I haven´t translated my
own text about drugs and why im drug free, of sxe if you
like. but you could always read this:
This is a text about drugs, written
by Arthur Moyse, Published by Phoenix Press
Phoenix Press
PO Box 824
London
N1 9DL
This text is taken from
http://www.vegan-straight-edge.org.uk/
INTRODUCTION
A good way of apparently winning a debate is to
substitute a false debate for the real one, thus ensuring
that people waste their time discussing irrelevancies. A
case in point is the drug problem which is presented as
one of law and order. More effective policing will arrest
all the dealers and stop the sale of drugs - this is the
message put across by the media, especially in fantasies
like the film Year of the Dragon. The thriller format
diverts attention from the consequently unchallenged
assertions that the use of heroin can (and should) be
stopped by the police. The debate appears to be won by
avoiding it. We discuss more effective means of policing,
thus missing the point that prohibition is wrong in
principle and unworkable in practice. Of course it is
only possible to rig a debate in this way when the means
of communication are firmly under control but that's
another story. As you are about to see the truth about
drugs is very different from the, fantasy put out by the
media.
If someone wants to take drugs then that's their
business. It is irrelevant whether or not the drug in
question is comparatively innocuous in its effects (like
cannabis) or extremely dangerous (like alcohol or
heroin). It is irrelevant whether the drug is legal or
illegal. The word drugs is often used to refer only to
illegal drugs, as if drugs were something outside of
normal society. In fact the three biggest drug problems
in Britain are caused by alcohol, tobacco and
tranquillisers prescribed by doctors and there is no
justification for restricting the use of the word to
those drugs which happen to be illegal. It is irrelevant
whether or not any harm comes to the drug user. The only
qualification to be made is that there must be an age of
consent set and imposed.
The view that we should be able to take whatever drugs
we want to is a particular example of the general
principle that we should be allowed to do whatever does
not harm other people. Mugging harms people other than
the perpetrator and is quite rightly seen as morally
wrong. In contrast, heroin taking harms the person who
has consented to take heroin - a victimless crime.
Individuals should be sovereign over themselves (and not
over anyone else). The individual is not the property of
some external entity such as government or God and this
is so whether the entity is real (like government) or
imaginary (like God). Yet this is precisely what is
asserted by anti-drug laws.
The libertarian principle just outlined is not
generally accepted. In particular governments show their
rejection of the sovereignty of the individual by trying
to forcibly stop people from taking drugs. (Note that
trying to force someone to do or not do something is
different from trying to persuade them similarly.) Why
governments reject the sovereignty of the individual is a
question to return to. For the moment there is another
point to look at. Prohibition has been a complete and
utter failure. The only limit to the number of people
taking heroin appears to be self-imposed. When everyone
stupid or depressed enough to stick a needle in their arm
is doing so then the number of addicts will stop rising.
So why has prohibition failed? To answer this requires a
short diversion into economics.
Drug dealers, like other merchants, are motivated by
the desire to make profits and profits are dependent on
price. If the price of what is sold is higher than that
of what is bought then the result is a profit. In turn
price is dependent on conditions of supply and demand.
Supply is the amount of something that's on sale and
demand is the amount of money that people are prepared to
pay for it. In the economic jargon of supply and demand
prohibition is the restriction of supply. This has the
effect, since demand has not been similarly restricted,
of raising the price. Every big seizure of drugs boosts
the profits of those drug dealers whose imports haven't
been seized. The more that gets seized the better the
prospects for the other dealers and the greater the
incentive to import more. In other words, prohibition
guarantees the profits of the dealers. No wonder it has
failed.
Prohibition has various other effects. It recruits a
sales force of small time users who sell drugs in order
to help pay for their own consumption. It boosts crime,
since those who have acquired expensive addictions will
steal to get the money they need. Dealers dilute their
products in order to sell them for more and this
increases the health risks run by drug users. Prohibition
also leads to police corruption. Dealers bribe the police
to ignore their activities and occasionally give them the
names of other dealers, business rivals, so that the
police have arrests to their credit and the dealers have
reduced competition to contend with. When a dealer is
arrested any cash handy and most of their drug supply can
disappear. The dealer is not going to complain since a
serious charge of possession with intent to supply has
been reduced to one of simple possession and for their
part the police now have cash and drugs for their own use
or for paying informants. The only point at issue here is
the extent to which such corruption occurs. (It could be
argued that the police are already so corrupt that
additional opportunities for corruption make no
difference but this line of argument doesn't seem to have
been advanced as yet.)
