Every
illicit substance today is now or was at one time legal and used by the
public, typically as medication or added to other consumable /
non-consumable products. Before World War I, heroin was sold
over the counter. Cocaine was used in food and beveragesch2 the same way
that nutmeg, sugar or other psychoactive substances are still used
today. There were no black-market drug dealers or drug
gangs. People never had alarm systems for their homes. Few
locked their doors. There was no drug crisis; parents didn't have
anxiety over discussing drugs with their kids because there was nothing to
discuss. Few people were dependent upon heroin, cocaine or other
drugs because physicians responded to their patients. If
someone wanted to break their drug habit, could freely consult doctors
without fear.
Today,
there are over 400 chemical and herbal substances that were all made
illegal for one simple but very complex reason: Irrational fear to
the point of paranoia. The emotion itself, is simple; the expression
of it is very complex and misleading.
During the 1980s,
there was a public outcry over illicit drugs, namely marijuana, cocaine,
and heroin. Penalties for drug possession, trafficking, and
manufacturing drugs increased, but were ineffective. By 1992, the
people of the world had been exhausted by the war on drugs (WOD).
European nations had already started migrating to harm reduction policy
and the U.S. voters were ready for a Democratic Party solution.
President Bill Clinton paled on the issue of drugs and the U.S. Government
began moving in one direction as the public underwent the beginning of an
attitude transformation.
By the 21st century,
treatment options and drug courts seemed promising in many states,
however, the federal laws did not change. Medical marijuana further
impacted voters by 2008 and the public turned to Barack Obama to bring
about change. Thus far, the Obama administration has made little
progress in adopting federal laws that match the attitude of the
public. One of the most disappointing obstacles to come out of the
ONDCP under director Gil Kerlikowske has been the lack of a drug abuse
prevention strategy.
The Drug War has been
easily the greatest cause of violent crime in American history: Gangs
fighting over monopoly territories, children killed in drive-by shootings,
families in the inner city living with the constant sound of gunfire
outside their doors, police killing innocent people in misguided drug
raids, crooked cops helping to spread poisonous drugs, non-violent
citizens sent to prison to be terrorized by violent prisoners – none of
which would exist in the absence of the federal drug laws.
There is nothing that
could make our cities safer than repealing the drug laws – all of them.
Does the idea of
heroin, cocaine, and opium being sold over the counter sound too ludicrous
to be true? You can check it out for yourself. A marvelous
website, maintained by the University of Buffalo's Addiction
Research Unit, shows the actual labels and ads from patent medicines of
the 19th and early-20th centuries. You can see the claims made, the
ingredients used, and the acceptance of what so many Americans fear today.
That era of innocence
didn't end because America was threatened by a drug crisis. It was ended
in the traditional way – by politicians looking for new worlds to
conquer, politicians who have no interest in examining dispassionately the
chaos they cause, and who will never face a single personal consequence
for the lives they have ruined.
did
not come into the mainstream until the 1960s and 1970s. Although
President Richard Nixon introduced the war on drug abuse in 1971, it
wasn't until 1972 that the war on drugs (WOD) became the actual platform
for prohibition. During the 1970s, drug addiction was considered a
disease. In released efore psychoactive
substances became a serious crime and members of the public were
prison sentences that not even those convicted of first degree murder
received, the same substances were associated with disease. Since
the 1990s, Americans have been inching back towards a resurgence of the
disease model. But before psychoactive substances were associated
with disease the first time, they were used by the public for
"recreational" and medical purposes. While the use of
drugs has never really changed, the numbers of those using drugs remains
in question with reformists and anti-drug crusaders wary about the
progress. The time has come for
the war games to end and a sensible drug policy be put into place.
In
the real world psychoactive substances serve different purposes for
different people. The attitude towards drugs is becoming more
subdued by single adults with no children
First,
there are those who use drugs and commit criminal acts as the result of
the drugs. The drug abuser must be rehabilitated and must pay for
the offenses against someone else or society. Second, there are
those who are abusing drugs as they
number
one problem in the world today is so common that we instantly recognize
it, and yet, so common that we fail to recognize it as a problem. It
has led us to the brink of war with other nations; it has literally
brought us into an ongoing war with the people of our own
nation. The superficial aspect of the problem in one word is Catachresis.
A better description of the the problem
is the manipulation of language by scholars, statesmen, and
diplomats to mean what they want you to think that is
different from what they are actually saying.
The war on drugs is the prohibition
of drugs. The war is directed at the people who use drugs.
