Coming
in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
August 28, 2003
Gilad Atzmon
The
Most Common Mistakes of Israelis
David Vest
Moore's
Monument: Cement Shoes for the Constitution
David Lindorff
Shooting Ali in the Back: Why the Pacification is Doomed
Chris Floyd
Cheap Thrills: Bush Lies to Push His War
Wayne Madsen
Restoring the Good, Old Term "Bum"
Elaine Cassel
Not Clueless in Chicago
Stan Goff
Nukes in the Dark
Tariq Ali
Occupied
Iraq Will Never Know Peace
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Behold, My Package
Website of the Day
Palestinian
Artists
Recent
Stories
August 27, 2003
Bruce Jackson
Little
Deaths: Hiding the Body Count in Iraq
John Feffer
Nuances and North Korea: Six Countries in Search of a Solution
Dave Riley
an Interview with Tariq Ali on the Iraq War
Lacey Phillabaum
Bush's Holy War in the Forests
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Website of the Day
The Dean Deception
August 26, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing the Dead
David Lindorff
The
Great Oil Gouge: Burning Up that Tax Rebate
Sarmad S. Ali
Baghdad is Deadlier Than Ever: the View of an Iraqi Coroner
Christopher Brauchli
Bush Administration Equates Medical Pot Smokers with Segregationists
Juliana Fredman
Collective Punishment on the West Bank: Dialysis, Checkpoints
and a Palestinian Madonna
Larry Siems
Ghosts of Regime Changes Past in Guatemala
Elaine Cassel
Onward, Ashcroft Soldiers!
Saul Landau
Bush:
a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action Figure?
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
August 20, 2003
Robert Fisk
Now No
One Is Safe in Iraq
Caoimhe Butterly
Life and Death on the Frontlines of Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
UN Bombing: Act of Terrorism or Guerrilla War?
Michael Egan
Revisiting the Paranoid Style in the Dark
Ramzi Kysia
Peace
is not an Abstract Idea
Steven Higgs
NPR and the NAFTA Highway
John L. Hess
A Downside Day
Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Gridlock at Path 15: the California Blackouts were the "Wake
Up Call"
Website of the Day
Ashcroft's Patriotic Hype
August 19, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Blackouts Happen
Gary Leupp
"Our Patch": Australia v. the Evil Doers of the South
Pacific
Sean Donahue
Uribe's Cruel Model: Colombia Moves Toward Totalitarianism
Matt Martin
Bush's Credibility Problem on Missile Defense
Juliana Fredman
Recipe for the Destruction of a Hudna
John Ross
Fox Government's Attack on Mexican Basques
Sasan Fayazmanesh
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say
Website of the Day
Tom Delay's Dual Loyalities
August 18, 2003
Uri Avnery
Hero in War and Peace
Stan Goff
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure
Cathy Breen
Baghdad on the Hudson
Michael Kimaid
Fight the Power (Companies)!
Jason Leopold
The California Rip-Off Revisited: Arnold, Milken and Ken Lay
Matt Siegfried
The Bush Administration in Context
Elaine Cassel
At Last, A Judge Who Acts Like a Judge
Alexander Cockburn
Judy Miller's War
Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Blackout Pete Wilson
Website of the Day
Fire Griles!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
Hot Stories
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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August
29, 2003
Saying Yes to Drugs!
a
Review of Jacob Sullum's Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use
By RICHARD GLEN BOIRE
It's rare that I read books about drug policy.
After just a little exposure to the genre, one finds, over and
over again, the same dates, the same key people, the same arguments
from the government and the same arguments from the policy reform
camp. There is the grand narrative told by the government ("drugs
are bad"), and there is the counter-narrative told by the
reformers ("drug prohibition is worse"). It sometimes
reminds me of how in the late 1970s I'd sometimes adjust our
family's Pong game so that the paddles would continually reflect
the pong ball back and forth, leave for school and return to
find the ball had remained in motional equipoise.
Yet when I heard that Jacob Sullum was
working on a book about drugs and drug policy, my expectations
for something new were lifted. As a senior editor for Reason Magazine, a publication
devoted to intelligent discussions over how to best allocate
power between the government and the individual, Sullum had penned
a number of fairly unorthodox essays about drugs. I was looking
forward to getting more of his thoughts on a topic that while
always in motion, rarely seems to advance.
Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use is the fruit of Sullum's thinking about drugs
and drug policy. Compared to most books in this genre, Saying
Yes is refreshing and insightful, and could well produce some
of the traction needed to advance beyond the policy of Just Say
No-an infantile policy equivalent to "Don't Put that in
Your Mouth."
Saying Yes dismantles much of the exaggeration
concerning illegal drugs, leading the reader to conclude that
this or that illegal drug isn't nearly as harmful as the government
has led us to believe.
Sullum's book is anchored in a particular
level of discourse about drugs-the fact-based, medical, scientific,
analytical, reporter level. Sullum's arguments tend to conclude
at the  point where he has taken the government's
thumb off the harm scale. While he sometimes takes the government
to task for trying to rig the scale, he seldom explores the government's
fundamental motivations for playing unfairly in the first place.
Rarely does Sullum address drugs or drug
policy from a deeper philosophical or principled perspective.
This is a book about drugs that is grounded in rationality. While
this is the book's strength, it is also its weakness. Empiricism
will only get you so far when the landscape has been constructed
by the irrational forces, deep-seated fears, religion, power,
and money.