In the face of state persecution (and other hazards)
drug dealers persist in providing consumers with the
products they demand. Drug dealers are the heroes of the
curiously-named free market. Why then, are they
unacknowledged by the so called free marketeers in the
legislature who contradict their free market principles
by trying to forcibly stop the use of drugs? Prohibition
is a perfect example of a do-gooding nanny state
interfering in what is none of its business and trying to
run peoples' lives for them. It seems that most of those
who advocate the free market don't understand what it
is.
What are we to do about the problem of drugs?
Obviously it is undesirable that people should use drugs
to the extent that they damage their health and all
possible means should be used to persuade people not to
do this. Proper information should be available on the
dangers (and benefits, if any) of drugs. There should be
adequate rehabilitation facilities for those trying to
kick dependency. (The inadequacy of rehabilitation
facilities shows how shallow the government's commitment
to the fight against drug dependency really is.) But the
government's failed attempt at prohibition must be
rejected, as must the medical profession's attempt to
play God by treating drug use as a medical problem. If
doctors want to do something to help people with drug
problems they can start with the tens of thousands of
tranquilliser addicts created by their prescribing.
Finally, why should the free market in the shape of drug
dealers be allowed to profit from what can be human
misery? The profit should be taken away from the dealers
by having drugs given away free to all those who want
them. This will remove the incentive on small dealers to
help pay for their own consumption by selling to others
and will cause a fall in crime committed by addicts in
order to meet the high prices charged by the unholy and
unadmitted alliance between government and the market.
The only losers will be the dealers and corrupt
police.
There is, of course, no chance of the libertarian
solution to the drug problem being adopted. Any rich
philanthropist who tried to set up such a scheme would
simply be arrested. There are three main reasons why
government makes the drug problem worse by persisting in
its failed prohibition. For a start, government is too
small-minded to admit that it has failed. Secondly,
governments reject the principle of the sovereignty of
the individual. Once it is accepted in one area, drugs,
people will try and extend it to others and who knows
where that may lead? Whether people use alcohol or heroin
to escape a dull, dismal and exploitative society is a
secondary question. Their desire to escape reality
through drugs is what comes first, not the choice of
drug. Any proper anti-drug campaign will start by
questioning the type of society where people do useless,
meaningless jobs in order to earn enough money to pass
their leisure time in a state of semiconsciousness.
Thirdly, the government is not worried about the failure
of prohibition because the whole thing is a massive
confidence trick.
Prohibition is wrong in principle and has failed in
practice. Government uses issues like the drug problem to
justify its own existence but, as we have seen, the
governmental solution makes the original problem worse
and creates an additional problem in the form of
increased crime. So what is the real purpose of
government? Clearly not the protection of the general
public. In the field of drugs the verdict is not merely
that government is not the solution. It is that
government is part of the problem.
The mass media myth about drugs centres on the pusher
who entices innocents to their de struction with evil and
mysterious substances. It being taken for granted that
people should be prevented from taking drugs. the main
way to achieve this is by imposing long prison sentences
on the pushers. That's the myth, now for some facts.
The biggest drug problems are caused not by the
illegal drugs the mass media condemn, but by alcohol and
tobacco. But the mass media get advertising revenue from
the alcohol and tobacco industries, and the government
tax those industries, and so it doesn't pay to tell the
truth. As for the pushers, their customers call them
dealers. They are making money by meeting consumer
demands and are obviously part of the wondrous free
market whose praises are sung so loudly. Drug dealers
are, in Mrs Thatcher's powerful and imbecilic phrase,
wealth creators. Illicit drugs and their suppliers are
simply another form of capitalism, differing from the
mainstream variety only in illegality.
The libertarian position on drugs is that however sad
it is for someone to damage themselves, possibly fatally,
with alcohol or heroin, in the last analysis, it's their
life (this refers to adults, not children). But there is
no reason why capitalists should be allowed to profit
from human misery and this goal can be easily reached. If
heroin were given away free then the dealer's profits
would evaporate (and addicts would no longer have to
resort to theft, prostitution, dealing, etc in order to
finance their habit). Instead of this we have (failed)
prohibition which restricts supply, thus forcing up the
price and guaranteeing exceptionally high profits. The
drugs squad are ostensibly the opponents of the dealers
but in reality they are their allies and the fiction that
police action will help solve the drugs problem is part
of the wider law and order confidence trick. Partly
because of the financial reason given earlier and partly
for other reasons including the law and order con,
neither the government nor the mass media will tell the
truth about drugs. But their hold over the exchange of
information is not total and the truth is beginning to
seep out.
