Cannabin-there

It’s a more-than-unfashionable, ‘square’ stance to take these days, to be against legalisation of Schedule 1 controlled substances. Even so, I am one of the apparently shrinking body of people who believes that cannabis (and other drugs) should remain illegal. And that’s not only because I’m a Lin Zexu fan, though I admit that is a real factor.

Firstly, the health effects are a major concern, and marijuana is often favourably compared to tobacco in the popular press. This largely stems from a comparison of the respective psychoactive compounds: it does appear to be true that THC is less addictive than nicotine. However, by volume (and especially given the way in which smoke is inhaled and retained), weed smoke contains between 50% and 75% more of the carcinogenic hydrocarbon compounds that cigarette smoke does. Marijuana also contains three times more ‘tar’ and five times more carbon monoxide than tobacco does. Potentially more concerning, particularly in our current social environment, are the psychological effects. Marijuana is linked to the development of severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia. Also alarmingly, corresponding to the liberalisation of attitudes on marijuana use, reported use has more than doubled among American adults; and abuse has nearly doubled.

Therefore, even if, as legalisation proponents rather dubiously claim, it’s not possible to overdose on cannabis in a single episode in the same way it’s possible to overdose on opioids, this is very much a public health question rather than a ‘victimless crime’. There has been a proliferation of vehicular accidents and vehicular accident-related deaths in states which have legalised marijuana – no doubt related to the CNS-depressant effects of THC. Colorado has seen increases in critical care admissions for children exposed to (legal, commercial) marijuana.

Speaking of which: it’s also more than clear by now that the beneficiaries of legalisation are not going to be the folks (mostly people of colour) who have been incarcerated for drug possession in the past. This is why – despite agreeing with many legalisation proponents that most such incarcerated people should be pardoned – I’m not particularly sympathetic to the appeals to emotion which use the unjustly-incarcerated as an argument for legalisation now; these arguments conflate what are already two separate issues. In fact, given the small fraction of incarcerations nationwide which are related to drug possession, the conflation of the two policies amounts to a red herring.

More to the point is what the Basis of the Social Concept document calls ‘the selfish interests of the drug business’, and marijuana stands to be no exception to these selfish interests. The beneficiaries of legalisation already include (mostly white-run) for-profit corporations looking to cash in on a new market, including the same multinational pharmaceutical conglomerates which have historically opposed legalisation as well as plutocrat-class lobbyists and legislators like John Boehner. Drug legalisation logic, including the popular form of that logic which is reproduced and proliferated by the popular press, stands firmly ensconced in atomistic, neoliberal assumptions about human behaviour. It is therefore no wonder that legalisation stands to benefit primarily the affluent and the well-connected – in whose interests neoliberal policy logic always operates – at the hidden expense of œconomically-struggling communities including children who stand to be hurt most by the negative health effects of widely-available, legal cannabis.

At the same time, I believe that we have enforced anti-drug policy in many of the wrong ways. The United States does disproportionately punish nonviolent possession offences while coddling traffickers. The CIA in fact has a history of promoting the growing, manufacture and trafficking of controlled substances, which dates back to their involvement in the Chinese Civil War, when they were involved in the opium shipping business on behalf of the Chinese Guomindang, and later on behalf of the rebels in Laos in the Golden Triangle. In the mid-1990s, Gary Webb investigated the CIA’s involvement in the Contras’ drug smuggling in Nicaragua – both cocaine and marijuana – and the ‘crack’ cocaine epidemic in American cities; for this investigation, the CIA, together with a compliant commercial media machine, attacked Webb’s reputation and killed him.

This post is rapidly turning into an anti-drug policy fact sheet, which was not my intention to begin with. It’s true that there are real costs associated with enforcing the law against marijuana, and benefits in dollar terms – for some people – to legalising it. But the real question is what kind of society we want to have, what we value as a society, and what we are willing to sacrifice for it. This was, in fact, the exact same debate that the Qing Dynasty had internally with regard to opium, prior to the Opium War. All the same arguments that have been advanced in the United States over marijuana, were also advanced by Qing officials during the 1830’s and 1840’s over opium, including the benefits to the œconomy if its legal status were secured. Lin Zexu was one of the brave souls who grounded his objections to the opium trade in the wisdom of Confucius and the Ru tradition. The Daoguang Emperor sided with Lin Zexu, fought the British over his choice, and lost the war – mostly due to technological overmatch, but also due to the corruption, backbiting and incompetence of his generals. But that does not mean that Lin Zexu was wrong.

The fundamental argument at the core of the controversy over decriminalisation or legalisation of drugs, is not an œconomic but a moral one. We may take for granted that enforcing laws is costly; this is the case with everything from traffic violations to national security. But do we simply accept it as ‘normal’ that a significant and growing proportion of our population seeks a chemical escape from the banal horrors of our hyper-capitalist age, to their own (and others’) immiseration? The destruction of human life wrought by the laisser-faire deregulation of guns is tragic. Why can we no longer say the same of the destruction of human life (and health, and potential) wrought by the deregulation of drugs?