CJ Trowbridge

HED 315 – Drugs and Society

2020-06-01

Reaction Points: Unit 1

• ethan nadelman’s ted talk
  • Effects of the war on drugs
    • Created a $300b global black market for drugs
    • More drug use than ever
  • Same failure as the prohibition on alcohol
  • Treaties emphasize criminalization rather than treatment
  • Most money spend around the world goes not to helping but punishing.
  • It’s not a front for advancing American policies
    • America doesn’t want chaos in neighboring countries.
    • Instead, the drug war is the international projection of a domestic American psychosis.
  • Most American politicians want to roll back the drug war and reduce incarceration (Except Joe Biden obviously)
  • America leads the world in Marijuana reform
    • Most states have legalized it
    • Most Americans want it legalized and regulated
  • People working on supply think the real solutions are in demand, and vice versa, plus international borders. Everyone thinks the answer lays in whichever area they know the least about.
  • Drugs are not legal or illegal based on their dangers, risks, or the science behind them.
    • Instead, they are legal or illegal based on who uses them.
    • Most opium was used by white women.
      • It was banned in order to mass incarcerate Chinese people who did not abuse it. This was the first ban on a drug in America
    • Cocaine was banned on the argument that it would make black people forget their place in society, so instead banning cocaine would allow them to be mass incarcerated.
    • Marijuana was banned in order to mass incarcerate migrant workers from Latin America.
  • Our drug policies emphasize criminalize drug use rather than helping people.
  • People routinely lose their jobs, children, homes, etc not because they have hurt anyone but because they chose to use one drug over another.
  • Legalizing drugs would improve public health and safety, and allow taxpayer resources to be spent on more important things, while also bringing in revenue, and improving the safety and quality of the drugs people are doing.
  • Prohibition is the abdication of regulation, giving control of commodities markets over to criminals.
  • Countries that legalize drugs have far better outcomes
    • Illegal drug abuse is down
    • Disease is down
    • Crime and arrests are down
    • Overdoses go down
    • Health and wellbeing improve
    • Taxpayers benefit
  • Coca cola had cocaine in it until 1900, and it was not more addictive or harmful with cocaine in it.
  • Cigarettes are more addictive and more harmful than any other drug.
    • Heroin addicts say it’s harder to quit cigarettes than heroin
    • Half of all people who have been addicted to cigarettes have since quit without ever having been arrested or put in jail or otherwise criminalized, or forced into treatment programs by judges.
      • Higher taxes, time and place restrictions on use, effective anti-smoking campaigns did it.
    • The challenge is two-fold
      • Developing effective alternative policies
      • People need to get informed and work on their fears, racism, and other personal barriers that prevent real reform.
        • We need better education for kids.
      • The whole war on drugs could be seen as one big problematic attempt to protect children from reality, and it fails to do that.
• the power of outraspection
  • 20^th century was the century of introspection
    • The self-help industry, therapy culture told us to look inside ourselves to find the answers; to gaze at our own labels.
      • This has not delivered the good life.
    • The 21^st century needs to be different.
      • Discovery who you are and what to do with your life by looking outside yourself rather than looking inside yourself.
      • Empathy is the ultimate art form of outrospection.
    • Empathy can be part of the art of living
      • Expands your moral universe
      • Improve your relationships
      • Create the human bonds that make life worth living
    • Empathy is about radical social change
      • Empathy is not a soft and fluffy concept
      • Empathy creates revolution
    • Psychology says empathy is
      • Affective empathy: A shared emotional response, a mirrored response
      • Cognitive empathy: perspective taking, stepping into someone else’s world and experiencing their beliefs, fears, perspective
    • Highly empathic people
      • get beyond labeling others by nurturing their creative curiosity
        • Orwell went into underprivileged communities to see how they experience life
          • This inspired much of his work and expanded his perspective and understanding of life at the social margin
        • Sensitive listeners who work hard to understand the needs of others
        • Make conversations two-way dialogues
      • History can be seen as the rise and fall of empathy
        • Slavery and subjugation comes when empathy declines, it goes away when empathy rises.
      • There are gaps in both kinds of empathy preventing progress on many critical issues.
      • We need new social institutions devoted to increasing empathy.
        • Empathy museums
      • We need to have personal empathy practices
        • To know thyself must include outrospection; to know your place in the human system, the costs others are paying for what you are buying and doing.
      • Did Rats Start the War on Drugs?
