Home | Literature | Stories

The Drug War
By: Shyster

She wanders down the littered streets of Vancouver, B.C., pushing a battered shopping cart with emaciated hands and a loping gait. Her eyes are vacuous, unblinking, as she asks passers-by if they could spare a little change because, she claims, she has not eaten for several days. She is yet another panhandler who will spend whatever earnings they eke out on drugs. People pass her without acknowledgment, with the superior air of those who have not fallen victim to the weakness of drug addiction. Her name is Heidi, and she is sadly typical of most of the heroin addicts in our city. She is labelled a criminal by current drug mandate, but her crimes are not bred out of malice for established legal principles. Her reason for violating the law is to obtain a substance that will prevent her from experiencing severe physical distress. Initially she made a conscious decision to use drugs, but she is now in the grips of a hellish addiction. A product of her environment, Heidi is punished for suffering a fate not of her own choosing. She came from an abusive home and so do 59 percent of the Canadian females who abuse drugs (Hung 23). Her drug use began when her boyfriend convinced her to try heroin at the age of fifteen. According to the 1995 Canadian Profile of the use of Alcohol, Tobacco and other Drugs, most Canadians with drug related problems are between the ages of fifteen to nineteen (161). Most of these drug addicts are abused kids crying out for help. If they are prudent enough to become addicted to tobacco or alcohol, help is available without recrimination. However, if the habitué is for illegal narcotics, the penal system most often provides the cure for their illness. This cure is one of fear, a fear that drives the addict deeper into the underworld of the drug culture and further from mainstream society’s acceptance. The isolated junkie has limited chances for recovery.

North America’s punitive solution to the drug crisis has had many negative repercussions. Drug related crime is increasing across all socio-economic strata despite increased police enforcement powers, and large-scale drug traffickers grow rich off artificially high black market prices that the drug war has created. Enforcement discriminates against the poor and minorities, and organized crime continues to profit both locally and abroad. Deadly blood-borne diseases are reaching epidemic proportions in poorer neighbourhoods as infected needles are shared between intravenous drug users in unhygienic conditions. These addicts are not receiving proper health care, so disease affects both them and those around them. Government propaganda portrays illicit drugs as morally wrong and physically destructive while the media encourages alcohol and cigarette consumption with glamorous ad campaigns. The Drug War is not solving the problem, it is only compounding it, and as long as North America continues to treat this as a war, with sick addicts as the enemy, the prognosis for recovery is dim.

Given such failures, it would seem reasonable to look for other alternatives if the current course of action is proving to be ineffective. The reduction of drug related crime is touted as one of the expected benefits of harsher drug legislation; however, the opposite is true. Drug offences in Canada have “increased rapidly from 8000 in the late 1970’s to 17000 in the 1990’s” according to a study done by the Research and Statistics Division: Department of Justice of Canada, February 2000. Similarly, this approach has not been a successful crime deterrent in the United States. In the United States, 60 percent of federal prisoners are incarcerated for drug related offences (The Nature of Things). The iron hand of increasingly stringent legislation has done little to discourage drug crimes on a local scale or on an international one. The United Nations has spent billions of dollars in an effort to stem the flow of illicit drugs from source countries such as Columbia. The following table from the United Nations website show how successful this has been.

Table 1
Illicit Crop Cultivation in Colombia 1990-1999 (hectares)

Coca
122,500 1999
79,500 1998
79,500 1997
67,200 1996
50,900 1995
44,700 1994
39,700 1993
37,100 1992
37,500 1991
40,100 1990

This table shows that the cultivation of illicit crops has increased as the drug war drags on. Demand is high and the profits staggering. Eva Bertram points out in Drug War Politics: The Price of Denial, that one hundred dollars worth of coca leaves in Columbia can sell for over a quarter of a million dollars once processed and brought to the United States. The cost of processing the coca into cocaine is cheap and the methods simple. All the war on drugs has done is increased the black market value of illicit drugs. For this reason, it does seem reasonable that an industry with such a large tax-free profit margin would be tempting to many, especially those in poorer countries. The poor in South America have suffered greatly in this war, where drug cartels control the economy and in North America, where drug gangs control the inner city neighbourhood. The Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada’s latest report on organized crime shows that the drug trade is still very lucrative for Outlaw Motorcycle, Asian, and Eastern European gangs, which have started to work together and have grown in numbers over the years. Disturbingly, ties between gang drug activity and child prostitution have been found, with most child prostitutes being addicted to the illicit drugs that the gangs provide.

