A Critical Look at U.S. Drug Policy

Introduction

Most of the U.S. drug policies have their roots in the policies established in the late 1980s by Drug Czar, William Bennett. Bennett escalated the so-called "War on Drugs," utilizing the philosophies that he had learned while obtaining his Ph.D. in philosophy, and applying them to his policymaking. Bennett led the United States beyond the health dangers drugs presented and brought the government ideology to a new level; sending America on a renewed crusade which emphasized the immorality of drugs.

Using this new approach, Bennett wrote that drug use "[d]estroys human character. It destroys dignity and autonomy, it burns a sense of responsibility, it subverts productivity, it makes a mockery of virtue." Note that this rhetoric includes nothing regarding the health dangers of drugs, which was the previous emphasis, completely transcending that line of reasoning to focus on the moral impact. In Bennett's 1989 National Drug Control Strategy, the same words sound over and over, mantra-like, emphasizing that the key to preventing drugs lays along the moral spectrum:

A young person's first line of defense against drugs is his own moral compass . . . Information and moral persuasion obviously help shape an individual's preferences, attitudes, and desires [against drugs] . . . Drug use is a moral problem (pg. 47-48, 51).

This was the kind of rhetoric which Bennett delivered to America, rallying these masses around the re-demonized products. These words were then echoed by others in the power structure, such as James A. Baker III, who said in his speech, "The U.S. Fight Against International Drug Cartels Is Sincere:"

An individual caught in the drug habit soon becomes a slave . . . the drug pirates and profiteers attack the central nervous system and the vital organs of democracy: the administration of justice; the integrity of government; the right of free speech (pg. 144).

Thus, these were the words offered by the federal government, contrasting still the liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s, and posing drugs as "obvious" moral wrongs which could only serve to destroy the American way of life. If such a position was so "obvious" and "sincere," logically then, the history of drug prohibition should show an equal antipathy towards these substances and bring the country full circle into an understanding of U.S. drug policy and the moral dangers posed by drug use.

Yet what if American history does not provide such facts? There are others besides Bennett and Baker who would argue that U.S. drug policies have been anything but consistent, honest, or fair. In John Helmer's work, Drugs and Minority Oppression, Helmer describes quite a different backdrop for the legacy of drug policy; a sordid account of American affairs that revolves around racism, classicism, and xenophobia. What remains then, is to filter the one philosophies through the other, and to see what remains: which influences and objectives are politically motivated, and which fulfill a predictive logic.

The Critical Approach

Helmer states his position clearly in his opening chapter, "The Vice's Cycle:"

These, then, are the foundations of the mythology of narcotics. No account of the drug problem in America today nor policy formula for dealing with it, whether in favor of prohibition or against, in favor of harsher criminal sanctions to deter narcotics use of gentler clinical therapy to overcome it, does not draw on these myths. They are the instruments of public deception, and deception is the mainspring of public policy. To interpret these myths at their source and analyze them in their social context is vital and urgent if the deception is to stop turning its predictable and destructive cycle (pg. 8).

Helmer holds no quarter and comes right to his point. Moreover, he is not content to simply answer empty rhetoric in kind; he fully backs up all of his statements with concrete examples of the deceptions he refers to above, as fulfilled in his following three chapters: "The Chinese Opium Crusade," "Blacks and Cocaine," and "Mexicans and Marijuana."

The first anti-narcotic laws in the country were put into place in 1875, as a citywide ordinance in San Francisco, prohibiting the smoking of Opium. Bennett and modern drug rhetoric would point to the moral depravity of drug users and the inherent dangerousness of the drug. Helmer, however, points to the economics and race issues as much more significant in getting opium banned:

To stabilize the labor market in the mining fields and hold the line on the level of wages, the whites turned their attack from the source of economic power to the source of labor competition, and attacked the Chinese to drive them off the fields (pg. 20).

