War%20on%20Drugs%20-%20Background

1
War on Drugs - Background

• Drug Wars both cause and encompass all forms of
  deviance street crime, addicts, prostitutes to
  organized crime, political and organizational
  corruption, government assassination plots and
  corporate profiteering.
• Drug Wars designers take advantage of racism and
  xenophobia, frame them in Christian morality, and
  employ them for personal and political profit.
• Drug laws can turn a law-abiding person into a
  criminal with the stroke of a pen.
• The Drug War is the direct cause of the
  quadrupling of the US prison population and has
  led to a mass imprisonment society.
• What Drug Wars rarely do is prevent or reduce
  drug addiction or use.

2
War on Drugs

• Punishment for non-prescribed drug use is not
  correlated with health risk.
• Consider alcohol causes numerous health and
  social problems but it was seen that Prohibition
  was a disaster (although extreme consumption was
  reduced as a result, although a powerful
  education program might have been also
  effective). Also now legal but controlled,
  although there are some dry counties. It is not
  illegal to be an alcoholic, although it can have
  serious consequences.
• Consider tobacco about 400,000/yr die in the US
  from diseases caused or exacerbated by tobacco.
  It is not illegal but it is controlled. Why do
  people smoke? What would happen if it were
  suddenly made illegal?
• Consider marijuana no fatalities or
  illness-related deaths. May aggravate (or
  relieve) depression, reduce motivation and drive.
  Appears to cause a higher risk of
  throat/esophageal cancer.

3
War on Drugs

• Substances for altering ones state of
  consciousness are found in all cultures.
• Even in the animal kingdom.
• Even children.
• These substances include natural substances such
  as tobacco, chocolate, coffee, marijuana, coca,
  opium, certain kinds of mushrooms, peyote, and
  many others found in local ecologies.
• Dont forget alcohol.
• Development of more powerful and sophisticated
  substances flow from military need as well as
  pharmacological research.
• Hypothesis drug use can become a drug problem
  when substance migrates to a new culture with
  no cultural role.

4
War on Drugs

• Our goal To explain the existence, process and
  outcomes of Drug Wars, both in the US and
  internationally.
• Well use primarily differential association
  (learning theory), functionalism (extant and
  latent), social control and conflict theory
  (symbolic crusades), and social psychology.
• In addition, well explore the impact of the
  development of the medical profession, government
  regulatory agencies (FDA), migration impacts,
  labor conditions and the economy, political power
  struggles. and US Foreign policy.

5
War on Drugs

• Basic premises
• One purposes of identifying a social problem is
  to deflect criticism/attention away from
  structural problems in the distribution of
  economic and political power.
• US society constructed a drug use mentality for
  both legal and illegal substances.
• Value contested whats wrong with getting
  high? versus getting high is immoral.
• All use is abuse versus recreational use can
  be responsible.
• Drug war laws came into being to serve political
  and career purposes, then became part of the way
  its done even in the face of expert opinion and
  empirical evidence to the contrary.

6
War on Drugs

• Migration and Drug Wars
• Drug problems are associated with problematic
  populations that need to be controlled
  immigrants, blacks, Mexicans, other
  Spanish-speaking cultures, Chinese.
• Drug wars are implemented when there are no other
  enemies (end of wars, times of economic
  stability, but also useful in times of economic
  destabilization, too).
• Migration directly causes a mixing (and hence,
  confrontation) of cultures, class structure, etc.
• Migration also supplies labor, may depress wages
  and displace native workers, or at least, be
  perceived as such, and therefore a desire to lash
  out at immigrants becomes more popular.

7
War on Drugs

• Social psychology of drug use.
• Compare prescribed and over-the-counter messages
  to illicit substance message.
• If you dont feel good, or optimal, take a pill.
  
• So illicit use is, as weve seen elsewhere in
  differential association and also in anomie,
  utilizing societys techniques but not in
  dominant normative fashion.
• Reinforced continuously by advertising.
• Messages about what illegal substances do, about
  users of illegal substances then inform users
  about their roles.
• Actual and perceived drug effects from
  experience, lore, friends, books, tv, movies
• Culture (learned from above)
• Drug War proponents often circulate false
  messages as scare tactics.

