| I grew up in the generation that saw the "This is Your Brain on Drugs" TV commercials and heard "Just Say No." We were among the first kids to go through the D.A.R.E. program. Now, as adults, some of the kids from my school are in a successful marijuana-loving band, and they wear D.A.R.E. T-shirts when they perform their concerts around the country. And yet, until college, I didn't actually know (or knew that I knew) anyone who DID drugs.
As an adult, I've come to find out that we were basically lied to about marijuana, although I'm not a fan of it myself. The "gateway drug" theory is bullshit, and even if it were true, why should two so-called gateway drugs (alcohol and tobacco) be legal, taxed, and regulated, when pot is criminalized? And why is medical marijuana so off-limits when prescription narcotics and other addictive and pleasurable prescriptions (like Xanax, for example) so easy to get?
America's drug policy had an even greater (and more tragic) effect on my life this year. The person most dear to me in my entire life was arrested and thrown out of college for about 2 ounces of pot his freshman year. And yet, a few years later, he was able to legally get enough Klonopin through a prescription to abuse it for nearly a year and ultimately kill himself. Pot would have never killed him, yet pot was illegal and even criminal.
For that matter, I've known two people - good people, not criminals - who spent time in jail for so-called marijuana crimes. One was jailed because he found some ditchweed - wild growing cannabis that can't even really get you high - and picked a bunch of it out of curiosity. The other because she dated a pot dealer but didn't do anything herself. What. The. Fuck.
So those are all of the different parts of the elephant of our drug policy that have touched me during my life. Grim's book was fascinating as it provided a historical perspective going back to the founding of our nation and then explained our more recent history, shedding light on my own personal experiences (and probably yours too).
What stands out to the reader probably the most is how one drug (or geographic area that produces a drug) rises when the government cracks down on another one. Suppress pot, and cocaine becomes the new big thing. Take away American availability to the precursors of meth and the Mexicans make it for us. Outlaw all alcohol and people get high instead of drunk. And the big winner in all of this seems to be the Mexican drug cartels, for every time Columbian, American, or Caribbean drug production or importation is curtailed or suppressed, the Mexicans step up their production and diversify their drug industry.
Another tragic but obvious revelation in the book is the influence of Big Pharma and to a lesser extent the alcohol and tobacco industries. They want us all to get drunk, high, and addicted, but they want a monopoly on our business. The big loser here is, of course, pot, because it grows like a weed so nobody can patent it, control production, and get rich by it. Since drug use is more or less a zero sum game, if pot smoking went up then consumption of tobacco, booze, and pharmaceuticals would go down. None of those industries want that, so pot remains illegal.
The third major theme that sticks out to me is our government's lack of concern over the effectiveness of drug policy. They will go full steam ahead with D.A.R.E., law enforcement, and drug testing despite evidence that they don't work (or evidence that other methods will work better and cheaper). No doubt the prison, defense contracting, and drug testing industries are enjoying this immensely. I understand that drug policy comes second to economic policy (i.e. passing NAFTA despite its known effects on the drug trade), but why are we so married to policies that do not work? Expensive and harmful policies that put many Americans in jail, some for life, needlessly. It seems its largely political posturing and rigid ideology, not to mention the right trying to crush the hippie counterculture movement by taking away their mind-expanding drugs of choice.
The long story short, which comes as a surprise to no one, is that our country has one hell of a screwed up relationship with drugs, and it's not about to change that any time soon. This is a very tragic stain on American history, as it results in the unnecessary jailing and even death of our own citizens, for nothing. |
