Drug
Wars: How
laws of pain science can help
Governments
Solve
Society's Drug Problems
The tentacles of
the drug trade,
and its associated gang activities, reach into all the
world's main
regions and has become a commonplace problem in
modern societies. The
underground activity becomes visible every now and again via
erupting gang wars - with their string of murders and paybacks.
Some events along these lines have included the US military invasion of
Panama to facilitate regime change and to curb the drug trade - with
205
Panamanian military and several thousand civilians killed; Colombian
violence involving paramilitary
groups and drug cartels - with 2800 trade unionists killed; an
Australian
underground
war (of "Underbelly" fame) - with 36 gang members dead; and the current
war amongst
Mexican drug
cartels - with 28000+ people killed. It is interesting to compare
Mexico's drug war death
count to
those of some real
wars: Korean War - 36,000+ US soldiers killed; Vietnam War - 58000+ US
soldiers killed; and Gulf War II - approximately 26000 Iraqi soldiers
killed. As one can see from the significant death counts, and in some
cases the need for military intervention, these are bona fide wars - except
that they are mostly internalised ones.
To date, governments have been unable to solve the
illegal drug trade and its gang wars - they mostly suppress them with
prohibition laws and a
greater
display of force respectively. So what causes drug addictions and drug
wars, and how
can
their social impact be reduced?
The Nature of
Drug Addictions, Drug Gangs, and Drug-related
Crime
Many
theories have been proposed to try to
explain the nature of addiction. They include genetic predisposition
(early adverse environmental conditions can alter protein production
and/or the genotype that may lead to drug experimentation);
self-medication hypotheses (self-drug-treatment
of stress, mental
unease, depression, bad feelings, etc.); and psychological and social
factors (delayed or missed life milestones or social role adaptations).
These theories are all valid in their own ways, but they have not hit
upon
the exact, underlying cause of the addiction phenomenon. Alternatively,
a major clue
to the nature of addiction comes from a telling observation made by
medical science of an addiction-like
behaviour when
patients are suffering from
undertreated pain:
Pseudo
addiction is a term which has been used to
describe patient behaviors that may occur when pain is undertreated.
Patients with unrelieved pain may become focused on obtaining
medications, may "clock watch," and may otherwise seem inappropriately
"drug seeking." Even such behaviors as illicit drug use and deception
can occur in the patient's efforts to obtain relief. Pseudoaddiction
can be distinguished from true addiction in that the behaviors resolve
when pain is effectively treated. [1]
The above
description of pseudoaddiction behaviour being related to pain is
interesting, in light of the discovery - at the heart of laws of pain
science - that unresolved pain is the
major cause of suffering in the
human species.
Our species
displays a spectrum of behaviours between two extremes: very feeling
(like
samaritanism) and very unfeeling (like warfare). Overall, the world
tries to be feeling oriented (via public health
schemes, charities, regulatory bodies, political correctness, etc.),
but
this is because it
constantly has to fight off a tendency towards unfeeling behaviours
(like business monopolies and price-fixing cartels, worker
exploitation,
racism, hooliganism, etc.). In
this world
children grow up within homes that, again, involve a spectrum of
parenting skills between two extremes: good parenting, with love,
warmth, acceptance, and recognition; and poor parenting, with neglect,
coldness, abuse, and violence. Children destined to become adult
sufferers
tend to
grow up in the more troubled environments. This could involve pain
experienced at birth, inadequate parenting, losing parent/s at an early
age, poor foster or institutional care, and an unfavourable
neighbourhood and schooling environment (that could involve boredom,
abuse, fighting, bullying, etc.). This builds up
in such people a
string of unresolved accumulated painful experiences. Each painful
experience alters by a certain amount brain wiring and chemistry.
In the
former case, altered wiring produces misperceptions, unrealistic
beliefs, irrational fears, raging thoughts, fantasies, and the like. In
the
latter case, the brain's endorphins (natural chemicals involved in the
experience of pleasure and pain) - and other chemicals - are altered
from the norm: some are
employed in "holding on to" unresolved pain while some are
overproduced to quell nervous anxiety and tension. As emerging
adults, people become attracted to various activities and
groups
that
can provide some degree of outlet - and temporary relief - for their
relative tensions
and
anxieties. Such groups can involve sport,
cars, motor bikes, technology, gambling, religion, drinking - or
drug-taking. Such groups have their share of good members,
average members,
and some fanatics. At the more fanatical end, for
example, sport has game fixers,
car enthusiasts have hoons, motor cycle enthusiasts have bikie gangs,
technology enthusiasts have hackers, religion has cultists, etcetera.
