The Drugs Menace and its Solution
Elizabeth Krantz
Many people have an illogical attitude to the issue of drugs. They accept with equanimity the incessant TV advertising of alcohol and the enormous consequential damage related to the abuse of this legal drug, but react in horror at the thought of easing prohibition on other drugs, even though such action would drastically reduce crime in the community.
This is not about promoting the benefits of legal or illegal drugs or even minimising the harmful effects of such drugs. Rather it is about the long-term effects on society of prohibiting some drugs while openly promoting others.
The Current Situation with Various Drugs
Tobacco.
Smoking kills more than 18,000 Australians a year. One in two lifetime smokers will die from their habit.*
- Smoking is responsible for 30% of all cancers and 25% of heart disease and costs Australia $12.7 billion a year in health care and other related costs.*
- Tobacco smoke contains over 4000 chemicals, at least 43 of which are known to cause cancer of the mouth, pharynx, larynx, oesophagus, lung, pancreas, stomach, kidney, cervix, vulva, penis, bladder and anus.*
*More info at: http://www.quitnow.info.au/gen_fact.html
Alcohol
Alcohol is responsible for every sixth hospital bed and around 3,200 Australian deaths per year from car crashes, assaults, suicides and medical problems such as strokes and cirrhosis. It is also responsible for family breakdowns, bashings, violence and sexual assaults.
Notwithstanding the enormous carnage created by excessive alcohol consumption, weak and morally corrupt Australian governments, bowing to the lobbying muscle of the legal-drug corporations, allow blatant saturation advertising of alcohol in all media, while raking off billions in taxes to finance their re-election campaigns.
The marketing blitz has created a culture of binge drinking amongst Australian youth (see side-panels)
Heroin.
Heroin is a prohibited drug, responsible for around 1,000 deaths per year mainly because of quality control problems. However, its prohibition causes enormous secondary damage to the community.
Secondary costs of prohibited drugs
- Massive amount of crime associated with addicts desperate attempts to get funds to pay extraordinarily high prices for the product due to the supply and demand situation.
- Jails filled with ordinary people turned into petty criminals.
- Addicts sink to a life of despair and degradation, mainly associated with committing crime or resorting to prostitution.
- Huge sums of money flows to organised criminal gangs, who use some of these funds to subvert or murder law enforcement officers. International drug trade estimated at US$400 billion per annum.
The war on drugs is lost. Criminals have won.
We must ask why is there a “war on drugs” when the Americans learned they could not prohibit alcohol?
Half a century ago, the Americans committed to a war on drugs and coerced the rest of the world to follow suit.
Think this through – you are probably willing to tolerate the idea of hordes of drunken, aggressive people (maybe your sons and daughters) tumbling out of night clubs in the early hours of every morning, brawling, urinating on footpaths and risking lives by driving cars and yet you react in horror at the thought of a person injecting an hallucinatory substance into their arm which sends them into a state of euphoria or somnolence. Heroin certainly is addictive but so is alcohol.
Why is this?
Because you (and the rest of the population) have been conditioned over the past half-century to react in that way.
A brief history of
prohibition
Prohibition in Australia has its origins in the 1920’s when the temperance movement was gathering pace. Regulations restricting the use of heroin, morphine and cocaine were introduced during the 1920’s and 1930’s in accordance with international treaties, predominantly led by the US.
In 1953, despite opposition by the Australian medical profession, the Menzies government, under pressure from the US and its captive UN agencies, passed a law banning the importation and manufacture of heroin.
Then in 1961 came the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, so called because it combined a number of international provisions dating back to 1912.
Read the full text of the Convention.
This convention conferred a trade monopoly upon the some of the most dangerous and evil people on the planet; the drug lords. The business empires of these evil tycoons have an annual turnover of US$ 400 billion, about 8 per cent of global trade.
Before the 1953 law, a heroin addict could get a prescription from his or her local doctor and collect a dose of pharmaceutical-grade heroin, in the form of heroin linctus, from the nearest pharmacy. In 1953, users suffered few indirect side effects from heroin. Property crime linked to narcotics was non-existent and although trafficking in heroin was a criminal offence, there were no prisoners in any Australian jail in relation to drug dealing.
Now under prohibition, heroin will kill about 20 people this week, mainly because of the uncontrolled dosage. Australia ’s 150,000 addicts and regular users, will need, at an estimated $1,000 per head, a massive $150 million this week to feed their habit. This will result in a monstrous amount of muggings, burglaries, armed hold-ups, home invasions, stolen cars and traumatised victims.
The bulk of the $150 million will go the drug lords and their army of enforcers, crooked cops and marketers. According to a 1997 report by Access Economics, farmers get 6 per cent of the end price, processors and wholesale traders share 4 per cent, and drug traffickers collect 90 per cent.
