare our rules with those of other cultures, and find both sets lacking. Finding that the taboos lack solid reasons, people are willing to discard the taboo to investigate new ways to satisfy the strong drive for intoxication. But this puts them in conflict with the majority who adhere to the taboo. The majority, willing to pay any price to stop what they see as a threat to the existence of their culture, will bear with the erosion of civil liberties and the high rates of violent crime...even if this leads to the destruction of the society they are trying to save.
Szasz, Thomas. Ceremonial Chemistry Garden City, New York: Doubleday/Anchor, 1975.