"Stimulant pills are being marketed now with even less knowledge of their safety than cocaine so it is not a matter of a good versus evil drug, it is a matter of a cheap and effective drug being held back over a patented 'mood enhancer' pill."

13 April 2011

The war on drugs should not be a war on people: an economic and social case for legalizing all drugs in the UK with age limits, tax duties and increased drug treatment clinics.

Dear British Parliament,

First, I ask that you read my whole letter before dismissing me outright. I believe that I have some good arguments which, even if you do not wholly agree with me, you might find some compromise in your current thinking which could nevertheless help society out in a big way. To this end, my first task is to give you an allegory which might shed some light on the concept I am trying to convey. Please forgive my indulgence in undertaking this literary vanity, but it is an allegory that I use in my lecture to students and it goes like this:

An Allegory

Aliens come to Earth, but they are not hostile. They are not here to eat us, or steal our water, they are genuinely benign and want to help us fix our problems. However, rather than just give us technology outright that we might not understand or misuse, the aliens teach us about how we can better use our environment and make use of new resources to improve our lives in a sustainable way and create wealth universally for everyone.

They have compiled a large book with all of their findings, but in a news release they will give some of their major findings including one finding which promises to be the most revolutionary idea ever to face Earth, heralded as the next evolutionary step after discovering the directed application of fire in human technology.

The Aliens come out in their exotic clothing and come to the microphones. They have translators ready and speak.

"Hello humans," they say. "We do not want to keep you waiting any longer, but we have found that you have a source of food, energy, clothing and medicine all combined in one source. It is a plant. The general spreading of this plant will positively-impact your environment and local economy. Behold..."

A pause, and then a curtain opens up revealing a large hemp plant.

"Cannabis?" a journalist asks out loud amidst the silent disbelief of the others.

Before any questions can be asked, the aliens are shot at by US government agents for possession of drugs and so the aliens, protected by their fabric armor, leave Earth declaring the planet free of intelligent life.

In short, humans often have the answer right in front of them, but ban that answer based on superstition and myth. Superstition, myth (and prejudice) keep drugs illegal. The drug war is a failure because it is based on three lies. The first lie is that it stops drugs from entering the streets. The second lie is that the war on drugs protects people. The third lie is that the war on drugs is an issue of human health. These lies are propagated because police are not interested in ending organized crime, but rather increasing statistics, like traffic wardens, to prove they are valuable law enforcers, and so go after soft targets like cannabis farms, to demonstrate their commitment to making neighbourhoods safe when in fact the net result is that people have less supply of the soft drug cannabis and so resort to harder drugs or experimental drugs that are not yet illegal but probably much more dangerous than cannabis.

A Case for Legalization

As a Police Constable once said to me in an interview, "legalize or criminalize all drugs." The issue of criminalization and decriminalization of drugs is emotive and decisive. What the debate is not about, however, is common sense and science. Common sense tells us that decriminalizing drugs would destroy violent drug gangs and get abusers into treatment programs funded by taxes on licensed drugs. Science identifies the most harmful drugs to the user and society (though recent sacking of science advisers indicates the government does not want to do this). If you put these two together, a policy on drugs should have what is best for society and to the individual in mind. Moreover, in these times of economic cuts, we cannot afford to be in denial about the benefits of banned plants and drugs which have been the target of political propaganda as opposed to hard science over the last 100 years.

Case in point: cannabis. Before you sigh or say to yourself why will the hippies never stop trying to legalize it, consider common sense: the decriminalization of cannabis would encourage growing hemp for industrial purposes. No longer regulated alongside its medical cousin, the growth of hemp as an industrial product would increase British independence by giving an additional tool back to farmers for everything from worming chickens, to renewing topsoil for crops, to creating medicinal cannabis for pharmacies to prescribe to people with glaucoma, undergoing chemotherapy, with Parkinson's and with a variety of other illnesses for which cannabis has been found to provide effective symptom treatment.

As it is common at this stage to either dismiss or accept an idea outright, I thought that I could help explain how the government is an unknowing partner in a conspiracy to harm and profit from the citizens. The effort to ban alternative therapies dates back to the turn of the century when it was found that fossil fuel (crude oil) was more profitable than hemp oil leading to cars relying on petroleum; hemp oil, a renewable source of energy, did not fit the burgeoning capitalist model of the booming twenties which sold finite resources at cost. In other words, the planned obsolescence of expensive non-renewable products was superior to enduring, cheap and renewable products in the new capitalist model brought in by the production line of Fordism, which could have been the mass production of bio-diesel cars if it were not for such profiteering thinking at the time. Not only is bio-diesel carbon neutral, but also it is renewable.

