by Thomas S. SZASZ

U.S.A. - Professor of Psychiatry at New York State University and internationally known as one of the founding fathers of anti-psychiatry.

ABSTRACT: The reasons why the State has declared war on drugs and its users are only a subterfuge that masks the real opportunistic reasons which benefit politicians at the expense of society.

("THE COST OF PROHIBITION ON DRUGS", Papers of the International

Anti-prohibitionism Forum, Brussels 28th september - 1st october 1988; Ed. Radical Party)

Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus, in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, the potato as an article of food.

Thomas Jefferson (1782) (1)

I

Ostensibly, the war on drugs is a struggle against "dangerous" drugs. But the substances we call "drugs" are simply products of nature (for example, the coca leaf) or of human inventiveness (valium). They are material objects - leaves and liquids, powders and pills. How then, logically, can human beings wage war against drugs? One would have to be blind not to recognise that the war on drugs must be a metaphorical war. The war on drugs - like any war - is aggression unleashed by some people against some other people. Tragically, the destructiveness of this war is obscured by modern man's stubborn refusal to come to grips with what drugs are, and by the modern politicians' eagerness to exploit that resistance. The word "drug" would appear to be a part of the vocabulary of science. In reality, it is today more importantly a part of the vocabulary of politics. This explains why there is no such thing - why there can be no such thing - as a "neutral" drug: a drug is either good or bad, effective or ineffectiv

e, therapeutic or noxious, licit or illicit. This is why we deploy drugs, simultaneously, as medical tools in the fight against disease, and as scapegoat in the struggle for personal security and political stability.

If history teaches us anything at all, it is that human beings have a powerful need to form groups and that the sacrificial victimisation of scapegoats is often an indispensable ingredient for maintaining social cohesion within those groups. Perceived as the very embodiment of evil, the scapegoat's true nature is thus impervious to rational analysis. Since the scapegoat is evil, the good citizen's task is not to understand him (or her, or it), but to hate him and to rid the community of him. Attempts to analyse and grasp society's ritual purgation of its scapegoats is perceived as disloyalty to, or even an attack on, the "compact majority" and its best interests.

In my opinion, the (American) "war on drugs" is no more than another variation of humanity's age-old passion to "purge" itself of its "impurities" by staging vast dramas of scapegoat persecutions.(2) In the past, we have witnessed religious or holy wars waged against people who professed the wrong faith; more recently, we witnessed racial or eugenic wars, waged against people who possessed the wrong genetic make-up; we are presently witnessing a medical or therapeutic war, waged against people who use the wrong drugs.

Let us not forget that the modern state is a political apparatus with a monopoly on waging war; selecting its enemies, declaring war on them, and thriving on the enterprise. And that is just repeating Randolph Bourne's now classic observation that "War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate co-operation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals lacking the herd instinct." (3)

Let us not forget either that barely fifty years have passed since Hitler incited the German people against the Jews - by "explaining" the various ways in which the Jews were "dangerous", to the Germans individually, and to Germany as a nation. Millions of Germans - among them leaders in science, in medicine, in law, in the media - came to believe in the reality of the "dangerous Jew": They loved the imagery of that racial myth, felt exhilarated by the increased self-esteem and solidarity it gave them, and were thrilled by the prospect of "cleansing" the nation of its "racial impurities". Today, hardly anyone in Germany believes the myth of the "dangerous Jew" - however, that change in attitude has surely had nothing to do with more research on, or fresh scientific discoveries about, the problem of "dangerous Jews".

"Mutatis mutandis". Every American president since John F. Kennedy, and countless other American politicians, have incited the American people - indeed people everywhere - against "dangerous drugs" - by "explaining" the various ways in which such drugs threaten Americans individually and the United States as a nation. Millions of Americans - among them leaders in science, in medicine, in law, in the media - believe in the reality of "dangerous drugs": They love the imagery of this pharmacological myth and are inspired by the prospect of cleansing the nation of illicit drugs. In short, we are now in the midst of a "therapeutic" war waged against "drugs" and the people who sell and buy them.(4)

II

It is a grave error to view currently fashionable drug controls as most people now do, and as their proponents would have us view them, namely, as measures similar to those aimed at stopping the spread of, say, typhoid fever by contaminated water or food. Instead of resembling controls with objective (technical, scientific) bases, contemporary drug controls resemble the prohibition of countless substances whose control is based on religious or political (ritual, social) considerations. In this connection, we must not forget that there is hardly any object or behaviour that has not been prohibited somewhere or at some time, and its prohibition not viewed by those promoting and enforcing it as rational or valid. The following is but a brief (and incomplete) list of such prohibitions, with a few comments about them.