That was in the 1860s, when the whites on the West Coast were starting to first take a formal stand against the mass immigration of Chinese. The aggression of these Americans was based on economic jealousy, with racism as a scapegoat for their bad fortunes. When the economic success of whites began to decline, they wondered why the Chinese had jobs when "real" Americans did not, and thus the vicious cycle of racial-economics began. It was for these reasons that the first agitations for exclusion began, and as Helmer said, "There [wa]s no mention in the record of anti-Chinese rhetoric of the time that the immigrants used opium or passed the habit on to whites (pg. 30)." Rather, the rhetoric was limited to whatever bigotry the whites could else conceive. Yet, according to Helmer, between 1865 and 1870 over twenty-thousand pounds of opium were imported into the United States; the opium was there, there was just no connection as yet. Also there was no intrinsic link between the drug and moral depravity or even any mention of epidemic dangers posed by the drug (certainly there were people that abused it, but so were there many that did not—just as with alcohol). And when opium was finally linked to the Chinese in a negative manner, Helmer also found that:

The earliest connotation of the opium use was not an intrinsic one. There was no claim, for example, that it was harmful directly. Its use indicated, rather, how different, foreign, and unassimilable the Chinese were as a group. A California Senate report of 1877 stated flatly: 'the whites cannot stand their dirt and the fumes of opium, and are compelled to leave their vicinity (pg. 30).'

Thus one can see why the first campaigns against drugs really existed: racism. In this case, it was a racism which was specific, born out of economic dissatisfaction. Helmer does not let the point rest; rather, he continues to hit upon the false foundations of American policy:

The Chinese opium crusade is such a clear illustration of the role of class in these developments, however, for it occurred when there was no precedent for a legal ban on narcotics and when no one believed that the drug or its use per se was harmful or dangerous. . . . the point to be emphasized is that the ideology of opium during the period in which the first anti-narcotic legislation in the country was introduced specified virtually nothing about the drug or its effects (pg. 31).

Helmer lists this history in a multi-level context, but none which justify any of Bennett's current suppositions. Helmer lists economic disparity and racism, which are inexorably tied together in American. Yet, much more intrinsically inauspicious than the sins to which Bennett alludes.

In fact, Helmer finds quite the opposite in America’s drug history, despite the fact that: "It seems so natural now—to some, reasonable—that the nonmedical use of these drugs should be prohibited totally and that their prohibition should be backed by the threat of prison (39)." And indeed it does, as he infers, when America has been inoculated since near infancy in an anti-drug culture, where the tentacles of propaganda stretch and infiltrate many aspects of Americans' socio-economic lives, as all are taught from all but experience that drugs are wrong. Yet, it is precisely this kind of ignorance that Bennett and those like him want. He knows that the most likely chance individuals have of shaking off his moral propaganda comes from actual experience—in fact Bennett said so quite indirectly in his 1989 Drug Control Strategy: "The real heroes are not those who use drugs and quit; they are those who never use them in the first place. This is the primary goal of prevention (pg. 47)." Bennett doesn't want individuals to be able to judge for themselves. That, of course, begs the question then, why not ? Why do Bennett and the government not want people to even try drugs? What might they learn? Perhaps they know and fear that these demonized substances are not as demonic as they are made out to be. If this was found to be so, the next logical question would be for what purpose would the government do this? However, before addressing such questions, a deeper look into the subject is necessary. Nonetheless, they should be kept in mind.

Returning to the above Helmer passage, it must be understood that while modern-day America has been force-fed years and years of refined propaganda; it was not always that way:

At first . . the federal government and the AMA found it difficult to convince those responsible for enforcing the ban and applying the sanctions that, as a general rule, an individual didn't have the freedom to consume whatever drugs he chose or that in the particular case presented to the court, the individuals charged were guilty of any crime other than the exercise of this freedom of choice (pg. 39).

Those whom Helmer refers to, policemen and judges, in particular, who were so opposed to enforcement then are those most ardently for it today. Thus, again the question that must be asked is why? Because the drug propaganda has infiltrated their minds? Perhaps partly, but the answer, more likely, lies more ingrained in their occupational definitions. The police enforce the law and judges preside over it; regardless of its moral connotations, drug use and trade is illegal in the United States. What these agents of the law then encounter are groups of individuals that they view as presumptuous and arrogant: people, who believe that they can do whatever they want, flaunt, and have no regard for the law. After decades of this, especially with the advent of prison overcrowding, the awesome rise in drug arrests, and the pressure of public hysteria, they are likely taxed, tired, and sick of having to deal with the same issue over and over; and also under a tremendous amount of pressure from the public to do something about the drug "menace" (whether they are being misled and manipulated in this view is another issue). Moreover, the belief that these enforcement agents are not doing their job well enough, leads politicians to getting on their backs also, even though neither the public or the politicians have a practical understanding of the difficulties of drug enforcement.