These are not the only children that are victimized by the drug war. Eva Bertram draws attention to the child that is not yet born, whose mother has a drug addiction, is often deprived of prenatal care because the mother fears arrest under current laws (169). Hospital staff is encouraged under current Canadian and American policy, and actually required in certain American states, to report on pregnant women who test positive for illicit substances (The War On Drugs: 1998). This prevents many women from seeking help with either their drug addiction or pregnancy. North America’s punitive approach is discouraging for many addicts who need help due to their fear of being arrested. This is leading to a health crisis as many poor drug users spread disease in major urban centres through needle sharing and prostitution. The War on Drugs 111 by James A. Inciardi describes places known as “shooting galleries” where addicts go to inject their drugs. These places normally have very poor hygienic conditions and rent out used syringes, many of which are visibly encrusted with blood. The heroin user frequents these places either because they are homeless or they fear being caught travelling with heroin in their possession (214-215). Subsequently, harm reduction has been proposed in both Canada and the United States but this contradicts standing legislation and has yet to acquire widespread approval. Notwithstanding, the use of methadone has gained acceptance in many Canadian and American cities. An example being Vancouver, B.C., which has the highest intravenous drug using population in North America. According to Aids Vancouver, 30 percent of the city’s I.V. drug users are HIV positive and another 88 percent have hepatitis C (Safe Injection Facilities: Proposal for a Vancouver Pilot Project 12). Needle exchange programs have been met with resistance, however, as policymakers feel that they would be encouraging drug use by implementing such programs. In New York City, where needle exchange of any kind is illegal, there is a 60 percent rate of HIV infection among intravenous drug users (The Nature of Things). On the other hand, James A. Inciardi points out that when Hawaii adopted needle exchange programs in 1990, all incidences of HIV infection in the intravenous drug users dropped to zero in 1996 and has not increased to date (236). Punishing the drug dependent does not solve the problem of drug use; it only decreases their chances of receiving help and contributes to the spread of disease in the poorest communities. Drug addicts have health problems aside from disease transmission. According to Dr.Thorstensen, who runs a clinic for addicts at the Portland Hotel in Vancouver, many addicts have scarring from ulceration of the skin, which occurs when the heroin injected has been combined with other substances, usually antihistamines. All that is required to prevent this is proper hygiene (The Nature of Things). The tragic irony in this is how easy it would be to prevent these people from experiencing such anguish. Clean drugs, clean needles, and a place to wash themselves, the solutions are not difficult to implement, if it were not for the stigma. It seems cruel that these people suffer so greatly simply because they have a socially unacceptable illness. Why is it unacceptable? Apparently, it is objectionable because illegal drugs are more hazardous to the health and therefore worse from a moral standpoint as well.

However, it is confusing how licit and illicit drugs are defined and the reasoning behind what makes one more dangerous than another. The Clinical Textbook of Addictive Disorders by Richard J. Frances reports physical effects of illegal heroin to be the same as that of legal opium based pain medications like percodan (152). From where do legal drugs elicit their virtue? It is common knowledge that tobacco is deadly and highly addictive, yet it can be purchased at any corner store. The 1999 Canadian Profile attributes one in every six deaths in Canada to smoking (112). There has yet to be recorded a statistic for a death due to marijuana use, and Drugs Crime and the Justice System put out by the U.S.Department of Justice, has sixty seven percent of American illicit drug users using marijuana exclusively. In Canada, two thirds of drug related offences involve cannabis as well (The Nature of Things). As for deaths attributed to the more dangerous narcotics, they make up just over one percent of those attributed to tobacco. Alcohol is another legal drug that is toxic to the human body. According to The Clinical Textbook of Addictive Disorders, “40% of heavy drinkers acquire evidence of alcoholic hepatitis” (107) this is a disease that can lead to cirrhosis of the liver, which is often fatal. Canadian Profile lists fifty-six percent of deaths in Canada due to alcohol related causes (85). The morality issue in differentiating between all of these drugs is nonsensical. Alcohol and tobacco, both industries with tremendous financial and political power, are treated differently than illicit drugs and are more socially accepted for this reason. An example of this acceptance can be seen in the media, where both alcohol and tobacco advertise freely. The distinction that this war has drawn between illicit “immoral” drugs and legal “moral” drugs is misleading and hypocritical.

For these reasons, the drug war must stop creating distress on economy and health, and start becoming logical and reducing harm. Attempts to banish drug use by means of legislation have proved to be unsuccessful and more North Americans are doing drugs now than before the war started. While the opportunists grow rich off inflated drug prices, poor addicts and the communities in which they live suffer pointlessly from preventable illnesses and the denigration of their neighbourhoods. The perceived sin of using specific drugs cannot compare to the blatant callousness of continuing this destructive and futile war.

Article Source: http://journal.ilovephilosophy.com

Please Rate this Article

 

# of Ratings = 3 | Rating = 4.3/5

Click the XML Icon Above to Receive Stories Articles Via RSS!
Additional Articles From - Home | Literature | Stories
Sign Up as an Author.
Submit Articles
Member Login
Top Authors
Most Popular Articles
Submission Guidelines
Ezine Notifications
Article RSS Feeds
New Stuff
Forum
Link to Us
Contact Us

Powered by Article Dashboard