But,
overall, most interest groups are reasonably harmless and
so there
are no laws preventing people's involvement in them. But a drug-using
and dealing
group does have laws preventing people's involvement, primarily
because heavy use of drugs can cause organ and tissue damage, or death.
In the
present-day world - where there is significant unfeeling nature -
several misperceptions about drugs have arisen:
Misperception
1: "Drugs are Addictive"
There is a
belief that just by their very nature "drugs
are addictive". This suggests that if a person takes a drug they could
immediately fall victim to its addiction. But findings in laws of pain science show
that this is not true. The only people who get a high from a
psychoactive drug - and therefore are susceptible to its addiction -
are those whose brain chemical supplies have become distorted from the
norm - via a
history of unresolved pain. With their brain endorphins tied up with
pain, or in overproduction, the introduced drug is able to produce
an artificial "high" - that provides
temporary relief from tension and anxiety.
Separately from this, some people can get addicted to almost any
chemical - like those found in glue and petrol (via inhalation),
which are more poisons than drugs. But people who have
little unresolved
psychoemotional pain - from good upbringings, or from resolved
histories of pain
via pain-resolving therapy - have naturally balanced brain chemical
supplies. So when they take a psychoactive drug they do not feel a high
- they just feel nauseous. This is because with normalised chemical
supplies, the drug has little psychoactive effect and is
therefore experienced for what it is - as a foreign and extraneous
substance.
Misperception
2: "Drugs are Dangerous"
Drugs
alter mood so as to produce alertness ("uppers" in drug parlance) or
relaxation ("downers"). They can
be dangerous if taken in excess, or when taken with other drugs or with
alcohol. Via the media we tend to mainly see people
under drug influence acting wildly, doing violent or crazy things, and
requiring a handful of police officers to restrain. The inference is
that when any person takes a drug they could automatically become
dangerous. This imparts a misplaced sense of "danger"
onto drugs. It is not necessarily the drug alone that is dangerous but
oftentimes the person taking
the drug. In particular, people who are psychologically or emotionally
unstable, or those who have a lot of repressed energy inside of them
are susceptible to wildness.
This unbalanced view makes the drug-taking culture appear scarier than
it really is, and the public unnecessarily fearful of
it. Drug users and
dealers
take advantage of this social fear by projecting "tough" and
"dangerous" personas - that also infuse the culture with an
anti-establishment "street cred".
Misperception 3: Medical Science will Discover a Cure for
Addiction
Another
misperception - or expectation - is that medical
science will eventually find a cure for addiction. This is unlikely to
occur
because medical science has been following a genetics-based path of
research. This path
has not yet developed anything that can resolve the latest crop of
health and behavioural problems, such as addiction, depression,
hyperactivity,
ADHD, PTSD, alcoholism, and others. Mostly, medical science develops
pharmaceutical drugs to treat sufferers' problems. These drugs are not
natural cures but
are just
temporary treatments to help alleviate symptoms. Separately,
there
are psychological, psychiatric, and alternative therapy services
provided by government and/or private
enterprise that offer help for drug addicts. Unfortunately, though,
their services mainly entail patch-up techniques to help people cope in
life. They do not facilitate resolution of suffering deep within the
brain.
The
Social Dynamics that create Drug Gangs
Even though
illegal drugs may be used by a smattering of people from all walks of
life,
the media, law courts, police, teachers, and upstanding people all
share the same view: drugs are considered "bad" and offenders must be
prosecuted. But essentially what the government is saying in this
situation is, "We cannot heal the suffering that leads to drug
addiction, so we are casting aside the people who take drugs - to fend
for themselves - and prosecuting them if they are caught in the act of
using or dealing". So a social gap
is
created between people who do not
take drugs - who are accepted as good people - and those who do - who
are shunned as bad people. What then fills this gap are the drug
gangs, who supply needy people with the drugs that they crave via a
black market. These drug gangs are essentially playing the role of
"defacto health care services" - or, even more accurately, as a defacto
section of the pharmaceutical industry, because it involves
plantations, laboratories, couriers, distributors, and sellers -
everything that a normal industry has. Essentially,
since the
government cannot facilitate the healing of drug addiction - and so
cannot
condone psychoactive drug production or consumption - the gangs
provide the health care / pharmaceutical service for sufferers (i.e.,
temporary alleviation of intense tension and anxiety) that the government
will not allow - albeit in a rough and violent form.