Moreover, those officials involved in drug enforcement that are elected or appointed, including sheriffs and judges, often promise to be tough on drugs, in order to secure their positions, which Helmer discusses:

If there was a connection between opinion and policy, it had to be a political one, of people and opinion mobilized for particular policy objectives. The story of each episode is the account of how this was done and what the objectives were.

A commentary on the evolution of police power indicated just how far, by 1914, legal policy on the issue had departed from the guarantees in the Bill of Rights:

'As each litigation arose, the judges could follow no rule but the rule of common sense, and the Police Power, translated into plain English, presently came to signify whatever, at the moment, the judges happened to think reasonable. Consequently, they began guessing at the drift of public opinion, as it percolated to them through the medium of their education and prejudices (Brooks Adams (1913), quoted by Nonnie and Whitebrea, "Forbidden Fruit," p. 1,009.).' (pg. 41-42)"

So those who are most stringent in drug enforcement now, were once among the numbers of Americans, who if nothing else, believed drug use to be an extension of the freedom of choice. If these officials changed to suit the public, why did the public seek such change? How did the rhetoric of the government, which started mainly with anti-Chinese bias, become filtered through a moral framework? In 1906, 1909, and 1919, a series of laws were passed, federally regulating, and ultimately prohibiting the use of drugs derived from the poppy and coca plants, including opium, morphine, heroin, and cocaine. But why? Or at least why then? Many said health reasons and the number of addicts.

One of the pushers of anti-drug legislation, Hamilton Wright, expressed what he claimed to be the "popular view," in 1910:

It has been stated on very high authority that the use of cocaine by the Negroes of the South is one of the most elusive and troublesome questions which confront the enforcement of the law in most of the Southern states. (pg. 47)

Yet according to Helmer, that "apart from press allegations . . . what evidence was there of the link between blacks and cocaine? Very little (pg. 48)." E.M. Green, a researcher cited by Helmer, who examined over two-thousand blacks over a five-year span at the Georgia State Sanitorium, "found only three cases of narcotic addiction among black patients, in contrast to 142 'drug psychoses' among whites (pg. 48)." Cocaine was also seen to be the cause for black rapes of white women, which triggered many lynchings of black men, most with little evidence and at the mere suspicion of the crime. Yet Helmer stresses time and time again, that there was nothing but anti-black racism to account for these types of responses and that "[f]or all [the] professional zeal in the anticocaine crusade, there is nothing but words to show for the alleged drug problem (pg. 51)." So what then brought about such obvious fictions in the face of public policy? Helmer found:

As this economy changed with postwar demobilization from a condition of labor scarcity to labor surplus, the tension between working-class whites and blacks rose as the necessity to compete for jobs and declining wages was forced on them. Rape, crime, and drug addiction were elements of the hostile stereotype that emerged in this conflict; their relation to true conditions was immaterial . . . The assault on white women, like the Bolsheviks' attack on patriotism or the crazed antics of the cocaine fiend, were all elements of a common ideology designed to justify and legitimize the repression with which black claims for equality were met. As I have said, the conflict over social justice is what the story of narcotics in America is about (pg. 53).

Helmer cannot get any clearer in his words and accusations.

Helmer also goes on further to detail a third, similar story involving Mexicans and Marijuana, but there is no need to dwell further on that here. There is another political angle that is useful to examine in Charles W. Lidz's, and Andrew Walker's work, Heroin, Deviance, and Morality. They state that President Nixon came to the office at a troubled time and "clearly needed a way of rallying the country . . . into cohesive opposition to the black radicals and the 'hippies' (pg. 70)," both of who organized anti-government strategies, rallies, and protests, and in the minds of some frightened conservatives, were preparing the country for revolution. This led to Nixon's crackdown on drugs and the reinventing drugs as a new danger. Lidz and Walker further say that

While expressive passivists had been relatively effective in claiming that they were the 'free' individuals in this society and thus heir to the great romantic tradition of the cowboy and the rebel, this issue seemed to put the shoe on the other foot. Instead of being free from the chains of convention, the counter culture was shown to be enslaved by drug addiction . . .