8
War on Drugs

• Labor, the Economy and Political Landscape
• With 80s, as the nature of the economy changed
  (loss of manufacturing, flow to service) and jobs
  left cities, working class families were left
  economically stranded. With the arrival of the
  Reagan administration, there was a need to
  deflect attention away from the massive
  redistribution of wealth undertaken in the Reagan
  era, the erosion of public services, and the
  official message of states rights which really
  meant loss of federal revenue for states.
• The results were
• Nancy Reagans Just Say No campaign, the rise of
  D.A.R.E and other anti-drug programs which are
  actually associated with an increase in drug use.
• The emphasis on the deserving achieving people
  versus the undeserving poor parasites.
• Renewed vilification of the Black urban
  communities.
• Dramatic increase in federal, state and local
  resources for policing and imprisoning of drug
  users.
• The beginning of the mass imprisonment era

9
Domestic WOD

• How Policy Could be Handled
• Clear, accurate information about the substances
  effects both positive and negative.
• Understanding of motivations to take
  mind-altering substances set and setting
  self-destructive reasons versus self-explorative
  ritual social settings.
• Internal and external social control focused on
  public health.

10
Domestic WOD

• Drug Law Addiction
• Both drugs and drug laws make people feel good
• Both drugs and drug laws can be abused.
• Both drugs and drug laws have externalities (side
  effects)
• Policy History
• Drug use and abuse was not really recognized as a
  social issue until after the Civil War
• Morphine
• Cocaine
• But to understand domestic drug policy, you need
  to incorporate some aspects of international
  policy.
• Opium on two fronts US (post-civil war
  experience) and British-Chinese-US trade in the
  Far East and Southeast Pacific. The US saw
  British-run and Chinese crime-supported opium
  traffic as an obstacle to commercial and military
  ties in the Far East and pushes the first
  international policy against drug use and
  trafficking. The State Policy attitude becomes
  part of domestic policy, too.

11
Domestic WOD

• Beginning of US Policy
• Pure Food and Drug Act, 1906 correct labeling
  of patent medicines.
• Foster Bill to restrict non-medical use of
  opium, cocaine, marijuana and chloral hydrate
  (depressant), engineered by Dr. Wright, whose
  anti-black and anti-Chinese attitudes resonated
  to the recently southern democrat congress.
• Drug Use became associated with unamerican and
  unpatriotic behavior.
• Foster Bill became the Harrison Act, signed into
  law in 1915, whose purpose was to establish
  government regulation of substances.
• The attitudes behind these acts also motivated
  the Prohibition, which was ratified in 1919,
  became law in 1920, repealed in 1933.
• Colonel Levi Nutt created precedent for
  prosecuting addicts and imprisoning them, despite
  protests from physicians and other groups. But
  then Nutt was ousted due to improprieties.

12
Domestic WOD

• The Harry Anslinger Effect Became commissioner
  of FBN (federal bureau of narcotics). A
  bureaucrat, cultivated political connections,
  drew support from pharmaceutical lobby, utilized
  conservative newspapers.
• When threatened with efforts to reorganize (and
  end his position) he sought out reasons to keep
  his post in existence.
• Popularized MJ as associated with blacks in New
  Orleans, and Mexicans in the southwest,
  racializing it.
• Made erroneous claims about effects
• Added the danger of the nations children
• Inflated statistics, or made them up, about its
  ubiquity.
• Aided by the sensationalist Hearst papers, he
  became aware of the need for an anti-marijuana
  statue..
• Made leaps of logic regarding causal effects
• Ridiculed experts pointing out that none of these
  claims were true.
• And so, Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 came into
  being, and so did a new class of criminals.
• In 1950s, Anslinger then associated drug use with
  communism, and the link of MJ to harder drugs.
• Thus, get tougher on drug users Boggs Act.
• When that was protested by professional
  organizations, the Daniel Commission then
  recommended more control (i.e., punishment
  instead of treatment), hence the Narcotic Control
  Act of 1956.