By making
psychoactive drug use illegal, the government criminalises a section of
society. As
we all know, human beings want to feel that they belong - they want to
feel apart of
society, to feel useful, and to contribute something to it.
But since drug users and providers are treated as outcasts (and
outlaws), this sets this
section of
society on a
path of violent, underworld growth. Drug barons build empires that can
eventually
become so large that they employ a significant workforce, a security
operation fueled by gun running, and can attain social influence
- such as through bribes and kickbacks to politicians and police. It is
like a
shunned section of
society has grown up and is trying to plug back into mainstream society
as a legitimate operation - albeit in a forceful manner. This
criminalisation, therefore, adds another layer of repression on top of
that already endured during a troubled upbringing. This means that such
suffering people not only have to fight against their own internal
demons to live life,
but must also fight against society to achieve a sense of freedom. So
unfeeling
human behaviour can be caused by either or both a troubled upbringing
and/or an
adverse social environment. When both of these constraints are
set in place, it can generate a double-dose
of repression that produces the most unconscionable
unfeeling behaviour imaginable - that we see acted out in gang wars -
including abductions,
ransoms, bashings, torture, decapitation,
dismemberment, body dumping, mass
graves - and even the killing of babies (who are unfortunate enough to
be the
innocent offspring
of gang members).
Criminalising psychoactive drug use also spawns an additional social
problem of drug-related crime.
Psychoactive drugs can sometimes be hard to come by on the black
market,
or the price can be artificially inflated by suppliers, and as a result
can become overly expensive. This leads desperate
people to commit crimes - like robbing homes, businesses, and banks -
to obtain money to pay for their drug habit. And this sometimes leads
to the murder of innocent people who inadvertently get in their way.
Every now and again the drug trade is
interrupted by a "drug bust", and the police and government make a show
of these successes - by, for example, displaying the hoard of drugs
and/or
cash gains on television. This is an attempt to reassure the public
that they have the drug problem "under control". But such busts are
just temporary setbacks for established drug gangs. By being unable to
legalise psychoactive drugs - the government is actually
allowing drug gangs to prosper, wars over
control of the trade to erupt, and innocent people caught in the
crossfire to needlessly die. The government is inadvertently helping to
produce what it wants to stop!
The current
"drugs are bad" system (as a part of a more
unfeeling than feeling world) has the following disadvantages:
- Psychoactive drugs sold on the black market are accompanied by
inaccurate - often over-exulted - descriptions to make the drugs
alluring. For example, a dealer may claim that a certain drug gets you
high for hours, and you see dazzling colours, wonderful shapes, and
hear beautiful sounds. There is no information given on the
after-effects, side-effects, or long-term usage effects.
- The
banning of psychoactive drugs creates a rebellious,
anti-establishment street cred
that makes the drugs even more alluring than they normally
would be, and covers over the real nature of drugs - as mood modifiers
or painkillers
- Drugs are not always sold in safe or consistent potencies, or
with correct dosages advised. They can be impure: doctored with various
fillers so as to make more money from a limited drug supply.
Conversely, some drugs can be overly pure compared to previous
supplies. In both cases the result can lead to sickness and possible
death in users.
- Illegal drugs are often stored in inadequate, unmarked packaging
- like plastic bags or foil wraps - that provide no details of the drug
inside, and that can be easily accessed and consumed by children.
- And, finally, the archetypal drug addict death occurs within an
uncaring
environment - alone in a hotel room or alleyway - or in a drug den
abandoned by their user and dealer friends - to top off having
already been long-abandoned by government and society.
Drug Addiction,
Crime, and even Health, are all about lack of Feeling Capacity
Laws of pain
science incorporates the discovery -
made by several practitioners independently over the last century - of
the brain's
own natural
healing mechanism. This mechanism (known here as exfeeling) - involves
psychoemotionally
sinking back into past painful
experiences and reengaging the pain - or bringing it to
consciousness - with expression of associated feelings. This
permanently clears trapped, aggravating tension and anxiety from the
brain and nervous
system, and, progressively, both rewires and rechemicalises the brain
back to normal. This healing process
has uncovered a direct
relationship
between pain and addiction: addictive cravings drop in accordance to
how much stored pain has been resolved. So, for instance, when a
person resolves a quarter of
their
past pain, their drug addiction drops by a quarter; when half of their
pain is resolved, addiction drops by half; when
three-quarters is resolved, drug cravings drop by three-quarters. When
a person
resolves the majority of their pain it becomes difficult to get any
satisfaction from taking drugs. What this
shows is that drug addiction is all about feeling capacity.