While the federal government did make a mild effort educate the public as to the danger of overuse of amphetamines and barbiturates by middle-aged and middle-class America, the repression never approached the magnitude of the repression of marijuana and heroin use by the hippies and blacks (pg. 72).

This politico-historical analysis is very important. Perhaps the "stranglehold" of drugs, as Bennett said, "on hundreds of thousands of young Americans is tightening," and Americans will all become "slaves" to addiction, or perhaps this was and is still just a clever ploy to counter antigovernment forces, as Lidz and Walker suggest. The inconsistencies in U.S. drug policies, as pointed out by several authors, force one to the conclusion that it is not the drugs themselves that call for elimination, as those properties have never been uniformly addressed. Indeed, an objective observer would be hard pressed to understand if drugs were a danger to health, morals, or the soul. Seemingly the only consistency is the constant association of drug legislation and drug use among minority or radical groups. One must wonder if drugs are used in America like pink triangles and stars of David were used in Nazi Germany; have drugs been demonized for no other reason than to enforce the governments' will against select groups? It is not unreasonable to see drugs as little more than convenient targets to use in surgical, socio-economic-political strikes.

Yet before drawing this as a conclusion, Bennett's roots shall again be examined. He claims to be a philosopher, and indeed has his Ph.D. in that field; so when he stands his words next to those of other classic philosophers, many which he claims to base his theories on, are his words supported or betrayed? We shall see.

U.S. Drug Policy and Philosophy

William Bennett makes no secret that many of his beliefs on drug policy are founded on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, one of the greatest Western philosophers. This fascination is clear in his writings, and one familiar with both men's work will see the correlations. Bennett says in chapter five of his work, Body Count: Moral Poverty And How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs (co-authored by John J. Dilulio Jr. and John P. Walters):

Unchecked freedom can often unintentionally turn into its opposite. Unless we combine self-regulation with freedom, and unless we soon restore order to our communities and make advancements against spreading social anarchy, we will see an increase in state coercion . . . we can pay now or we can pay later (pg. 195).

Note the terms "self-regulation" and "freedom," as they correlate to create responsibility. Bennett continues similar Kantian trends in his 1989 National Drug Control Strategy when he says that:

We cannot afford to delude ourselves that drug use is an exclusively criminal issue. Whatever else it does, drug use degrades human character and a purposeful, self-governing society ignores its people's character at great peril (pg. 7).

At this point, one must stop and examine what is being said. When Bennett talks of freedom and self-regulation, he is drawing from Kant's Lectures on Ethics; notice the parallels from this section of Kant's work:

Conceive freedom as the complete absence of orderliness, if it is not subject to an objective determination. The grounds of this objective determination must lie in the understanding, and constitute the restrictions to freedom. Therefore the proper use of freedom is the supreme rule.

Bennett is making the judgment that the freedom of drug use is too much freedom in itself and that this berates wise regulation. Never does he stop to consider that one might self-regulate drug use as one does alcohol intake. As far as the theory that drug use "degrades human character," he no doubt gets such thoughts from Kant also. Consider the following Kantian passages:

In all nature there is nothing to injure man in the satisfaction of his desires; all injurious things are his own invention, the outcome of his freedom. We need only instance strong drink and the many dishes concocted to tickle his palate. In the unregulated pursuit of an inclination of his own devising, man becomes an object of utter contempt because his freedom makes it possible for him to turn nature inside out in order to satisfy himself.

Stopping at this point, one might be inclined to think that Bennett has interpreted Kant well as an anti-drug proponent.

