The fundamental problem with the concept of drug control is that most human beings, in all eras and cultures about which we know, have used and enjoyed drugs to modify their mood or state of mind. In the United States, foe example, there are nearly 200 million people over the age of 12, of which 178 million are caffeine users (89%), 106 million are alcohol users (53%), 57 million are nicotine users(28%), along with approximately 12 million marijuana users (6%), some 3 million cocaine users (1.5%), 2 million heroin users (1%), with about a million users (0.5%) each of the entheogens and non-ethanol solvents (according to the governments conservative data from a household survey; Goldstein & Kalant 1990). Not only are the numbers of illicit drug users greatly inferior to the numbers of users of legal psychoactive drugs (alcohol, nicotine, caffeine), but the scope of health problems associated with illicit versus licit drug use shows a similar disparity. Compared to the estimated three to four thousand deaths per year as a consequence of all illicit drug use combined, approximately 320,000 Americans die prematurely each year as a consequence of tobacco use, and they are accompanied to the graveyard by an additional 200,000 premature cadavers each year resulting from use of alcohol (Nadelmann 1989). Although there are approximately three times as many nicotine users in the United States as users of all illicit drugs combined, there are nearly 100 times as many deaths as a result; and although there are about five times as many alcohol users as illicit drug users, alcohol is responsible for some 50 times as many deaths. One might conclude that tobacco is some thirty times more dangerous than entheogens, marijuana, cocaine and heroin; and that alcohol is about ten times more dangerous... or one might claim that in time we will discover that additional premature deaths are in fact due to illicit drug use. Nevertheless, the disparity is striking, and it cannot be argued that illicit drugs are justifiably illegal because they are dangerous, as long as substances evidently much more dangerous are legal. Because something is dangerous does not justify illegalizing it, it any case. Whereas the comparatively benign psilocybine-containing mushrooms (see Chapter 5) are illegal, the deadly-poisonous amatoxin- and phallotoxin-containing Amanita and Galerina species are perfectly legal (Ott 1978b; Ott 1979b). Similarly, with regard to drug toxicity deaths, 70% are the result not of illicit drugs but of legal prescription drugs, of which it is said that 300 million doses per year are "abused" (Hollister et al. 1991.
I might also mention that, whereas both alcohol and nicotine are highly addictive substances (Byrne 1988; Schelling 1992), the entheogens show no pattern of habituation or withdrawal syndrome (Hofmann 1980). In a recent article arguing for drug control, on a 1-5 scale of "relative risk of addiction" (with 1 being the highest risk), addiction authorities A Goldstein and H. Kalant rated nicotine a "2" along with heroin, with alcohol rating a "3" along with barbiturates and benzodiazepines or "sleeping pills" (Goldstein & Kalant 1990). Marijuana was given a "4," and the entheogens a "5," together with caffeine. In a rebuttal to letters in response to their article (Hollister et al. 1991), Goldstein & Kalant commented that the entheogens really didn't even belong on a table of risks of addiction, since these drugs are "aversive rather than reinforcing in animal models"- that is, that experimental animals will avoid them rather than become habituated to them. Although many people persist in ignoring the fact that nicotine is an addictive drug (a recent letter complained "to compare nicotine with crack would seem an assault on common sense"; Levin et al. 1992!), former U.S. Surgeon General C.E. Koop stated in no uncertain terms (Byrne 1988:
The pharmacological and behavioral processes that determine tobacco addiction are similar to those that determine addiction to drugs such as heroin and cocaine... We should also give priority to the one addiction- tobacco addiction- that is killing more than 300,000 Americans each year.In the former Soviet Union in 1990, tobacco shortages sparked widespread riots, forcing emergency importation of American cigarettes (Frankel et al. 1992b)! Long-suffering consumers would endure stoically chronic shortages of food, clothing and energy, but not tobacco- this, in the country in which the real Czar once ordered the execution of tobacco smokers (Szasz 1974)! As if to underscore the metabolic similarity between heroin addiction and nicotine addiction, the hypotensive drug Clonidine has been found to ameliorate or diminish both heroin and nicotine withdrawal symptoms (Glassman et al. 1984), and former National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) director W. Pollin stated that tobacco addiction was "no different from heroin or cocaine" (Holden 1985). In magazine advertisements by Marion Merrell Dow, Inc., manufacturers of Nicorette chewing gum (containing nicotine polacrilex in 2 to 4 mg doses per piece), it is stated quite plainly: "your body's addiction to nicotine is a medical problem." Chewing the gum is said to "relieve the discomfort and anxiety that are nicotine withdrawal symptoms," and slowly reducing the daily dose of Nicorette will "enable your body to adjust and slowly overcome its addiction." The gum became famous when former "Drug Czar" W.J. Bennett, who on assuming his post had given up a two pack-per-day cigarette habit to set a good example (Marshall 1989), later admitted that he had relapsed, and was still hooked on nicotine gum. Just say no!
