Where to begin? The idea of this post has been ruminating for a while. It comes out of some discussions I have had with friends, memories I have, and plain old school Woodward and Bernstein style late nights of too much reading-minus the secret tapes and deep throat... he hmm.

I listened to a Podcast of a Vanda Felbab-Brown talk at the Brookings Institute about her book Shooting Up. Which really just confused the heck out of me. The intersection of politics, development, history, and culture with drugs or specifically narcotics and their production and consumption is in a word fascinating and has many surfaces. How people talk about drugs to us is equally fascinating, amusing and mostly useless. There is the old fashioned Tom Clancy-good-guy CIA analyst trying to save the western world from some poorly acted Columbian cartel boss-who usually has a big gut, 43 Hummers and a batting cage. There is the after school special style of analysis that takes aim at trying to explain why poor people do dumb things like growing poppies instead of coffee. There is also the rock star-fish-out-of water-photo-op style of talking about drugs. Usually this is some reformed Betty Ford alumni working off ten years of debt to their publicist by sweating it out in front of a documentary crew with lines like “I had no Idea” and “my dealer didn’t tell me that”. We live in a serious times for sure and it seems that the 80s fascination with drugs is almost romantic compared with the problems of today. Recession/depression, the environment, 2 wars, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, The Jonas Brothers…

The idea that drugs are a big deal, and maybe even one of the single greatest threats to modernity is seen as quaint, church league and so Nancy Reagan but drugs to me are fucking scary. I have a long history of hating them and I know in my mind how to talk about drugs but in the context of their greater influence on where we find ourselves in the world I am a neophyte. But from experience-they suck. I have tried pot and hash and have known the very few times I have that I hate them. I couldn’t fathom taking the next step up in terms of harder types. I would rather drink vinegar and listen to cats screw. I hate the loss of control, the paranoia, the weakness, and the sense of losing time. I have seen almost everything tried-from mushrooms to cocaine. I have witnessed a heroin coma and taken a friend to the hospital after she had not really eating anything of note for three weeks because of being strung out. That same friend’s heart stopped while in the ER and that was a moment that every 16-year old needs to be a part of. I have seen a friend take 3 hits of LSD before a concert and watch their fear and anxiety take over their unconscious mind. So much so that a simple pyro explosion made him jump so high that he landed on a bar and crushed his knee. I have walked with friends on a Trainspotting spiral just to throw my hands up in the air in abject acquiescence to the futility of battling with the demon and its food. When it comes to recreational drugs and my friends-I say nothing. I trust their decisions but don’t condone it. I have never surrounded myself since childhood with people that see drugs as an important part of their lives mainly because the drugs are a symptom of far greater diseases that would threaten my safety and sanity. But if ever asked, I’m honest- I think they are one of the most destructive forces created by human hands. Drugs prey upon social sickness and castrate the moral fortitude and credibility of entire socio-economic groups. They are a modern experiment in social Darwinism that has been allowed to continue. They are both the chicken and the egg.-the cause and affect of so much pure evil.  Need more? Here are some bullet points.

 -Their romanticisation in music culture is sad and dangerous. The list of dead stupid rock stars due to the combination of head issues, too much money, leaches and pimps in disguise as managers and friends is cliché and hopefully a happy casusalty of the new monetary and structural realities of the business. Art will still attract and require the damaged and disengaged for its propegation as the Brooks Brothers types make shitty music but what we don’t need is the tortuted artists getting a pass in posterity for his/her transgressions and the subsequent wink that it’s a part of the business and necessary for great creativity.

 - Wars are being fought and funded for the proliferation and profit of drugs. Fucking wars. Drugs are power, land and money all wrapped up in one. While the western lapdogs of reason were busy painting the sorry picture of why terrorism exists-religious fanaticsm, anti-Americanism, blah blah, The depth of understanding about the realities of how and why terrorist networks have been funded seems to be lost under a flag of irresponsible media coverage and spin.

 -Enviroenmental degradation and diversion of resources from the food supply (thirty years ago Afghanistan grew vines known for its raisons) and subsequent fortification of a poverty trap are a bunch of great reasons why drugs are insane. Just as you are hooked on the score, the grower is hooked on the cash and forced by the barrel of a gun to not even think about reserving that acre for food for his/her family.

 -Wasted millions on prevention, education, enforcement and rehabiliation not to mention healthcare expenses.

 -The holes and scars they leave on countless communities. The worst, by far worst are the Native reservation drug realities.

 So why do they exist? What are our failures that open ourselves up? I have smoked on and off for years and still drink a little. Do I have a moral authority to speak ill of narcotics, their uses and users because my choices are not illicit?

What this comes down to is the never ending debate about legalization and control. In the suppression of the illicit economy, interdiction is important but it's where the focus is that's the problem it seems. The big score. The photo op on the boat with bags and bags of (insert drug type here) is the goal and the burning of crops etc. are the great battle victories in the "war of drugs/terrorism". Getting back to what smart people like Felbab-Brown have to say, this approach has been deemed to be unsustainable. Its too scorched earth, literally- and undermines the support needed and "antagonizes" the population. It is also seen as western interventionism and rarely utilizes the local government as a method of support in convincing people to help with the cause. The alternative that is talked about is "licensing particular parts of the illegal economy of drugs". This has been used in other economies such as illegal commodities trading in parts of Africa. But interdiction should be refocusing on the "coercive..power of crime groups" not being "dominanlty focused on suppressing flows as ...thats a rather illusive goal". Drugs are a moving target and the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the ails of the society that produces them and the society that consumes them.

Along with the battle there has been the control which has been an equal misspent effort. Prohibition of a commodity has failed repeatedly and has served to create an underground economy that grows its customer base and entrenches into formal aspects of society-from police curruption to methodone clinics. The money that is spent hand over fist on enforcement, education, health and rehabilitation needs to be drawn form the revenue source. The legalization of illicit drugs on the street coupled with a directed and progressive focus on issues of poverty and development in source countries is more of an answer than what we have now. 

At the individual level, it makes me cringe and bite my tongue when the same person who espouses anti-corporate rhetoric and lives their life in a decidedly world view - knowledgeable of the interconnectedness of political and social issues will light a joint. Sure there are debates on its medicinal aspects and no revolutions are started by potheads, but the idea of yelling at Pepsi for some untoward corporate agenda while ignoring the uncontrolled and violent repercussions of the trade in drugs is shear hypocrisy. As I get older my parental wagging-finger mentality may get the best of me when it comes to drugs and I may start to speak up more about them to friends and family. They don't exist in a vacuum and seem to be viewed the same way we view meat on the table, with an ignorant detachment toward the line of intended and unintended consequences that their travels to you created. They show up in a bag, the end result of an unregulated industry thats probably bigger than Apple, Microsoft, Shell, Coca-Cola, and Halliburton combined but with little testing, no safe-guards, no consumer protection, no taxes, and no regulation beside their out-right contraband. Seriously. Judges, counsellors, doctors, lawyers, academics and cops are saying that that is failing and I agree. The only place it seems that this is not talked about with any intelligence is in the arena of the political elite. What more do they honestly need?