Ideas For Democracy:  Goal #9

Develop effective programs to discourage drug abuse and drug addiction and to minimize the harm caused by illegal or underground economies.

 

Citizens who want real democracy will actively support this policy and vote for trustworthy candidates who actively support this policy.

 

IFD - policy:  The most promising way to reduce drug addiction to the minimum is to abandon the endless dysfunctional conflict between treating the illegal use of drugs as a crime and also as a disease.  We also must address the inescapable reality that illegal drug use is an underground economy.  The logical solution to these problems is to treat the entire illegal drug system as the result of an American tradition:  self-medication.

 

We should treat all of the problems that arise from acts of self-medication as a single problem, acts that include both prescription drugs and non-prescription controlled substances.  By including as part of this same single problem the illegal economy of producing, buying and selling drugs outside the regulations of licensed physicians and pharmacists, we can develop a coherent policy and effective programs directed entirely toward physical and mental health of the populace rather than an endless conflict between drug-economy criminals and the institutions of law enforcement.  The most insidious destructive result of the "war on drugs" and the persistent conflict between the disease model and the criminal model is that drug enforcement operates as though it is a program to punish the poor while drug abuse by the wealthy or financially secure is regarded as a common experience for celebrities of all kinds who tell the same story over and over again of descending into drug abuse and then recovering by way of either religion or family or both.  Our culture has created an emotional worship service around the myth of successful people who turn to drugs -- which IS self-medication --  to relieve emotional or physical pain, and then are compelled to engage in a difficult and dramatic road to "permanent remission."  It is all very moving, very dangerous, very destructive, and astronomically expensive if you count the losses in both productive time and the money taken from the legal economy and channeled to a criminal underground.  Treating this problem as a kind of combat between good police and bad drug dealers clearly does not solve the problem.  The "drug war" model is not driven by a military enemy.  The entire system is driven by the traditional and widespread practice of self-medication, which was with us during colonial times and came to America from the European culture.  Self-medication is something that people do and have been doing for centuries, including before the Europeans used their sailing ships to explore the world and claimed that they own it.  So then, what we need to do is examine the phenomenon of self-medication, and evaluate when it is either harmful, or illegal, or both, and set out a plan of public and governmental responses to minimize the harm and minimize the costs.  We need to recognize that a great deal of self-medication occurs in our society that does not harm the individual or the society and does not sustain an illegal or underground economy.  Therefore, we need to sort out the forms of self-medication that are tolerable and those that are not.  This process will immediately show that using prison as a punishment or cure for drug abuse is totally ineffective.  There is no scientific evidence that drug abusers or dealers placed in prisons learn a better way of life.  Programs of conviction and incarceration need to be discarded and replaced with more effective methods -- for most forms of self-medication.  Still, prison may be an appropriate consequence for those who insist that they will make their living in an underground economy that preys on the vulnerability of the simple, the gullible and people in pain.    

 

Any approaches that help to reduce the harm caused by the underground drug economy might also help to address other underground economies, such as the illegal firearms economy.  As a matter of national economic policy we need to review all of our economic policies and institutions and plan a transformation to an inclusive economy that includes every citizen who wishes to participate in the paired economic activities of contributing productivity (giving) and appropriate consumption (taking or buying).  An essential new practice may be to provide for individuals to be able to safely end their participation in an illegal or subversive economy and join the legal economy.  We should make this possible with minimal punitive consequences for past participation in an illegal economy and no judicial "deal" or requirement that the individual coming into the legal economy testify against other persons.  This type of testimony for leniency is a despicable and destructive practice in the first place.  Such testimony should not be trusted under normal circumstances because it is the testimony of a person who has participated in criminal behavior for their own benefit, and their testimony in exchange for a benefit is tainted and not reliable.  Our government often says it will not negotiate with terrorists, so then why does the government negotiate with criminals?