The same is true for the superior quality of hemp over pulp paper. It is important to realize that much of the destruction of our rainforests could have been avoided were it not for the successful application of propaganda against not the "drug" variety of cannabis, but the low-THC hemp plant which was grown in WW2 for American and British military equipment due to its low cost and high quality. During the most frugal of times, a country is most practical. Like the fish and chips diet of British people in WW2, the use of hemp for its cheap and quality end product provided an immediate boost to local economies which traded in this commodity.

I think it is also important to grant my request to legalize all drugs, not just on the basis of their return to the medicine cabinet of cheap, safe and potent remedies, but also due to the fact that the criminal empire relies on the illegality of drugs (and prostitution) to survive. Any banned social crime will have a market for organized crime and, as has been shown in the Netherlands and Germany, the legalization of prostitution leads to fewer women getting pulled into the criminal culture as they can survive on their own in state-regulated brothels. Like these women, drug users could become more independent and eventually end their dependence on that lifestyle. Quitting drugs would become as in fashion as quitting smoking because it would be more out in the open and no longer criminal.

I have made ethical arguments, but there are economic arguments to be made as well. At some point a country decides that it is going to take radical action to fix social injustices which has the effect of boosting the economy. This was done in the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage in Europe. When such changes are made, rapid economic growth ensues. Social liberation leads to positive changes. The banning of cannabis was done on the basis of its association with African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans (in Britain). If it is true that the prevalence of smoking dope is associated with race, then decriminalizing dope will decriminalize that same race and bring what was once a marginalized group back into mainstream society. Surely this inclusion, partly demonstrated by the new "Rasta Mouse" on BBC, is a cultural value to be embraced.

The economic argument also relies on the taxes that would be collected on cannabis cigarettes. A "double the cost" tax (100% tax) would still mean a far cheaper supply for users who currently rely on the illegal drug market. The taxes collected could fund additional police and assure that no cuts need be made to the front-line services that keep society safe. Police could then be instructed to focus their energy on catching and prosecuting hard crimes, like violence against property and the person and "white collar" crime, which costs the country far more than "benefit cheats". Additional money into the coffers of the state is a good in and of itself; heavy taxing on cannabis and other narcotics would surely bring in additional money to councils.

The most acute benefit of hemp is to the economy. Not only can hemp be used for standard paper and clothing manufacturing, but also the leaves contain the nutrients needed (i.e. a "complete food") for livestock to survive. In other words, industrial hemp is suitable for creating shirts and food fortification alike. Like its cousin the Stinging Nettle (Urtica), the leaves of hemp contain high protein, and its oil contains essential B vitamins (also contained in fish oil). Iron, phosphorous and other essential nutrients for animal feed and top soil fertilizer abound in the stem. Of course, hemp is far easier to manage than Stinging Nettle, is much more suitable for consumption and has finer and stronger fiber when made into clothing.

There are even more economic benefits to hemp. Hemp oil is an ideal source of energy for cars manufactured to run on vegetable oil (bio-diesel) as opposed to petrol or petroleum-based diesel. Because of how easy it is to grow hemp, its speed of growth and natural resistance to infestation and disease, growing the plant to extract its oil for energy (and food) would be the most efficient plant to use in terms of all aspects of its cultivation and harvest. The oil is versatile and can be used as petroleum is used in a variety of food, cosmetic and industrial products.

There is precedent that a vegetable oil can change the entire economy of a country. Look at Malaysia, the largest supplier of palm oil in the world. Palm oil is also an industrial/food product, but far inferior to hemp oil insofar as its adverse effects on human health and the environment. Growing palm in slash and burn operations which deplete old growth rainforests for the nutrient-hungry (and thirsty) palm plant is not sustainable, whilst hemp can be grown in nutrient-poor, humid, or even drought conditions. So, perhaps Britain could become the leading exporter of hemp oil due to its relaxed laws on cannabis. This would be common sense and scientifically sound. Instead of unhealthy palm oil being used in EU peanut butter, the healthier hemp oil could help fortify foods such as peanut butter and oriental noodles alike, producing cheap nutrient-rich supplements as opposed to adding bulk palm oil to foods to inflate the caloric value.