        • Much of our current “knowledge” on addiction is based on a small series of rat trials.
          • Some rats in solitary confinement chose heroin over food until they starved to death
          • This became the common understanding of what human behavior must also be like
          • Social rats did not have the same behavior. Further experiments showed that rats with social opportunities chose to quit heroin, paralleling normal healthy human recreational drug use.
          • Even rats that were forced to become extremely addicted to heroin would choose to quit heroin once they were reintroduced to their social groups.
        • Environment, feeling of isolation, poor social bonds, and lack of control lead to addiction.
        • Drug addicts are shamed, ostracized, incarcerated, or moved into half-way houses instead of integrating them into society.
          • Society is doing the worst thing possible to people with addiction, amplifying the problem rather than ameliorating it.
        • reducing the risks of drug use
          • Abstract: The central proposition of this article is that if people are thoughtful, well-prepared and aware of the means and best environments for using a particular drug, then the risks associated with the use of a particular drug – any drug – can be minimal. The types of drugs discussed in this context focus on those assumed to be the most ‘addictive’ – heroin and cocaine – to those less well-known but potentially more hazardous to use without prior knowledge and preparation – such as Yage and Fly Agaric. This proposition is discussed in the context of different definitions of relatively non-problematic patterns of drug use, specifically: controlled, recreational and unobtrusive. It is concluded that while the effect of taking a particular drug is a primary motivation to the user, the role of set and setting are of fundamental importance in ensuring that the effects of that drug are as intended for and expected by the user.
          • drug use need not be dangerous
          • a set of assumptions exists as to the long-term effects of drugs, with certain drugs believed to have the capacity to lead to inevitably destructive patterns of use
          • Question: ‘‘Is cocaine/heroin an intrinsically dangerous drug?’’ Answer: ‘‘Not necessarily’’
          • cannabis, ecstasy and LSD, these being drugs not generally associated with destructive or addictive use, due to the relatively low level of medical intervention and criminal behaviour associated with such drugs
          • evidence is emerging that heroin, regarded as one of the most addictive and destructive drugs, can also be used in a way that is not associated with either serious health problems nor high levels of criminal behaviour
          • If applied only to certain drugs, recreational drug use reinforces the concept of there being an addictive hierarchy of substances. Therefore ecstasy is ‘fun’ whereas heroin is not: ecstasy is used on an occasional, leisure time basis, whereas heroin is used with monotonous regularity through necessity. The research on controlled heroin use would dispute this view, and indeed in the authors’ own research on heroin use participants typically described their motivation for using heroin in hedonistic terms: they enjoyed the effects. Yet ‘recreational heroin use’ has been viewed as a subversive, even irresponsible term: ‘‘…The opiates are drugs of addiction. There are variations in individual susceptibility, but anyone who takes an opiate for a long enough time will become addicted.’’
          • Unobtrusive drug use could simply refer to chaotic users who have not sought treatment or been identified by health agencies. We would argue in return that such drug use is extremely obtrusive to the individual concerned. Similarly, criminally orientated drugs users who remain out of reach of the drug treatment system are highly obtrusive to those whose houses they break into. Unobtrusive drug use, therefore, needs to be characterized by patterns of use that are neither dominating the lives of those who are taking the drugs in question, nor distressing or damaging to those around them. And we would return to our original position that unobtrusive drug use should, in principle, be applicable to any psychoactive drug.
          • Fly Agaric (mentioned several times in the article): Arguably the most iconic toadstool species, the fly agaric is a large white-gilled, white-spotted, usually red mushroom, and is one of the most recognizable and widely encountered in popular culture. Arguably the most iconic toadstool species, the fly agaric is a large white-gilled, white-spotted, usually red mushroom, and is one of the most recognizable and widely encountered in popular culture.
          • There exist a range of substances naturally occurring in flora, fungi and even animals that have traditionally been used with the purpose of inducing visions and profound shifts of consciousness. While the active compounds themselves vary greatly, the desired effects are very similar: hallucinations, near-death and/or out-of-body experiences and extreme intoxication. Historically, in tribal communities these were used (e.g.) to communicate with the spirits of the dead or with ‘higher beings’. It was understood that to do so involved an element of risk and therefore these rituals were undertaken by adepts trained over a number of years specifically for this purpose.
          • A conclusion to be drawn from the argument presented in this article is that Set is a crucial factor in controlled, recreational, unobtrusive drug use.
