Commentary––

Hysteria Over Drugs Still Rules

By William A. Collins

Laws on drugs,

Bring great expense;

And rarely show,

Much common sense.

By a vote of 79 to 64, Connecticut’s House of Representatives this year struck a telling blow against common sense and human dignity. It chose to deny the use of marijuana by sick and dying patients for whom there is no other effective therapy. Most of the winning votes were based on “morality,” lending further erosion to the significance of that tired term.

One might think that our guys were merely doing what everyone else does, caving in to the national drug hysteria promoted by the Prison-Industrial Complex. But other states have proved braver, with Maryland just becoming the eighth to sign practical medical marijuana rules into law. It seems that with drugs, as with election laws, Connecticut lags timidly behind the curve. In addition we have closed our remarkably successful drug courts and curtailed our equally successful needle exchange program.

This national obsession with narcotics is nothing new. The War on Drugs has been waged for 80 years now, and has shown no more progress than did the war in Vietnam. And the collateral damage has been similarly phenomenal, ravaging most of our inner cities and millions of our poorer citizens. There are even those cynics who assert that this has been the strategy all along. In any event, nothing useful was learned from our equally unsuccessful war on alcohol –– Prohibition –– not even that we should give it up when it doesn’t work.

Luckily other nations have seen the light. Northern Europe and Canada are going back to treating drug addicts more as victims than as crooks. Treatment venues are mushrooming and junkies are being given heroin, clean needles, and sanitary settings to do their business. Not only is this approach reducing crime, but also cuts into the spread of AIDS. As might be expected, our allies must accomplish all this in the face of anger and threats from the US government.

Nor is Washington pleased with the worldwide trend to treat marijuana more like alcohol than like anthrax. That reform began years ago in The Netherlands, and has now spread (horrors!) to Canada. Our drug warriors are scandalized.

Canadians are also pressing us to allow imports of commercial hemp, which they grow in profusion. Like the shmoo in Dogpatch, this plant possesses nearly magical properties. It can be readily processed into paper, boards, or cloth, with no detriment to health, environment, or morals. Unfortunately it falls into the same biological family as pot, so it’s verboten here. The Montana and North Dakota legislatures legalized it, and have asked Congress to do the same, since their farmers are desperate for a new crop. (Forget the Canadians –– we’ll grow it ourselves.) Equally desperate tobacco growers are eyeing hemp hungrily, too.

Meanwhile America’s military destruction of Afghanistan, and our free trade destruction of farming economies in Mexico, Bolivia, and Colombia, have pressured farmers there to grow anything that pays. Often that’s coca, poppies, or pot. Thus there’s always an endless world supply. And being already illegal, and enjoying a high markup, these crops pose an appealing financing mechanism for terrorists. No one, after all, keeps embarrassing records. Even our CIA dabbled in that game in the 80s, to fund our own Contra terrorists in Nicaragua.

Connecticut fits in comfortably with all this insanity. Drug users, even the sick and the dying, are viewed as criminals, and doctors who might like to treat them are viewed as scum. And in a painful budget season, the untrammeled incomes of the 500 wealthiest Nutmeg families took precedence over the treatment needs of the state’s poorest addicts. Further, arrests and “street value” dominate our daily mainstream press’ headlines. The fact that the War on Drugs hasn’t worked, and shows no signs of working, is ignored. Reporters don’t mention that drugs are now cheaper, purer, and more plentiful than ever. Indeed, as a whole state we seem to be dangerously addicted ourselves –– to hysteria.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)