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Page 8 News Street Roots • Aug. 21-27, 2015 Street Roots • Aug. 21-27, 2015 News Page 9 “THE BIGGEST MORAL ISSUE ABOUT THE WAR ON DRUGS' BY EMILY GREEN STAFF WRITER fter spending a hundred years and a trillion dollars fighting the war on drugs, there’s one thing we know for certain: Prohibition isn’t working. In his captivating new book, “Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs,” London-based journalist Johann Hari argues that the very problems the war on drugs aims to eradicate — cartels, gangs, drug-related violence and addiction — are only exacerbated by drug prohibition. Inspired by addicts in his personal life, Hari set out to answer what he says are some very basic questions about the drug war and addiction. His three-year journey took him across 30,000 miles and into 12 countries. Critics.are calling the resulting book an entertaining and powerfully compelling argument for drug policy reform. A Em ily G reen: Can you explain how the War on Drugs started what you refer to in your book as the war for drugs? Jo h a n n H ari: If you and me decided after this interview that we wanted to go and steal a bottle of vodka and went to the local liquor store and they caught us, that liquor store would call the police. That liquor store doesn’t need to be violent or intimidating; they have the power and the force of the law backing them up. If you or I decided we wanted to steal some cocaine and your local seller of that substance caught us, obviously they can’t call the police. The police would arrest them, so they have to be violent and intimidating toward us. They would have to attack us to protect their property rights. Now, obviously, if you’re a drug dealer, you don’t want to be having a fight every day, so what you have to do is establish a reputation for being so terrifying that no one will dare to take you on. Milton Friedman calculated there are 10,000 additional murders every year in the United States as the result of this dynamic. If you want to understand what happens to that violence after the drug war ends, ask yourself, “Where are the violent alcohol dealers today?” Does the head of Smirnoff go and shoot the head of Heineken in the face? Of course not, but under alcohol prohibition, that’s exactly what happened. We went from having it controlled by criminals and in the illegal market to having it controlled by licensed and regulated sellers in the current market, and the violence went away. This is the biggest moral issue about the war on drugs. One hundred and sixty thousand people have been killed or disappeared in Mexico over the past eight years as the result of this dynamic. E.G.: From your interviews with members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, who are all either current or former law enforcement officials, what did you fin d to be the prevailing reason they came to the conclusion that the way we’re fighting drugs right now is not the right way? J.H.: One of the people I most admire is this cop in Maryland called Leigh Maddox. Her best friend, Lisa, was murdered by what Leigh believed was a drug gang. So she signed up to destroy the drug gangs. She went after everyone she could. She would bust people just for smoking a single joint. She was like the drug war dream girl. And yet Leigh started to notice a couple of things. One is that they only ever w en t and arrested African Americans. One of her colleagues, Matthew Fogg, went to his boss and — I’m paraphrasing — he said, “Hey boss, how come we only ever go to black neighborhoods to do'drug busts? I’m pretty sure white people use drugs as well.” And his boss said something like, “Well of course they do, but white people get lawyers, and white people know journalists and judges, and they .make a fuss, so we’ll go for the low-hanging fru it” Leigh isn’t a racist, so she was disturbed by that, to say the least. Also Leigh noticed if you’re a cop and you arrest a pedophile, the next week there will be less children being abused in your neighborhood. If you arrest a rapist the next week the rate of rape will go down. If you arrest a drug dealer, Leigh noticed two things: Firstly, there’s no fall in drug dealing, but even more than that, she noticed there is actually an increase in violence — the murder rate would go up. Drug dealers establish a patch by violence, and they control it through violence, right? If you come along and knock out that dealer, what you do is you (start) a war for control of that patch in which there’s going to be a lot of violence. That doesn’t mean that we should leave drug dealers to do what they want to do. What we should do is bankrupt them. When drugs are restored to the legal market, where they used to be in the United States until they were banned a century ago, you bankrupt the criminal gangs. E.G.: How is the war on drugs affecting drug addicts? J.H.: It turns out that addiction is not what we’ve been told it is. We think that if you and support clinics, where if you were an addict, you could go to the clinic and you’re given your heroin E.G.: What are some o f the things we’ve legally. You have to use it in the clinic. learned from alcohol prohibition that support the I went to this clinic in Geneva. The addicts argument for legalizing drugs? don’t look anything like any addicts you’ve ever seen in the United States. Most of them J.H.: Look at the murder rate in the United have jobs, they don’t look sick in any way; States in the 20th century. It massively goes they don’t have any wounds or abscesses. up when alcohol prohibition is A lot of the things we introduced, and it massively falls associate with heroin when alcohol is legalized again, and addiction are in fact the it massively rises again with the big result of the prohibition intensification of drug prohibition in of heroin addiction. For E.G.: