Bubblehammerblog

Years ago I had a mate, a mid level cannabis dealer, who used to amuse himself writing letters to local and national newspapers describing in ludicrous detail the deleterious effects of dope smoking - grotesque enlargements of the genitals, pathological consumption of jelly babies, monsterous bearded growths on buttock cheeks. One or two letters were published by gullible editors and it was a good laugh. But my friend claimed his letters had a serious purpose. He was opposed to the idea of decriminalisation on economic grounds, since the illegality of cannabis was the only factor that allowed him to make a meagre profit from what was basically a common or garden weed.

My dealer friend had no real grounds for concern, because there is no realistic prospect of progressive legislation on drugs. Nor is there any hope for a rational objective debate on the issue taking place in the mainstream. In the words of the memorable speech by the Baltimore police major in the excellent The Wire, there has never been, nor ever will be, a 'paper bag for drugs'.

There are simply too many players for whom prohibition is both convenient and highly profitable. The global recreational drugs industry is vast, ranking just behind the motor industry in economic terms. The US and Europe spend more on cocaine than they do on education and overseas aid combined.

As better informed legislators are aware, it's clear that no amount of prohibitionist legislation can make any significant impact on demand for recreational drugs. The UN declaration of creating a 'drug free world' is obviously absurd. If the further repressive measures that some politicians are itching to get on the statue books were effective, then Iran, with some of the harshest punishments for drugs use on the planet, might be the model. But that country has the largest population of drug users in the world. The abject failure of prohibitive legislation has prompted some self-appointed drugs experts to pin their hopes on research to come up with vaccines to immunise the next generations against the effects of selected drugs, but that prospect thankfully remains science fiction.

The main beneficiary of prohibition is organised crime. Prohibition magically transforms easy to cultivate weeds and kitchen sink chemical processes into hugely profitable commodities. No other commodities come close to offering the profit margins available to cocaine and heroin traders. Once the basic agricultural product has been processed, using cheap easily available chemicals, the value of the product doubles every time it moves down the chain to the consumer. Factor in adulteration at the wholesale stage and margins go through the roof. A lot of people make a lot of money, is there any wonder that some are prepared to kill to protect and promoted this trade?

States also benefit from the prohibition status quo in less obvious ways. There's the basic principle that the state has the right to legislate on the chemical composition of the brains of its citizens, including the notion that there is an officially sanctioned range of states of consciousness, ('working, asleep, drunk', as Timothy Leary put it), outside of which lies only subversion. This is why the 1960s counterculture caused such alarm among the American elites.

Prohibition is also useful to the police, providing them with easy access to search warrants, and enabling them to keep a high profile among whole swathes of otherwise law abiding citizens. Traditionally, drugs squads have enjoyed low status in the police force because, at street level, busting users is easy danger free work.

State intelligence services have been known to use the huge profits of the  drugs trade to fund 'off the books' covert operations. The well documented links between some state intelligence services and organised crime, inevitable given the nature of their operations, have made this possible. Elements of the CIA and the Pakistani ISI for example have a long history of involvement in the South American and Asian drugs business, as documented by various ex CIA agents, and academics such as Professor Peter Dale Scott. The Kosovo Liberation Army, which has morphed into the Kosovo civilian administration, was largely funded by heroin, a blind eye having been turned by the various intelligence agencies involved in the region. Kosovo remains a major transit point for the trade.

The medical establishment played a key part in the early years of prohibitive legislation, lobbying against the availability of opium, an effective remedy for a whole range of ailments, and much cheaper at the time than visiting a physician. Prohibition provided doctors with a much enhanced fee paying patient base. The medical profession continues to provide the state with research that justifies continued prohibition. People continue to ignore medical advice, which annoys many doctors intensely.

This is the merest sketch of the range of forces and interests lined up against those who hope for any meaningful change in the drugs laws, absurd and futile as they are. So there's no forseeable paper bag.

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