Heitor De Paola, M.D.
20/10/2004
Recently, Brazilian magazine Época (#333, 04/10/2004 – www.epoca.com.br) published an interview with Brazilian psychotherapist Mônica Gorgulho, Director of International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA) and former President of Rede Brasileira de Redução de Danos (REDUC – Brazilian Harm Reduction Network). In that interview she defended the idea that repression doesn’t work for minimizing drug abuse and its social consequences and made her case in favor of governmental programs to stimulate ‘the safe use of these substances’. This is ‘already the policy of Brazilian government’ for the last two years, ‘the only Country in Latin America that adopted harm reduction as an official policy’ so far. The repressive politics of the past are becoming progressively substituted by one in which predominates distributions of syringes, crack pipes and condoms within ‘a more comprehensive attitude vis-à-vis the users of drugs’. The predominantly apparent reason is to protect them from AIDS and C-Type Hepatitis.
Those ‘repressive’ policies of the past are identified by Gorgulho, and by all the international institutions and foundations connected to harm reduction practices, as twofold: in the first place, drug users were deem as criminals and subjected to high judicial penalties of incarceration; on the second hand, and she sees no difference at all between the two, they were diagnosed as mentally ill and ‘subjected’ to medical care. Within the framework of those new and ‘more advanced’ strategies, they are seen as ‘citizens with their own rights whom could or could not commit crimes and/or have a kind of mental disturbance’. However, she said and repeated many times that ‘harm reduction policies do not mean legalization of illegal drugs’. But what those suggested practices point to? If it is not legalization it’s worse, it means to suggest governments to act against the law! Really, to suggest the Executive to turn against the laws passed by the Legislative and enforced by the Judiciary to law-abiding citizens! In my opinion its intention is to create a fait accompli that, in proper time, will turn impossible not to pass new laws legalizing those drugs.
In a close examination of this interview – and the vast literature on the subject as well – we can see how these arguments are not based in sound truths, but in half-truths/half-lies. It is common knowledge that half-truths are more confusing and disturbing than clear-cut lies because while the latter are easy to perceive for its true value, the same doesn’t happen with half-lies. They are not easily recognizable as such; their falseness is concealed by the half-true part of the argument.
For example, who would disagree with the opening statement of this interview, that ‘civilization lives with drugs since its inception’ and that is the most improbable that anytime in the future will be able to exist ‘a world without drugs’? Anyone familiar with history cannot, for the sake of truth, disagree with this. It is well known that beer and wine are reported to exist among the Sumerians. Arab warriors used hashish since they still lived in a polytheistic society before Mohammed and was largely used by the radical sect of The Assassins, in Arab language: hashishim. A great deal of drugs was used by every known culture in performing religious rituals. And so on. I could quote a lot of drugs used from ancient times to the present.
However, it doesn’t follow that these historical arguments are a strong base do defend legalization of the drugs, it’s really a non sequitur! It’s so silly that based on them we could say that murder should not be a crime as far as mankind lives with murder since the very first times, as described in the Genesis. We are able to use this same nonsensical but persuasive discourse about robbery, smuggler, slavery, women traffic, paedophilia and almost everything that our civilized common sense condemns. Civilization is exactly the opposite of accepting wrongdoing as good! The functions of the laws were always to limit the destructive impulses with which, notwithstanding, we have to deal with, as far as they constitute important components of the human psyche. Of course ‘to be legal or illegal is a definition of society’, but could it be different? She says that certain drugs were legal in the past and cites opium, which was fashionable in the United States and Europe, where the fumaderos were, for a period, very chic meeting places. But not a word is said about the reasons why opium became illegal! Was it that someone took this decision all of a sudden without sound reasons? Or was it not for the great harm and serious damage to users and society alike? Incidentally, the case of opium is one that rather denies the idea that repression doesn’t work and permissive policies do.
Another half-truth is the comparison of drugs and ‘work under great stress’, the usual condition in modern times, or ‘fast food’. This is another quotation to bewilder the reader, as is the old argument of ‘powerful economic interests’. As Gorgulho identifies none, I will: laboratories that produce ‘official’ drugs to be prescribed by official doctors. They certainly are interested in drug prohibition to avoid competition in a free market. Nevertheless, however potential risks those drugs present us, official institutions and medical researchers scientifically control them, at least up to a certain point. [Added in 2023: today I’m not so sure]. The authorities continually report physical harms, less so with psychologicals. Curiously the same argument of powerful economic interests is never discussed in the other direction, that of the champions of legalization that count with enormous sums of billions of dollars from powerful foundations and other NGOs. All for the defense of mankind, without envisaging great profits? Just for the sake of love for people?
But the first prize to half-lie goes to the old argument that ‘prohibition is the cause of abuse or illegal actions’! It’s a reverse argument that pretend it is not because of the obvious harm to the users and the potential damage to society that those drugs are prohibited but, on the contrary, the damage arises from the prohibition and illegality! And this is not intended to start a controversial debate, instead is uttered dogmatically as an absolute truth that doesn’t admit discussion. In the bottom, this idea intends to make civilization abolish all law, Constitutions, tradition, religion, whatever that stands as an obstacle to complete liberalization of crime. Contrary to traditional knowledge – namely, that law was established by mankind to inhibit and punish crimes and abuses – but exactly the other way around: laws are determinants of crimes. Therefore, a lawless culture would be a paradise on Earth! An inversion between substance and definition.
From these arguments it should follow that alcohol and tobacco as legal drugs should be deemed harmless. But to the harm reductionists these substances are the ultimate evil. Astonishing, there are two contrary but simultaneous assertions: legal drugs would be harmless and at the same time, drugs already legal – and even fast food! - are the most dangerous of all! This is an example of how far omnipotence of thought may go within ‘scientific’ and intellectual environments: say anything, but say it with deep conviction, for nobody will contest you! In traditional logic two opposite ideas are mutually exclusive; no more, they are dialectically acceptable, as far as you can spell both with the same conviction and if anyone contests it is immediately and contemptuously considered an ignorant of ‘the more recent developments of scientific and epistemological studies’. Ambiguity becomes the new queen of argumentation!
Embezzled interpretations of statistic data are frequently published to prove that tobacco is the cause of more illnesses and deaths than illegal drugs. This is true in absolute figures but it is a lie when we check relative ones. It is so because the number of cigarette smokers exceeds in millions those of hard drug users! So, it is obvious to expect that a greater number of the formers acquire a number of illnesses not always related to smoking whereas this is not the same to the latter: their illnesses almost always are directly connected with drug abuse.
Another conclusion from theses statistics, never mentioned, is that if they prove anything it is the fact that legalization increment the number of users, as obviously expected! The case of The Netherlands is an adequate exemplar. But such data are anathema and are never mentioned. Prohibition inhibits potential users. Other statistics that point contrary to legalization are systematically concealed. As for example, in 1980 after the liberal policies of Carter Administration there were 25 million users of hard drugs in the United States. After eight years of Reagan Administration and a combination of repression and educational actions, this number was reduced to a half, 12.5 million! Today these figures are increasing again, rising up to around 15 million.
Is civilization to allow its own destruction in the name of reducing harm? Is it not, on the contrary, increasing harm through liberalization of hard drugs?
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The author is psychoanalyst in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Member of the International Board of Drug Watch International, Clinical Consultant, Boyer House Foundation, Berkeley, CA. (Titles no longer applicable in 2023)