Drug commentary

So, while I was on holiday, I see that David Brooks has copped a lot of flak for his column which might be summarised as "sure, I tried marijuana as a teenager too, but all successful people realise that it's basically for losers.  We shouldn't experiment with legally selling it."

Much of the criticism is over the top, I think, and they let indignation get in the way of some sound points.  (See the Slate article Should Black Kids Pay for David Brooks’ Pothead Sins? as a good example.)

And, let's face it, it is hard not to be a little annoyed with the "don't do as I did, you young 'uns, or you might not end up as President" approach of, well, US Presidents.  

As for libertarians;  for goodness sake, they keep on citing Portugal's decriminalisation of possession of drugs as if it is something they think should be emulated, when in fact the system is nothing like an easy going libertarian dream at all.  Sure, the possessor of small quantities may not face court, instead they face this (assuming Wikipedia has it right):

The drugs are confiscated, and the suspect is interviewed by a “Commission for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction” (Comissões para a Dissuasão da Toxicodependência – CDT). These commissions are made up of three people: A social worker, a psychiatrist, and an attorney.^[9][10] The dissuasion commission have powers comparable to an arbitration committee, but restricted to cases involving drug use or possession of small amounts of drugs. There is one CDT in each of Portugal’s 18 districts.

Oddly enough, one of the fairest takes on Brook's article is to be found in an Economist blog, even though that magazine keeps on talking up relaxing drugs laws.   (And, everyone has to admit that America has had issues with dealing with drug use as a health issue rather than a criminal one.  But the Australian and European approaches have generally not resulted in excessive criminal prosecution for small time users, and we have long been advanced in matters such as the methodone program for heroin users, and needle exchange programs.)

As it says in the Economist article that I'm recommending:

The point is that however the cost/benefit formula is constructed, there are factors on both sides of the equation. Lives have been ruined by marijuana as well as by its prohibition. It may be facile to lament the legalisation of the drug while ignoring the damage wrought by prohibition, but it is equally silly to assume that there will be no losers from the unprecedented experiments in Colorado and Washington. Mr Brooks may sound supercilious and priggish, but he is a columnist for the New York Times; that is virtually a job requirement. He does not explicitly argue for prohibition to be maintained, as many of his critics appear to assume. Nor would his conclusions be incompatible with widespread decriminalisation of marijuana, which would alleviate much of the harm of prohibition without carrying the implicit imprimatur of state approval Mr Brooks dislikes so much (that is not my position, nor that of The Economist, but it is not a dishonourable one). Opposition to marijuana legalisation is the position of a substantial if dwindling minority. Perhaps Mr Brooks's column is best understood as an expression of that minority concern.

[Update: here's a short article from a site I am completely unfamiliar with, linking to other pieces I haven't actually read yet, about the genuine complexity of legalising the use of marijuana.]

As for a broader bit of commentary on drug use, I was quite impressed by this article in Slate:

Cocaine trafficking horrors: Users are complicit in the atrocities of the drug trade

in which a scientist can't get over the fact that rich Americans who want their cocaine simply will not factor in that they are feeding a horrendous situation in Mexico.  Sure, they can say the true blame is the government anti-drugs regime (at an international scale) that sets up the money to be made in drugs by criminals.  Put surely the proper, moral thing to do in that case is to campaign against that approach to drugs, while not personally feeding the system that is causing criminal mayhem in poorer countries.

I imagine some readers might argue that you could say the same thing applied during Prohibition, and ask whether I think all people who went to a "speakeasy" in that period where immoral too.  Well, basically, yes: I think they were if they knew the extent to which they were directly fuelling murder in their country.  The thing is, as bad as gang warfare might have been in the mafia in that period, it was  nothing on the scale of what people can read about in the situation in Mexico and other countries today.  (Read the Slate article on that point.)   Also, people are (or should be) better exposed to the effects of their paying for drugs now given modern communications compared to how people got the news 90 years ago.

The argument that cocaine is a drug which, like marijuana, is capable of use just for occasional recreational fun is a two edged sword - libertarian types will puff up and get indignant about why such a drug is criminalised and banned at all, but I say the fact that some users only want it for that special one night buzzy feel makes it even worse that they will not consider the dire consequences of their feeding the criminality in Mexico.

Why can't people just live with the one, ancient, social (but still dangerous) drug that comes in thousands of taste varieties?  

UPDATE:   Add Slate's David Weigel to the list of writers over reacting to Brooks.  In fact, while Brook's "confession" of once not being to perform in front of his class due to overindulgence was a bit embarrassing, Weigel comes up with is own confession which I find a tad cringeworthy in its own way:

Actual confession: I smoke pot. I've never bought it, but I've had it when friends bring it out to enliven a party. Frankly, I'm a terrible pothead. Having never really smoked cigarettes, I'm all thumbs at lighting a pipe or joint. The last time I smoked, earlier this week, the product overcame the wan barriers of my tolerance and I passed out on a kitchen floor—actually a pretty excellent goodbye-to-the-old-year metaphor, though somewhat embarrasing at the time. (UPDATE: Should note that the time before this, pot was part of a lovely evening of conversation and record-playing. It's like any other drug, and the experiences vary.)

David, David.   As I assume you are mature enough to not pass out through over indulgence in alcohol any more, it's not that great an advertisement for marijuana to tell us you passed out from it a bit unexpectedly only last weekend.

And then he runs with the "it's not so different from alcohol anyway" argument:

Point is, I didn't fear or confront any other consequences. I knew I wouldn't because none of the people I've smoked with, in D.C. at least, have found it impeded their work any more than a bit of heavy drinking would. As a habit, it's somewhat less dangerous than heavy drinking, as it neuters the violent instinct, is hard to overindulge on, and isn't as fun to ingest. (Your choice: Suck on a wet roll of paper full of vegetation in your friend's bedroom, or knock back an aged and aerated red wine across the table from a date?)

 Oh OK, so like I argue, good alcoholic beverages can taste great and  (I take David's word for it) are more fun to ingest.   So why do people who want to use it (say) once a month so insistent that they are missing out on much if they can't get it?  Go buy a particularly good bottle of one of that "more fun to ingest"drug instead.

Look, as the Economist article suggests, what most of these attacks on Brooks are suggesting is that moderate personal use of marijuana should be largely decriminalised, because the over the top approach to criminalising it in the US has gone too far.  Australians and Europeans can largely agree with that.

But the Brooks article is about the effect of outright legalisation, which is quite a different thing.