What are some examples of the 1970s. example, abscesses and approaches to drug use that have When you ban a drug, whether it’s wounds — they don’t proven to be more effective than alcohol, marijuana or cocaine, happen when you give criminalization? obviously you can’t do any health people heroin legally; and safety inspections on criminals. those are just the result J.H.: In 2000, Portugal had one One of the results is the product of the impurities that are of the worst drug problems in the becomes radically more dangerous. put in it by drug dealers. developed world. They arrested and “Chasing the Alcohol poisoning was absolutely Do you know how imprisoned more people, and every " I would say Scream: The First endemic during alcohol prohibition. many deaths from year the problem got worse. to anyone and Last Days of For example, on one occasion, 500 overdose they’ve had in They decided to set up a panel of reading this, people died of alcohol poisoning in these heroin clinics in scientists and doctors to look at the the War on who thinks Wichita, Kan. Switzerland since they best evidence, and they agreed in Drugs” the drag war A significant number of the drug- began this experiment 10 by Johann Hari advance they would do whatever Is a catas related deaths in the United States years ago? Not a single these scientists and doctors are the result > particularly drugs one. recoriimended. So they went away trophe ta t like Ecstasy — (of) the contamination The most striking and looked at all the evidence, thinks, What thing is, when you’re a heroin addict in the drug because of prohibition. And clearly which included Rat Park, and they c a u l do?' Yon and you go to these clinics, you can those'deaths cease when you have a legal and came back and they said: can't think of stay on that heroin program for regulated product, and we know that from all “Decriminalize all drugs from your whole life if you want to, and the evidence in places that have legalized. cannabis to crack — but take all the a more pow At the moment, we don’t have a choice erless person you set your own dose. But the vast money we used to spend on arresting and imprisoning and in our culture majority of addicts chose, over time, about whether drugs exist; we have a choice between w hether they’re controlled by violent, shaming addicts and punishing than a home to reduce their dose and eventually murderous, criminal cartels and gangs, who stop. users, and spend it instead on less street ad pay no taxes and who sell to children and Because as the chaos of being a turning their lives around.” dict, and be cause all sorts of chaos and sell us shitty, street user ends — the constant They did do some residential cause of what scramble to get your drug. Because contaminated products, or they could be rehab and psychological support, you’re given a safe, legal controlled by doctors and pharmacists who but the biggest things they did had Bnd started, pay a large amount of tax, sell the cleanest prescription, the women stop nothing to do with th a t They set up thousands of prostituting themselves, the men possible product, don’t carry out any acts of a huge program of job creation for people who stop committing property crime, violence or aggression. addicts. The goal was to make sure would have they start to get back to a normal that every addict in Portugal had died lived." E.G.: P omf book makes a solid argument for life, and as they become more something to get out of bed for in legalizing drugs such as marijuana, heroin and the morning, and what they found is JOHANN HARI connected to the society, they don’t cocaine. B ut when it comes to drugs such as need their connection to their drug that as they got back into meth and crack, I felt like the solutions weren’t meaningful work and had a bit of as much. quite as obvious. Since writing this book, have control over their lives, they were you developed your thoughts on the question of E.G.: And what would you say to people who much more likely to rebuild connections. what to do with meth and crack any further? say they don’t want their tax dollars going to It’s now been 15 years since this supply addicts with drugs? experiment began, and the results are in. J.H.: Fifteen percent of the people who use Injecting drug use is down in Portugal by 50 meth become meth addicts, according to the J.H.: When you prescribe heroin to people percent. Deaths from overdose are massively research by Carl Hart at Columbia University. down, HIV transmission among drug addicts is who have very serious addiction problems, You have to ask yourself, what’s happening the crime rate massively falls. (In massively down, street crime is massively Switzerland), it was a 93 percent fall in with that 15 percent that become addicted? down, and one of the ways you know this has It’s not that they use the drug more; it’s pain, burglary. That frees up all those police hours worked so well is that virtually nobody in isolation and disconnection. and all that time. It’s expensive to deal with Portugal wants to go back. There are six big It’s an important question about what property crime. If your only concern is your political parties; none of them want to reverse regulatory structure we can put in place for tax dollars, this saves loads of money. this policy. meth and crack. No one believes, and I I also would say, because addicts are human certainly don’t, that they should be legal the beings and they need our love and E.G.: In your book you talk about some compassion. And someone who looks at way that marijuana or alcohol are legal. No clinics where doctors are prescribing heroin to heroin addicts and thinks, “Well I wouldn’t do one thinks there should be a crack aisle at heroin addicts. Can you explain how this CVS. That would be grotesque. that; what a fool,” to me that’s a bit like practice actually helps drug