I really do not know why some drugs fall into the different schedules used by our laws but my recollection is that it relates to supposed harm. I say harm because marijuana is considered very harmful and thus its position in our drug laws. I recall an Atlantic Monthly article about marijuana and that the drug had no lethal amount. So much for physical harm.At best, drug policy is problematic. Anyone criticizing current policy should expect the label of immoralist. Well, that was pretty much true till the police started telling the public how much of a failure was the War on Drugs. From my experiences as a public defender many years ago, I have to agree about the failure. In addition to fear of appearing immoral, too many have a vested interest in the current system to allow a rational change. Seems to be the same in Britain:A new report by the Royal Society of Arts criticises the "moral panic" which has supposedly guided a generation of drug laws in the UK. Such laws, it says, are no longer "fit for their purpose", and may never have been fit in the first place. It argues that the current Misuse of Drugs Act - and its punitive ABC classification system - should be replaced with "an index of harm", determined by the respective health risks of any given drug.
Implicit in the findings is a criticism of the practice of treating drug-taking as a crime, rather than a health problem; as the business of the Home Office rather than the Department of Health. Even then, it argues, evidence suggests that the "majority of people who use drugs are able to use them without harming themselves or others", rendering the "harmless use of illegal drugs" not only possible but "commonplace". The Home Office has already said it doesn't accept all the report's recommendations, but hasn't yet elaborated further.
And yet the panic remains unabated, peddled by tabloids, politicians and clerics. The irony of a society in which more people die from peanut consumption than ecstasy, say campaigners, has been airbrushed from modern history. But there is no reverse gear, according to politicians, no way of revisiting the topic."Politicians have bought a lot of their own propaganda and they have their own fears about the way reform would be met by the great unwashed," says Danny Kushlick, director of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. "They've pumped out an enormous amount of propaganda for a ridiculous policy, and effectively painted themselves into a corner."
The slippery slope theory falls back on an age-old mantra: that drugs lead to more drugs, and that we need to be saved from ourselves. The theory - based on the fact that heroin addicts invariably started out on softer drugs - is seen by its opponents as a fraud that ignores what seems obvious. Most people who take drugs, they say, will never graduate to heroin; most will never give it a second thought. Most, they will argue, whether in a loved-up state or otherwise, would see little cause for panic at all.
I suggest reading the whole article as it contains some very interesting history in a short space.
And why the article made me think about Richard Pryor?In moral terms, things didn't get serious until the crossover of drugs into the West's indigenous white community during the 1950s and 1960s. It was only then that Britain introduced drug laws, under the UN's guidance, which rewarded cannabis users with a lengthy jail term. Traversing the race divide like the rhythm in Elvis's hips, the "black problem" became a white problem, rendering the whites using those drugs problematic.Pryor made the same point about the U.S. over two decades ago.
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