Not only is psychoactive drug use nearly universal among American adults, but virtually every culture that has been studied has been found to make use of one or another inebriating substance (Weil 1972). Moreover, there is increasing evidence for the use of medicinal and inebriating plants by non-human animals (Siegel 1989; Siegel & Jarvik 1975; Siegel et al 1974; Sigstedt 1990; Williams 1989), of which the most famous example is that of catnip (Nepeta cataria) as an inebriant by housecats, a use to which most any species of feline is susceptible, given access to the drug (see Appendix B; Tucker & Tucker 1988). The American Association for the Advancement of Science recently held sessions on "zoopharmacognosy" at its annual meeting (Gibbons 1992). Clearly, use of inebriants is a normal, ordinary, animal activity, virtually universal among members of our species, and any legal attempts to prohibit one psychoactive substance in favor of another (which, after all, involve questions of taste, tradition and prejudice rather than any scientific criterion) is automatically destined for trouble. Laws simply will not deter many millions of people from using the drugs of their choice, but they can distort and pervert the legal system and wreak all sorts of havoc in the attempt.
An avowed purpose of drug control measures in the United States is to increase the street prices of illicit drugs. In this sense, the costs imposed on traffickers by the necessity of escaping detection and by the loss of occasional shipments or the arrests of personnel constitute a sort of "business tax" which is passed on to the consumer. The governmental expenditures on drug enforcement can be seen as a subsidy of the illicit drug dealers. As Professor Nadelmann put it (Nadelmann 1989):
The greatest beneficiaries of the drug laws are organized and unorganized drug traffickers. The criminalization of the drug market effectively imposes a de facto value-added tax that is enforced and occasionally augmented by the law enforcement establishment and collected by drug traffickers. More than half of all organized crime revenues are believed to derive from the illicit drug business; estimates of the dollar value range between $10 and $50 billion [U.S. $10-50 thousand million!] per year... If the marijuana, cocaine, and heroin markets were legal, state and federal governments would collect billions of dollars annually in tax revenues. Instead, they spend billions in what amounts to a subsidy of organized criminals.We will return below to the economic consequences of the drug laws. Here the important point to note is their lack of efficacy. n driving up the prices of illicit drugs, the laws enrich criminals and lead to petty theft and other crime to enable users to pay the exorbitant prices which result. Besides arbitrarily classifying millions of users as criminals, and forcing the users into contact with the criminal element sometimes associated with drug trafficking, the drug laws provoke more crime- drugs which would otherwise be cheap become expensive as a consequence of official policy, and theft and related crimes increase proportionately. The public health is again degraded, as the citizen is placed in greater danger of muggings and burglaries, even of being an innocent victim of a shootout between rival drug gangs fighting over territory. A hard-boiled, medical analysis of drug laws in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded (Edison 1978):
The laws controlling narcotic and other psychoactive drugs... should be evaluated for effectiveness and safety in the same way we would evaluate surgical or pharmacologic treatment. As a treatment, the drug laws appear to be only marginally effective. Their side effects are so dangerous that the treatment is often more devastating than the disease. A judgment based strictly on the effectiveness and safety of the drug laws would require their immediate repeal or overhaul.
In a similar vein, Daniel E. Koshland Jr., the editor of the premier American scientific journal Science, a man with extensive career experience in the chemistry and pharmacology of opiate drugs, commented in an editorial entitled "The War? Program? Experiment? on Drugs" (Koshland 1989):
The drug program recently unveiled by the Executive Branch... is at least a useful experiment, and should be labeled as such... A minimal requirement would seem to be ongoing analysis of the program's degree of success, to decide whether to continue in the same direction or to seek new directions if the program is not succeeding... The experiment will be acceptable only if accompanied by a scientific detachment that says, "The get-tough experiment is under way. If it fails, legalization is next."Nevertheless, the government understandably shies away from studying the efficacy (or lack thereof) of its own efforts against drugs, and has repeatedly been accused of "flying behind" in the "War on Drugs" (Hamilton 1990; Marshall 1988a).
