I recently watched an episode of West Wing, called Mandatory Minimums which got me thinking about drugs and their impact on society.
When the characters have a discussion in the oval office about treatment versus penalization, they mention various statistics. One of them was that, over 30% of the prison population are non-violent first time drug offenders. Various facts like this, piqued my interest, and as I did more research, I decided to share some of my thoughts on the topic.
History of Drug Usage
The use of drugs has been an integral part of various societies since ancient times. Natural drugs like marijuana and peyote were ingredients in early medicines and played a significant role in some religious rituals.
Around two centuries ago, the addictive nature of drugs was uncovered. At the same time, drug usage became popular among criminals in the northwest. One theory suggests that drugs were used by criminal organizations to ensure the loyalty of their members. Because of this, people began associating drugs with crime. Pressurized by public opinion, the USA and other northwestern nations introduced strict penalties to curb drug use.
Surprisingly, in spite of continuous implementation of penalties for over a century and a half, drug usage has consistently been on the rise. Over the last decade, drug consumption has been off the charts, with a staggering total of 296 million drug offenders worldwide, in 2021.
Drugs have adversely affected our society for a long time. But our efforts to tackle the problem seem to be doing more harm than good. To address the issue effectively, we must realize that not all drug offenses are equal, and each case needs to be handled based on the nature of usage, severity, and its effect on health and society. Drug usage can be classified into three main categories.
Types of Drug Usage
Personal Recreational & Instrumental Drug Use
Personal, recreational drug use is usually casual and voluntary, and is not considered addiction. Recreational drugs are often used by adolescents.
Personal recreational drug use poses risks, as suppliers, even those catering to casual users, may have ties to organized crime mobs. Besides, even recreational drug use could lead to addiction.
Consistent long term usage of recreational drugs is damaging to health and may even indicate addiction. If addiction is suspected, it is best to consult an expert.
Personal recreational drug usage is often confused with Instrumental drug usage. Let’s look at the latter.
Instrumental drug use refers to the act of using drugs as a tool to achieve certain goals, like gaining social validation, or escaping from the hardships of reality.
Many teenage drug users are instrumental users, succumbing to peer pressure and therefore experimenting with alcohol, cigarettes, and recreational drugs. Adults with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) also turn to these drugs as a means of escape, putting them at risk of addiction.
Addressing the underlying fears and insecurities through counseling or therapy can be a successful method to treat addiction resulting from instrumental usage.
Recreational drug usage, whether it’s casual or instrumental, can result in addiction. Without the necessary care and support, individuals struggling with addiction, are likely to relapse.
Drug Addiction
Drawing a clear line between addiction and recreational drug usage is difficult.
Addiction is the persistent attachment to something despite negative outcomes. Drug addiction is particularly perilous as addicts will assume major risks to acquire drugs. While addiction is a treatable medical condition, it is not curable. Relapse is likely, if one is exposed to drugs again.
It’s crucial to recognize addiction cases as distinct from cases of recreational or instrumental use, as addicts are often powerless to fight off cravings or withdrawal symptoms without medical help. In such cases it is effective to prioritize treatment over imprisonment for a resolution.
Local Drug Dealing for Recreational Purposes
Drug dealing for recreational purposes, although detrimental to community life, should be separated from large-scale drug trafficking.
Local dealers can often be influential or intimidating members of small communities. Peer pressure compels individuals who would otherwise avoid drugs to use them. As social creatures, we often conform to the behaviors and norms of those around us.
Recreational usage is particularly harmful to people who are constitutionally more prone to addiction and become hooked after only a few tries.
Drug overdoses are often fatal, and over 109,000 accidental deaths occurred in 2022 due to drug overdoses, just in the USA.
Finally, small-scale dealers sometimes get ambitious and extend their business, farther and include a wider selection of drugs thus graduating to large-scale drug traffickers.
Small-scale drug dealing although detrimental to communities, has limited resources and localized impact. Drug trafficking on the other hand is a lucrative business involving large-scale well funded operations backed by powerful black market criminal organizations transcending national borders, like the drug lords in Africa.
Drug Trafficking
When drugs are distributed throughout a country, it is called nationwide drug trafficking. This is the root cause of a government’s challenges with drug dealing.
The national drug trade is at the heart of a country’s drug issues, because national cartels provide drugs to smaller-scale operations. Meanwhile, international cartels oversee drug dealing on a global scale. A prime example of this is the Latino cartels from Mexico and South America operating in the USA.
Economic Impacts
Large-scale cartels, become major suppliers of illegal goods, and accumulate vast amounts of black money. To conceal their ill-gotten wealth, their leaders resort to laundering techniques, often investing in extravagant items such as luxury watches and high-end cars. They engage in a wide range of criminal activities, including data manipulation, falsification, and even carrying out assassinations, all aimed at covering their tracks.
