Disdain and Fear

In general, our culture doesn't think much of drug users.

This is an old truth, one with some pedigree to it. While opium and such have been legal for a very large percentage of human history, a general suspicion of drugs and those who partake of them has been with us since ancient Greece, if not before.

The basic concern, the source of much of the disdain, seems to be that, regardless of how harmless a drug may be, those under its influence aren't good for much while its effects last. "Drunkards" and "potheads," though one's innebriating substance is (now) legal and the other is (presently) not, both share this core source of contempt: neither has a reputation for being reliable, trustworthy, or capable. The popular conception of either one under the influence is, at best, a sort of floppy person better suited for staring through the ceiling than going out to buy a carton of milk, much less filling out the yearly income tax.

In other words, people tend to kind of think of them as a bit of a waste of space. He who uses is seen as wasting his life, wealth, and health, and eventually likely to sink into a dissolute spiral of increasingly destructive behavior. That's where the contempt comes from.

The "fear" aspect of our society's prohibitive angle on this seems to come partly from a fear of what an addict might do to get a fix or might do under the influence. Certainly, this had something to do with the hysteria surrounding crack cocaine, for example. But that fear seems to melt away, given time (though the effects remain). A deeper issue is probably the idea that addict-hood is, in effect, catching-- a contagious, socially-transmissible disease-- especially when we're talking about teens or preadolescents.

We as a culture do not trust our young people very far. People will often balk at the notion of saving adults from themselves; children, not so much. "The children! We have to protect the children!" is a politically-potent rallying cry whether we're talking about violent video games, violent movies, pornography, the theory of evolution, premarital sex, drug abuse, or Harry Potter.

... So it seems that a portion of the reason why we lock drug dealers and/or addicts up with such vigor is the idea that they are not merely wasting their own lives and damaging their own relationships, but that they threaten to corrupt our own relationships with our children, as well.

Now, unlike the '80's hysteria over rampaging, crack-addled brown people, this is a valid concern. The problem is how to deal with it, and it appears that our prohibitionary, largely punitive approach, treating drugs as a matter for the criminal justice system rather than the health care system and locking up ridiculous numbers of people (who we then need to feed, house, clothe, etc.), doesn't work.

The war on drugs is a bust (and not a drug bust). That much seems to be agreed; where we differ seems to be whether to double down or try something else.... And it does appear that the place that has decided to try something else on the grandest scale so far has not burned down, fallen over, and then sunk into the swamp.

A society generally jails two kinds of people: those it morally disapproves of and those it fears. Drug abusers and dealers may fit into both categories to varying degrees and with more or less justification, but the real question is not whether they fit under the heading of "people we feel should go to prison," but whether the problem fits under the heading of "something we can solve by sending people to prison."

If it's not, then it seems likely that it's time to bite back our disdain and fear and try something more practical.