Drug Prohibition and the Treatment System: Perfect Together

Abstract

The “War on Drugs” in the U.S. is consistent with the predominance of the abstinence model for treatment and helps legitimate compulsory treatment. Alternative public health approaches such as harm reduction are suspect and devalued. The mission of treatment risks becoming trivialized, primarily focusing on separating individuals from “illicit” psychoactive substances, in perfect accord with current drug policy. The current policy breeds disrespect for law and imposes enormous social and economic costs on society, without demonstrable effects on the availability or costs of “illicit” drugs. Maintaining the policy has become an end in itself, as shown in the disproportionate campaign against marijuana use, but there are signs that the policy is becoming vulnerable. Similarities to the situation at the time of the repeal of alcohol prohibition in 1933 are discussed.

Keywords:

• drug policy
• substance dependency treatment
• marijuana
• drug prohibition
• “War on Drugs”

Notes

Notes

1. Tommy Chong was one-half of a comedy team (now split) that became well known in the United States in the 1960s to 1980s for rude but hilarious comedy record albums and a series of Hollywood movie comedies featuring the recreational marijuana subculture. In 2003 he pled guilty to selling “bongs” and other drug use paraphernalia through an Internet “head shop” and was sentenced to 9 months in prison followed by one year of probation. This was part of Operation Pipe Dream, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's short-lived and apparently futile attempt to eliminate Internet sales of drug use paraphernalia. Chong's penalty was rather harsh compared with those of other convicted peddlers because, in the best comedic tradition, he ridiculed the government's crackdown. After his release, he went on a satiric “Marijuana-Logues” tour.