Not the people who use drugs for "recreational" purposes, but
those who have a medical need for a drug that they are unable to obtain
from health care providers. Health care insurance reform
cannot resolve it; health care reform that recognizes drug policy reform
is the necessary foundation, can.
You
may not be familiar with the word catachresis, but you are intimately
familiar with what it does. Most often,
the words are simple. One of the more dramatic examples in
recent history occurred when U.S. president, William Jefferson Clinton
argued the definition of the word "is". When
you see someone debating the definition of a word, you are
witnessing someone in the midst of confronting corruption.
What lies behind a redefinition generally never has positive
value. Redefining words is at the heart of politics.
Politicians try to manipulate you into thinking the way
that they think by deviating from the standard definition of a word to
mean something else. In other words: the abuse of language for
political impact.
The
words "use" and "abuse", we know, are
antonymous. That is the definition of one of those words is is the
direct opposite of the other. Just as we have in the words
"normal" and "abnormal", the prefix ab means
"away from" as in the word absent. Thus,
"away from" normal is abnormal and "away
from" use is abuse. If we want to mathematically
express normal, we pick a point on an x, y, z graph and call that
"normal". Let us say that normal is at 0, 0, 0.
Then, every positive and negative integer and fraction in all directions
expresses an abnormal condition because it is "away from" or
"deviates from" the norm. Thus, 1, 0, 0, is abnormal
and so is 0, -1, 9.
The
correct administration of a drug is expressed as "drug
use". Drug use is measured in dose, x, (milligrams)
per unit of time, y, (hours) for no more than a macro-unit of unit of time
(days, weeks, months). Therefore, if a 50mg dose of some
medication is required or allowed every 4 hours for a maximum of 5 days,
then the coordinates that describe the "use" of a drug
50mg, 4hours, 5days (or 120 hours) might be 50, 4, 120. Then,
abuse would be any deviation away from 50, 4, 120. Thus,
increasing as well as decreasing the dosage would be abuse, just as
shortening or lengthening the frequency and duration. However, abuse
in the medical context of drug abuse, just as it is with any type of
abuse, typically means excessive. If too little of the drug is
taken, it might not be effective , but we do not call that drug abuse,
still, it is a deviation from the norm.
Consider
the words "recreational" and medical. The U.S. Office
of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has contested the possibility
that an illicit drug can be used medically. Meanwhile, millions of
American use drugs for medical purposes on a daily basis. In fact,
in my two studies at Stanford (2003-04) and UCLA (2005-06), I have shown
how the routine use of a drug immediately following experimentation is an
indication of a pre-existing medical disorder that has been undiagnosed or
untreated. Similarly, just about anyone who routinely
administers a drug is doing so for medical reasons. The government
asserts that this is merely "recreational" use. So which
is it?
To
test this, consider the mathematical representations of the
terminology. Essentially, "recreational" drug use is the
extraneous use of a drug that offers no medical value but taken for the
purpose of producing pleasure. Thus, 0 + d = D; where, 0
is the normal state of an individual, d is the drug or psychoactive
substance administered, and D is the experience derived by the drug.
On the other hand, medical use of a drug resolves a physical, mental, or
emotional disorder. Thus, we have -d + d = 0. Here, the drug
reverses the disorder to produce an individual at the 0 or normal
state.
Modern
medical science and pharmacology are far from perfect. It is still
contentious whether a health care provider administers psychoactive
medication in which a normal state is produced. In some cases, the
medical purpose of the medication is to mask the disorder. Such
that, the disorder is not corrected, but rather subsides as the result of
the medication. In such cases, -c + d = -CD which does not equal 0
but comes closer to or above it. If we are to consider this using
numbers, -3 + 4 = 1 In this case, the
"drugged" state is closer to 0 or the normal state than the
disorder.
For
a member of the public, often the disorder is nominal enough for a
provider to neglect it , seeing that the "drugged" state may
take the individual further away from the normal state. This can be
expressed as -a + d = -AD or numerically, as -1 + 4 = 3.