The Jewish dietary laws, set forth in the Old Testament, prohibit the ingestion of numerous edible substances. Although conformity to these rules is now often rationalised on hygienic grounds, they have nothing whatever to do with health; instead, they have to do with holiness, that is, with being dutiful towards God, in an effort to gain His favour. By glorifying what one may or may not eat as a matter of the gravest concern to an all-caring deity, true believers elevate ordinary events - say, eating a shrimp cocktail - to acts that are, spiritually speaking, matters of life and death. Similar proscriptions of food characterise other religions - for example Muslims are forbidden to eat pork, Hindus to eat beef. Most religious codes also proscribe, as well as prescribe, certain drinks. Jewish and Christian religious ceremonies require the use of alcohol, which, in turn, is forbidden in the Koran.

Like eating and drinking, sexual activity is a basic human urge the satisfaction of which has also been closely controlled by custom and religion, and law. Among the forms of sexual activity that have been, or are still, forbidden, the following spring quickly to mind: masturbation; homosexuality, heterosexual intercourse outside of marriage; heterosexual intercourse with the sole purpose of sexual enjoyment; heterosexual intercourse with the use of condoms, diaphragms, or other "artificial" birth control devices; non-genital heterosexual intercourse; incest; and prostitution. For about two hundred years - until well into the twentieth century - self-abuse (as masturbation was then called) was thought to be the greatest threat to the medical and moral well-being of mankind. Preoccupation with self-abuse, both popular and professional, has since been displaced by a similar preoccupation with drug abuse.

Verbal and pictorial representations of certain ideas or images are perhaps the prime products of human inventiveness prohibited by human inventiveness. This behaviour, too, has its roots in religious ritual, exemplified by the Jewish prohibition of graven images, that is, making pictures of God and hence of man, who is created in His image. This why, prior to the modern era, there were no Jewish painters or sculptors. With the development of literacy among the laity, the Catholic church quickly made translating the Bible into the "vulgar" tongues a crime. Thus, in the fifteenth century, possessing an English Bible was an offence much like possessing heroin is today, except that the penalty for it was death by burning at the stake. Since then, there followed an almost endless variety of prohibitions of the spoken or printed word and the painted picture, such as prohibitions of blasphemy, heresy, subversion, sedition, obscenity, pornography, and so forth. These prohibitions have been implemented by such in

stitutionalised interventions as the Roman Catholic Index of Prohibited Books, the Comstock laws (in the United States), the Nazi book burnings, and censorship policies of the various totalitarian regimes.

Money, in the form of precious metal or paper, is another product of human inventiveness widely prohibited throughout history. Although the United States is regarded as the very pillar of the Western capitalist world, until recently, owning gold was, prohibited there. Private ownership of that metal (in forms other than personal ornaments) is, of course, prohibited in all Communist countries; and so, too, is the free movement, across national boundaries, of paper money. Prohibitions against lending money at interest are deeply ingrained in the Christian and Mohammedan religions. Charging any interest was sometimes viewed as an evil to be proscribed; at other times, only charging "excessive" interest, called "usury," was prohibited. Interest rates charged or paid by American banks today would certainly have been considered usurious in the Middle Ages.

Although gambling was prevalent and permitted in antiquity, in the Christian world-view it, too, came to be seen as a sin and was generally prohibited. Conducted as a private enterprise, gambling is still treated as a criminal offence in most parts of the United States; however, if it is conducted by the state - offering much lower odds to the gambler than private gaming establishments - it is regarded as a positively virtuous undertaking, aggressively promoted by the government.

