Encefalus

Ex-cop may be charged in case of man Tasered to death - CNN.com.

All right. This is all wacked up.

This news article publicshed in CNN raises three important issues:

1)Drugs

2)Guns

3)Law inforcement

I want this to be a series of three articles treating all 3, saying as much as I can say in a few words. The first installment is this one and so let’s start right away

Figure 2.1 Past Month Use of Specific Illicit Drugs among Persons Aged 12 or Older: 2006

¹Estimates for methamphetamine use incorporate data from new questions added in 2005 and 2006 that are not included in estimates for use of illicit drugs other than marijuana, use of psychotherapeutics, or stimulant use. See the introductory paragraphs of this chapter for further information.

This is a graph from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) of USA (since the current news was from the USA). The rest of the graphs can be found here. Obviously there are many people who are doing drugs. The questions we need to ask are

1)Why they use drugs?

2)What’s the great fuss about the drugs that the state not only has strict regulations concerning their use, but also tasers users

Cocaine and marijuana, common recreational drugs

Concerning the first there are surely many answers. But before we try to answer any of those we must think that when we are trying to talk about why people start taking drugs, we consider the drug use to be some short of special behavior that needs some special explanation. When someone says he wants to marry or find a job, many people won’t ask him why, because the answer is, usually, pretty straightforward. But when he uses drugs, most people rush to find a million different explanations like for example: Low self-esteem, addiction, peer pressure, adolescence etc. But why talk, for example, about peer pressure concerning drugs and not peer pressure concerning other social habits (like wearing pants).

Alright, I can feel now some of you losing me over there. "This guy’s a freakin’ idiot! He compares my pants with pot! I’m outta here!".

Freaked out reader

Before you freak out let me explain a few things. It’s very important when analyzing EVERY issue to consider that there is a difference between the structure and the content. This means that while peer pressure can exist in different settings, it’s still peer pressure. The same holds true for many things. Therefore, while we consider drug abuse to be a grave issue, it’s not much different from more mundane things. Therefore comparing clothing fashion to drugs may not be much different than comparing a sparrow falling to a meteorite crashing. Both the bird and the stone are governed by the laws of gravity and physics.

What I’m trying to say here is that while the american society (and not only that) considers drug abuse a serious issue, a thoughtful analyzing of the subject requires careful thought without any biases. A very good strategy to eliminate any biases is to take a look at different cultures and societies. Even better yet, we should look into the history of mankind to find clues about drug abuse in the past of civilizations much different than our western 21st century reality.

There are indications that drug use is not a recent phenomenon:

Certain psychoactives, particularly hallucinogens, have been used for religious purposes since prehistoric times. Native Americans have used mescaline-containing peyote cacti for religious ceremonies for as long as 5700 years.^[14] The muscimol-containing Amanita muscaria mushroom was used for ritual purposes throughout prehistoric Europe.^[15] Various other hallucinogens, including jimsonweed, psilocybin mushrooms, and cannabis have been used in religious ceremonies for centuries.^[16]

(Taken from Wikipedia: Psychoactive Drug - Ritual and Spiritual Use )

Wikipedia also lists some nations that made systematical use of enthegens (psychotropic substances that they were used into a religious context in order to communicate with one’s deity or some higher spirit)

Entheogen-using cultures

It seems that these societies held a very different view of drugs than the one we hold today.

"Pfff, what could these primitives know anyway? They probably thought that weed is some kind of magic."

Maybe weed is indeed magic

Alright, maybe they considered weed to be magic and mushrooms to be spirits. This doesn’t change the very fact that manty of these cultures managed to evolve and survive in their environment for hundreds of years despite systematic full-scale drug abuse.

Then, why all this fuss?

First of all, drugs cause economic damage. Surely, there’s a connection between skunk and schizophrenia as well as LSD and psychosis. However, the greatest damage happens to the economy. It’s self-evident that being stoned or dying from heroin abuse can significantly restrain your productivity.

Secondly, misinformation can spread quickly, parents can get concerned and through the years social norms get into action that are based upon the wrong facts. Cannabis can be considered worse than alcohol (even when it’s not) and drugs can be thought to be the cause of every problem instead the result of it. You’re not doing drugs because you have depression induced by stressful living factors (homelessness, poverty, work stress). You have depression because you’re doing drugs and that causes worse living conditions (homelessness, poverty, work stress). See the relation between the two? Most people hurry to blame it on all drugs and see them as the cause instead of as the effect. Surely, drugs can cause anti-social behavior. But what tells us that this is not the result of social stigma and persecution (that is, purely sociological and juridical causes) instead that of chemical compounds?

Let’s see this graph taken from this article on BBC: Drug classification rethink urged

It shows the harm that drugs induce as rated by independent scientists. What does this show? It shows that barbiturates, alcohol and benzodiazepines are more harmful than amphetamines, LSD and cannabis! Therefore, why haven’t we banned alcohol or barbiturates yet?

The reason alcohol is still legal is very simple: The Prohibition. People just like alcohol. If they can’t get the legal way, they’ll get it the other way. But they’re going to get it in the end.

The reason that barbiturates and benzodiazepines are legal are also simple: The drug companies are making a shit load of money.

Take a look at the Pharmaceutical Companies Revenues

The kind of plants that the pharmaceutical companies have in their gardens

Shocked? See why some things are not always as they seem? As long someone someone’s making money and is bribing the proper officials everything’s fine. So we see that these things happen

1)Drugs are banned because of misinformation and economical damage

2)Alcohol is permitted because in different case we would have civil unrest

3)Benzodiazepines and barbiturates are permitted because the big boyz are making piles out of your pocket

So, we have to rethink the whole thing about the drugs. Should they be permitted? Maybe yes and maybe no. In my opinion, everything that does not harm someone else in some way should be permitted. But then, drugs cause loss of capital so maybe they really harm all of us. But then, so do other things and this can’t stand as a serious argument unless we specify the magnitude of the damage and we consider it to be big enough to justify the ban of an activity (that in this case is usually deemed recreational). Maybe drugs cause anti-social behavior, but maybe the anti-social behavior is the direct result of laws that cause more problems, instead of solving those they claim to solve. Netherlands has made legal the use of "light" drugs such as cannabis. Other countries have not taken such legal approaches to the matter but are very loose on the subject. Others are strict. In USA as it seems, a cop considered a good strategy to taser a user 9 times. However, the guy tasered to death and his social circle maybe considered that taking cocaine didn’t constitute a serious problem (but maybe they did, we’ll never know that).

Netherlands

But, maybe, drugs are like alcohol. Most people use them just because they are fun. Maybe, we have a tendency towards drugs, much like we have towards alcohol. And maybe, even better yet, we should talk about a tendency towards psychotropic substances and eliminate the distinction between alcohol, coffee, drugs and benzodiazepines. According to the position of sociobiology if a human behavior exists in all societies and all ages, then (since we’ve eliminated the social factors) we can say that there is a genetic predisposition.

Whatever your position might be, the fact that can be derived from this debate is that the view we take on the subject of drugs, is not something that can be so much concrete as rather more fluent and dependant upon the circumstances. I could go on with this article forever. There are certainly many more factors involved. There is a huge bibliography on the subject. However, I didn’t want this article to become a book about every concept of substance abuse. I just wanted to pose some thoughts and let it function as a stimulus for some more. I hope it served my intentions.

P.S.:If anyone’s wants to flame me about what I’ve written just feel free to do so  since this subject is usually a flamewar-starting subject 

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Socio-Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.