            • The role of Setting is also of crucial importance for this position, requiring further exploration and discussion than within the focus of this article.
          • We are aware that many of the ideas proposed in this article will go against prevailing opinion, particularly the argument that drug use can be, in principle, generally non-problematic to the user and those around them. Being unpopular does not, however, make an argument necessarily flawed.
          • There is a huge space to fill in current drug research.
• embracing positive change: Dan Bigg
  • Treatment for substance used as an owner’s has historically been viewed as binary with addiction and abstinence as a person’s only two options
  • There are many positive changes a person can make to reduce the negative consequences of their “opioid misuse.”
  • Harm Reduction: To assist any positive change as a person defines it for themself.
  • There is a huge, productive middle-ground between abstinence and addiction.
  • Instead of banning drinking or banning driving – which would not work — we say don’t do them at the same time, which reduces harm.
  • Rejoice and affirm improvements, rather than perfection.
• continuum of drug use
  • No Use—Experimental—Occasional—Regular—Heavy—Chaotic
  • No Use
    • Self explanatory
  • Experimental
    • almost half of high school students have tried an illegal drug, and more than 70% have tried alcohol (also illegal in their case).
  • Occasional
    • periodic use, often related to social occasions
  • Regular
    • drug use starts to become an expected part of the person’s life
    • We see two possible risks for increased harm at this stage:
      • the risk of creating a physical dependence, and
      • the risk of replacing existing defense and coping mechanisms with an external one: the drug.
    • Heavy
      • daily or multiple times per day. At this point the persons life is starting to be organized around the drug
    • Chaotic
      • compulsive, stereotypical “addict” behavior, in which a person’s entire life is organized around drugs and drug use: finding drugs, paying for drugs, enjoying drugs and recovering from the experience. Other parts of the person’s life fall into disrepair entirely.
    • Most US Drug prevention, treatment, and policy decisions are based on a perception of all drug use as chaotic, chronic, and pathological.
    • The perception of all drug users as crazy out of control addicts also supports what is known as the clinician’s fallacy. This concept was developed by researchers studying schizophrenia, who were interested in challenging the conventional medical wisdom that schizophrenia was incurable—that once diagnosed, a schizophrenic would need to be maintained on anti-psychotics for the rest of their lives. In fact, they found that most schizophrenics were cured without treatment—they simply “aged out” of the disease. Clinicians had been under the impression that the disease was incurable because the people they saw in their practice were the people who were the worst affected.
• johan hari: everything you think you know about addiction is wrong
  • The United States and Britain banned drugs over a century ago, and imposed that decision on the world.
  • The argument was that punishing people who were suffering from addiction would serve as a deterrent to prevent more people from becoming addicted to drugs.
  • We keep doing this even though we know it doesn’t work.
  • Mongooses really like hallucinogens but only under certain circumstances.
  • Almost everything we know about addiction is wrong
    • Doctors give people large doses of heroin on a very frequent basis. It’s very normal. Most people who are given enormous amounts of heroin on an ongoing basis by doctors do not become addicts.
    • Talks about rat experiments and rat park experiments
    • 95% of Vietnam soldiers who came home addicted to heroin quit cold turkey with no problem and no relapse.
  • Bonding as an alternative to addiction
    • If no bonds with people, then bonds with substances that provide an out.
  • All of you could choose to do nothing but drink vodka for the next six months. The reason you’re not going to drink vodka for the next six months straight is that you have bonds and connections you want to be present for.
  • A core part of addiction is about not being able to bear to be present in your life
  • If you wanted to design a system that would make addiction worse, you would design our system.
  • Successful alternative systems in Britain, Portugal, and elsewhere give addicts jobs instead of prison sentences.
    • Drug use dropped by 50%
    • HIV, overdoses, addiction are all down.
  • The number of close friends the average American believes they can call on in a crisis has been steadily declining since the 1950s, while the average floor space the average individual has in their home has been steadily increasing. This is a metaphor for the choice we’ve made as a culture to have a parody of human connection rather than having human connection. Twitter followers and facebook friends don’t show up to help you through a crisis, real flesh and blood people you spend physical time with are the ones who do that. We are one of the loneliest societies that have ever been. It’s not just individuals who need to recover, our society needs to recover together.
  • The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it’s connection.
• allan ginsberg, cia dope calypso
  • This is difficult to put into bullet points
  • The CIA pitted factions against each other in southeast Asia, using a CIA opium business to fund conflict between neighboring countries.