An ever-present theme in Sullum's book
is what he calls "voodoo pharmacology" the idea, largely
promoted by the government, that certain drugs have the power
to hijack a person and enslave him or her in an inescapable prison
of craving and compulsion. Sullum's aim is to show that this
is a myth, that only a very small percentage of illegal drug
users become addicts, while the vast majority of people who use
illegal drugs live normal, productive, loving lives.
Sullum's book is filled with valuable
insights derived from deconstructing government statistics about
drugs and drug use. He shows how even the most vilified drugs
such as heroin and crack cocaine are not nearly as addicting
as the government would have us believe.
He adds a new gloss to these statistics
by suggesting that one reason why marijuana is widely perceived
as a "soft" drug, deserving of less stringent controls
than say crack or heroin is, at least in part, because over 30
percent of the US population has tried marijuana and that makes
it very hard for the government to sustain a false stereotype
of marijuana users. In contrast, it is much easier for the government
to maintain a disparaging stereotype about crack and heroin users,
because those drugs are used by a relatively small percentage
of Americans. A drug like LSD, which has been used by roughly
nine percent of the US population at least once, falls somewhere
in the middle; more vilified than marijuana, but less than crack
or heroin.
The bulk of Sullum's book is devoted
to logically demonstrating that most drugs aren't as bad as most
people believe. Sullum never denies that some people do indeed
get into problems with illegal drugs, but he marshals plenty
of evidence to prove that even with the "hard drugs"
like crack and heroin problem users are a small minority of users;
the exception rather than the rule.
Saying Yes is best, however, when Sullum
goes beyond the empirical and begins to explore why even intelligent,
responsible, drug users have such a difficult time getting outside
the established frames that define drug use.
Sullum suggests (but only quickly) that
because there is so much political, legal, and social pressure
to abstain from using illegal drugs, that many people who do
use them are quite anxious about doing so and as a result, commonly
feel driven to justify their drug use. For some, this manifests
as a need to frame their drug use as "medical" or "religious"-
two categories that abstainers of illegal drugs might appear
more willing to accept. Sullum writes: The search for excuses
reflects the lingering suspicion that drug use is sinful without
a special justification. Yet the desire to alter one's consciousness
appears to be a fundamental aspect of human nature. Like sex,
it is nothing to be ashamed of, but it needs to be constrained
by moral principles, which means getting beyond the unthinking
blanket rejection of drugs.
At another point Sullum also expresses
frustration (but again without much elaboration) with drug policy
reformers who rely almost exclusively on harm-reduction arguments
(e.g., the war on drugs does more harm than good), calling attention
to the fact that such reformers have an almost universal tendency
to stress that they are opposed to drug use. The bumper sticker
statement "Drug use is bad, but the drug war is worse,"
epitomizes this position.
Gary Johnson, former governor of New
Mexico, and a darling of the drug reform movement was a poster-child
for this position, calling drugs a "handicap" and a
"bad choice," and telling a group of college students,
"I hate to say it, but the majority of people who use drugs
use them responsibly." Sullum rightly wants to know why,
since most people do in fact use drugs responsibly, Gary Johnson
"hates to say it."
Echoing the point made by Thomas Szasz
(most recently in his book Pharmacracy), Sullum identifies the
evolution of modern medicine as largely responsible for the current
bifurcation that divides "good drugs" from "bad
drugs." If a drug changes the way a person thinks or elevates
a person's mood, it is taboo unless it is being used to improve
a medical deficit. Nonmedical use of drugs, including nonmedical
use of prescription drugs, is viewed as 'abuse" by the government
and by most of the medical establishment.
This is the uneasy tension that exists
with respect to marijuana. More and more Americans seem willing
to accept marijuana's use within a medical framework, but they
remain deeply concerned that some people will make bogus medical
claims in order to simply get high. Indeed, as Sullum points
out, the medical model for drug use is now so overgrown that
it has prompted some school districts to coerce parents to place
their children on Ritalin in order to attend school. In other
words not only does a medical imprimatur make drug use acceptable,
a medical purpose can be enough to force a person to take a drug.
Sullum rightly asks why it is that "legitimate"
drug use must satisfy a medical model. Why can't we recognize
that there are perfectly good nonmedical reasons for why a person
might want to use a drug? Why is it so hard for most people to
accept that drugs can be used responsibly for the express purpose
of enhancing the senses, boosting mood, occasioning a pleasant
evening, or eliciting a spiritual experience? As Sullum notes,
all of these uses of drugs are legitimate. Indeed Sullum is weary
of creating hierarchies that characterize some reasons for using
drugs as acceptable, but others as unacceptable. Sullum writes:
Seeking a medical or religious exemption from drug prohibition
amounts to asserting that my use of this substance is important,
that it deserves respect in a way that more frivolous uses do
not....The urge to offer such excuses is based on the sense that
drug use is morally suspect without an elaborate and serious
sounding defense....Wine drinkers generally do not feel compelled
to proclaim that their beverage was endorsed by God, that it
relieves anxiety or reduces their risk of heart disease. They
simply say, "I like a nice glass of wine." It is in
these portions of Saying Yes, where Sullum moves into a more
principled examination of drug use, that he is at his best. Yet,
just as Sullum begins to travel off the beaten path, the book
concludes, leaving one feeling the textual equivalent of a dreaded
drug under-dose.
Nevertheless, for dissipating much of
the hype surrounding the dangers commonly associated with illegal
drugs, Saying Yes is the best book since Andrew Weil's The
Natural Mind. It is hard to imagine an open-minded person
reading Sullum's book and coming way from it without a much more
informed understanding of why so many intelligent people choose
to use illegal drugs.
Richard Glen Boire is director and chief legal counsel of the Center for Cognitive
Liberty & Ethics.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 23 / 24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
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