A low feeling capacity, means a miswired brain and altered brain
chemistry - and a consequent need for
drugs to constantly "right" the system. A
normal
feeling capacity means a correctly wired brain and a full supply of the
brain's natural chemicals -
and so
no desire to take extraneous drugs to augment the system. It also means
that drugs are not addictive in and of themselves; rather, that some
people's brains are primed for addiction to foreign
chemicals due to their
pain-ridden histories.
In fact, a
more
unfeeling than feeling world often unknowingly deals with people's
feeling
capacity. For example, people sometimes use the phrase "no sense no
feeling" in describing someone's nature. This means that a person who
exhibits a lack of feeling sense
- like wearing light clothing on a freezing day, or experiencing some
sort of hurt without reacting to it - tends to also display a lack of
common sense. Another example of this applies to the law courts. To
help them determine appropriate sentences judges have a wealth of
judicial history to rely upon. But this is not all they use. In the
final analysis, judges always want
to gauge an offender's level of remorse for their crime. Sincere
remorse indicates that the offender has empathy and feeling, and thus
has
the potential to learn from their mistakes, and so deserves a lenient
sentence. Little remorse indicates that the person has little empathy
and feeling, that they are less likely to be rehabilitated, and so
they require a harsher sentence (to protect the public).
Feeling
capacity also plays a vital role in our level of health. As an example,
obesity is currently a major health problem in the Western World - it
can lead to
diabetes and heart attacks. And one of the reasons some obese people
cite
as a problem for them is recognising when their stomach is full - so
they keep gorging past a point where others would stop. They have lost
feeling capacity within the brain-digestive system circuit.
So we basically (but unscientifically) recognise that the level of
feeling capacity is
directly linked to one's level of common sense, empathy, and health.
But the
trouble is
that the world we live
in does not yet employ a science to restore feeling capacity. Whatever
feeling capacity people have either stays the same or gets worse
throughout
their lives. It is never restored to normal (i.e., to a high level of
feeling/sensitivity). More generally,
in fact, most of the problems and struggles that we humans suffer
from - behavioural, health, addictions, and violence - are due to loss of feeling capacity - and not due to
genetic faults, or lack of morals,
faith,
or discipline. What society needs is a
science of pain/feeling to restore that natural feeling capacity and so
gradually dissolve human struggles and problems, like drug addiction.
New
Perspectives and Social Directions offered by laws of pain Science
In contrast
to the existing system,
in a world that is more feeling oriented than unfeeling, there would be
an effective cure for human suffering available - in the form of the laws of
pain and its exfeeling
process. And the advantages of such a
new science is that it can open up
new perspectives on certain problems, and allow society to do things
that it previously could not do. Its widespread application would allow
a refreshing turnaround of government policy. In such a world there
would be numerous centres effectively healing individuals of past pain
to deep brain levels, thus restoring the brain's wiring and chemical
balance to normal. There would also be social programs
highlighting people being healed, and insights and growth being
discussed. It would be a healing culture, rather than an
ignoring-past-pain and turning-one's-back-on-drugs culture. In such a
world it would be no
problem to legalise psychoactive drugs, since a cure for addiction
would be
ever-present.
So,
let us return to the aforementioned definition of pseudoaddiction as
seen in patients suffering from undertreated pain. What if a
person is suffering from physical or psychological pain and they do not
get adequate treatment and relief? They must repress that pain
by
switching off from it and trying to get on with their lives. But that
repressed pain continues to enervate the system below the level of
present-day consciousness, and their craving for drug relief does not
stop - it repeatedly comes-and-goes. When people develop the ability to
repress
from an
early age, they tend to immediately repress any
later painful experiences - big or small - so that pain is piled upon
pain within the brain and nervous
system - throughout one's upbringing and adult life. The cause of true
drug addiction, therefore, is simply a progression on from
pseudoaddiction, and, so, the above quote for pseudoaddiction can be
modified as follows:
True
addiction is a term used to describe people's
behaviors when they are suffering from a history of unresolved physical
and/or psychological pain. People with unresolved pain may become
focused on obtaining chemical substances, and may seem
inappropriately "drug seeking". Even such behaviors as theft and
deception can occur in the people's efforts to obtain relief, and a
sense of kinship with similarly suffering people can
lead to the formation of drug gangs. True
addiction can be distinguished from pseudoaddiction in that the
behaviors are not resolved until past pain is effectively
reexperienced, or brought to consciousness.
