SpenniesThe War on Drugs
March 16th 2007 13:47
Just a little ramble on drugs this week.
The late, and great, comedian Bill Hicks once said these famous words: "I believe drugs have done some good things for people," (famous I suppose only insofar as Tool fans are concerned, but nevertheless).
The point is, he is right.
I am horrified everytime I open the newspaper and read politican after politician promising to crack down on drugs, to make the streets 'safe' for our children, to eliminate 'killers' like ecstasy, speed, marijuana and, employee of the month, ice. Now, I'm all up for living in a world without 12-year-olds who are shooting up, but lately I'm more worried about ending up in an Orwellian dystopia than the former. If drug laws keep getting stricter, if support groups and parent groups and committees and politicians keep getting stupider, then we're pretty much doomed. No more beautiful art, poetry or music. No more groundbreaking literature, photography or comedy. (Let's face it, the best of the best are usually under the influence of something).
Drugs have the ability to open up areas of the mind which cannot be otherwise opened. Thoughts and ideas that cannot otherwise be had are had on drugs. They free the mind up, in a way.
But if there was a national poll conducted tomorrow with the question 'Would you prefer to live in a world completely free of any kind of recreational drug?', I bet more than 50% of this country would say yes. And why? When one in a really large number of users actually dies from drugs, suddenly it's become a national problem, a pandemic, a big black stain on our otherwise completely moral society. This, of course, is all bullshit. Society has just fallen victim to paternalism.
Paternalism, a philosophical concept, in this case refers to the interference of the state on its citizens, against their will, justified only by a claim that the persons interfered with will be better off or protected from harm. Just like it's delegated by law that you wear seatbelts while in the car and helmets while riding, what you can and cannot do to your body also falls in this category. At the theoretical level, paternalism raises questions of how persons should be treated when they are less than fully rational -- but the majority of the population can be said to be fully rational. So is it really all that justified for the state to tell us what we can or cannot do to our bodies? If I, a fully rational human being, want to inject heroin into my eyeballs, I should be able to go out, buy heroin, and inject it into my eyeballs. Right?
If this government suddenly legalised all recreational drugs do you really think that 12-year-olds will start shooting up on the corner of George and Pitt St? Do you really think the hospitals will be inundated with people ODing? Do you really think the mortuaries will become full of drug-related deaths? Unless people suddenly become irrational overnight and start acting like animals, this is probably not going to happen. What's more likely to happen is that drug-related crime will drop and less people will die from taking impure drugs (since it will no longer be illegal to make them).
Alas, it will be a long while I dare say until the law-makers realise all of this. And by that stage I may have just given up on the whole trying-to-convert-people-to-r ationality thing. I may just be injecting heroin into my eyeballs anyway.
The late, and great, comedian Bill Hicks once said these famous words: "I believe drugs have done some good things for people," (famous I suppose only insofar as Tool fans are concerned, but nevertheless).
The point is, he is right.
I am horrified everytime I open the newspaper and read politican after politician promising to crack down on drugs, to make the streets 'safe' for our children, to eliminate 'killers' like ecstasy, speed, marijuana and, employee of the month, ice. Now, I'm all up for living in a world without 12-year-olds who are shooting up, but lately I'm more worried about ending up in an Orwellian dystopia than the former. If drug laws keep getting stricter, if support groups and parent groups and committees and politicians keep getting stupider, then we're pretty much doomed. No more beautiful art, poetry or music. No more groundbreaking literature, photography or comedy. (Let's face it, the best of the best are usually under the influence of something).
But if there was a national poll conducted tomorrow with the question 'Would you prefer to live in a world completely free of any kind of recreational drug?', I bet more than 50% of this country would say yes. And why? When one in a really large number of users actually dies from drugs, suddenly it's become a national problem, a pandemic, a big black stain on our otherwise completely moral society. This, of course, is all bullshit. Society has just fallen victim to paternalism.
Paternalism, a philosophical concept, in this case refers to the interference of the state on its citizens, against their will, justified only by a claim that the persons interfered with will be better off or protected from harm. Just like it's delegated by law that you wear seatbelts while in the car and helmets while riding, what you can and cannot do to your body also falls in this category. At the theoretical level, paternalism raises questions of how persons should be treated when they are less than fully rational -- but the majority of the population can be said to be fully rational. So is it really all that justified for the state to tell us what we can or cannot do to our bodies? If I, a fully rational human being, want to inject heroin into my eyeballs, I should be able to go out, buy heroin, and inject it into my eyeballs. Right?
If this government suddenly legalised all recreational drugs do you really think that 12-year-olds will start shooting up on the corner of George and Pitt St? Do you really think the hospitals will be inundated with people ODing? Do you really think the mortuaries will become full of drug-related deaths? Unless people suddenly become irrational overnight and start acting like animals, this is probably not going to happen. What's more likely to happen is that drug-related crime will drop and less people will die from taking impure drugs (since it will no longer be illegal to make them).
Alas, it will be a long while I dare say until the law-makers realise all of this. And by that stage I may have just given up on the whole trying-to-convert-people-to-r ationality thing. I may just be injecting heroin into my eyeballs anyway.
We have drugs to thanks for Lewis Carroll's vivid, and wonderful, imagination.
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