The “War on Drugs” is doing as well as the war on terror. Just as the latter murders civilians, thereby creating fertile ground for enemy recruiters, the former takes its own innocent victims. It converts a chronic disease into a crime, with destructive consequences for us all.
The Sentencing Project reports: “Sentencing policies brought about by the ‘war on drugs’ resulted in a dramatic growth in incarceration. … At the federal level, prisoners incarcerated on a drug charge comprise half of the prison population, while the number of drug offenders in state prisons has increased [13]-fold since 1980. Most of these people … have no prior criminal record for a violent offense.”
A recent talk at the Jessup Library in Bar Harbor by Dr. Steven Kassels persuasively exposed the contradictions and moral inconsistencies in the drug war. Kassels is medical director of Community Substance Abuse Centers and author of the medical-legal mystery thriller “Addiction on Trial: Tragedy in Downeast Maine.” He pointed out that heroin addiction is analogous in fundamental ways to type 2 diabetes or to smoking. Diabetes has a genetic component but is exacerbated by poor habits, including food and exercise choices. In addition “alcohol, nicotine, cocaine and heroin all create their effects through the same common pathway. … The same medication, called naltrexone, is used to curb the craving effects of both alcohol and heroin.”
Willpower alone, whatever that is, is often equally unavailing against all of these addictions. Kassels asked his audience to close their eyes and contemplate only their own breathing for 60 seconds. If they are not able to purge all thoughts — and most are not — “you know the struggles of addiction. It is not mind over matter.”
Though heroin’s fatal victims are unacceptably high — more than are killed in auto accidents in many states — smoking and diabetes take even more. Nonetheless we do not generally characterize smokers such as Dick Cheney as “nicotine addicts.” And though we tax their habits, we do not jail them. Those fortunate enough to have health insurance are offered programs to help them withdraw and alter their lifestyles. We continue to provide medical assistance even if they periodically “cheat” on their diets.
We pay for our moral and medical inconsistencies not only with lives but also with our pocketbooks. Incarcerating one patient costs more than $50,000 per year as compared with $5,000 for outpatient treatment.
Kassels argues: “Expanded access and funding for treatment makes fiscal sense, regardless of whether we believe addiction is a disease or a weakness of moral character. … Putting more “addicts” in jail may make us feel good in the short term but does not solve the problem.”
Part of the power of Kassel’s novel lies in its implication for the question of why social policy persists in these morally questionable and fiscally costly contradictions. The criminality of a drug is determined in part by who is — or is purported to be — its prime user. In coastal Maine, as in many rural and suburban communities, heroin is perceived as an “inner city” drug, with all the racial and economic baggage that term carries. Thus in Kassels’ novel, the character accused of murder in the Maine coastal village bears the twin stigma of being “from away” and, falsely, having introduced heroin into this purportedly pristine community.
In this context, I worry that for some citizens, putting addicts in jail may do more than make them feel good in the short term. It may subconsciously serve deeply entrenched identity needs. Economic arguments, though important and persuasive to some, may not always prevail. For others, jailing the heroin abuser as a uniquely evil moral reprobate is part of affirming a strongly held collective and individual identity, that of a hardworking, sober, self-sufficient community of citizens and workers. Treating outsiders and drugs associated with them as uniquely dangerous threats to the community serves several psychic purposes. It may help repress inner doubts about the sacrifices one made to sustain that identity, its staying power in a world of rapid global change, or deviant desires one may have harbored.
Drug policies cannot be easily dissociated from economic issues. A generous safety net, with Medicare for all, pension protection, shorter working hours and employment guarantees might reduce anxieties, allow moralizers to be easier on themselves and open new possibilities of personal and community life. Perhaps our politics would be marred by less resentment of all Medicaid recipients, especially those tarred with the triple stigmas of outsider, poverty and “addiction.”
John Buell of Southwest Harbor is a columnist for The Progressive Populist and blogs regularly for The Contemporary Condition. His most recent book is “Politics, Religion, and Culture in an Anxious Age.” His email address is jbuell@acadia.net.