addicts? As recently as the 1950s, housewives used looking at someone who’s had their legs cut to be prescribed meth as a diet aid. Now I’m off because they were in a terrible car crash, J.H.: Switzerland’s had a huge heroin and saying, “Well, what an idiot, I would never not in favor of going back to that system, but problem, and they tried American-style if you think that meth is this drug that have my legs cut off.” Well no, you weren’t in crackdowns, and the problem just got worse a car crash. Addicts have been in car crashes and worse. Bear in mind, this is a very See DRUG WAR, page 10 of the soul, and they need our love and conservative-country; they decided to start severely neglected to being molested to losing a parent. What it found is that for every one of these terrible things that happens to you when you are a child, you are two to four times more likely to grow up to be an injecting drug user. And if six of those things happen to you as a kid, you are 4,600 percent more likely to grow up to be an adult injecting drug user than someone who had none of those traumatic experiences. Violence is inevitable when the drug market is controlled by criminals rather than regulators, author Johann H ari argues in 'Chasing the Scream' PHO TO BY M A R G A R ITO PEREZ/REUTERS Chalk outlines were drawn for a 2011 protest against the war on drug cartels in Cuernavaca, Mexico, to represent people killed. In “Chasing the Scream,*. Johann Hari tells the stories o f a woman who paid with her life for speaking out against cartels and a man who turned himself in after years o f working as a cartel hit man. In the past eight years, 160,000 have been killed or have disappeared in Mexico as a result drug war, Hari says. me and the next 20 people that walked past your office all used heroin together for 20 days, on day 21, we’d all be heroin addicts because there are chemical hooks in heroin that our bodies would start to physically need, and at the end we’d have this ravenous craving, and that’s what addiction is. If I stepped out of thisinterview now and I get hit by a truck and I break a hip, I’ll be taken to hospital (in the U.K.) and I’ll be given loads of a drug called diamorphine, a medical term for heroin. It’s much stronger than the heroin you get from a drug dealer on the street because what the dealer sells is very heavily contaminated. You’ll be given that heroin in hospital for quite a long time, and if what we think about addiction is right, what should happen? Some of those people, at least, should become addicts, exposed to all the same chemical hooks as your addicts on the street. This has been studied very closely, and it doesn’t happen. Your grandmother was not turned into a junkie by her hip replacement operation. I only really began to understand it when I went to Vancouver (B.C.) and interviewed Bruce Alexander, a professor of psychology. He explained the theory of addiction we have in our heads comes, in part, from a series of experiments that were done earlier in the 20th century. You get a rat, and you put it in a cage, and you give it two water bottles. One is just water, and the other is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself. So there you go — there’s our theory of addiction. But in the ’70s, Professor Alexander comes along and he says, “Well wait a minute, we’re putting these rats in an empty cage. They’ve got nothing to do except use these drugs!” So he built a cage that he called “Rat Park,” which is basically heaven for rats. It’s got cheese, colored balls, tunnels. It’s got loads of friends, (the rats) can have loads of sex, and it’s got both the water bottles: the normal water and the drugged water. But this is the fascinating thing: In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water. They almost never use it. None of them ever use it compulsively. None of them ever overdose. There’s loads of human examples I talk about in the book, but I think the core insight from this is that we’ve been thinking about addiction in the wrong way. Human beings have an innate need to bond and connect, and when we’re happy and healthy, we’ll bond and connect with each other, but if we can’t do that because we’re isolated or traumatized or beaten down by life, we’ll bond and connect with something that gives us a sense of relief. That might be heroin; that might be alcohol; that might be gambling; that might be pornography. The war on drugs is based on the idea that the way that you stop people from becoming addicted is you take addicts and you punish them and you make them suffer in order to make them stop. Suddenly, when you understand that pain and suffering are the causes of addiction, the idea of imposing more pain ceases to make sense. A doctor called Gabor Maté said to me, “If you want to design a system that would make addiction worse, you design the war on drugs.” E.G.: Wfozf are some of the ingredients for making a drug addict in the first place? J.H.: The large element is isolation, pain and trauma. Totally legally, I could be drinking vodka now — you could be drinking vodka now. You and I probably have enough money in the bank that we could both drink vodka for the next month. You’re not going to do that, and I’m not going to do that because we want to be present in our lives. We’ve got jobs we love; we’ve got people we love; we’ve got books we want to read; we’ve got TV shows we want to watch. The core of addiction is about not being able to bear to be present in your life. Now there’s lots of different things that can make your life so painful that you can’t bear to be present One example where we have very strong evidence that it has a huge causal relationship with drug addiction is childhood trauma. “The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study” looks at a whole range of terrible things that can happen to a kid, from being