Here, the disorder at -1, is closer to the normal state than the
"drugged" state, but it presents a positive experience
mathematically and for the member of the public who cannot obtain
treatment for the disorder from a qualified health care
provider. If the disorder is treatable, there is no
reason why the provider should hesitate to treat it. If, on the
other hand d, the drug used to treat the disorder, is a Schedule II or III
drug, and the patient is a member of a group typically associated with
with "high risk", then the provider may think otherwise,
considering that providers today are likely to sacrifice their own safety
for a patient associated with a demographic group that society declares
untrustworthy. While it is against the law to discriminate
against a person because they are African-American, it is not unlawful to
show prejudice where there is an African-American youth with an attitude
of a gang member. Similarly, a white person whose sexual
orientation is unknown is very different from a gay white male with
HIV/AIDS. When a gay man with HIV/AIDS reveals a history of a
disorder such as narcolepsy or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
(ADHD) that typically requires a stimulant drug to correct the problem,
there are few providers today who will treat the problem.
Thus, the likelihood that the patient will use an illicit drug is far
greater had the patient been treated for the disorder.
The thinking of the U.S. Government is that if the physician does not
treat the disorder, the chances are that the patient will never even
consider the illicit drug. Unfortunately, the goal of the U.S.
Government is simply to reduce the number of drug
users.
ATTITUDES
Whether
the people in society like it or not, younger generations have
learned from medical marijuana that the U.S. Government is not always a
reliable source of information. This is mainly because the drugs
themselves have not evolved. Marijuana, heroin, and cocaine have
been in the mainstream since the 1960s. As a result, the parents,
grand-parents, and even great-grandparents of today's youth are likely to
have some experience with these drugs. With experience comes
knowledge, thus as ignorance fades, so does fear. As fear
diminishes, parents today are less likely to share the same concerns that
existed during their youth.. However, just the opposite can occur
among families in which parents never used these drugs, or their
experience with them was negative. That does not mean the children
of these parents will take on the same attitudes. Because teenagers
tend to look beyond their parents, often rebelling, they might cultivate
an opposing perspective. As long as the same drugs are in the
mainstream, eventually they will become acceptable to younger
generations. When drugs change, for example, the recent
increasing popularity of methamphetamine, the government capitalizes on
the ignorance to thrust upon society greater fear. Rationally,
parents will be more concerned about meth if they have no experience with
the drug; their children will also have a negative perspective until they
discover that the propaganda has not been forthright. When a
peer comes along and introduces the drug, there could very well be a
domino effect of experimentation. Those who immediately begin to use
the drug routinely are those who are most likely to be benefitting from
the drug or
When the government heightens the adversity associated with the newly
popular drug, adolescents and teenagers will be less tempted to try it and
their attitudes will remain negative. While this has kept the
younger generation from using methamphetamine, it only takes one peer
to In fact, because the drugs themselves are stagnant --
the illicit drugs
majority
of U.S. citizens will not deny anyone from obtaining medication with a
controlled substance as long as that substance, of course, is not
endangering the lives of others or placing the public at greater
risk. However, as the outcome of California's Proposition 19
has shown us, the public does not agree with the legalization of an
illegal drug for "recreational" purposes. The reasons are
clear, as a majority of the public fears that legalization of a drug will
encourage advertisers and marketers to develop their campaigns to entice
users.
As
the public becomes more familiar with illicit drugs, their opinions depend
on their experience. That experience may be formed by personal use
of the drug or by witnessing someone else they know who uses the
drug. There are many "recreational" drug users who
are not interested in legalization. The outcome of drug user
case histories (Stanford 2003-04; UCLA 2005-06) show that part of the
"thrill" that "recreational" drug users experience is
the idea that they are doing something illegal. For them, it is a
walk on the "wild" side. Then there are those who use an
illicit drug for medical reasons and the majority from this population
would rather the drug be legalized. What the majority of the
public seems to share is an attitude about underage drug use. The
solicitation of a drug to a minor is considered by most people something
that should not be tolerated. There are still some -- however few --
who feel that minors (under the age of 18) should not be barred from using
drugs. As the age decreases, the number of population against drug
use increases. For example, of 2,569 participants in the
study, only 13 felt that drugs should be legal for individuals from
birth to 12 years of age. However, 210 felt that drugs should
be legalized for those between the ages of 12 and 14. An additional
315 felt that drugs should be legal for those between the age of 14 and
18. Bear in mind that all 2,569 case histories were taken from
drug users or former drug users ages 18 to 55.
What
most Americans don't realize is that the majority of illicit drugs used
routinely are by those with legitimate medical disorders.
While this has been known for some time, it is just beginning to make its
way into the political arena. Unfortunately, what politicians
understand by this is that using an illicit drug in an of itself is
a disorder. This would mean that the "recreational"
use of alcohol or tobacco or even caffeine is a disorder.
