Drugs--as Americans, we’ve been taught to respond to the word like a Pavlov’s Dog. Our response is a conditioned negativity. We also respond emotionally--the word conjures up fear, something to feel threatened by, a social menace, the thing that may kill our kids. And our definition of drugs is strange and confused. Somehow substances like marijuana or LSD or Ecstasy qualify, but other substances don’t; otherwise, why the phrase “drugs and alcohol”? Isn’t alcohol a drug? A few years back, the Supreme Court even declared that nicotine isn’t a drug. Yeah, right.

And if drugs is often assumed to mean "illegal drugs," the term also fuzzes a variety of illegal substances of vastly different pharmacological qualities into one cumbersome category as if they were all equally guilty. The logical fallacy of equivocation involves changing the definitions of a term as an argument progresses. And this fallacy permeates our drug discussions--sometimes “drugs” means pot, sometimes it means heroin, sometimes it means some other substance. It’s like we’ve been trained to be confused as well as hysterical. As a society, we’ve almost lost the ability to even discuss drugs dispassionately and intelligently. So, let us start anew . . .

It’s always best to begin at the beginning; first, we need to understand the origins of drugs and their use. The earliest drugs came to prehistoric humans from the nearby flora and fauna. (Later, of course, when human technology became more sophisticated, we learned to create synthetic drugs.) So, why did these early humans use drugs; for that matter, why does anyone use drugs?

Historically and prehistorically, humans have seen drugs as tools; that is, drugs are substances that have helped humans do particular things they need doing. I’d suggest five particular uses for these tools: for medicine, for religious/spiritual purposes, as aphrodisiacs, as performance enhancers, and for what we sometimes call “recreational” purposes though on more careful examination, we would see this is usually a combination of stress reduction and pleasure. Often these categories have gotten mixed, but the point is, people don‘t take drugs because they‘re depraved necessarily: they take them because they’re trying to achieve a purpose.

Since humans use drugs as tools, it must follow that people have always seen something useful and positive in drug use. So, we need to be asking not just what negative things use of the drug might be creating but also what positive things the user is trying to achieve. This, by the way, in no way assumes that the overall impact of drugs on an individual is always positive.

We currently use the term drugs as if it were synonymous with drug abuse. The two are not the same, and we must wonder why those tens of millions the taxpayer spends every year aren’t for something known as “the War on Drug Abuse.” Much drug abuse, incidentally, seems the product of misusing that recreational category.

And “drugs” aren’t just illegal drugs: they’re the substances people put into their bodies to achieve one of the above five purposes. It’s the caffeine millions of Americans consume each day, usually as a performance enhancer. It’s the nicotine that millions are addicted to for recreation or performance enhancement. It’s the alcohol tens of millions use for recreational purposes, that millions abuse. It’s the Viagra that millions of American males are using as an aphrodisiac. It’s the billions of dollars of prescription drugs being consumed, allegedly for better health. It’s the steroids thousands are taking to supplement their workouts and enhance their athletic performances. And yes, it’s the marijuana smoked for recreational purposes, the cocaine snorted and usually abused for recreational and performance-enhancing purposes, the heroin injected, originally, for stress-reducing purposes even though this may lead to crippling addiction or death.

The overwhelming majority of Americans are “on drugs” almost every day. According to Dr. Nicholas Perricone, the caffeine in that single cup of coffee you drank this morning will still be measurable and affecting you late at night. If the best part of waking up is Folger’s in your cup--roughly 90 milligrams of caffeine--you‘re on drugs. If you’re regularly drinking caffeine-laden soft drinks or even tea, you are on drugs. If you’re taking prescription medications, you are on drugs. I recently saw a PBS program where a US government official described now-retired General Tommy Franks: he drinks coffee all day, smokes tobacco and uses “chew.“ “He runs on adrenaline, caffeine and nicotine,“ the official concluded. Tommy Franks is on drugs. Now, I’m told Mormons don’t even drink tea, but they’re a small portion of the population, and even they probably use substances like aspirin. Again, almost everyone in America is “on drugs“--and most of the time, I would guess. (Again, bear in mind, of course, that drug use does not automatically equal drug abuse.)