In short, there is virtually no material object or human behaviour that has not been found to be "dangerous" or harmful" - to God, king, the public interest, national security, bodily health, or mental health - and thus prohibited by religious, legal, medical, or psychiatric authorities. In every case of such prohibition, we are confronted with certain ceremonial-ritual rules rationalised and justified on pragmatic-scientific grounds: Typically, we are told that such prohibitions protect the health or well-being of particularly vulnerable individuals or groups; actually, the rules protect the well-being - that is, the integrity - of the community as a whole (which is what is meant by saying that certain behavioural rules have a ceremonial function).

III

In what way are drugs a danger to persons individually or to people collectively, as nations? What do the officially persecuted drugs - especially opium (heroin, etc.), cocaine, and marijuana - do that is so different from what other drugs do? And if these drugs pose such a grave danger today, why were they not a danger to mankind for thousands of years? Anyone who reflects on these matters must realise that our culturally accepted drugs - in particular, alcohol, tobacco, and mind-altering drugs legitimised as psychotherapeutic - pose a much graver threat, and cause much more demonstrable harm, to people than do the prohibited or so-called dangerous drugs.

There are, of course, complex religious, historical, and economic reasons (which cannot be gone into here) that play a role in determining which drugs people use and which they avoid. But regardless of such cultural-historical determinants, and regardless of the pharmacological properties of the "dangerous drugs" in question, one simple fact remains - namely, that no one has to ingest, inhale, or inject any of these substances unless he or she wants to do so. This simple fact should put the "drug problem" in a totally different light from that in which it is at present officially portrayed. The official line is that "dangerous drugs" pose an external threat to people - that is, a threat like a natural disaster, such as an erupting volcano or a hurricane. The inference drawn from this image is that it is the duty of a modern, scientifically-enlightened state to protect its citizens from such a danger, and the duty of the citizen to accept that protection for the good of the community as a whole.

But the so-called "dangerous drugs" pose no such threat. The danger posed by them is quite unlike that posed by hurricanes or plagues, but is rather like the danger posed (to some people) by, say, eating pork or masturbating. The point is that certain threats - 'natural disasters', in particular - strike us down as "passive victims", whereas certain other threats - for example, forbidden foods or sexual acts - strike us down as "active victims", that is, only if we succumb to their temptation. Thus, an Orthodox Jew may be tempted to eat a ham sandwich and a devout Catholic may be tempted to use artificial contraception, but that does not make most of us view pork products or birth-control devices as "dangers" from which the state should protect us. On the contrary, we believe that free access to such foods and devices is our right.

Actually - that is, at the present time, and especially in the United States - the so-called "drug problem" has several distinct dimensions. First, there is the problem posed by the "pharmacological" "properties" of the drugs in question. This problem is technical: All new scientific or practical inventions not only offer us certain solutions for old problems, but also create new problems for us. Drugs are no exception. Secondly, there is the problem posed to the individual by the temptation to use certain drugs, especially those believed to possess the power to "give" pleasure. This problem is moral and psychological: Some drugs offer us certain new temptations that we must learn to resist or enjoy in moderation. Thirdly, there is the problem posed by the prohibition of certain drugs. This problem is partly political and economic, and partly moral and psychological. Drug prohibition constitutes a type of scapegoating, as discussed earlier; it also creates vast new legal, medical, and social problems - pro

blems predictably associated with authoritarian-prohibitionist meddling into what most people regard as their private lives.

In addition to all this, policies of drug prohibition generate a wide range of otherwise unavailable economic and existential options and opportunities. For members of the upper and middle classes, the war on drugs provides opportunities for gaining self-esteem, public recognition for benevolence, life meaning, jobs, and money; for example, it enables the wives of American presidents to play a combination of Santa Claus and Doctor Schweitzer vis-a-vis their involuntary beneficiaries, who, without the compassion and largess of these ladies, are ostensibly unable to abstain from illegal drugs. Similarly, it enables physicians, especially psychiatrists, to claim special skills in treating the mythical disease of drug abuse, a claim politicians and others are only too eager authenticate. These examples are, of course, only the tip of the proverbial iceberg: There is no need to list the numerous jobs in the "drug rehabilitation" racket, and their ripple effects on the economy, with which we are only too famili

ar.