There is
plenty of scientific research that supports the phenomenon of repressed
painful experiences. For example, many animal and human studies have
shown that adverse experiences in foetal life, infancy, and early
development can still affect the organism later on in its adult life.
(Scientists attribute this effect to believed
resultant genetic changes. This may be so, but the causative mechanism
involved is repression. To restore the system all you need to do is
reverse repression via exfeeling; whereas scientists have found it hard
to reverse genetic changes one-by-one.) To quote a recent example, the
wellbeing of
Jewish Holocaust survivors of WWII was compared to the wellbeing of
European Jews who did not witness the Holocaust. The survivors still
showed signs of being psychologically scarred by that
mass
genocide threat -
by, for example, displaying more post traumatic stress and
psychopathological symptoms - even though most were children at the
time, and even though they had since built productive lives for
themselves. The researchers also recognised that late life
circumstances for survivors, such as retirement, failing health, and
death of a spouse may reactivate those early stresses. So
tension and anxiety related to painful experiences
tends to stick with people throughout
their lives - they does not disappear (unless properly treated).
Being able to
heal suffering in a more feeling oriented world, and, hence, being
able
to legalise drugs, would have the following advantages over the current
system.
- The
amount of drugs being sold would provide useful statistical information
on how much suffering there is in society, and whether that suffering
is declining, steadying, or rising due to certain social circumstances
(normally it should be steadily declining).
- When
people go into a store to buy packaged psychoactive drugs they would
get accurate information about the drugs' properties, via posters,
package descriptions, and seller advice. For example, information could
say that a particular drug makes you feel euphoric for two hours, but
that you may feel depressed for several hours afterwards, and, further,
that long-term heavy usage may lead to organ or tissue damage.
- The
drugs would be clean to use (to reduce health problems from fillers),
and in the correctly labeled potencies (to reduce the incidences of
overdoses). A gradation of potencies could also be sold to
allow a
movement to progressively lighter drug concentrations as past pain is
resolved. The drugs could also be stored in child-proof containers to
prevent accidental consumption by children.
- Other
substances - like minerals, vitamins, and alternative medicines - could
be added to psychoactive drugs to help sufferers partly maintain a
healthy intake of nutrients. For example, Omega-3 (a substance useful
in maintaining brain health) might be able to be
added to the drug MDMA ("ecstasy") to partly offset the brain damage
that that drug's long-term use is believed to cause.
- The
social gap between those who take drugs and those who do
not is eliminated, and so the weight of repression on drug addicts is
halved (i.e., social repression is eliminated, which just leaves
individual repression to be dealt with). It would also take away the
false
danger, rebelliousness, and street cred attributed to drugs, and leave
behind just their true nature as mood modifiers and painkillers
- If a
drug addict were to die, they would at
least die within a
caring environment - where people are always healing themselves and
encouraging others to do likewise - rather than an uncaring environment
where people use others primarily to make money, and where the
government, law, and mainstream society shun you.
- And,
finally, legalising psychoactive drugs would negate the "defacto
health care service" provided by drug
gangs.
Many of the people involved in gangs could then live a longer,
healthier life
working
within fuller, socially acceptable industries rather than living a
short, unhealthy life
being apart of violent groups. As a result, gang activities and their
underground
wars would, over
time, be significantly reduced.
Any
profits made from legalised drug sales could be channeled back into
supporting laws of pain treatment
centres to help more addicts to heal.
If you really want to control the drug problem, you have got to grab
hold of all aspects of it: farming, manufacture, distribution, and
usage; while at the same time supporting the latest effective
psychotherapeutic science to heal its addicts. This is a real,
effective solution
- not just the current system's letting desperate people do whatever
they want with drugs behind society's back - then, after the fact,
chasing
after
them to try to catch them in the act of wheeling-and-dealing.