While the government experiments with the "get-tough" approach, scientific developments have compromised severely the forensic chemical basis for evidence in the ensuing drug-related prosecutions. The interesting discovery that the illicit entheogen DMT appears to be a mammalian neurotransmitter (Christian et al. 1976; Christian et al. 1977) and that the drug normally occurs in cerebrospinal fluid (Corbett et al. 1987) raises important legal questions. Moreover, diazepam or Valium has been found to occur in rat brain and in trace amounts in wheat grains (Wildmann et al. 1987), and "diazepam-like" compounds have been found in bovine urine (Luk et al. 1983). Similarly, the controlled opiates morphine and codeine have been found to be normal components of human cerebrospinal fluid (Cardinale et al. 1987), and morphine has been found to be a trace constituent of cow and human milk, and to occur naturally in mammalian brain tissue. Trace amounts of morphine have also been detected in "various plants such as hay and lettuce" (Hazum et al. 1981). In ancient times, Pliny reported a lettuce variety called "poppy lettuce, from its abundance of juice of soporific property" (Harlan 1986) and lactucarium or "lettuce opium" was introduced to the pharmacopoeia in 1810 (Duncan 1810) and may still be purchased from companies advertising in "countercultural" drug magazines. Trace amounts of morphine in poppy seeds used in baked goods can show up in the urine of a diner. With the detection of morphine in urine being considered prima facie evidence of heroin use in methadone-clinic patients and in job applicants (Bigwood 1978; Potter & Orfali 1990), and with the drug laws flatly proclaiming that unauthorized possession or sale of "any material, compound, mixture or preparation which contains any quantity of" DMT, Valium, morphine and many other drugs, where does this leave the concept of drug control and forensic chemical evidence? If morphine occurs in hay and lettuce, in poppy-seed rolls, in every one of our bodies, even in mothers' milk... on what scientific basis can an authorized cultivator of opium poppies be punished, without also punishing lettuce and hay growers, or the proprietors and employees of supermarket chains and the corner Mom and Pop grocery for illicit trafficking in morphine present in each and every quart of wholesome milk? On what basis... as citizens subjected willy-nilly to the absurd consequences of drug laws... we demand to know... on what basis?
The absurdities and incongruities into which we fall in the looking-glass world of the drug warriors by no means end there. A recent article in Science proclaimed that the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) "Aims to Fight Drugs with Drugs," that "the agency is planning a massive search for medications to treat cocaine and other addictions," looking for "magic bullets for addiction" (Waldrop 1989)! The only "magic bullets" for addiction the authorities have found so far are the .38 caliber variety injected by police special revolvers! Let's treat whiskey addicts with gin while we're at it... or heroin addicts with methadone... surely they can't be serious! Do they say this with tongue in cheek, or do they have something else in cheek... perhaps a goodly quid of leaves from the "stupid bush" which the CIA chemical warriors were searching for in the Caribbean in the fifties and seem to have found at home on Langley (Marks 1979)? We must call recall that heroin was originally marketed as a "cure" for morphinism (Escohotado 1989a; Latimer & Goldberg 1981), and one of the "magic bullets" against addiction, bromocriptine or Parlodel (see Chapter 2, Note 9), is already suspected of being itself an addicting drug (Holden 1989b). The article goes on... claiming this could be a "Manhattan Project for chemists"- so what does that mean, "nuke" your neighborhood junkie or hippie? Maybe that's not too far off the mark- a recent review of a book about the Manhattan Project by prominent physicist Freeman J. Dyson drew a specious analogy between LSD and nuclear weapons: "nuclear weapons and LSD are both highly addictive... Both have destroyed many lives and are likely to destroy many more..." (Dyson 1992). Nobody said Dyson was an expert on entheogenic drugs, but the scary fact is that Science published this absurd fancy, and this well-respected scientist was apparently serious. Of course, I realize NIDA has no intention of treating whiskey addicts with gin... more like treating whiskey addicts with methanol... forcing people off one drug, the effects of which they happen to like, and substituting another drug which will do everything for them but provide the pleasure they originally sought in drugs! This is treatment... or assault?
Meanwhile, as thousands of people are being arrested for possession of cocaine, it has been found that another "material, compound, mixture or preparation which contains any quantity" of this illegal substance is the bulk of American paper money! In an analysis of 135 American Federal Reserve Notes of varying denominations and from different parts of the country, all but four (97%) contained detectable quantities of cocaine. The average content was 7.3 mcg of cocaine per bill, and one bill contained as much as 270 mcg of cocaine (Pool 1989). This means that virtually all Americans (save only the poorest, who might have only "spare change" in their pockets) are in possession of a Schedule II drug all the time, with the richest among us perhaps falling in the "possession with intent to sell" category based on the gross weight of a big bankroll of cocaine-containing greenbacks... or should we call them "whitebacks"? But since the citizen carrying his hard-earned Federal Reserve Note is legally just a "bearer" of a monetary instrument which is the property of the Federal Reserve Bank, does this mean that it is the proverbial "higher ups" who are to be arrested... do I hear calls for an indictment against the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank and the Secretary of the Treasury for cocaine trafficking... or, since the "buck" ("cocabuck"?) ostensibly stops on the desk of the oval office, let's go right to the top of this sordid drug ring, to the President of the United States. Never mind the fact that the U.S. currency is printed on paper containing hemp (i.e. marijuana) fiber, or that Betsy Ross' first American flag was sown on hempen cloth, or that the originals of the U.S. constitution and Declaration of Independence are written on hemp fiber parchment!
