Drugs and delusions, American obsessions

Great Decisions last week dealt with Mexico. There was a good discussion led by Professors Heather Brady and Tim Gaster centering on drugs and drug cartels. My view — but not mine alone — is that these problems are not really Mexican problems, but reflect what is going on here. That is, American criminals carter to American vices, and Mexican gangsters want a part of the action. Mexico, Columbia, California, all are following a course we saw in our country during Prohibition, in that when the police are asked to enforce unpopular policies, criminals get rich, and the police and politicians become corrupted or ineffective.
There are few who doubt that our society has a problem with drugs. People like them, whether it is coffee or alcohol or substances which only the foolish would use voluntarily. The world is full of fools.

It is difficult to save a fool from folly, especially when the folly is both fun and a means of defying authority. Our experiment of 1919-1933, prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcohol, produced some good results, but more negative ones. So many citizens refused to obey the law, even mocked the government for its clumsy efforts to stop drinking, that first the federal government gave up everything except collecting a tax, then the states and counties and cities followed. No one had ever questioned police taking in public drunks or arresting those who got behind a wheel while intoxicated, but interference with private behavior was government out of control.

It is hardly news that efforts to eliminate “recreational drugs” have failed. Organized crime has grown, users are forced to be pushers to afford their habits, countries such as Colombia, Bolivia and Mexico have been destabilized, and Afghan farmers have been driven into the arms of the Taliban; every effort to start a public debate on the costs ends up a casualty in the culture wars.

The laws may not always be wise, but the record of clever men who set democratic processes aside as flawed or too slow is not good, either. The public usually finds a way around the plans of everyone who wants to make them shape up, but equally important are those who benefit from the War on Drugs. At the top of my list are the gangsters who would be put out of business by legalization of their products. Our drug policy, as I see it, is not driven from the top down, but from the bottom up. Politicians figure out what the voters want, then pass appropriate laws. When voters say, “There ought’a be a law!”, Congress responds.

Mothers organized in MADD have a lot of clout. What politician wants to face angry women whose children perished in car accidents or with needles in their arms? And so Congress shrugs the worst costs of our drug policy off on foreigners and ignores turf wars between domestic gangs that end up with innocent bystanders dead. Such an explanation of how we got into our plight, I think, is more logical than believing in imperialistic plots or sadistic pleasure in ruining young people’s social lives. I am wary of explaining anything as a conspiracy (or racism or sexism) that can be understood as stupidity.

If all of George Soros’s money and influence can hardly budge the country toward decriminalizing drugs, whose eloquence can? We drive by the minimum security prison in Galesburg, read about the state government’s budget woes, but rarely ask if there might be a better way to deal with minor drug offenders.

    We have reasons to worry even about legal drug use. Drugs that used to kill bacteria no longer do. Is this the result of natural evolution — the strongest organisms surviving efforts to kill them — or have we speeded up the process by absorbing too many antibiotics from meat and milk? What is the impact of flushing unused medicines down the toilet? Is that why girls are maturing younger? Right here in Monmouth twenty years ago Doc Roller wanted a public health service so that we could investigate what he saw as an unusual number of rare cancers. No, he was told, that cost too much.

The outcomes of efforts to resolve many similar problems are mixed. While our local water today no longer contains the radioactive substances it once did, and many people have turned to bottled water because of its better taste, our teeth no longer get the minerals they need. On the other hand, we don’t hear much about the fluoridation conspiracy — the one mocked in Doctor Strangelove decades ago as communists trying to soften our brains. Meth users — and there seem to be plenty around — don’t worry about its effect on their teeth. When the brain is gone, who cares about the teeth?

Maybe that’s the way to deal with dangerous drugs. Crack cocaine fell out of favor after its users began to die in significant numbers. The crackpot theory that the CIA had invented it to kill Black people probably helped.

ObamaCare, should it survive financial scrutiny long enough to go fully into effect after the 2012 election, will require some committee to decide how to deal with drug addicts. Should we give health care to people who are self-destructive? Not only whether to provide expensive treatments for their health problems, but also what medical treatments should be available to smokers, enthusiastic consumers of large-size hamburgers, and beer drinkers.

Meanwhile, our legislatures have decisions to make. Should we release prisoners serving time for minor drug offenses and their associated petty crimes? Should we put cigar smokers in their cells (think Bill Clinton). Should we put tobacco growers out of business (think Al Gore) and legalize marijuana (think Jerry Brown, the former “Governor Moonbeam,” who is now governor of California again and could use the tax revenues)? Or more closely regulate pain-killers (think Rush Limbaugh) or TV ads which suggest that for every ailment there is a medical cure, or for every ailment a class-action lawsuit.

Whatever else this brings us, boredom is not a side-effect of the debate. Instead, we may have to monitor our blood-pressure more often. And what will we use to combat high blood pressure? Why, more drugs, of course.
Where will we get them. Mexico, of course.

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Drugs and delusions, American obsessions