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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: We're all after a quick fix Libby Brooks The Guardian Thursday 01 Aug 2002 Drugs do work. Current government policies on their use and misuse do not. On this at least, surely, everyone can agree. Illegal drugs work in the sense that they provide immediate and manageable pleasure to a user group the majority of whom will never spiral into addiction and death. But the increasing polarisation of the debate around decriminalisation and legalisation has left us with no space in which to examine the nature of this desire for artificially altered consciousness. Why do increasing numbers of people - especially young people - take drugs, and why should they stop? As far as the prohibitionist lobby is concerned, all drug use is problematic, instigated by peer pressure and sustained by addiction. People who take drugs are breaking the law, and violating social and moral norms. Thus the 34% of 16- to 59-year-olds who say they have taken a drug during their lifetime are deemed aberrant. But it is deeply unhelpful to lump use of all classes and kinds of drug together. Of the above age group, 27% have taken cannabis, a relatively safe though not altogether harmless substance. But only 5% have taken cocaine, 1% heroin and 1% crack - hence the proportion taking substances most likely to lead to problematic usage remains low. Perhaps responding to this, David Blunkett recently downgraded cannabis, allowing police forces to concentrate resources on tackling more dangerous class-A drugs, and on treating addicts. This change in the law will hopefully signal a conceptual reclassification too, viewing drug misuse as a health rather than a criminal-justice issue. It is estimated that for every pound spent on treatment £3 are saved on law enforcement, yet two thirds of the money available to tackle drugs is being spent on prohibition. But establishing an overt culture of use for any drug is a subtle and arduous process - look at the slow change in attitudes towards drink driving, or the muddled responses to the largely successful Lambeth experiment (a modified version of which came into force yesterday). The answer is not to pathologise drug use or stigmatise addiction but to understand it. If one differentiates between those who take drugs because of the state they're in and those who do so because of the state it gets them into, a different picture emerges. The desire to transcend the everyday is a fundamental part of the human condition. We are all sensation junkies, and throughout our lives we tirelessly pursue that which we desire: love, sex, sensual pleasure, escape. Ultimately, people take drugs because it makes them feel good. That's not so surprising in a society where the majority of our social interactions are based around a degree of self-medication - be it food, drink or spliffs. Unhappiness responds well to alcohol, tobacco and certain street drugs. A minority also take illegal drugs to help them feel better, which is arguably where misuse begins. It's a subtle but crucial distinction. You don't have to be genetically predisposed to addiction, socially excluded or have a family history of mental illness to take drugs because they stop you feeling bad - but you'll be more likely to. This much is obvious if you agree that drug misuse is symptomatic. But it is also true that you don't have to be unhappy to take drugs because they make you feel good. This is more complex. Unhappiness is seen as a modern epidemic. Some psychiatrists express concern about the relentless expansion of the boundaries of what constitutes depression. Clearly, clinical depression is a debilitating and frightening state, but depression has also become a catch-all phrase which takes in the dysphoria that is surely a necessary component of having a whole emotional life. There is a huge difference between a healthy public discussion of once private anguish and the situation where we define ourselves through what we suffer. To be human is to be journeying, and not always joyfully. But these days all good things come not to those who wait but on demand - love, conception, physical perfection, spiritual contentment. Consumer capitalism is increasingly commercialising our private world, co-opting the language of emotion. Orange mobiles offer optimism. L'Oreal provides self-esteem. Insidiously, it becomes harder to articulate the worth of things with no market value - genuine emotions, spiritual struggle, personal responsibility, our humanity. It is inevitable that illegal drugs feed into this culture of self-medication - sometimes levening, sometimes devastating. To open the conversation as to why we need not blithely sanction their use, or attempt to normalise what should be a growing public health concern. But it can allow room to talk about how our society manages unhappiness. And how we negotiate responsibility for our desires and choices in a world where it's now possible to sue a fast-food joint for making you fat.
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