Drugs
History
Humans have
sought the use of psychoactive and poisonous substances to alter
consciousness for thousands of years, spanning primitive, ancient, and
modern cultures. However, it is the modern Western World - derived from
European culture, and to a secondary extent from Middle Eastern culture
-
that has been driving popular consumption and varieties
of drugs. Drugs from various regions of the world were introduced into
Eurasia during the Age of Exploration and resultant Colombian Trade -
between Old and New Worlds - in plants, animals, and foods from the
1400s-1600s (the Early Modern period).
Essentially,
the introduction of drugs into society has followed a similar path:
initially a drug is introduced for providing believed general health
benefits - as in a "pick me up" or "tonic" - with the drug being
attributed as a gift from the god/s (e.g., beer, caffeine, nicotine).
Or it is introduced for
use by physicians for medicinal
purposes - either to treat specific health problems, or as a painkiller
(e.g., opium, alcoholic spirits). (This is the general level of drug
usage that
primitive cultures reached.) Over
time
the drug's moderate use becomes established amongst a major proportion
of the public.
(This is the general level of drug usage that ancient cultures
reached.) Then it
reaches a flashpoint where it is habitually used in excess by
an increasingly dependent section of society - and leads to various
social problems (like unsocial behaviour, disheveled appearance,
uncoordination, or a rash
of health problems). (This is the general level of drug usage that
modern society
has reached.) Historical examples of drug addictions and
accompanying health/social problems have included an
English gin epidemic of the early 1700s, and the Opium Wars between
England and
China of
the 1800s.
In the
Early Modern to Modern World there have been several rounds of drug
addiction problems. The
first occurred with caffeine and nicotine, the second with alcoholic
spirits, and the third with hard drugs. Coffee (containing
caffeine) was variously
believed to be addictive, or associated with rebellion, or associated
with expense and so was
banned and unbanned a number of times in Arabia, the Middle East, and
Europe. Interestingly, its cultivation in Central America - under
harsh, exploitative conditions - led to social uprisings, coups, and
suppressions that foreshadowed the more recent harder-drug and
paramilitary related violence.
Alcohol
was the next drug to create social
problems and attract prohibition laws - in a number of European
nations as well as in North America. These laws were mainly brought
about by concerns from the Protestant religion. Most significant was
Prohibition in the
USA in the 1920s. It led to a popular
underground bootlegging market in rum. Since the governing regime was
not
allowing this self-medication to take place, organised crime gangs took
over alcohol distribution and grew to become powerful (e.g., the
Chicago gangs). The alcohol production and supply came from the
surrounding areas of Canada, the Caribbean, and Mexico. Eventually, the
gangs were suppressed and alcohol prohibition laws lifted. After WWII
harder drugs like cannabis, heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine have
become the new social problem and the target of prohibition laws. And, yet, the situation surrounding their
usage is
almost identical to the alcohol trade of the early 1900s,
where outside regions of Panama, then Colombia, and, more lately,
Mexico have been the hard drug
producers and the USA the main drug consumer (while under prohibition
laws). And, again, with gangs controlling the trade.
In
other words, as the general level of unresolved pain within our species
has grown, the people's
need for drugs or drug potencies has also grown in lock-step. As a
result, the same social problems related to drugs have emerged - at
first from caffeine and nicotine, then alcohol, and finally hard drugs
-
and the same attempts to
criminalise consumption have been implemented - and have ultimately
failed. History repeats itself in drug wars because the undercurrent
human suffering is not being resolved. What history has
shown is that the best way to handle a drug problem is to legalise the
drug, and then place regulatory controls on it -
involving licensing, price regulation, taxes, duties, packaging
information,
hours
of sale, locations and
times of acceptable usage, and social mores of
non-toxification when driving, operating machinery, or working.
So what is the situation today regarding the USA's drug policy? Here
are some statistics:
The
United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. A very
large portion of people who are incarcerated are imprisoned for
drug-related crimes. In 1994, it was reported that the "War on Drugs"
results in the incarceration of one million Americans each
year. Of the related drug arrests, about 225,000 are for
possession of cannabis, the fourth most common cause of arrest in the
United States.
Marijuana constitutes almost half
of all drug arrests, and between 1990–2002, out of the overall drug
arrests, 82% of the increase was for marijuana...
A poll on October 2, 2008, found
that three in four Americans believed that the War On Drugs was failing.