The US is the world’s chief enforcer of prohibition. It does so with a religious fervour. The Bush administration will spend more than $US18 billion this year fighting the so-called drug war. In its war on drugs, the US uses its economic power to coerce recalcitrant countries into submission. Its actions are backed up by the UN International Narcotics Control Board, which uses treaty agreements to ensure co-operation.
As most US foreign policy is directed towards protecting the interests of powerful US lobby groups, one wonders which US interests benefit from the huge efforts in maintaining drug prohibition.
Where has this led us?
We are now at the point where drug-related crime is out of control. How many times have you or a family member or associate been robbed, mugged or defrauded? In nearly every case the crime was perpetrated by a desperate addict needing cash to pay the outrageously high price for a fix. That cash then finds it way to the “Mr Bigs” of crime.
Every country has seen its law enforcement system subverted to a greater or lesser degree by the drug lords. Murder of judges and law enforcement officers is routine in countries like Colombia, Mexico, Thailand and even Italy .
Rio de Janeiro is a pointer to the future for other large cities. Rio ’s large sprawling favelas (slum areas) are no-go areas for the police. These areas are controlled by three drug lords who hire thousands of young men, and boys as young as twelve, and arm them with military-style weapons. These armies are recruited to hunt down and murder informers and rival gang members. Thousands are murdered each year. Law and order is breaking down in the rest of Rio .
The governor’s mansion was recently sprayed with bullets as a message from the drug lords. The more wealthy people move around the city in helicopters, utilising the numerous helipads atop buildings, and retreat at night to fortified compounds, hardly ever setting foot on the streets.
Australia is heading in the same direction (see side panel Big Circle Gang).
What can be done?
Looking logically rather than emotionally at the issues, the inevitable conclusion is that prohibition is doing more harm than good. Can prohibition be removed without the world falling into a moral morass?
I believe it can.
How?
- Take the distribution of drugs out of the hands of criminals and put it under government control (at least we get to vote for these crooks). Governments have no qualms about raking in billions of dollars as their take from the distribution of the killer drugs, alcohol and tobacco.
- Remove penalties for possessing small amount of “soft” drugs, such as cannabis and for drugs supplied under
prescription.
- Make hard drugs such as heroin, cocaine and amphetamines available by prescription from pharmacies and doctors at a price that does not force addicts and users into crime.
- The government to tax all drugs and to put all revenue back into drug rehabilitation and anti-drug advertising.
- Legislate for harsh penalties in relation to:
Operating any machinery while under the influence of any drug.
Exporting drugs
Trafficking in drugs outside the government-controlled distribution network.
- Prohibit the advertising of all non-medicinal drugs, including alcohol.
What would the result be?
- Most addicts, freed from the degradation of mugging, prostitution and stealing to feed their habit could lead a more or less normal life.
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Addicts could be more clearly identified and coerced into rehabilitation programs.
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Overdose deaths would drop dramatically as the quantity and purity of drugs would be controlled.
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The massive flow of money to criminal empires would dry up.
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Strong, continuing anti-drug campaigns should reduce the amount of drug-taking in society. The modest anti-smoking campaigns of the past 20 years has turned smokers from cool people into social pariahs, while considerably reducing the level of smoking.
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Jail populations would decrease by around 70 per cent.
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The police could concentrate on other law enforcement areas.
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The level of muggings, home invasions, bank hold-ups and violence would dramatically decrease.
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The savings to law enforcement, health, legal and correctional institutions would amount to billions.
- Replacing alcohol advertising with anti-alcohol messages would save thousands of young
people from a life of misery.
Is there any proof this system would work?
In a five-year trial in Switzerland, prescription-grade heroin was supplied to hard-core addicts from a series of clinics. Each addict was injected under supervision. The results were:
- There were no overdose deaths for the five years of the trial.
- The crime rate amongst addicts was down 75 per cent.
- Homeless participants fell from 12 per cent to one per cent.
- Participants with jobs rose from 14 per cent to 32 per cent.
Naturally there will be howls of protest at such an idea. Some of the howls will come from people conditioned to howl. But many protests will have more sinister origins. The billionaire drug lords and the drug kings of each city will not give up their lucrative businesses and lavish lifestyle without a fight. However, they will fight through their paid politicians and crooked officials.
Many government and law enforcement agencies thrive on the ongoing drug problem. A sudden decrease in crime would reduce the career prospects of police officers. Many health officials and social workers depend on drug-related problems for their livelihood.
A degree of international cooperation is needed to ensure a number of countries moved down the road of removing prohibition. A single country promising prohibition repeal would incur the wrath of the powerful United Nations bureaucrats.
There will be many vested interests to overcome.
But why wouldn’t every sane, sensible person not support such a proposal?
In the long run, do we have any other choice?
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