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What is the Problem with Illegal Drugs?
My father was a cocaine addict who died of an overdose. He began using when I was about eight, and died when I was 24. He tried to quit a couple of times — twice he went into treatment centers — but he was not successful.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the problem of illegal and addictive drugs but have avoided drug-related threads because they’ve just been too painful to read. When I was younger and still considered myself a libertarian, I was very sympathetic to legalizing drugs. The “War on Drugs” is extremely expensive and its success is debatable. At this point, I’m just not sure which way is best. (For whatever it’s worth, according to this ngram, the phrase “war on drugs” didn’t become widely used until after 1980. Thanks to Mike H for that interesting link.)
Though — as I said — I haven’t followed all the arguments as closely as I should have, I think there’s a “supply and demand” aspect to illegal drug use that gets overlooked, mostly because both sides focus so much on the “supply-side” arguments, aruging either in favor of continuing or removing restrictions on the amount of drugs.
Is that the best way to look at the problem? In one sense, the cycle begins from the supply side: drugs have to be available before people can become addicted to them. But even if that’s where it begins, it must also be fueled and fostered from the demand side. Some people want to use harmful substances, or are compelled through addiction to do so. Suppliers will find a way to meet this demand. If people did not want to use harmful substances — or if they were not compelled by addiction — we would not have our current problems.
Might our energies be better spent if we focused on how to legitimately reduce demand? Keeping harmful substances illegal probably dampens demand, mainly by instilling fear of getting caught in those who might otherwise use the harmful substances. I think we can all agree that it would be good to reduce demand based on the free and willing choice of individuals to refrain from those substances. If we could radically reduce demand for drugs, our problem would be reduced if not solved.
I’m not necessarily looking for a proactive policy suggestion here, but I’m not excluding it either. I’m really just thinking out loud, mainly because if we misdiagnose the problem, our solutions will never be effective and its certain we will always be arguing over them.
I first floated this idea on Majestyk’s thread on the libertarian vision. In response, Midget Faded Rattlesnake asked a great question:
But to what extent is political policy a legitimate and effective tool for helping people to make this choice?
Ryan had this to say:
There are just so many factors contributing to why a person uses harmful drugs, it isn’t a problem with any easy (or even realistic) solution.
He is probably right. Then again, when I accept that there isn’t a realistic solution, I feel very sad.
What do you all think? Has our society misdiagnosed the problem? Is it more a supply-side problem, or one of demand?
Published in General
Having been around a number of addicts (to very hard substances, up to and including heroin), I think we can divide them into three (admittedly oversimplified) groups: those who will inevitably become addicted to a powerful substance, those who will never become addicted, and those who have the potential to become addicts but are not necessarily destined to.
The problem with the first group – those fated to become addicts – is that the law is pretty much useless. These people have a mental affliction, and they will inevitably find some substance to alleviate their constant pain. I had a friend who huffed the copper polish at the restaurant where he waited tables – try restricting access to every cleaning agent/paint thinner/gasoline etc. It’ll never work.
And quite frankly, the problem with the second group – those who will never become addicted – are often unable to conceive that addiction is not always, or even usually, a choice. Those blessed with strong willpower often simply cannot imagine that a large number of people simply cannot control their own actions consciously.
I think the entire controlled-substance and psychiatric care issues are one bundle too.
The one thing that cannot be disputed is that we are physiological beings–a group of cells governed by hormones and brain chemicals like serotonin and dopamine, all being coordinated by our neurosystem.
The problems addicts are trying to treat are problems we simply haven’t found the cures for yet.
Depression is so often caused by circulation issues, for example. Heart issues. I’d look there first before I’d put anyone on an antidepressant. Depression is like a fever. It’s a symptom.
We need to throw away the morality fixation we have with respect to addiction and come up with some real answers.
Indeed, it can be.
But note that, even if we are successful in treating brain-ailments as just another kind of physical ailment, living with a physical ailment typically carries some moral implications, too.
A blind man should rightly feel within himself a moral obligation to not drive a car. An asthmatic may rightly forgo a career as a singer because the attacks are simply too unpredictable. And so on.
Humans that are unusually miserable, for whatever reason, do put themselves under extra moral pressure. While they can (and sometimes do) take this moral pressure to extremes, crippling themselves further, moral pressure in the right “doses” is part of what helps keep us going even when we’re miserable.
