Why the 'Serious Illness' Notion has been a Serious Mistake
In the last entry I promised to discuss why I think the notion that
permission to use cannabis on medical grounds should be granted only to
those with ‘serious’ diseases is 'unrealistic.'
Actually; I think it's both silly and self defeating
Although several good reasons for thinking that way might become apparent
to an experienced clinician after a bit of critical analysis,
most working doctors have already been so intimidated by the drug war
they have long since excused themselves from thinking seriously about
cannabis. Thus, even the most cogent clinical arguments I might make
(and there are several) wouldn’t help much-- and would be Greek to
non-clinicians.
No problem; a perfectly good case can be made from basic human nature
if we simply consider the almost universal bans on two other human
behaviors widely regarded as ‘sinful:’ gambling and prostitution. Those
proscriptions have also tended to survive in secular democracies
despite their perennial failure. Although cloaked in the garb of Public
Health from the time of the Harrison Act, our drug war had its roots
in the same quasi-religious logic that led to bans on commercial sex
and wagering; they simply had much longer histories in Western society.
One key to understanding the underlying connection between the three bans
is that, from the outset, they all relied heavily on the state’s powers of
arrest and prosecution. The biggest difference was that, in the case of
drugs, the first clamor for a ban came from the top down. However, that
difference is also readily understood: our drug policy, like many
others, had complex origins. Early in the Twentieth Century there was a
desire to curry favor with China; along with an increasing public
awareness of ‘addiction’ as an exotic problem. Combining them under the
circumstances that existed at the time was both logical and effective.
The next point to be made is that historically, policies
criminalizing specific behaviors which were not regarded as directly threatening
by a significant fraction of the affected population have tended to
fail. Beyond that, increasing attempts at top-down enforcement in the
face of such failure has usually tended to corrupt both law enforcement
agencies and the affected society. One would think that such a history—
especaiiy if repeated several times— might have triggered some
recognition among politcal analysts that moral prohibitions do not make
good policy; but such critiques are noteworthy for their absence. All
one has to do is search for academic treatises either analyzing or
condemning moral prohibitions as failures to be struck by their
relative absence–– either in the past, or in the modern glut of books
dealing in detail with every imaginable subject.
The only possible conclusion also applies directly to the drug
war itself: morality-based policies, no matter how irrational they prove to be,
tend to be treated with undue deference at every level of society. Once
understood as an intrinsic part of human nature, that scruple goes a long
way in explaining both the persuasive nature of ‘politically
correct’ ideas, and the undue deference accorded certain notions in the
absence of evidence that they are at all realistic. Examples are the
‘will of the people,’ the 'essential' nobility of humanity, and
the idea that we humans were intended to 'rule' over other species.
It thus appears that the ‘seriously ill' scruple is simply the logical
default for (typically human) critics of the drug war; the down side of
such thinking is that it has prevented them from understanding— and
promulgating— solid clinical evidence that our drug policy has actually
had far worse consequences than most people imagined.
It also explains why I must rely on this blog to communicate with the
demonstrably small nucleus of drug war resisters that 'gets it.' I am
still forced by history (and basic human optimism) to believe that
truth and logic are ultimately contagious; however, the process is
usually erratic and was always been unpredictable. Whether modern IT will
accelerate full recognition of the drug war's social consequences is
still an unsettled question.