Because we’ve so arbitrarily defined drugs, there are a number of drug abusers in denial because, encouraged by society, they don’t see the substances they’re abusing as “drugs.” How many millions live in a cycle of legal uppers and downers? In the morning, they sip coffee to “get going”; in the evening, they drink alcohol “to unwind.” Some fall into a sort of addictive spiral as each drug increasingly becomes needed to counteract the effects of the other. And often the most stridently against “drugs” are, in their private lives, drug abusers themselves; for instance, according to daughter Patty, former First Lady Nancy Reagan was addicted to painkillers at the same time she was pushing her “Just say no” anti-drug program.

However, that isn’t to say that everyone “on drugs” has a drug problem. I would suggest a fair definition of “drug abuse”: whenever the negative aspects of use of a drug outweigh its positive aspects, in the long run as well as immediately, for the individual or society, that constitutes “drug abuse.“ That might mean that for some substances, any use equals abuse. Given, for instance, the apparently highly addictive nature of crack, even one-time use is probably abuse. On the other hand, some drugs can be used responsibly. As I recall, the 1972 government report Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding mentions, for instance, “responsible” marijuana users, but the same could be said of users of any number of substances.

Drug laws are not primarily about protecting public health. Jail time does not promote health, physical or mental; as President Carter once noted, "Penalties against drug use should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against the possession of marijuana in private for personal use." As for protecting society, well . . .

Most drugs have ethnic roots, and use of particular drugs often has ethnic overtones; in some cases, use of a particular drug may even be a defining quality of a group’s culture. Historically, drug laws in America have been used to persecute ethnic minorities and undercut the Bill of Rights (see John Helmer‘s Drugs and Minority Oppression or click here), and there‘s no reason to believe the leopard has changed it spots; however much drug-war advocates claim to be protectors of the public health, their real concern is often moral health, and in their racist/ethnic-chauvinist minds, particular ethnic groups are often seen as “unhealthy” for the nation. If you want to persecute a particular group, go after their drugs; define those drugs as a menace to society, and you have a pretext for ethnic persecution and a social crackdown. Usually, drugs are illegal less for their health hazards than for the ethnic identity of their users.

The health issues are mostly demagoguery. “Between 1977 and 1992 a conservative cultural revolution occurred in America. It was called the drug war,“ said John Walters, deputy drug czar from 1989 to 1993 (qtd. in Baum 104). Notice that he speaks not of health but of a cultural/political agenda. That health issues are mostly pretext is also shown by the fact that substances that clearly cause death and injury remain legal--alcohol and nicotine are primary examples though Jack Herer quotes US Surgeon General reports to the effect that even caffeine is responsible for at least a thousand deaths each year from “stress, ulcers and triggering irregular heartbeats, etc.”--while substances such as marijuana, which has never caused a single documented death, remain illegal. Also, much of the anti-marijuana research is untrustworthy, and some of it’s downright silly as in studies purporting to show pot smoking makes adolescent males grow breasts. On the other hand, the fact that those targeting a drug are insincere and politically manipulative doesn’t automatically make that drug one-hundred-percent healthy--a century or so ago, American society outlawed opium use to persecute Chinese-Americans, for example, but that doesn’t mean opium isn’t addictive and prone to abuse.

