The Drug War as Political Theater

Most people think that drug prohibition laws were a response to social problems caused by out-of-control drug use.  The real story is that these laws came from political zealotry. Most of the problems with drugs today—crime, decadence and swelling prison populations—are largely the result of prohibition laws.

The politics behind drug prohibition began when early 20^th century political leaders linked drugs to minorities. Cocaine was linked to Negroes who were said to commit deviant sex acts under the influence. Marijuana was linked to Hispanics and was said to cause insanity. And opium was believed to be corrupting white women, who then desired black men for sexual purposes. Protestant missionaries in China wanted anti-opium legislation for the same reasons they wanted anti-alcohol legislation:  intoxicated peoples tend to be less receptive to the teachings of Christ.  Finally, politically influential corporations like DuPont and Hearst viewed hemp as a threat to their bottom lines.

Eventually prohibition laws came under the authority of the United Nations’ Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961).  This treaty shifted the conversation from race-baiting to concerns about health. Advocates of the drug war began to see themselves as guardians of public health.

The theatrics only got worse. If you set yourself up as a guardian, you have to view your charges as helpless, sick or both. This is why we hear fantastic claims that drug abuse is a brain disease and that drugs overtake the human will to resist them. That many people behave that way is true enough, but it has less to do with drugs than with human opportunism. Addicts behave the way they do because they can. They are endlessly enabled by being told that they can’t control themselves and by the many social programs available to them (welfare, rehab, medical care, disability payments, etc.)

In my new book, Blowing Smoke: Rethinking the War on Drugs without Prohibition and Rehab (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), I suggest that the solution to the drug problem is to legalize drugs for adults and let people bear the consequences of their own behavior. If we took these bold steps we’d see a transformation in how people use drugs and we’d silence some of the histrionic fits coming from the political class.

The Mind and its Minders

(Note: A version of this post initially appeared on the blog of the Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group. You can view it here.)

The history of psychology is littered with fads and fallacies: the four humors of Hippocrates, phrenology, Freudianism and behaviorism to name a few. More recently we’ve seen the “biochemical imbalance” theory of emotional problems, which has led to a robust pharmaceutical industry to “treat” imbalances.

These seemingly disparate movements share a similar perspective on mental life, namely, that the mind is controlled by mechanistic forces. Whether the forces are hormones, genes, unconscious dynamics, reflexes or neurotransmitters, human consciousness has always been viewed as a byproduct. According to the theory, you may think you’ve been making independent decisions in life, but in reality you’ve been a marionette, performing a scripted dance.

In college I remember thinking that many psychological theories bore an uncanny resemblance to Marxism: reductionistic explanations of human behavior followed by grand prescriptions that seemed to benefit the theorists more than they helped the stated beneficiaries. Centrally-planned economies fail because they misjudge human nature. Creativity and productivity flourish only when there is political and economic freedom. When people feel they can control their destiny, they begin to create it.

Modern psychology is on the cusp of a scientific revolution and it’s long overdue. Neuroscience has recently shown that the brain is highly plastic and constantly changes to meet the demands that individuals place on themselves. Challenge yourself mentally or physically and your brain changes to improve your efficiency and accuracy.

The field of genetics is also undergoing a revolution. Both thoughts and behaviors can open access to genes, which then send instructions throughout the body to reinforce whatever it is we are doing. This heretofore unknown function of genes—what we call “epigenetics”—appears to mediate the plasticity we find in the brain. It’s now more accurate to say that the mind controls biology, rather than vice versa.

In my book, Blowing Smoke: Rethinking the War on Drugs without Prohibition and Rehab, I address one area of old-school psychology—the disease model of addictions—and argue that it neither fits nor helps the problem of drug abuse. Neuroscience and the Berlin Wall teach us something important about the human condition: people thrive when they are not held back. After working for years with substance abusers, I’m convinced most of them would move toward moderation if we quit telling them they are diseased, and instead give them their freedom.

Drug abuse: choice or disease?

The correct answer is neither.

Drug abuse is a habit. Some habits are trivial, but other habits are complex--they require time and concerted effort. Drug habits are the latter kind. So is mastering a musical instrument.

To develop a complex habit one must have a passion for it. Drug addicts don’t wake up and make a simple choice to consume drugs; they consume drugs because it is their passion. They arrange their lives around drugs, they hang out with other drug users, and they cut themselves off from respectable society. When they experience craving and withdrawal symptoms they simply do more drugs. They always do. Drugs haven’t overtaken them; they’ve overtaken drugs—passionately.

All habits change the brain. Whether you practice the piano or deliver cocaine to your brain, the human brain adapts to the demands that are placed on it. The changes are predictable and consistent. Stop practicing a habit and those changes are dismantled.

Shawn Vestal of the Spokesman-Review interviewed me about my book, Blowing Smoke: Rethinking the  War on Drugs without Prohibition and Rehab (Rowman & LIttlefield), which is scheduled for release later this month. In his column he accurately reflected my criticisms of the disease model of substance abuse and he captured the fears most people have about drug legalization. He interviewed one Grace Creasman, director of addiction studies at Eastern Washington University. As if on cue to any criticism of the disease model, she assumed the only other position was that drug abuse is a choice: “Why would someone deliberately ruin their lives? Why would anyone do that to themselves? Why would they lose their jobs, their husbands or wives, their whole lives, unless there was something more to it?”

Indeed, there is something more to it. Passions are not driven by choices, passions drive choices. Addicts don’t make choices to ruin their lives, their passions ruin their lives. Passions change only through pain. Becoming a drug abuser is a long, dark road. One comes out of it only through deep, personal pain.

This is why drug rehab doesn’t work, a topic I cover in Blowing Smoke.  The rehab industry uses the disease model to market itself, but rehab is really little more than subtle appeals to addicts to make better choices.  Thought-experiments, though, are not capable of changing passions. Passions change only with pain. Only when addicts hit bottom, and hit it hard, do they begin to change their ways.

My solution to the drug problem is to accept responsible drug use as a cultural norm (legalize), but let irresponsible users experience the pain of there passions. In most cases this can be done with a simple laissez faire approach--quit rescuing addicts from the consequences of their behavior.