Until a substance is abused, it is not a disorder. By abuse we
mean "excessive" to the point that it imposes a problem.
We use food every day. It is normal human behavior. If we did
not use food, we would die. We use air, every day; if not, we would
die. But it is rather the abuse that causes harm. Thus, the
attitude that needs to change is making the distinction between
"use" and "abuse".
THE ROOTS OF DUE PROCESS
To understand Drug Use Education,
consider first, the history of the automobile. When the first
working steam-powered vehicle was designed in 1672, no one was thinking
the invention would replace a horse and carriage. With all the
efforts to develop an automobile during the 18th and 19th century, at the
dawn of the 20th century, no one in society still visualized that the
automobile was nothing more than a novelty. Karl Benz, the father of
the modern automobile was a bit "eccentric". During the
1890s through the turn of the century, the automobile was slow in gaining
popularity. It was "dangerous" to drive an
automobile. It was illegal to drive one on city streets.
By 1910, the automobile becoming
increasingly popular, but it wasn't affordable until a decade later when
Henry Ford invented the cost-effective Model T. By 1930, the
automobile had replaced the horse. The problem was the number of
traffic accidents. Although WWII
The core foundation of DUE requires an
attitude transformation about drugs that strips away fear and ignorance
spawned by the WOD and promotes safety and knowlege with the understanding
that the appropriate drugs taken correctly with regard to dosage and time
can be a powerful healing remedy, while excessive doses of the same drug
can produce harmful and even fatal results. In addressing proper
drug administration, DUE demands a study of neurology and how psychoactive
substances work, conveying the variations of human genetic types,
physiology, and how one drug can produce different reactions among various
users. Although DUE should not be limited to the subject of
recreational drugs and mandate that every student graduates with at least
an LVN degree while offering those who wish, the benefits of obtaining an
RN degree, the intent of DUE is to prepare students as young as 5 years
old with a realization that every substance they consume will effect them
in some way; discipline is the only approach that guarantees committment
from being absorbed by mental urges which result in relapse. DUE
explores the possibility that recreational drugs may have medical benefits
which draw users to repeat the practice more than addictive
behavior.
HOW WOD HAS HAMPERED U.S. RESEARCH
EFFORTS
The U.S. approach to research of
psychoactive substances has been far more perplexing than the recidivism
rates of those incarcerated for drug possession and trafficking.
Pre-WWII research almost always involved patients committed for life to a
sanitarium. These helpless victims, locked away by family and
government to protect the safety of community members, were used to test
new drugs and surgical procedures that typically resulted in behavioral
modification, rendering the victims helpless or useless and often in
discomfort such that their lives were often terminated. During WWII
both the Japanese and German Nazis government bodies authorized some of
the most inhumane and gruesome experiments on American and European POWs
that sparked the emergence of international regulations at the Geneva
convetions which enforced strict limitations on scientific experimentation
of humans that has been adopted in the U.S. to include guidelines in the
use and treatment of laboratory animals as well. Following WWII,
U.S. veterans were often treated with psychoactive substances, including
hallucinagenics that lasted well into the 1970s. Unauthorized
studies ended during the early years of the WOD after which a moratorium
was placed on research of controlled substances as it pertained to the
benefits derived from non-medical use of a specific substance.
This was a positive step for many veterans who were administered often
excessive quantities of mind-altering substances which curtailed their
ability to function normally. However, the cap on controlled
substance experimenation has been detrimental to important research.
Because so much about psychoactive
substances remains unknown, the lack of pharmacological research that
presents honest information has been left to other nations, many of which
are enemies to the U.S. During the past decade, there has been an
overwhelming amount of international scientific data regarding substances
that are labled "controlled" in the U.S. and their benefits in
the treatment of disorders. The U.S. has forbidden such research,
allowing a serious regression that has impacted scientific research
because the WOD does not permit any study which might favor restoration of
a drug that has been considered "off limits" to the U.S.
public. Thus, U.S. drug policy does not recognize any health
benefits that might exist for Schedule I drugs, curbing research on
medical marijuana, for example. Throughout the past three
decades, other nations have pursued such investigations while the U.S. has
blocked such research by withholding grants to those U.S.-based
organizations which published research papers that contradicted the U.S.
political position. Today, the U.S. Government is beginning to
realize that by hindering pro-positive drug research, it has failed to
uncover information that would have enabled the U.S. to be a competitve
player with other nations that have advanced beyond ours.