Chemical detection technology has progressed to such a point that we are all in danger of being the "enemy" in the "War on Drugs"... or prospective casualties. Recently a military plot, a commissioned officer of the United States Air Force, was ignominiously court-martialed for illicit drug use when amphetamine residues were detected in his urine. Thanks to a little scientific detective work, it was later proved that an over-the-counter anorexic (diet pill) he had been taking quite legally, a product which contained phenylpropanolamine as active agent was contaminated in the manufacturing process with trace amounts of amphetamine, as were other lots of similar products tested. The court-martialed pilot was given back his commission and reinstated to active duty, but not restored to his prior flight crew status (Pool 1989). It is significant that a major legal challenge to government plans to screen employees' urine for drug metabolites was mounted by U.S. Customs agents, the Grand Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police and U.S. Department of Justice federal attorneys who commented: "they test; we sue" (Crawford 1988)! Note that these are the "frontline troops" in the "War on Drugs," and they don't want "the people" to know what drug metabolites are in their urine! A company called Psychemedics is now fighting the "urinalysis lobby" for a piece of the $200 million per year U.S. drug testing market- promoting a technology based on infinitesimal residues of drugs or drug metabolites in hair samples (Holden 1990c). There is some evidence that merely allowing your fingers to touch your hair after handling some of the Federal Reserve Chairman's cocaine-blighted bills could make you a candidate for a positive reading in a "hairanalysis" drug test... or taking a stroll through the park and inadvertently passing through some marijuana smoke exhaled by some brazen lawbreaker (it has been demonstrated that such "passive" exposure to Cannabis smoke can lead to false positive readings for marijuana use in blood and urine tests too; Moreland et al. 1985). Urinalysis also involves the problem of "false positives" if detection thresholds are set low enough to detect all users (Schwartz et al. 1987). The ultra-sensitive analyses for drug metabolites in urine cannot tell whether morphine in the urine came from a shot of heroin or a few poppyseed rolls with sinner. Do you still think the troops fighting the "War on Drugs" are on your side... can you be sure you won't one day be considered "enemy"? Perhaps the "skinheads" are on to something...
Let's face it, we're all on drugs, all of the time... I'm not talking about the industrial quantities of alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, etc. consumed regularly by humankind, but about the DMT and morphine our bodies make for us and which we "consume" all the time; or our very own sleeping pill, the endogenous ligand of the Valium receptor (which may be Valium itself); or the "anxiety peptide" which blocks that receptor (Marx 1985); or our endorphins and enkephalins (our own self-produced "ENDOgenous moRPHINES"; see Snyder & Matthysse 1975) which kill our pain; or "Substance P," our own pain-causing molecule (Skerrett 1990); or anandamide, the endogenous ligand of the THC (marijuana) receptor (Devane et al. 1992)... The life of the mind, of consciousness, is a constant, ever-changing pharmacological symphony, or to put it less romantically, a never-ending drug binge. The urge to ingest opiates or DMT or Valium is completely natural (Siegel 1989) and as "organic" as can be- we are only supplementing or complementing the drugs that make our brains work, and these drugs work for us precisely because they are identical to, or chemically similar to our own endogenous drugs. Researchers have found "commonalities" in "drug abuse" irrespective of gross pharmacological differences between different classes of drugs (Holden 1985) because on one level all psychoactive drugs are the same- they are all fitting into our own brains' own receptors for our homemade, endogenous drugs.