13
Domestic WOD

• The Nixon Years Connected drug use with
  anti-government (read anti-war and anti-Nixon)
  behavior.
• Justified breaking of law for surveillance and
  other purposes.
• Militarized war on drugs more so than previously.
  See pg 23 of Walker.
• Carter wanted to decriminalize.
• Reagan just said no to criminalization, and
  signed a series of increasingly severe laws
  against users and sellers.
• Also, co-opted opposition so that no one could be
  politically safe and be opposed to drug laws.
• Greatly emphasized control over education
  Omnibus Antidrug Act of 1986. zero-tolerance
  policies.
• By politicizing drug users again, he was able to
  stigmatize (discredit) political opposition.
• Bush I years continued the drug war, expanding
  it, imprisoning more and more,
• Drug Czar Bennett continued use of misleading
  facts and falsehoods of drug use and users for
  his own political purposes.
• During Clinton years, imprisonment continued,
  with some saying it is credited with the lower
  unemployment rates, but those were also boom
  years. Names Army General Barry McCaffrey as
  drug czar. Pardons a number of non-violent drug
  users in prison.
• Bush II more of the same.

14
Domestic WOD

• LSD as an example
• Developed by Sandoz initially as a military tool,
  and then with ideas for a new area of
  psychotherapeutic drugs by Albert Hoffman.
• Military wanted it as a weapon or alternately,
  truth serum.
• Medical establishment saw substances as medicine.
  
• CIA elite deviance (anomie) in justifying any
  behavior (cold war mentality). Differential
  association of cloakdagger methodology applied
  to this context.
• Enter the psychedelic pioneers therapeutic
  value and spiritual exploration
• Never saw bummers initially
• Needed new language since pathology couldnt
  carry the concepts
• Non-drug factors play an important role in LSDs
  effect. set and setting
• Used very successfully in treatment of a number
  of emotional conditions.

15
Domestic WOD

• Conflicts
• Different intentions behind use of drug between
  military/medical and pioneers.
• Different schools of thought (paradigm shift)
  regarding outcomes.
• Medical model couldnt handle this treatment,
  fell outside its framework of understanding.
• FDA couldnt properly regulate its use.
• Fell on heels of 1950s conformism, cold war
  mentalities
• It couldnt be used by corporate America,
  although to some extent they tried.

16
Domestic WOD

• Drug-testing entrepreneurs
• Robert DuPont Jr headed NIDA somewhat
  sporadically from 1971 to 1978 but through the
  Reagan administration was able to make his EMIT
  test flourish.
• Robert Willette former NIDA, head of Clinical
  Research. Claimed 100 accuracy, left to run
  diagnostics lab.
• Peter Bensinger former DEA director. Left to
  form Partnership for a Drug-Free America. And to
  counsel corporations on drug-testing.
• Robert Angarola former counsel to ODAP left to
  serve as counsel to corporations regarding
  drug-testing lawsuits from disgruntled employees

17
Domestic WOD

• Drug-testing (in-)Accuracy
• The earlier drug-testing methodologies were
  notoriously inaccurate. A poppy seed bagel would
  trigger a positive test for opium.
• Alcoholism was much harder to catch.
• Whereas testing for substances had been either a
  tool for medicine, it became a tool for catching
  and firing employees.
• Could be misused (and sometimes was) for other
  detections (e.g., pregnancy, prescribed
  medications that would trigger health insurers
  concerns for high-risk customers).
• Marketed as being good for employees well-being
  for treatment facilitation.
• Steal This Urine Test by Abbie Hoffman
  bladder cops
• Drug testing is used widely for anyone in
  transportation, as well as those in companies
  with military contracts, and of course, athletes.
  
• No clearly established connection between
  productivity and recreational drug use.
• Consequences loss of pay, termination,
  stigmatization, loss of benefits including
  pension and insurance, denial of disability
  insurance, emotional distress, possible criminal
  charges.