For members of the lowest and lower classes, the war on drugs is perhaps even more useful; for example, for unemployed and unemployable youngsters, the war provides an opportunity for making a living as drug dealers and, after they have recovered from "drug abuse" as drug abuse counsellors; for unskilled but employable persons, it provides countless opportunities for staffing and running the infrastructure of the drug abuse empire. Last but not least, for persons at all levels of society, the war on drugs offers a ready-made opportunity for dramatising their lives and aggrandising their individuality by defying certain modern medical taboos.

The role of defiance in so-called drug abuse is, indeed, quite obvious. It is clearly displayed in the various contemporary sub-cultures' righteous rejection of conventional or legal drugs and its passionate embrace of the use of unconventional or illegal drugs. The perennial confrontation between authority and autonomy, the permanent tension between behaviour based on submission to coercion and the free choice of one's own course in life - these basic themes of human morality and psychology are now enacted on a stage on which the principal props are drugs and laws against drugs.

IV

Americans regard freedom of speech and religion as fundamental rights. Until 1914, they also regarded the freedom of choosing their diets and drugs as fundamental rights. Obviously, this is no longer true today. What is behind this fateful moral and political transformation, which has resulted in the rejection, by the overwhelming majority of Americans, of their right to self-control over their diets and drugs? How could it have come about in view of the obvious parallels between the freedom to put things into one's mind and its restriction by the state by means of censorship of the press, and the freedom to put things into one's body and its restriction by the state by means of drug controls?

The answer to these questions lies basically in the fact that our society is therapeutic in much the same way that medieval Spanish society was theocratic. Just as the men and women living in a theocratic society did not believe in the separation of church and state but, on the contrary, fervently embraced their union, so we, living in a therapeutic society, do not believe in the separation of medicine and the state but fervently embrace their union. The censorship of drugs follows from the latter ideology as inexorably as the censorship of books followed from the former. That explains why liberals and conservatives - and people in that imaginary centre as well - all favour drug controls. In fact, in the United States, persons of all political and religious convictions, save libertarians, now favour drug controls.

Viewed as a political issue, drugs, books, and religious practices all present the same problem to a people and its rulers. The state, as the representative of a particular class or dominant ethic, may choose to embrace some drugs, some books, and some religious practices and reject the others as dangerous, depraved, demented, or devilish. Throughout history, such an arrangement has characterised most societies. Or the state, as the representative of a constitution formalising the supremacy of individual choice over collective comfort, may ensure a free trade in drugs, books, and religious practices. Such an arrangement has traditionally characterised the United States, but does so no longer.

Ironically, throughout the so-called free western world today, the censorship of words and pictures is generally regarded as a moral and political anachronism, rejected by virtually all intellectuals and politicians; whereas precisely the opposite is the case for the censorship of drugs. The argument, such as it is, that people need the protection of the state from dangerous drugs but not from dangerous ideas is unpersuasive. No one has to ingest any drug he does not want, just as no one has to read a book or look at a picture he does not want. Insofar as the state assumes control over such matters, it can only be in order to subjugate its citizens - by protecting them from temptation, as befits children, and by preventing them from assuming self-determination over their lives, as befits an enslaved population. How have we come to this sorry pass?

Conventional wisdom now approves - indeed, assumes as obvious - that it is the legitimate business of the state to control certain substances we take into our bodies, especially so-called psycho-active drugs. According to this view, as the state must, for the benefit of society, control dangerous persons, so it must also control dangerous drugs. The obvious fallacy in this analogy is obscured by the riveting together of the notions of dangerous drugs and dangerous acts: As a result, people now "know" that dangerous drugs cause people to behave dangerously and that it is just as much the duty of the state to protect its citizens from dope as it is to protect them from murder and theft. The trouble is that all these supposed facts are false.

Clearly, the argument that heroin or cocaine is prohibited because it is addictive or dangerous cannot be supported by facts. For one thing, there are many drugs, from insulin to penicillin, that are not addictive but are nevertheless also prohibited: They can be obtained only through a physician's prescription. For another, there are many things, from poisons to guns, that are much more dangerous than narcotics (especially to others) but are not prohibited. It is possible, in the United States, to walk into a store and walk out with a shot-gun, but it is not possible to walk into a store and walk out with a bottle of barbiturates or with an empty hypodermic syringe. We are now deprived of these options because we have come to value medical paternalism more highly than the right to obtain and use drugs without recourse to medical intermediaries.