Because DUE demands a pro-positive
approach to drugs, it is impossible for DUE and the WOD to co-exist.
There can be only one directive from the federal government. If the
U.S. wants to proliferate the drug abuse problem and harness scare tactics
that will keep drug use underground, no action needs to be taken because
the WOD produces drug abusers every day. However, if the goal
of the U.S. Government is to dramatically reduce the occurance of drug
abuse in our society, then serious action must be taken to overhaul
current drug policy.
THE WOD IS A BARRIER TO HUMAN HEALTH
& DUE
The time has come to identify the
pitfalls associated with the extreme measures taken by government to allow
and curtail drug use and research. While we cannot expect to return
to the days before there were controlled substances, the U.S. government
must recognize the rights to human freedom which include the right of the
individual to make educated decisions about the drugs they consume without
unecessary restrictions imposed by government law and most definately
without criminal punishment for a human behavior that is
normal. The WOD has prooven to be seriously defective since
debilitating drugs are still administered to patients in VA hospitals,
private practices, hospitals, and clinics that impact the CNS, producing
the unwanted effects much the same way as the psychoactive substances that
were administered to WWII veterans after the war. DUE is a vehicle
that allows an individual to participate in decisions about the
consumption of medications and substances that are today in the hands of
the U.S. Government that admitted as recently as January 2006 that
"too little is known about drug abuse, especially the causes and ways
to treat and prevent drug abuse." While the administration of
drugs is speculated not to be a human rigtht but rather a privlege that
comes from the appropriate education, it is the right of every human to be
extended a rudimentary form of such education outside the scope of medical
school which will allow individuals to have the privledge to prescribe
their own medications with or without the necessity of a healthcare
provider. Today, online pharmaceutical vendors assume that the
patients they treat are honest about their health. Actually,
it should have nothing to do with their business to understand why someone
orders medication. With DUE, all they would need to do is verify the
credentials that an individual has and caution patients who may be
taking drugs that interact with medication they are currently taking as
indicated in the patient's healthcare record, a record that each patient
in good standing has the privlege to dispute.
A continuation of the drug war is job
assurance for everyone staffing America's second pharmaceutical system,
the drug dealers. Today, there are a vast number of drug
dealers solicit drugs to only a few individuals. It is impossible
for many of these newbies to be aware of drug interactions and quality
level of the street drugs they peddle. It is equally impossible for
the U.S. Government to produce meaningful statistics about drug users when
a majority of drug users are out their practicing the advice from Nancy
Reagan to "Just Say 'NO'".
ATTITUDE TRANSFORMATION: HOW LONG WILL
THS TAKE
A societal attitude transformation about
drugs in which many will argue could take not only years or decades, but
generations before there is public acceptance of concepts that are
misunderstood and morally violating such as recreational drug use.
Considering that in every culture one of the first -- if not the first --
uses of chemical substances was as a psychoactive depressant / stimulant I
find it hard to believe that an attitude transformation is far beyond the
grasp of the current generations. The basis for this is the
proliferation of more than 1,500 drug reform organizations throughout the
U.S. and abroad. While a number of these organziations
are small individual or community movements, there are at least 35 in the
U.S. alone that are driven by large donations from philanthropists who now
support the grand-daddy of these organizations, the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA).
With a membership that has drawn over 50,000 supporters worldwide, the DPA
is leagues ahead of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America whose
membership has recently dwindled to about 10,000. Proponant
organizations which started to disappear during the 1990s have lost
momentum. Many have become temporary havens for the survivors
(family & friends) of the WOD victims who died because of a fatal
overdose (FOD). Once these survivors realize that the drug
policy and not the drugs have caused the death of their loved one, they
disengage from proponent organizations. Recent disinterest in
proponent organizations has been attributed to the lack of support they
have provided to make hydrocarbons, such as gasoline, a controlled
substance. As these organizations continue to diminish, the surge in
reformist organizations is an indicator that attitude transformation is
rapidly occurring without government intervention. If the U.S.
Government becomes overwhelmed by a majority of Americans who demand
public policy changes, it won't be long before a political leader wielding
educational solutions to end drug abuse makes a prominent mark to end the
WOD, starting what may become the most inclusive era in American politics
and it would be about time.
I
- Understanding the genetics of
addiction.
- Preventing drug abuse that leads to
dependency.
- Distinguishing cases of abuse from
use.
- Treating drug abuse and permitting
drug use.
- Developing drug use protocols (dosage
and detoxification)
- Isolating drug administration from
conventional crime.
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