Critics cite a large number of
unnecessary deaths and imprisonments, increased levels of violent crime
and gang activity, wasted government funds, violation of civil
liberties, lack of public support, illegality of current drug policies,
environmental destruction from drug eradication programs, [and]
lack of
effectiveness...
A 2008 study by Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron has estimated
that legalizing drugs would inject $76.8 billion a year into the U.S.
economy — $44.1 billion from law enforcement savings, and at least
$32.7 billion in tax revenue ($6.7 billion from marijuana, $22.5
billion from cocaine and heroin, remainder from other
drugs)...
The Rand Drug Policy Research Center study [of the 1990s]
concluded that $3 billion should be switched from federal and local
law enforcement to treatment. The report said that treatment is the
cheapest way to cut drug use, stating that drug treatment is
twenty-three more times effective than the supply-side "war on
drugs".[2]
So if
there is a growing consensus for legalising drugs in the USA, what is
the hold up? Although some treatments have had success at steering
people away from drugs, there has never been a thoroughly
effective treatment that could heal
drug addictions by restoring natural feeling capacity.
This leaves a
potential legalisation program without an effective treatment partner
to bring
about resounding change. Currently, both the UK and USA economies are
trying to recover from the damage caused by the 2008 Global Financial
Crisis. The UK has a debt of $247 billion, and an unemployment rate of
7.7 percent; while the USA's debt is $1.3 trillion, and unemployment
rate 9.5 percent. They have both spent billions of dollars on economic
kickstart packages that have only minerly worked. So they are in need
of more funds, and more job opportunities. Where to get them from? With
the right treatment partner as an ally, legalising
some or all drugs could be an innovative way to generate funds to
decrease debt,
while also creating new job opportunities in the farming and
pharmaceutical
industries - as well as in the health care industry to heal addictions.
All it takes is a
little open-mindedness and a willingness to accept change and progress
in society.
Laws of pain science services
Laws
of pain
science can provide the following services for governments and other
organisations:
- Devise
social programs to educate people about the following:
- parenting
techniques that avoid causing pain to babies, children, and teens
- the
nature of the brain in pain and its need for drugs
- healing
past psychoemotional pain.
- Provide
helpful advice on drug use and gang behaviours to prominent
professionals who must deal with drug problems - like
politicians, judges, police, and journalists.
- Establish laws of pain
science
centres to effectively treat drug addicts and other troubled people,
and to teach this natural science of healing to others
Summary
It is
incredible that people within a section of
modern society are willing to fight with, and even kill each other,
over a supply of what are essentially just mood modifiers and
painkillers. Those people must have a lot of pain
inside of them in order to undertake such desperate measures for
relief. Governments need to ask themselves where does
all this pain come from? How can this pain be resolved? And why are we
banning drugs instead of healing the pain directly?
The
growing
drug problem boils down
to one question: do we want to allow people to have their drugs and get
a high a few times a week, or do we want to criminalise the drug-taking
culture and cause them to grow via a path of violence and
declining feeling capacity? Recently, due to pressure from the Green
Party,
the Australian Labor Government has declared itself open to discussion
on euthanasia. This involves the use
of powerful drugs to help people in severe pain and suffering to end
their lives with dignity (with government support for ethical
euthanasia
centres). A subsequent poll has found that
three in four Australians now support euthanasia. So the obvious
question
is this: is
the Australian Government - or any government for that matter - also
prepared to
be open to discussion on legalising
some or all psychoactive drugs - in connection with supporting the
latest
psychotherapeutic science - with the aim of taking effective control
over
the drug problem,
to facilitate the healing of addiction in its users, and to prevent
unnecessary deaths in society?
References
[1] Substance
dependence, Wikipedia, (online), Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., (accessed
Sep 2010),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_dependence
[2] War on Drugs, Wikipedia,
(online), Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., (accessed Sep 2010),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs
Psychological Pain of Holocaust Still Haunts Survivors, ScienceDaily,
(online), ScienceDaily LLC, (Sep. 24, 2010), (accessed Sept
2010),
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100920123912.htm
Various
drug information: Wikipedia, (online), Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.,
(accessed Sep 2010),
http://www.wikipedia.org
Article
copyright © R Lane. Published October 2010
Previous
Home
Next
Text and/or
pictures / images / sound / video
© copyright Lane, R., 1997-present
Superpsychology LOP
All rights reserved