I submit, therefore, that our so-called drug-abuse problem is an integral part of our present social ethic that accepts "protection" and repressions justified by appeals to health similar to those which medieval societies accepted when they were justified by appeals to faith. Drug abuse (as we now know it) is one of the inevitable consequences of the medical monopoly over drugs - a monopoly whose value is daily acclaimed by science and law, state and church, the professions and the laity. As formerly the church regulated man's relations to God, so medicine now regulates his relations to his body. Deviation from the rules set forth by medicine is now considered drug abuse (or some sort of "mental illness") and is punished by appropriate medical sanctions, called treatment.

To be sure, drugs are potentially potent influences, for good or ill, on our bodies as well as on our minds. Hence, we need private voluntary associations - or also, some might contend, the government - to warn us of the dangers of heroin, salt, or a high-fat diet. But it is one thing for our would-be protectors to "inform" us of what they regard as dangerous substances, and it is quite another thing for them to "punish" us if we disagree with them or defy their wishes.

According to the formula made famous by the Caesar, the masses of mankind need only two things: "panem et circenses", bread and circuses. This is still true. Today, farms and factories supply us with an abundance of "bread", while drugs and drug controls give us our "circuses". In other words, the contemporary preoccupation with the use and abuse of drugs, together with the persecution of (illicit) drugs, addicts, and pushers, is best understood as a secular ritual that amuses, fascinates, terrorises, and satisfies people today, much as gladiatorial contests and Christian wonder-workings fascinated and satisfied the Romans.

Sadly, the war on drugs has offered, and continues to offer, modern man much of what he seems to crave: fake compassion and genuine coercion; pseudo-science and real paternalism; make-believe disease and metaphorical treatment; opportunistic politics and unctuous hypocrisy. It is hard for me to see how anyone who knows anything about history, about pharmacology, and about the fundamental human struggle for self-discipline and the seemingly equally intense human need to reject it and replace it with submission to a coercively paternalistic authority - how any such person could avoid coming to the conclusion that the war on drugs is simply another chapter in the natural history of human stupidity.(5)

V

I believe that just as we regard freedom of speech and religion as fundamental rights, so should we also regard freedom of self-medication as a fundamental right; and that, instead of mendaciously opposing or mindlessly promoting illicit drugs, we should, paraphrasing Voltaire, make this maxim our rule: "I disapprove of what you take, but I will defend to the death your right to take it!"(6)

In closing, it is important to emphasise that the war on drugs is the longest, most protracted formally declared war of this turbulent century: It has already lasted longer than the First and Second World Wars and the wars in Korea and Vietnam combined - and its end is nowhere in sight. Indeed, because this war is a war on human desire, it cannot be won in any meaningful sense of that term. Finally, since its principal beneficiaries are the politicians who wage it, we must, against all odds, try to enlist some honest and humane politicians in our quest to lay before the people the case that peace, after all, is better than war - even if the "enemy" is stupidly called "drugs".

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(1) T. Jefferson, "Notes on the State of Virginia" (1781), in A. Koch and W. Peden, eds., "The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson" (New York: Modern Library, 1944), p. 275.

(2) T. S. Szasz, "The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (New York: Harper Row, 1970), esp. pp. 242-275.

(3) R. Bourne, "The Radical Will: Selected Writings, 1911-1918" (New York: Horizon Books, 1977), p. 360.

(4) For a systematic development of this thesis, see T. S. Szasz, "Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts and Pushers" (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1974); rev. ed. (Holmes Beach, FL: Learning Publications, 1985).

(5) See, generally, C. Mackay, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" [184l] (New York: Noonday Press, 1962).

(6) "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Actually, this phrase, irrevocably attributed to Voltaire, is not found "verbatim" in Voltaire's works. See C. Morley, ed., "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" (Boston: Little, Brown, 1951), p. 1168.