For the most part, “Gateway,” the argument that marijuana leads to harder drugs, is ridiculous. In the world of rational scientific thought, correlation (that a high percentage of cocaine users have also used pot, for instance) doesn’t equal causation; it’s called a “cause-effect fallacy.” Also, how can pot be “addictive” and at the same time, how can its users supposedly get “bored” with it and want to move on to more potentially dangerous substances? Isn’t that a contradiction? Also, if Gateway were true, wouldn’t we have seen a substantial increase in the number of heroin users in the last forty years? The facts say otherwise, and heroin use seems to rise and decline according to market prices, not marijuana use. The only documented evidence of a marijuana gateway, notes Daniel Baum in his Smoke and Mirrors, is due, ironically, to pot prohibition: by pushing marijuana into the same underground economy as, say, crack or heroin, some gateway effect is created. So when gateway is used as a rationale for pot prohibition, it becomes, to a limited extent, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Yes, by illegalizing a drug, we do send a clear message discouraging its use, but in the larger picture, that small benefit is outweighed by a dozen deficits. So, while some drug use is extremely dangerous, drug laws almost always make things worse. Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose, but that’s partly because the heroin she bought the night she died was forty times normal strength. In a legal, regulated market, she might still be alive. Baum notes that many of the Vietnam veterans who returned home addicted to heroin were pushed in that direction by US Army drug testing: you couldn’t leave Nam without a clean test; pot--what most of these heroin addicts had been previously using--can be detected up to thirty days; heroin can’t. And a resulting crackdown on heroin raised prices, leading to the more efficient and addictive practice of mainlining. Baum: “By cracking down on marijuana, the army had pushed its troops into snorting heroin. By cracking down on snorting heroin, the army had pushed its troops into mainlining” (55). The program was allegedly intended to stop drug use; instead, Sam Stone came home. Or look at Ecstasy: Baum reports that psychologists were having marvelous results with it--without injury. But in 1985, it was banned by the federal government; since then, there have been “Ecstasy” deaths. The substance that the occasional young person dies from, however, is in fact the unregulated street knock-off of the real drug. The government illegalized Ecstasy allegedly to protect youth, and those laws are now partly responsible for killing youth. And Baum cites a laundry list of other examples where drug prohibition and testing have been starkly counterproductive. (See also the Michael Douglas-directed film “Traffic” (2000).)

Drug education” might better be called “drug propaganda.” And programs such as DARE are dangerous: official voices of “drug education” have become the boy who cried wolf; that is, since they insist on seeing pot as a gateway drug, they begin by emphasizing the dangers of marijuana. Often this involves ridiculous scare tactics which kids soon see through; stories about the horrors of marijuana become about as credible as the claim the masturbation will make hair grow on the palms of your hands. Examples: I’ve seem former drug cop David Toma tell kids, “I knew a woman who smoked pot. Thought it was harmless. Well,“ Toma continued, tapping the center of his forehead, “her baby was born with one eye right here!“ Or when I was in high school, they showed us a Sonny and Cher-hosted film about the dangers of “drugs”; in one scene, a pot smoker hallucinates a purple gorilla. “Hey,” I heard a classmate wisecrack, “how come I can never find pot like that?” And when the film “Reefer Madness” is shown, it’s as a campy comedy. So, kids learn they can’t trust the official line on pot, especially if they eventually try marijuana and see first hand how exaggerated the horror stories have been. Question: how many kids when handed a crack pipe for the first time say, “Hey, isn’t this stuff dangerous?” to which a peer replies, “Yeah, right: isn‘t that what they said about pot?” And the kid decides to find out for her or himself. Three weeks later, we’ve got a crackhead. Real drug education would place a firewall between soft and hard drugs; current “drug education,” with its Gateway agenda, intentionally blurs the two.

Some drug laws are, however, needed. First, as noted, regulation of substances would be a boon. Second, drug testing may on occasion be acceptable--when someone is driving a car, for instance, or doing a job where if impaired he or she could endanger people. But intelligent testing would focus on actual impairment, not on whether it can detect the joint you may have partaken in at a party three weekends ago. And it wouldn’t assume that trace elements of THC in fat cells necessarily mean impairment (studies show that even intoxicated marijuana users are not necessarily impaired). And such tests would apply to all drugs: a surgeon with the jitters from drinking too much coffee would be banned from the operating room just as a drunken engineer would be banned from driving a train just as a police officer prone to "roid rage" would be banned from the force. Last, it should be illegal to drug another person without his or her knowledge and permission. Whether it’s some wannabe rapist spiking a woman’s drink or some misguided counterculturist who’s decided to slip someone LSD as an intended “favor,” the law should punish such behavior: it’s dangerous, irresponsible, and shows complete disregard for the rights of others.