2 posts tagged “drugs”

Do you ever hear a song that reminds you so specifically of a time in your life that the hair on the back of your neck stands up?  Happened to me last night, when through random chance this song came up on my playlist.  I owned the vinyl new and at some point in the CD shift, I had the album burned to CD.  I haven't listened to it in probably ten years.  Listened to it five times last night, thinking about our five-year Fiasco in Iraq anniversary.  Sure, when Faith No More released this song, we weren't in the first Gulf War yet, but in the spring of 1991, I was volunteering as a DJ on the college radio station and whenever we ran news about the Desert Storm invasion, I used to play this song.   Said something to me about a whole gamut of problems. 17 years later it still does.  Some of the cultural references are dated, but we've still got the same batch of crap going on: war in Iraq, chaos and death in Darfur, shuttle disasters, New Orleans, HIV, drugs and guns.  (And wasn't Faith No More kick ass when Chuck Mosely was their singer?)

We care a lot
about disasters, fires, floods and killer bees
about the NASA shuttle falling in the sea
We care a lot
about starvation and the food that Live Aid bought
We care a lot
about disease, baby, Rock Hudson, rock
Yeah!

Well it's a dirty job but someone's got to do it

We care a lot
about the gamblers and the pushers and the geeks
We care a lot
about the smack and crack and whack that hits the streets
We care a lot
about the welfare of all you boys and girls
We care a lot
about you people 'cause we're out to save the world
Yeah!

Well it's a dirty job but someone's got to do it

We care a lot
about the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines
We care a lot
about the NY, SF, and LA PD
We care a lot
about you people 
We care a lot
about your guns
We care a lot
about the wars we're fighting,
gee, that looks like fun

We care a lot
about the Garbage Pail Kids, they never lie
We care a lot
about Transformers 'cause there's more than meets the eye
We care a lot
about the little things, the bigger things we top
We care a lot
about you people, yeah, you bet we care a lot

Well it's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it

Well it's a dirty song but someone's gotta sing it

It's not like I ever look to Lou Dobbs for wisdom or insightful commentary, but sometimes he still manages to shock me.  In his CNN column last week he wrote, "We're fighting a war that is inflicting even greater casualties than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and, incredibly, costing even more money. We're losing the War on Drugs, and we've been in retreat for three decades."

When I first read that opening line, I thought, "Wow.  Is old Lou about to say what I've been saying for years--that the money and effort wasted on the War on Drugs needs to come to a halt?"  No.  After detailing the horrors of drug addiction and drug abuse in America (22 million American addicts, with 3 million new users/experimenters a year, and a 113% increase in fatal overdoses), Dobb's solution is this: "we must commit ourselves as members of this great society to only one option in the War on Drugs -- victory." 

He doesn't come right out and use the word "surge," but he might as well.  It's not enough for Lou that we've squandered billions of dollars on drug law enforcement, most of it on encarcerating non-violent drug users, sellers, and possessors.  Oh, sure, he's advocating that we provide more treatment options for addicts, but he's still using that tired old militaristic verbiage: war, battle, victory.  We've been prosecuting the War on Drugs for close to 40 years and you know why we can't win it?  Because it's not a war, my people.  The metaphors don't work.  You can't metaphor drug addiction into the box you want it in.  If you could, why not call it the Cockroach of Drugs and spritz it with a metaphoric pesticide?

If it were a war, there would be identifiable sides.  Even in Iraq, where things are seriously effed up and hard to sort out, you still have sides.  You have Shiias and Sunnis and Kurds and Americans and Syrians and Saudis and Israel.  You have people who want democracy and people who want theocracy and people who want the Americans to go and people who want them to stay.  You have people who think it's okay to kill civilians and people who think it's wrong.  Sure, it's still not as easy as a football match, where there are two neat sides: one rooting for Man U to win and the other rooting for Leeds to win (ha--weren't expecting that, were you?)  It's not that simple, but there are still sides.

The drug "war" doesn't have sides.  You've got people who want to try pot.  You've got people addicted to heroin.  You've got a street runner who needs a couple hundred bucks to get his car repaired.  You've got a grandma selling dope out of her house so she can have a little extra money for her grandkids.  You've got a cop who wants to put her out of business.  You've got a cop who just wants his cut.  You've got a meth producer who's having a good time, raking in money, partying it up, buying expensive toys.  You've got a meth producer who is so fucked up addicted that she doesn't even notice when her trailer catches on fire.  You've got a Senator who wants to improve his poll numbers before the elections, by talking tough on crime.  These are not sides of a fight.  These are just people doing a thing because it gets them to tomorrow.

I say this with some surety, because I know these people.  My father was a Midwest Methamphetamine Al Capone.  He was the lowest of the low--a mass producer of meth.  The guy who feeds a thousand smaller dealers, who in turn feed ten thousand smaller dealers, who in turn fuel the addictions of hundreds of thousands of meth-heads.  People whose lives are utterly destroyed by meth.  People who lose their jobs, families, houses, and teeth to meth.  Was he a bad dude?  You bet.  Was he an evil genius or a criminal mastermind, who wanted to destroy people who used his product?  No.  Was he engaged in an ideological battle against the US Drug Czar?  Good vs. evil?  No.  My father liked making a ton of money and spending it on fun.

If we're going to use military metaphors to talk about drugs, I was at my father's Waterloo.  I was there when the black helicopters and vans full of BATF, FBI, and IRS agents arrived.  They ransacked the whole compound, terrorizing the children, including me.  I was strip-searched.  Twelve-years old and I was strip-searched in front of four grown men, including one BATF guy who insisted on calling my sisters and me "little cunts," as in, "You little cunts need to shut up before I put a hurt on you."  Were they evil guys?  Probably not.  They were just doing what they perceived to be their jobs.  Were they good guys?  Not that either.  Half of my father's gun collection simply disappeared between the raid and the official inventory of confiscated items, as did three customized Harley Davidson motorcycles, a mint 1938 Indian motorcycle, oh, and the 17th century samurai sword my grandfather brought back from Japan. 

You see how there aren't sides in a war like that?  How there are no clear-cut "good" and "evil" sides, as George Bush would lead us to believe exist in every disagreement.  And what did that "Waterloo" accomplish?  Well, not that much.  Sure, they got my father, but they only managed to pin enough tax evasion charges on him to put him in prison for seven years, where he was still able to get and smoke pot on a daily basis.  (Yup, that's some war on drugs, we've got going.)  Sure, he lost all his property and a lot of his friends. 

But beyond my father, everything went on as usual.  The little drug dealers went right on selling.  There were a few tight weeks, where supplies were running low, but where the Colossus had once stood, a hundred smaller operations sprang up to take his place.  I've always been surprised that Republicans are so down on the drug trade--after all, it is a perfect example of the free market at work.  People demand drugs.  Someone will supply them.

It's as if we learned nothing from our national experiment with Prohibition.  As long as we keep painting the dealers as "bad guys" instead of "business entrepreneurs in need of regulation," we're going to lose the "war."  As long we put non-violent drug users and dealers in jail, we're going to lose.  As long as we go on giving lip service to that Puritanical mantra of "I'm too good for drugs," we're going to lose.  As long as we keep drugs in the shadows and make them appear mysterious and dangerous to teenagers, we're going to lose.  We're going to lose the war, as long as we keep pretending it's a war.  We'll stop losing, when we realize that drug use is just part of human behavior.  Then we can start figuring out how to minimize the damage and help people improve their drug behaviors.