The inequities and incongruities drug laws force on our legal system are many and weighty. Scientists presently are vociferously debating (and rightly so) the statistical and legal interpretations of forensic evidence based on DNA analysis, so- called "DNA-fingerprinting" in which the DNA of an individual left at the scene of the crime is amplified by PCR technology (The Polymerase Chain Reaction invented by K. Mullis, formerly of Cetus Corp.). A recent article in Science (Chakraborty & Kidd 1991) questioned the claimed statistical significance of "matches" between DNA "fingerprints" (in reality, autoradiograms of electrophoretic separations on polycrylamide gel of fragments of digested DNA), and the editors of the journal felt compelled to take an unprecedented step by simultaneously publishing a rejoinder to this article (Lewontin & Hartl 1991) and a news article explaining why (Roberts 1991), all followed by an editorial (Koshland 1992) and a spate of letters and rebuttals (Wills et al. 1992). This is as it should be, for the technology promises to revolutionize the nature of evidence, both accusatory and exculpatory. The extreme care with which the scientific community is treating the establishment of standards for DNA fingerprinting, however, contrasts markedly with the standards prevailing in a modern American drug-violation prosecution. Entrapment of the defendant is the rule, and sometimes undercover group A of municipal drug police is working assiduously to entrap undercover group B of state or federal police, and there have even been shootouts between two different police units. This is protecting the public welfare? Eyewitness testimony purchased from avowed criminals (whether outright with cash, or with pardons or reduced sentences) is de riguer. The luckless defendant may have been subjected to an illegal wiretap or search and seizure without warrant or probable cause, but since the police were "acting in good faith" (the police are always "acting in good faith," aren't they?) the evidence is admitted. Even more shocking and fraudulent is the established American practice of regarding one gram of 10% heroin to be one gram of heroin (when in reality only one-tenth of a gram of heroin is involved) in considering sentencing or the charge (simple possession is distinguished from possession with intent to sell, which carries much stiffer penalties, by the quantity of drug seized as evidence). This is especially absurd when doses of LSD are seized, which may contain only 25 to 50 mcg of the drug on a piece of paper or gelatin weighing tens or hundreds of milligrams (Shulgin & Shulgin 1991). Imagine the innocent farmer wending a weary way to the barn in a bucolic setting with a couple of tons of hay on the truck... hay which contains morphine (Hazum et al. 1981) in trace quantities... by this standard (s)he could be arrested for possession of a couple of tons of morphine, and go down in history as one of the all-time great narcotraficantes. How about an Untouchables-type raid on a pasteurization plant, to bust the nefarious pushers of tons of "morphine"- milk containing traces of the drug, that is? My ludibrous tone masks genuine concern- as a citizen subject to the possibility of entrapment and wire tapping, to all sorts of chicanery, prestidigitation and fraud in the name of law enforcement, I demand to know... we must know... on what basis can "the people" prosecute ill-starred individuals in possession of "grams" or "kilograms" of illicit drugs, meanwhile allowing traffickers in "tons" of Valium, morphine, codeine, DMT or any number of other controlled drugs to go free? On what basis?
Entrapment, wiretaps, searches without warrant or probable cause, arbitrary enforcement due to the very ubiquity of controlled substances in our own bodies, on our money, in the milk we drink... these disreputable, slipshod and unethical enforcement techniques of questionable legality threaten our freedoms and human rights. However bizarre or patently illegal a police tactic may be, once it is accepted in a court of law, and then cited in another judgment, a body of precedent begins to accumulate, and what was once a heavy-handed excess by rogue elements of police operating outside of the law slowly becomes standard practice acceptable in any courtroom (Shulgin & Shulgin 1991). The use of extraordinary "emergency" measures instituted to deal with the "epidemic" of "drug abuse" and tolerated by judges who have swallowed the anti-drug propaganda hook, line and sinker, is changing the relationship of citizen to state to the detriment of individual freedom. Our civil rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution, such as the right to privacy, freedom from unauthorized search and seizure practices, such as the presumption of innocence are steadily eroded and wear away as surely as Thomas Jefferson's face disappears from an aging nickel coin, and police-state tactics that once were "wartime" expedients justified by the "deadly menace" of drugs are suddenly applied to any and all areas of law enforcement. Already we are seeing the same Gestapo-inspired police-state tactics applied to the enforcement of other laws (Gestapo was the German acronym for Geheimne Staats Polizei, or Secret State Police" under the National Socialist German Worker's Party, or "Nazi" government of Adolf Hitler). Bizarre and illegal raids and seizures have been directed against so-called "computer hackers," the police assiduously taking advantage of the legal dispensations given to "drug warriors" (Gans & Sirius 1990; Holden 1990b; Levy 1991; Sirius & Gleason 1990; Sterling 1992. As a recent article in Mondo 2000 noted:
Acting on the request from certain corporations, the FBI and the Secret Service- armed with vaguely worded warrants- have raided businesses and homes of private citizens and seized tremendous numbers of computers and related items, with very few corresponding arrests. The language of the warrants was vague because even in the rare case where the government knows what it is looking for, on the electronic frontier, it probably has no idea what it is looking at. (Gans & Sirius; italics in the original)After snooping illegally on conversations over electronic bulletin boards, and because of government agents' profound ignorance regarding the terminology employed, a business called Steve Jackson Games, Inc. was raided by the Secret Service, three computers and data for a product in development (a non-computer game seized, and the company was almost driven into bankruptcy (Holden 1990b; Levy 1991). No crimes had been committed, nor were criminal charges ever brought against the company or its employees, who were not compensated for damage to equipment (when the computers were returned six months later, one was destroyed and another required a $200 repair) and financial losses exceeding $125,000. Owner Jackson was forced to lay off eight of his 17 employees to stay in business. The raid was conducted pursuant to a vaguely-worded warrant which was not explained to the owner of the business, and when his lawyer asked to see the warrant, he was told the information was "sealed." Thanks to the excessive zeal of our drug-bust-crazed police, eight people lost their jobs, having committed no crimes- will some of these innocent victims turn to drug-dealing to support their families? In a related case in which the government brought charges against an alleged "computer criminal" for supposed complicity in stealing information from a telephone company, information alleged to be "highly proprietary" and worth $79,000, the prosecution ignominiously dropped the charges in mid-trial when the defense showed the alleged stolen property was public information, readily found in public libraries and openly distributed by the company in question for $13 by calling a toll-free number (Levy 1991)... the grand larceny charge evaporating to petty theft before the astonished prosecutor's eyes! This case exposed the legal charade for what it was- not police fighting crime, but a war over "freedom of information," over control and ownership of information, and against the libertarian element favoring freedom of access, whether to information or to drugs (Clarke 1992; Ross 1991). But the U.S. government insists on having unfettered access to information- the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), in collaboration with the U.S. State Department, is prohibiting the export of "RSA" data-encryption programs (for encoding computer or other digital data) which exceed a standard, in this case allowing only "algorithm keys" of 40 bits or less. This enables the NSA, with its state-of-the-art, to be able rapidly to "crack" any codes it wishes, whereas a 512 bit "key" is considered necessary for relative security, given the speed of today's supercomputers (French 1990). The FBI has proposed a bill and a "Digital Telephony Amendment" to the 1934 "Communications Act" which will require any new communications system (including computer networks) to be designed to allow facile wiretapping by the authorities; even though in 1990 U.S. judges approved only 872 legal wiretaps (Levy 1992). This is like requiring that condoms or automobile airbags have holes in them! Of course, the way to make computer networks secure against "hackers" and spies (which the NSA is ostensibly looking for- domestic spying is supposedly beyond its reach) is to allow effective encryption of data, not to conduct Gestapo-like raids, not to seize or destroy computers. As long as the government wishes to have access, it will be available to anyone with the ingenuity to discover the "back door" to any computer system. In the Steve Jackson Games case, one of the computers seized was at the time running an electronic bulletin board, a form of expression which the U.S. Constitution protects as surely as it protects printing presses and broadcast media. Federal Judge Sam Sparks agreed, and subsequently awarded Jackson and associates $55,000 plus court costs in their suit against the Secret Service, ruling the investigation had violated the "Electronic Communications Privacy Act." In his judgment in Austin, Texas, Sparks held that electronic bulletin boards qualify as publishing under the law, entitling operators like Steve Jackson Games, Inc. to the protection of the "Privacy Protection Act" which limits government access to files and records of journalists and publishers (Ortega 1993). Although freedom of information appears to have won this round, can anyone be deluded into supposing that the U.S. government will draw the line at "computer hacking" as it flexes its new police muscle? Is it likely U.S. law-enforcement officials will draw the line anywhere?
In a recent interview with an American journalist, the chief of Amsterdam's narcotics police commented that the idea of a "War on Drugs" reminded him of Gestapo, German police who "thought they could change society's behavior. The police are a very dangerous element in society if they are not limited. We know what war means... We fight war against our enemies, not with our own citizens" (Beers 1991). In the Netherlands drug laws similar to the American laws are on the books, but the Dutch government administers them in a fashion characterized as "harm reduction" or "flexible enforcement"- narcotics chief Zaal commented that illegal drug users are "patients, and we can't help them by putting them in jail" (Beers 1991.) In the wartime United States, then-Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that illicit drug users "ought to be taken out and shot" for "treason" (Beers 1991). In the "War on Drugs" only the users are shooting the drugs, the police are shooting at us; people are the enemy, people become casualties. It is a dangerous cat-and-mouse game, and although the police are ostensibly the cats catching and destroying the mice, nevertheless the mice in this case are leading the cats around by their noses, always a step ahead. This is an inevitable and predictable result of concentrating drug control efforts on the supply, rather than the demand.
