but it isn't going to happen, at least not this year. I got the following from the Drug Policy Alliance:
Today, on the 50th anniversary of Nixon declaring the “war on drugs,” Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Cori Bush have officially introduced the Drug Policy Reform Act, a bill to federally decriminalize ALL drugs that they unveiled earlier this week at the press conference the Drug Policy Alliance hosted. DPA has been a strategic partner on the development of this legislation and will be actively advocating for its passage in Congress.
DPA’s Executive Director, who is currently testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on why we must end and begin repairing the damage of the war on drugs, released the below statement:
“With the introduction of this bill, we have the opportunity to begin turning the page on the drug war and start a new chapter today — one in which the systems we have in place in this country begin providing people support, instead of punishment, and where everyone is entitled to the same respect and human dignity no matter what their relationship with drugs is,” Kassandra Frederique, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance said. “While the bill itself won’t end the drug war wholesale, it does put it on notice and ends the number one excuse law enforcement has to harass, surveil, assault and even kill Black, Latinx, Indigenous and low-income people. We may have endured 50 years of terror as a result of these intentional and racist policy choices, but that doesn’t mean we have to settle for 50 years and one day of it. It’s time to end this now.”
Actually, Nixon declared the "war on [some people who use some] drugs." Just so we're clear, some people use psychoactive chemicals in ways that are detrimental to themselves and others. For example, people drink and drive, or they drink enough to harm themselves physically, or impair their ability to work or be good parents. But we learned the hard way that criminalizing alcohol use did more harm than good. We haven't banned tobacco either even though it's still the leading preventable cause of death in the U.S. Now more and more states are legalizing cannabis -- although let's get real, law enforcement was never interested in white suburban kids or college students who smoke pot. Marijuana possession was only a crime for Black and Latino people, for the most part.
But what about really dangerous drugs like opioids or methamphetamine?
The plain truth is that the harmful consequences of opioid dependency are almost entirely a consequence of its illegality. Illicit opioids are expensive and difficult to obtain, which means that people who are dependent on them spend most of their time and energy trying to obtain them, and the money needed to do so, which often leads them to commit property crimes. Injecting is a way to get more bang for the buck but it's also a way to get HIV, myocarditis, and lots of other bad consequences. It turns out, however, that if people just take buprenorphine or methadone every day, they can go ahead and live perfectly normal, healthy lives.
I might add that the opioid epidemic is of course iatrogenic, a fancy word meaning that doctors caused it. Most people who are prescribed opioids don't go on to have any problem with them, but a few do, and that's a risk that the manufacturers underplayed and doctors didn't recognize. Nevertheless it's not a moral failure, it's a change in brain chemistry that creates compulsive use. Treating people as criminals is no different from criminalizing diabetes or cancer. It's just cruel and ignorant.
For meth, unfortunately, there is as yet no really effective pharmaceutical treatment, and it's a difficult dependency to overcome. So don't start! Nevertheless, again, making criminals out of people who are compulsive users is not in the least helpful.
Unfortunately, few or no Republicans and probably not all that many Democrats will go along with sweeping decriminalization right now. But at least we're having the conversation.
11 comments:
Are you familiar, estemado Cervantes, with the rat park experiments? They shed quite a bit of light on why (some) people use (some kinds of) drugs.
My mother was right. Racism is the number one problem this country faces. Directly address that and a whole host of other social and public health solutions will fall into place, including drug policy reform.
Sigh... you liberals. So easily diverted by shiny objects.
Race was literally invented to (a) justify colonizer rapine and (b) divide the lower class against itself. The historical development of slave laws in Virginia lays this out in inarguable terms: what began as standard indenture law morphed gradually into 19th C chattel slavery via prohibitions on cohabitation and fraternization. The reason racial equity laws have stalled out since the 60's is that the pie stopped growing, allowing the working class to once again be pitted against itself on racial lines. Both King and Hampton were assassinated for threatening this paradigm. The ruling class just loves to talk about race (and homophobia, etc...) because it diverts the conversation from class, which might threaten their patch and blow the lid off the whole thing.
In america dark skin IS a class, not a thing in itself. Our laws are designed to keep the lower orders under control; being black (or, god forbid, native) just drops you to the lowest order for our enforcement system.
I agree with everything you've said, Mo. I wonder why you seem to think I disagree. Hmm.
PS Mo: Perhaps it's because I don't express myself from a stance of direct experience. But we're on the same page with our values and beliefs. We speak different languages but say similar things.
Don: It's because you consistently refer to race as a central issue, as here and as you did previously vis Biden and Stacy Abrams. I bring up an issue of economic material reality and woosh! you blow right past that to discus how blacks and whites see and are treated in america. You assert, for example, that I can't make common cause with the Instagram Rioters but that's exactly what Fred Hampton did. Living in Montana I have managed to pull many militia-adjacent types into my orbit because I talk class, not race.
Perhaps there is an element of direct experience here, but if so, it's about growing up in poverty and a life in the blue collar class before anything else. You address the world through a middle class, professional lens and your arguments remind me of those yard signs that advocate all the liberal causes but exclude unions and minimum wage. It's a bunch of culture war crap which I see as a diversion from the material issues we face.
I see your point, and appreciate your perspective. Well expressed. You are effectively moving beyond the conversation about race to the fundamental conversation about class. And yet, I have spent decades in deprivation and worked many blue-collar jobs, frequently involving messy manual labor. I was a musician for years, outside the norm of wealth accumulation and the office space. So I think you have me inaccurately pegged. I’m not saying there’s no validity in your judgment, just that it’s far from totally accurate. Most of us have a tendency to put things in boxes, even when those things are people, and I think you are not immune to that practice.
Of course I'm not immune, no one is. The point here, Don is that for whatever reason, you appear to see things through that middle class, collegiate lens. That you were a musician, for example, suggests tertiary education and, perhaps, a more genteel upbringing than my own. As always I could be wrong, and I'm not a big fan of standpoint theory to begin with, but the things you say suggest a middle class liberal mindset.
Well, I wish I had gone to a real university. The trade school I attended was supposed to teach me about music, but was shockingly negligent in that regard. I’m sure I would’ve been better off on a college campus, with dorms and a core curriculum, etc., than living in Manhattan at age 17. My upbringing was in a middle class environment, but filled with emotional and sexual abuse. I didn’t want for material items, although we we were lower middle class.
I confess to being a bit surprised and must apologize for drawing unsupported conclusions about you.
Well, thanks, Mo. You are a gentleman and a scholar, but of course you are much more than that. I appreciate your flexibility. I think some of your observations about my perspective are accurate in kind. I guess my background is just sort of a melange.
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