Thanks, Mendel. Yes, talking about the human root of the problem was my intent. It is–I think–absolutely crucial to understand the root if we are to make any headway about the problem.
Didn’t say it was “immoral” but it all has consequences to one degree or another. No man is an island. Money spent on one thing is not spent on another. Time devoted to recreational drugs is money not spent well on the ones you love.
Yes, I am in favor of this.
Let’s hope they wake up before that happens. I don’t like the idea of them being advertisements for what not to do.
Watching? That sounds proactive. Regarding those people, I don’t think there is much watching happening.
Sorry, that is too stupid a position for you Fred. That is a bumper sticker argument for the simple minded at a marijuana legalization protest. Yeah there are plenty of alcoholics out there and alcohol dependency can ruin your life. Many types of drugs however take the guess work out of it…they WILL destroy you. There are such a thing as “functional” alcoholics that can still hold down a job and get through life. Ask any treatment professional or for that matter criminal court judge….there are ZERO functional opiate addicts, none. They don’t exist. Comparing alcohol regulation to narcotics such as meth or opiates is where theory doesn’t hold up to reality in my opinion.
AMEN
I guess I just know more alcoholics than you.
As for functional opiate addicts, I dispute your claim. First, it’s the addicts that make the users look bad. This seems flippant, but, just like alcohol, some people can handle their high. Some people can’t.
And opiates are but one class of drugs. What about hallucinogens? What about narcotics?
It would be irrational to ban alcohol because some people can’t handle it and become alcoholics and destroy their lives. Most people can handle their wine or beer. So why then should the people who can handle pot, handle LSD, and yeah, handle cocaine, be treated as criminals because a small percentage of people can’t handle their high?
The fact is that we have the drug laws we do in this country because of a moral panic a century ago about scary “Chinamen,” scary Mexicans and scary “Negroes” using opium, marijuana, and cocaine respectively, to seduce innocent virginal white women. If those drugs had been associated with white people, as alcohol was, we wouldn’t still have their prohibition. But that’s how we got drug prohibition. We’ve kept it because of a century of self-serving propaganda on the part of the prohibitionists lapped up by people who should know better.
I’m no expert on drug laws and I have no desire to be. But if I remember correctly, Utah was one of the first states to make marijuana illegal. It had nothing to due with scary Mexicans or dangerous “negroes”.
It was because many Mormon missionaries were returning to Utah from Mexico high as kites and dumb as rocks. And certainly less industrious than when they left.
Can we please avoid falling into the same rat hole that every other drug thread devolves into?
So what if there are functional opiate addicts? The whole point of this thread is that there are a huge number of non-functional addicts in the US, whether they be addicted to opiates, alcohol, pills or rubber cement.
And for most of these people, drug laws are fairly irrelevant: their predilection toward addiction is so strong that rules cannot hold them in, and in the absence of their preferred drug, they will simply find another. Meanwhile, the libertarian adage of “live and let live” will also not make their condition better. This does not mean the only answer is state intervention, but some type of external intervention will always be necessary to prevent such destructive addicts from destroying even more lives than just their own.
I think the point most of us don’t want to face is that there are a class of people for whom neither the classical “libertarian” nor “conservative” nor “liberal” worldviews help much.
These are people afflicted with some condition which makes them unresponsive to external incentives. In other words, the mentally ill – to which destructive, lifelong addicts definitely belong.
These people do not conform to the libertarian notion that people can take care of themselves best if left to their own devices. Yet they also do not respond to strong threats of legal punishment. And they also don’t improve by the liberal nonjudgemental bear hug.
I think the first step our society needs to do is recognize this dilemma in the first place. It is often impossible to find any effective solution if we keep our expectations too high, and when it comes to the mentally ill, the sad fact is that we must all accept that the best we may be able to do for them will still be very disappointing.
You can dispute my claim if you want but I’m saying you are wrong on this one. Your statement: “First, it’s the addicts that make the users look bad.” is nonsensical and is pretty much verbatim what an addict says. With some narcotics there are not “users” and “addicts” only the later because eventually all your life is about is finding the drug and getting high.