With so many benefits and so few real risks to legalizing drugs, why are we not already doing this? What has stopped such an apparently great policy from being? This assumption relies on the premise that the government wants what is best for its people, which is flawed. Policy does not always reflect what is best for the people, but rather upholds propaganda which benefits a small group of people invested in a lie. An example would be the tobacco industry and its knowledge of the link between cancer and cigarettes. Although cigarettes now have warnings, they did not have warnings until the hard scientific evidence was put forward (and trusted by the public). The reason that we have the war on drugs nationally and internationally is because such crack downs increase demand without substantially decreasing supply. A few token operations make people bolder in trying to get their hands on something before it "runs out".

Unfortunately, most drug users are exposed to harmful additives to their drugs, assuming there is any active ingredient in the drug at all. Recent reports show that street cocaine contains as little as 3-5% of the actual drug and this is heralded as a success for police. But it also means that people are not deciding to stop taking the drug, but settling for a product full of dangerous chemicals to fill that 25% decrease in the active ingredient. Numbers of arrests increase, but harm to human health increases with it as people are exposed to less regulated chemicals which are even more dangerous than the banned drug.

The drug war is expensive and rather than spend so much time sniffing out drugs, resources could be used to sniff out bombs and make airports more secure. Unregistered drug trafficking through the UK would be just as criminal as trafficking alcohol or tobacco illegally, but resources would be most concerned with increased security. Furthermore, the international flow of drugs would end at the UK as no one would have a market here for illegal, poor-quality versus legal, pharmacy-grade quality available at local chemists. Just as in the Netherlands, border police could focus on stopping the export of drugs from the UK, which would effectively cut the budget in half in terms of stopping the flow of narcotics. Again, no profit for importing narcotics means it just will not be done by organized crime looking to profit by providing illegal products.

Recognized as an essential part of the Afghanistan economy, legalizing drugs would have an immediate impact on Al Qaeda and the Taliban by stopping their profit from the sale of heroin. On the other hand, the democratic government of Afghanistan could engage in legal trade with the UK, selling opium poppy plants on the legal market and assuring that the profits are used to build schools and structures which benefit the citizenry. Of course, a large amount of this trade already takes place as the pharmaceutical industry relies on the poppy plant for a variety of its products, including morphine. And so, legalizing drugs and ending the drug war would support legitimate government in the Middle East, particularly Afghanistan by opening an additional "above-board," regulated, market for a local commodity. This would not increase or decrease the net importing of the drug, but rather take the market out of the hands of criminals.

Costs of legal and illegal drugs are soaring. With an aging population, the NHS could strain under the broad mandate of doctors. Already, the NHS provides the quality of a private company to all of its patients and although targets could be better, Britain is still a leading medical country in terms of research and quality. All citizens have a right to the best primary health care available. Without losing the innovation of new drugs, safe and potent drugs like cocaine could be used for their medicinal properties to relieve everything from arthritis to treating skin ulcerations. An effective and cheap pain reliever, the banning of cocaine was due only to the fear of its potential for abuse. But potential for abuse should not deny the population something which has so many positive benefits. For example, with the superior pain relief of cocaine, fewer elderly patients would seek euthanasia because they would have an immediate quality of life change. Perhaps greater research into the use of narcotics to ease pain in those considering suicide could save lives and that alone should prompt review of the current drugs policy.

There is one problem with my plan even if you agree with what I have said so far. The United States uses extra-territorial jurisdiction to dictate to other countries what they should do in their domestic affairs. The US conducts judicial reviews in Canada and the LIBERTAD Act has effectively shut down international trade with Cuba by blackmailing countries that would consider doing substantial business with Cuba. However, the US should be thankful Britain went into Iraq. The debt the US owes Britain is big enough to cope with the legalization of drugs in this country. Perhaps it would help the US and Britain as the US could forge an even stronger relationship across the pond based on common sense policy toward drugs. The same arguments for improving Britain could also be used for improving America.