The U.S. "War on Drugs" is a "supply-side" endeavor- 71% of the funds in the fiscal year 1991 "National Drug Control Strategy" was destined for reduction of supply (29% for "interdiction and international control"; 42% for law enforcement); only 29% for "demand reduction" (Goldstein & Kalant 1990). Since more than 75% of the nearly 750,000 yearly arrests for drug-law violations in the U.S. are for simple possession, mainly of marijuana (Nadelmann 1989), it can be said that the bulk of U.S. law enforcement effort is directed at punishing users, rather than reducing the supply. "Interdiction and international control" efforts have been, by and large, ineffectual. Despite intensive efforts directed against the illicit production of cocaine in South America, and toward interception of the drug at U.S. borders, the wholesale price of cocaine dropped 80% during the 1980s, while the purity of the drug as retailed increased fivefold, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) figures (DEA 1989). Since the DEA reported in 1987 that the foreign export price of cocaine represented only 4% of the U.S. retail price, there is no reason to expect a reversal in this utter failure to reduce supply- the drug is so cheap to produce and so lucrative that traffickers can and do easily counteract any increased activity or expenditures by the authorities. Once again, the laws constitute a subsidy to the traffickers- a "value-added tax," and the foreign aid money put into crop substitution programs in Peru constitutes a direct subsidy to increased planting of coca. Since the interest rates are so high, farmers simply plant a small parcel in one of the accepted substitute crops, as a cover, then use the bulk of the funds to plant more coca - the only crop sufficiently remunerative to enable them to repay the loans (Morales 1989). Except for opium poppies, that is... (Morales 1989; Ott 1992a)
Heroin production is even more lucrative and even less influenced by enforcement activities- according to the DEA, the foreign export price of heroin is only a fraction of 1% of its U.S. retail price. As the international control efforts against heroin have been directed chiefly at the "Golden Triangle" area of Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe, traditional opium poppy growing regions, the traffickers have simply begun to introduce opium and heroin production in areas not traditionally known for this. Opium poppy cultivation has become so widespread in Mexico, that the country has emerged as one of the leading heroin suppliers to the U.S. market. Moreover, opium poppies have become the natural and preferred substitute crop for coca in South America, and heroin production in being introduced in Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and even Guatemala. Enforcement activities have thus led the black market to its own crop-substitution scheme, and opium poppies are being substituted for coca, with the inevitable result that any reduction in the supply of cocaine will be more than compensated for by a substantial increase in the supply of heroin. This is progress... this is protecting the public health?
The U.S. authorities have been relatively more successful in reducing the smuggling of marijuana into the country, yet there is a plentiful supply of marijuana on the U.S. market. Not only is the drug cheap to produce (foreign export price 1% of U.S. retail price, according to DEA figures), but the unintended (though entirely predictable) results of the U.S. campaign against the drug have been the conversion of the U.S. into one of the world's leading producers of the drug and the transformation of many former marijuana smugglers into cocaine and/or heroin smugglers (Adler 1985)- as costs of smuggling increase, smugglers will turn to loads with a higher value per unit of weight. Thus exaggerated attention focused by the authorities on the smuggling of marijuana has led to vastly increased domestic production, obviating the necessity of sneaking the drug past beagle-eyed customs officials. The value of the U.S. marijuana crop in 1987 was estimated at $33.1 billion ($33,100 million; Siegel 1989). The market is still supplied, but in a manner less visible to the authorities, immeasurably more decentralized and much less susceptible to control efforts. While this development may help the country's international balance of trade, it hasn't made much of a dent in the supply, and has made future attempts to influence the supply infinitely more difficult. Furthermore, the necessity of indoor intensive cultivation to escape surveillance has led to the development of super-potent strains of Cannabis approaching 20% THC, nearly double the concentrations found in natural, outdoor strains previously considered to be the most potent. The price has gone up, yes, but producers have managed to continue to supply the market with a product superior to that formerly smuggled, are much less likely to be arrested, and are making much more money! Does anyone still doubt, as Professor Nadelmann claimed, that the producers and traffickers of illicit drugs are the chief beneficiaries of the laws (Nadelmann 1989)?
Another predictable response to "supply-side" enforcement efforts has been the introduction to the black market over the past 15 years of a series of completely artificial heroin analogues. The first of these so-called "designer drugs" (Kirsch 1986) to appear on the U.S. market were derivatives of Meperidine or Demerol, such as MPPP, which is about 25 times the potency of the parent compound and about three times the potency of morphine. The most famous of "designer narcotics," however, are the compounds known as "China White"- derivatives of the medicinal Fentanyl, a compound some 100 times the potency of morphine. The best-known of these black-market derivatives is (alpha)-methyl-Fentanyl, roughly 3000 times the potency of morphine. According to the DEA, starting materials and equipment to make a kilogram of this drug cost about $2000, with the product being worth as much as a billion dollars ($1000 million)! It is important to note that this compound was an invention of black market chemists, never described in the chemical literature (Baum 1985; Shafer 1984; Shafer 1985). Once again, "supply-side" enforcement directed against opium poppy cultivation and heroin production has stimulated domestic production of inexpensive succedanea thousands of times the potency of morphine. In a similar manner, exaggerated attention focused on illicit cocaine production and smuggling is fueling the growth of the U.S. amphetamine industry. Annual domestic production of methamphetamine is estimated to be worth $3 billion ($3,000 million; Cho 1990). Again, the U.S. trade deficit has been helped, but comparatively large-scale and visible enterprises such as heroin and cocaine production are being replaced by practically invisible small-scale substitutes. Instead of international networks of growers and harvesters, chemists and smugglers, now all that is required are solitary chemists inside the countries of consumption. As drug policy experts A. Goldstein and H. Kalant stated in a recent article:
Advances in pharmaceutical chemistry are such that highly potent psychoactive drugs of every kind can be synthesized readily in clandestine laboratories, so the illicit market would adjust quickly even to a complete sealing of our borders, were that possible. (Goldstein & Kalant 1990)
Misguided enforcement efforts have resulted in the creation of decentralized and small-scale production of alternatives, practically invisible to the authorities. Production costs go down, profits skyrocket, and the chances of detection and arrest are reduced- the illicit drug manufacturers and retailers couldn't be happier.