Absolutely there are different types of drugs. I never said or implied that the recreational pot smoker should be treated like a heroin addict or pill head. That’s kinda my point that generalizing “drugs” and equating them with alcohol is not accurate.
Not buying that racism is the root of all drug laws either….no doubt scare tactics have been used to promote all sorts of prohibitions but that’s not the same thing as being the legal basis for them.
Very good points Mendel and much more in line with the original post. My apologies for getting off track.
I know of some amazing hopeful programs for mentally ill people.
I understand what you are saying, but there’s cause for optimism. :)
This is an article that just appeared last week in the Cape Cod Times. It is written by Sheriff Cummings, a friend of a friend, and he runs the county jail. He once joked that he wished three-quarters of his inmates would stop taking drugs and the other quarter would take the ones they are supposed to take. I’ve added some bold at the end about a new drug that is exciting to learn about:
Three things:
1. I contest that there are that many addicts. And there are plenty of people who can use drugs, including crack and heroin, and not become addicts. So if our public policy goal is addiction prevention, then there are a large percentage of drug users who we punish despite them not being addicts. Like I said: Some people can handle their high.
2. Even if there were a huge number of addicts, obviously legal prohibition has been a complete and utter failure in stopping them from becoming addicts. However if the goal is punishing people for their moral failings (needing to get high once in a while), then it’s been a success, but that seems like a dubious public policy goal.
3. And frankly, if the goal is helping addicts, legal sanctions only increase the incredibly high costs of addiction.
Vivitrol is a new delivery mechanism for an old drug, naltrexone. Naltrexone binds to opioid receptors to reduce feelings of euphoria – not only the euphoria from opiate drugs, but from alcohol and endorphins (the body’s natural euphoric, pain-killing compounds), thus hopefully depriving people who, say, cut, from the “rush” or feeling of pain relief they get from self-harm.
What’s new about Vivitrol is that, instead of being a naltrexone pill that must be taken daily, it’s a time-release naltrexone injection that lasts for a month.
People struggling with addictions of any kind seem to lack agency in a portion of their lives, and an anti-euphoric drug that can be injected once a month requires the addict to exercise less agency than an anti-euphoric pill that must be taken every day, hopefully making it easier for addicts to comply with a treatment that works by depriving them of the expected reward they’d get from engaging in the addictive behavior.
Harm reduction may be the best realistic social policy when it comes to drug addiction.
I’m not suggesting that parents or family should take that approach – it’s their job to be totally unreasonable about the outcomes they want for an individual. In fact it’s their duty.
But equally it’s the duty of people who formulate broader social policy (and laws) to acknowledge and plan to manage different degrees of failure as well as success – and to be realistic about the stats.
Thank you. That sounds like good news all around.
If you legalize drugs, you will undermine or eliminate the drug dealers.
Look at China’s example. Drug dealers get the death penalty, but plenty of people still line up to deal drugs.
It’s weird. My only personal experience with heroin was with a coworker taking it. It didn’t seem to affect his job, but when he brought some to work he was fired, since it was illegal to possess.
I was first exposed to libertarianism in 1980, with arguments about drugs. It took me some time to come around to the conclusions that (a) no matter what, a certain percentage of the population is going to take drugs and (b) this issue becomes a choice between the lesser of two evils.
Hope this helps clarify your thinking!
I’m a recovering alcoholic and I struggle with this one too. AA would teach us that it isn’t a choice and that is why we have to turn ourselves over to a higher power. For me, it does feel like a choice but then I never really went through denial; I knew I had a problem and if it didn’t feel like I was choosing to drink, it certainly felt like I was choosing not to quit. (I’m not sure that makes sense, but it is how I felt at the time).
I stayed sober for 10 years on my own, without a program before I relapsed. I then drank for 5 years and though I was very high functioning with respect to my job — 4 promotions and 300% increase in salary in 5 years — it was devastating to my family.
I’ve been sober 5 years this time, I’m in a program and I’ve managed to make significant progress in rebuilding my family — mostly because my wife is truly an angel, without her I probably wouldn’t be here typing this.
I guess this is a long winded way of saying, for me I think it probably is a choice, but I don’t think that is generally the case for an addict. Having now met thousands of fellow addicts I can honestly say that most of them have it far worse than I do and I have profound respect for those that manage to stay sober.