There is another rational argument for taking such radical action as liberalizing the drugs policy. As China becomes the new super economy, what will distinguish the West? The only hope for the West is to improve its service economy by implementing the latest technological and social discoveries. This is not a West versus East argument, but rather a soul-searching idea for countries like the UK which have contracted so much from their colonial days that what is left, especially with further devolution, can only thrive in its upholding of liberal values. This is why Belgium and the Netherlands has such relaxed laws on social crimes, because they are host to so many international organizations. The liberal nature of the areas surrounding diplomats is essential for maintaining peaceful (and pleasant) relations in a safe environment. It is very practical that a service economy would rely on the availability of drugs outlawed in states from which business travelers and tourists come to sample the local culture. This is a controversial point, as "drug tourism" is an issue in the Netherlands, but to embrace, rather than reject, the profits of being more socially free would be to thrive as a niche market of common sense and science.

The drug war targets minorities, over-burdening prisons with drug-addicts who might otherwise be normal and productive people, funds terrorism, destroys the environment, deprives people of additional pain relief at a cheap cost, costs police resources that could otherwise be used to protect the public commons against crimes against property and the person, and fails to bring any tangible benefits as the drugs get through anyway and the NHS has to pay to treat addicts, the prisons have to pay to house addicts and society has to pay when addicts use crime to get access to their impure and dangerous drug.

Every hundred years there is some form of revolution that changes everything. It is clear the drug war is costly and so the next revolution in Britain should be the legalization of drugs and an end to the drug war. There might be several objections to what I am saying and I will try to address those objections here.

Common arguments against drugs:

Cannabis makes people psychotic. Cocaine gives people heart attacks. Heroin spreads Hepatitis and HIV from shared needles. Various amphetamines and the above when abused makes people into serial killers and fuel domestic violence. Drugs cause addiction. These are all common arguments against making narcotics too readily available. I will address this general line of argument below.

Cannabis makes people psychotic

There is little evidence to support this claim and most of the evidence that does exist is anecdotal. When someone acts crazy, for example, by murdering someone, if the coroners find cannabis in their system, the media use this "connection" to blame the drug for the person's behaviour. But like most drugs, those with prior illness seek out drugs for pain relief. It is more likely that someone is psychotic and using cannabis to be less psychotic than normal and using cannabis to become more psychotic. In short, drugs make people feel good - that much is true - but whether or not they make people more psychotic is unproven. Too much of any drug, including paracetamol, can cause psychological disturbances and risks including death at high dosages.

The psychotic argument gained ground during the recent Labour years in Britain when the government decided to raise the criminal penalty for possession of cannabis from Class C to Class B against the advice of its scientific advisory panel. Although the term "skunk" has existed for decades to describe a particularly potent smelling plant, the variety itself was seen as a moderately strong drug compared with hydroponic "white widow" for example in the Netherlands. However, the British government scared people into thinking that heavy cannabis use could make you psychotic and the public supported that view enough to allow the reclassification. The problem was that the new policy was purely political. There was no common sense or science behind the move, as demonstrated by the sacking of Professor Nutt, who presented scientific findings which contradicted government policy. The result is an irrational policy that sees drug users as psychotics instead of people self-medicating for some mental or physical pain.

There is one problem with understanding cannabis fully and that is the restriction of its use for scientific study. Longitudinal studies are no substitute for studies that measure acute and chronic effects in a laboratory setting; the same is true when testing the effects of any drug. Indeed, the scientific studies which do exist find that THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, protects the lungs and brain. Although its short-term effects include short-term memory loss, this effect goes away once the drug passes out of the system. The long-term effects of THC on the lung and brain tissue is protection against tissue degeneration, thereby showing promise for treatment against Alzheimer's and slowing of cancer growth. Unfortunately, like arguments against climate change, there are always "scientific" articles claiming the opposite. In short, there are articles which suggest bad side-effects from cannabis, but these effects are superficial when weighted against the potential for its use to improve human health. The claims above are not my own, but have been proposed by the larger scientific community on their recommendations for drugs and social policy.