However, if one takes the very last sentence from the above passage, and reads the very next sentence in Kant's work, the meaning may change: "Let him devise what he pleases for satisfying his desires, so long as he regulates the use of his devises." Interesting how quickly Bennett overlooks this line, because everything Kant does say to those that critically read him, is summed up by this statement: moderation is what Kant preaches. He would likely argue that drug use, as long as it is done responsibly, is permissible; it is the abuse of drugs that betray one and degrade human character. When Kant says desires must be "regulated," he does not speak of the law doing so, because his works place large emphasis on self-duties. What Kant speaks of is one regulating their own satisfaction of their desires, not a system of laws created by a governing body.

Unfortunately, Bennett's mistakes do not end there, nor does the discourse rest on the single point above; consider also this misconstrued Kantian passage:

He who transgresses against himself loses his manliness and becomes incapable of doing his duty towards his fellows . . . Let us illustrate our meaning by a few examples of failure in one's duty to oneself. A drunkard does no harm to another, and if he has a strong constitution he does no harm to himself, yet he is an object of contempt.

Bennett and his supporters take Kant's reference to the "drunkard" to define itself as one who is at the moment drunk, rather than one who is habitually drunk; yet, it takes only a dictionary, or clear thought to know it is the latter which is true. Further, Kant himself elucidates the difference:

Drink promotes sociability and conversation, and inspires man, and in so far as it does so there is an excuse for it; but once it goes beyond this stage it becomes a vice, that of drunkenness.

In this last line, Kant both defines the vice of drunkenness, and also endorses the responsible use of drugs again. Whether Bennett is not examining Kant close enough, or simply reads him through jaded eyes, is difficult to be ascertain, but it is obvious that Bennett is wrong in his analyzation of Kant. Kant stresses time and time again, that in moderation, alcohol is fine, that it is upon addiction which it becomes wrong.

Moreover, if his didactics on moderation were not clear enough, Kant goes further and denounces those that would preach abstinence:

We ought, they said, to deny ourselves everything that tends to promote the pleasure of the senses to suppress the animal nature of our body . . . But there is no virtue in practices of this kind . . . they are fanatical and monkish virtues . . . [yet] we must not allow it to become inveterate in any of its pleasures.

It is very likely that Kant would think Bennett one of those fanatical men; a man who faces a topic irrationally and is a fool in dealing with this particular subject, especially considering that Bennett supposedly gleans his knowledge from Kant. Again, it is addiction that Kant lambastes:

The power of the soul over all our faculties and circumstances to make them submit to its free and undetermined will is autocratic . . . If he surrenders authority over himself, his imagination has free play; he cannot discipline himself . . . he yields willingly to his senses and, unable to curb them, he becomes their toy and they sway his judgment.

This only further proves the point, as most of Kant’s passages have, that Bennett does not subscribe Kant's philosophies. The conclusions that he came to were his own. Yet did he do so intentionally or not? Men like Michel Foucault would certainly believe Bennett to be a manipulator of the masses. Foucault would say that it comes down to power relations; that despite the racial-economics, class battles, and moral lectures, it all comes down to a power struggle, one where drugs are the convenient focus. Therefore, one can use a Foucaultian lens through which to view U.S. drug policies to understand that their purpose is in fact to use drugs as a marker to bring down those that threaten the current power structure.

Foucault builds his model in four general rules:

Regard punishment as a complex social function . . . Regard punishment as a political tactic . . . Make the technology of power the very principle both of the humanization of the penal system and of the knowledge of the man . . . In short, try to study the metamorphosis of punitive methods on the basis of a political technology of the body, in which might be read a common history of power relations and object relations (pg. 170-171).

In his chapter, "The Body of the Condemned," from his book, Discipline and Punish, Foucault's discourse involves the techniques of punishment applied to pointed strategies beyond punitive measures. Bennett and those in his circle could then intend the punishments inflicted by anti-drug laws as methods to control social behavior and lash out at those who oppose the current political powers. Thus, drugs could be a topic on which to attack political opponents, saying both that they are not "tough" enough, or that those men and women might have actually used those drugs (whether they inhaled or not) at some point in their life. These policies also allow others to promise to be tough on drugs to climb to power, as the masses who have already been assimilated into the anti-drug mindframe will vote for those politicians. As Foucault would say:

In our societies, the systems of punishment are to be situated in a certain 'political economy' of the body: even if they do not make use of violent or bloody punishment, even when they use 'lenient' methods involving confinement or correction, it is always the body that is at issue -- the body and its forces, their utility and their docility, their distribution and their submission. It is certainly legitimate to write a history of punishment against the background of moral ideas or legal structures. But can one write such a history against the background of a history of bodies, when such systems of punishment claim to have only the secret souls of criminals as their objective? (pg. 172)

Foucault’s last question brings about only one answer: yes. Despite what the state claims, something else is happening. It is about power. Specifically, it is about the power the system holds over the bodies they want to hold it over:

The body is also directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs . . . the body becomes a useful force only if it is both a productive body and a subjected body. This subjection is not only obtained by the instruments of violence or ideology; it can also be direct, physical, pitting force against force, bearing on material elements, and yet without involving violence; it may be calculated, organized, technically though out; it may be subtle, make use neither of weapons nor of terror and yet remain of a physical order. (pg. 173).

From this final passage, Foucault is almost tangible, spelling out exactly what Bennett and those like him in the power structures are doing. Suddenly the true elements of philosophy that they are pitting against American citizens is obvious. Perhaps it never was Kant; Dr. Bennett may have known Foucault much better than he ever let on.

Conclusion

In this work, the foundations of the anti-drug crusade have questioned, tarnished by racism, classicism, and economic strife, as well documented by John Helmer. One can also see that the modern drug rhetoric, which is supposedly based on Immanuel Kant's writings, is obviously not—or if so, poorly and loosely done. The truth more likely is that Bennett hides behind the monumentalization of Kant's work to mask his true intentions, which lie much more along the lines of Foucault's view of government. Foucault has said that, "America is a land without memory." Bennett uses this truism to obscure the sordid past of the anti-drug crusades, counting on the fact that America has indeed forgotten the roots of its own drug policies.

The most logical hypothesis remaining is that drugs have been used as scapegoat tactics to bring down those that would oppose the powers that be. It is even within the realm of possibility that Bennett is little more than a well-learned scholar hired to devise or put into words a clever smokescreen, and it is not even him who makes the power play—but that supposition is beyond the scope of this work. What American citizens must be unrelenting about, and indeed fear, is the fact that their government, or at least certain individuals in it—and perhaps elsewhere in the power structure—are using the demonization of narcotics to marginalize certain individuals or groups. The work of people such as Helmer, Lidz, and Walker have shown this and the worok of Foucault has exposed the true philosophy behind this tactic. This policy then, is a betrayal of Americans’ trust, limiting the self-determination and free will of countless Americans, denying them the constitutional rights owed to them by a democratic government.

Yet this conclusion necessarily also draws upon a larger worry. If the American government can use the association of drugs to bring down any one person or group, what will they use next? Do they ever need a legitimate wrong to extricate enemies from their way, or can they just make one up depending upon their whim? Even sticking with the modus operandi of drug scapegoatism, how hard is it to plant a bag of cocaine on someone; and who would be believed in a court of law, a police officer, or an anti-government protester? The former, of course. To take it one step further, consider the millions of pounds of drugs confiscated a year by drug enforcement agencies; if agents planted a couple pounds in a man's house, he could be sent away for life. One step further, how does this elocution of anti-drug lies affect international relations? As the U.S. is making anti-narcotic legislation and enforcement a high-ranking priority when dealing with foreign powers, how does this allow the United States to manipulate other nations? For example, did General Manuel Noriega of Panama really traffic drugs, or did he just say no to U.S. demands? Can the United States really manipulate global politics based on a heinous fiction? These are all questions that should concern the American public.

All evidence seems to point in this false direction, yet a conspiracy of such breadth would be impossible for this work to positively correlate on its own. Nonetheless, the smallest signs of the mere possibility should be enough to alarm all. If nothing else, American citizens must force themselves to be critical and scrutinize all such situations they may encounter, to try and discover such deceptions. Sadly, America may need to anticipate the worst, and prepare itself for the reality of dealing with a rogue government that is no longer Of the People, By the People, and For the People, but For the few who have the knowledge and power to commit such manipulations, and are not afraid to dominate those too weak or ignorant to stand in their way.