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| NEW INTERNATIONALIST 224 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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| THIS MONTH'S THEME | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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The needle and the
damage done I want it now Growing the stuff The harder they come Explosive mix Peddling delusions How to make dirty
money squeaky clean Shoot-out in downtown
USA An iceberg in Brazil
Simply - what's the treatment? User |
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The war on drugs |
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| FROM THIS MONTH'S EDITOR | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Most of us fear that drugs might ruin the lives of people we care for - usually young people and almost always excluding ourselves. So when it came to discussing what we should say about the war on drugs the NI editorial debate was sharper and more passionate than usual. Here was a topic that touched us all. Everyone has a view. Reacting to the pointless cruelty of the war, my first thought was that all drugs, including hard drugs like heroin and cocaine, should be legalized. It seemed to me that more damage was being done to the health of individuals and of society as a whole by prohibition than by illicit drugs themselves. This was, as you can imagine, a contentious view. The argument was not resolved, and I started work on the magazine feeling I was entering a labyrinth without an exit worth taking. But, as often happens, my views began to shift as I went along. My own fears about drugs are focussed on my daughter, Ximena. She has grown up in the East End, the nearest thing London has to an inner-city ghetto. People who are looking for problems like drugs usually go to the East End to find them. So, true to form, I went back there to talk to Ximena and her friends. We met up in a North London pub. They were good company - a bright, lively
and lighthearted bunch of teenagers, most of whom had at least experimented
with marijuana. But I found much less support for the legalization of drugs
than I had anticipated. I found all this rather disconcerting. I did not expect the people for whom I felt deep concern, including my own daughter, to start teaching me lessons. But they did. I became less interested in legalization, in whether cocaine chewing gum or opium-dispensing machines are a good idea, more interested in the issues both drugs and the war against them conspire to conceal. Both have about them the feeling of a misleading metaphor, particularly for the relationship between rich and poor. The magazine began to take shape. Now I'm wondering what Ximena and her friends will make of the finished article. I would like them to think it offers a way out of the drugs labyrinth, into a less perverse, less hypocritical and (admittedly) less glamorous world where we can see things more clearly for what they are, undistracted by the scream of police sirens. As for myself, politicians say that sometimes you can make your present convictions more compelling by confessing to the error of your former ways. Not being a politician I can't judge whether it's worked in this case. What I suspect Ximena will actually be thinking, however, is that I should stop worrying about her and give up my pipe. That is quite a different matter. After all, I began by claiming that when it comes to drugs we apply our concern to everyone but ourselves. |
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Letters FRONT COVER PHOTO: |
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David Ransom
for the New Internationalist Co-operative |
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They
were sceptical about the big business interests that would move into a legalized
drug market. And, quite frankly, they couldn't get excited about abolishing
laws they thought were unenforceable anyway.