Cocaine gives people heart attacks

It is true that cocaine is a potent drug, but in its pure form cocaine is quite safe. It is no less difficult to overdose on Ritalin than on cocaine; both speed up the heart and the abuse of either can cause death. The biggest difference is that cocaine, like cannabis, comes from a plant and is easy to extract. Coca Cola of course used cocaine in its drink until the government banned its use in the early twentieth century. Just chewing on the leaves of the coca plant provides mild stimulant properties and helps native populations living in South America with a spectrum of health problems. Stimulant pills are being marketed now with even less knowledge of their safety than cocaine so it is not a matter of a good versus evil drug, it is a matter of a cheap and effective drug being held back over a patented "mood enhancer" pill. "Kiddy crack" refers to the abuse of Ritalin (and its modern variants) which produces the same effects and risks of cocaine use.

Heroin spreads Hepatitis and HIV from shared needles

By decriminalizing heroin, users would have even more open access to clean needles. It protects the wider population to provide heroin users with clean supplies as they are less likely to get an infection and pass it on to someone else. The existing policy of providing heroin abusers with free needles has been shown to be quite effective and using methadone to treat addicts is also effective, but these treatments could be done in clinics outside the purview of the NHS, though that would not stop the NHS from treating someone suffering from a drug overdose, for example.

Drugs in general make people into serial killers

This is a myth perpetuated by those who would lose money if effective and cheap drugs were allowed to thrive in a regulated and taxed market. The fact is that people are not all normal. People have all had different childhoods, in some cases have brain damage, but one thing common to all of us is that we want pain relief. When someone smokes a crack rock they are, for five minutes, feeling pure joy despite their bad life. It is, after all, five more minutes of life. Maybe without her drug a hopeless single mother would have killed herself. Though a drug addiction is not a long term solution it is no more wrong than taking a cigarette break for absorbing the positive properties of nicotine. People want to feel good and drugs help them; drugs, like any tool, will benefit the priest and the sinner alike, but they do not make the priest a sinner except by very strict interpretations of religions which outlaw any human intervention on behalf of one's health.

Serial killers, or any people with severe mental disabilities and anti-social disorders, will seek to self-medicate, not always in order to better themselves. Sometimes it is as simple as reaching for an aspirin. The drug makes the person feel less pain in the terrible life they are leading. This is not to say that drugs should be legal to provide pain relief for the criminally insane, but rather to extract the drug culture out of the criminal sphere thereby making it more likely the criminal is helped before committing a serious crime against property or the person. It is not a good thing when an insane person seeks pain relief in the criminal market where propensities toward anti-social behavior are encouraged.

Drugs cause addiction

The addiction argument relies on the premise that an addict will do any and all harm to acquire more of their drug, even if it means murdering someone. However, with drugs legalized, it would actually lower the threshold for users to obtain their drug and therefore would reduce the desperation of not having their "dose" when necessary. If users know they could go to their doctor to get a prescription, they are no more likely to commit a crime than someone using Prozac to maintain their mental fitness. Prozac is also addictive and has undesirable side-effects such as weight gain, which in turn increases risk of heart disease, and is responsible for many suicides from people who become worse after taking the drug.

We need some classification, drugs do cause harm

All drugs, narcotic and otherwise should be classified according to their actual harm, not their psychological impact on a population that has been told lies about drugs and has chosen to believe these lies rather than accept the common sense thinking and scientific evidence which supports my argument. This view means that the only consideration should be the truth and health of the population when deciding how to officially classify a drug.

Conclusion

A policy of drug classification is complicated, so all drugs should be made legal in order to end the criminal empire built on selling illegal drugs, generate profit from the taxes charged on drugs sales, increase British security by stopping funding to Al Qaeda, provide a renewable energy source, i.e. hemp oil, increase the economy by increasing "diplomatic tourism" and leading the knife's edge of social innovation into the next ten years in which humanity must decide on logical solutions as opposed to politically-popular solutions to solve the threats of energy and production deficits as well as a diminishing economy based on non-renewable resources.

The most obvious drug to legalize is cannabis which has the potential to transform nearly every industry in the UK in a positive way. With all the benefit cuts and pain that the population is feeling, a bit of pain relief could come from a very obvious source: pain relief.

With scholarly interests in international private security, policing, education and the politics of science, Dr. Chapman is currently using a research grant toward field work in England. This field work seeks to further demonstrate the political similarities of volunteer organisations qualified by high stakes up to and including death, e.g. skydiving, martial arts, mushroom hunting (Fine et al. 1996), etc., and public citizenship. Dr. Chapman can be contacted at: dionysus2001@hotmail.co.uk.