I had to participate in an intervention years ago, and we had three days of intensive education ahead of it.
We had a textbook on alcoholism, and the book described an experiment in which rats were injected with some brain matter from deceased alcoholics. Rats will not touch alcohol normally; only water. But these rats that were injected with the brain matter went for the alcohol, not the water.
That was all I needed to hear.
It makes sense to me.
I’ve never struggled with a drug addiction, but I’ve struggled with other bad habits – habits that could reasonably be called addictions – and while you don’t necessarily feel that you’re actively choosing to engage in the bad habit, you can still feel that you’re choosing to not take every step reasonably within your power to break the bad habit.
I suspect there’s typically some amount of choice involved, even if it’s not very much.
Let’s use an example something that many people would not consider a choice at first blush: the intrusive thoughts of, say, severe depression or OCD. I know a counselor that works with people to help them set aside these intrusive thoughts. It can be very, very hard work to set aside these intrusive thoughts, even with the help of medication, and a life spent having to do continual mental maintenance to set aside intrusive thoughts that healthier people don’t even have in the first place is unquestionably a harder life. Nonetheless, it seems that many people with intrusive thoughts are able to learn some coping skills that render those thoughts less intrusive.
Indeed, much of the first couple years of the program I’m in was education. Lots of bits like the one you cited….one that has stuck with me are the amazing images of activity — or the lack thereof — in brains that are on various drugs.
The education I’ve received on Marijuana has been an interesting as well. I’ve never been a fan, tried it a couple times, and I know the conventional wisdom is that it isn’t addictive nor particularly harmful but Marijuana users are consistently the ones that never seem to be able to stick with the program. Many alcoholics seem able to maintain sobriety, pain pill folks and cocaine addicts as well….but never the meth or Mary Jane users.
It could be that when put in a room with abusers of “more serious” drugs they simply feel that their issue isn’t a serious one, but based on what I’ve seen, they’d be mistaken.
Um….now you are just freaking me out Rattler. Do we know each other? I’ve never been able to completely figure out why I have a compulsion to drink to excess. There are a couple of options, a rough go as a kid, long history of alcoholism in the family but my best guess is EXACTLY what you’ve described here. Very insightful.
My coping skills for severe depression are to press on..do something, work a little more, build a cabinet or ride a motorcycle and spend as much time with my wife and her kids as possible. For the OCD…well….we’ve just learned to laugh at it.
If your family is anything like mine, it might be a family history of intrusive thoughts that’s causing the family history of alcoholism. The cray-cray is the underlying problem; the alcoholism, merely a rather dysfunctional attempt to self-medicate it.
I’ve never been organized enough to have OCD, but I realized pretty early on that I wasn’t, um, entirely normal upstairs, and that, for that reason, recreational drugs could probably tempt me more than they might tempt the average, more well-adjusted person. With this knowledge, insobriety never became a bad habit for me (my bad habits tend to be much more idiotic and much less fun).
It took me considerably longer to realize that the rest of my family is about as abnormal as I am. (You grow up around your family. They’re your idea of “normal”, even when they’re not.) I suspect that many members’ reluctance to admit their mental peculiarities contributed to their alcohol problems.
Curious Kevmo: #83 “I guess this is a long winded way of saying, for me I think it probably is a choice, but I don’t think that is generally the case for an addict.”
Might one suggest that it was a choice which turned into a habit? Once the tracks are greased, sliding down that set of rails doesn’t require much mental or moral effort.
I believe that it means that the brain’s synapse/s required for the habit are built and operate without renewed permission. The permissions were given in the past to build that synaptic connection. Once one is there, one merely does what one does.
We don’t think about the alphabet any more, we merely apply it. It is the same with addiction.
Agreed. Clearly stated, as well.
Let me say this. It is difficult for me to imagine how making cocaine legal would have helped my father. I cringe at the notion of him buying it on the open market–for example, at a legitimate cocaine store. My goodness. I can imagine him taking me into such an establishment as a young child and I can imagine the “vibe” of the place. I’m sure I would have been scandalized. Add to this the amount of scandalization I already felt due to the pornography, pot smoking, pot dealing, and cocaine use… all barely concealed from the children in the home (me and my step siblings)…. **sigh**
Don’t get me wrong. I love the man. Always will. But he was not in his right mind.