It is simply too easy to outwit the drug laws. Well before the authorities realize what is going on, talented surreptitious chemists have invented new, more profitable, and legal succedanea for controlled drugs. When one of the "designer heroin" labs was busted, the chemist told police he was experimenting with "snow cone flavorings" (Shafer 1984). When the results came back from the forensics laboratory, the police found they had no case against the person. When (alpha)-methyl-Fentanyl was finally identified (the first structure proposed by the DEA chemists, 3-methyl-Fentanyl, later turned out to be erroneous; Ayres et al. 1981; Baum 1985) and the drug was scheduled, the ingenious chemists made para-flouro-Fentanyl, still legal. Finally, the government concocted the "Controlled Substances Analogues Act" establishing the novel principle that any chemical or pharmacological analogue of any illicit drug could be deemed to be illegal! This is a textbook case of an unconstitutionally-vague statute, and is the purest essence of arbitrary and selective law enforcement, crystallized in a form more potent than any Fentanyl derivative. Never mind that this absurd law makes virtually anything illegal which some police chief or district attorney doesn't like (Shulgin 1992), and is virtually illegalizing scientific research into mind drugs and making the whole field of chemistry suspect; the important thing is it simply will not work. Sure, it will enable charges to be brought against manufacturers of new analogues, on the rare occasions when such are detected and arrested, but the genie is out of the bottle. The laws have made illicit drug synthesis so profitable and it is such a simple endeavor, that no law will stop it, not even capital punishment. The laws even serve as textbooks for would-be black market drug chemists, who look through the schedules for ideas for new products (Shulgin & Shulgin 1991).
Having touched on the subject of Constitutional vagueness, it is important to stress that scientific research continues to reveal new plant (and animal) species containing illegal compounds. Since controlled substances such as DMT, morphine and codeine appear to be general mammalian neurotransmitters, dog and cat (or other mammal) owners are technically in unauthorized possession of illicit drugs all the time. As we will see in Chapter 5, there are at least 89 species of mushrooms now known to contain illegal psilocybine, and another 57 species can safely be assumed to contain these compounds. This book mentions some 250 plant species known to contain illicit drugs. Some, such as the forage grass Phalaris arundinacae, are common articles of commerce which can be purchased cheaply by the truckload; some, like the psilocybian mushrooms, grow adventitiously all over the world. Since one would have to be expert in plant taxonomy and phytochemistry, and would have assiduously to study the latest research reports in order simply to know which plants are illegal, plants which might grow unbidden on one's property at any time, it can be said that the laws interpreted as proscribing these plants are "unconstitutionally vague"- it is not immediately obvious to the ordinary citizen, nor indeed to anyone, just what is illegalized by these laws. In fact, with the advent of the "Controlled Substances Analogues Act" of 1986, any and all plant and animal species can be said to be illegal, at the whim of the government. Short of being an expert in several scientific fields and devoting considerable time and effort keeping abreast of the latest phytochemical and botanical research, some of which is published in German (Gartz 1986c), Spanish (Guzman 1983), French (Heim & Hofmann 1958), Italian (Festi 1985; Fiussello & Ceruti-Scurti 1972; Samorini & Festi 1989), Czechoslovakian (Pouzar 1953), Norwegian (Kvambe & Edenberg 1979; Nordbo 1979) or other languages, there is no way for any citizen to be certain (s)he is not in illegal possession of a proscribed drug.
This is all a result of misguided, supply-side enforcement. As long as demand exists for illicit drugs, and as long as the laws guarantee, nay, subsidize the profitability of meeting this demand, people will line up for the chance to enter this business. As even informed opponents of drug legalization acknowledge, only by targeting the demand side can we make strides toward reducing the consumption of illicit drugs (Goldstein & Kalant 1990; Jarvik 1990). Empty propaganda accompanied by a "war" against users (recall that 75% of arrests in the U.S. are for simple possession) who are treated as vermin, as vectors of transmission of a "plague" (Szasz 1974) only alienates them still further from authority. Only by treating people with respect and offering them unbiased information and viable alternatives (N.B. jail is neither an effective deterrent nor a viable alternative; Packer 1968; Skolnick 1968) can governmental authorities hope to dissuade users from this or that drug. There is evidence that information campaigns can influence drug use (Elickson & Bell 1990). Suasion, not coercion is the answer, and the voice doing the persuading must be morally impeccable. As Shakespeare's Hamlet lamented: "ay, there's the rub."