While not as successful as international cartels, national cartels still possess a substantial capital, leading them to commit dangerous crimes in order to safeguard their operations.
Finally, they use this money to make huge investments, which skews the stock market and makes it unfair to those who invest with hard-earned money.
Psychological and Social Impacts
Drug distribution is a form of business that effects not just its members but their families. Children born into families involved with drug cartels are automatically expected to grow up into members of the cartel. Additionally, often parents value their position in a cartel over their children, due to an ingrained imaginary survival instinct from generations of gang membership.
Large cartels often have close-knit smaller offshoots which allow them to work effectively. Members are usually more loyal to their offshoot than the gang as a whole.
These cartels involve the local population and smaller cartels to create a long chain which allows them to operate effectively.
Impacts of a Cartel on Drug Consumption
Traffickers deal in hundreds of billions dollars worth in drugs every year. They are undoubtedly the main source of addictive substances, including legal drugs.
While cartels do supply drugs to individuals, I believe that recreational drugs are a more common gateway to drug use. It’s unlikely that someone who has never experimented with drugs would approach a cartel leader and request to try their products.
Another likely reason for people to be exposed to drug use, is to have an addict at their house, especially a parent or guardian.
Cartels are more likely to work as passive suppliers, than play an active role in getting people addicted to drugs.
Flaws in Drug Laws
Usage of Marijuana in Medicine
Despite its reputation for recreational use, marijuana, or cannabis, has great promise. It is particularly useful in treating specific cancers, epilepsy, and multiple sclerosis (MS).
Cannabis & Cancer
Cannabinoids may slow cancer growth and eliminate less complex strains in early stages, but not fully cure it, as per research.
Scientists believe that by tweaking medicinal cannabis, they can further enhance delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol and cannabidiol levels, potentially benefiting cancer patients.
Effects of Cannabis on Nerve Pain and MS
There are many opinions as to weather or not medicinal cannabis should be an acceptable drug, but it is definitely a useful one. Here’s why people are often skeptical about using marijuana as a medicinal drug.
Ill-effects of Marijuana on Human Body & Legalization
Smoking marijuana may have temporary effects like increased heart rate, dilated blood vessels, and changes in blood pressure. Interestingly, these are also common symptoms experienced during intense cardio workouts.
Compared to other drugs, medicinal marijuana has minimal impact on the body and appears to be quite effective without any major side effects. Despite this, many people are hesitant to use it as a replacement for non-addictive drugs due to the negative experiences the government faced with cocaine even though the use of marijuana as a medicine can be traced back to the Assyrian era.
Marijuana can be a powerful tool in helping people overcome drug addiction without serious negative side effects. The reason people become addicted to drugs is because they experience an increase in dopamine levels. Marijuana makes your body think you are experiencing the heightened dopamine levels, without actually heightening your dopamine levels significantly.
It is advantageous that people are aware of the fact that marijuana is addictive, so if or when they choose to use it, they use it in moderation, to ensure that they don’t get addicted.
Marijuana is a drug, which in my opinion, should not be illegal. Now let’s look into another drug, a more modern drug, which is far more addictive than marijuana:- oxycodone.
Doctor or Drug Dealer?
Oxycodone is a potent pain reliever prescribed to soldiers, athletes, and those with serious injuries, but its addictive properties and widespread abuse in the US raise ethical concerns about its prescription.
Oxycodone & Effects
Oxycontin is the most commonly used oxycodone based drug. In the year 2006, it was estimated, 8.3% of the US. population, 12 years and above had abused at least one Oxycodone during the course of a month. Oxycodone is the most addictive legal drug and a lot more addictive than marijuana.
People use oxycodone, thinking it’s safe because the doctor prescribed it. They trust the drug because it’s legal when prescribed. Since it is very effective, and also very addictive, users get hooked onto it very easily.
Once you get addicted, you simply can’t stop. Overuse of Oxycodone can lead to severe respiratory diseases, lung degradation, liver problems and heart issues. Serious overdoses can even cause death.
Doctors continue to prescribe Oxycontin only because sometimes nothing else works. It has helped cancer patients, soldiers who have faced severe mutilation.
Oxycodone is a highly effective opioid pain-killer. But around 8-12% of users are severely addicted.
Sometimes, Oxycodone feels like it is actually curing a disease because it is so successful at blocking out the pain, but in reality it is only suppressing a symptom.
How Oxycodone Works
Oxycodone like heroin, morphine, etc contains opioid which interrupts the pain signals your brain sends and replaces them with a euphoric feeling. Opioids release dopamine from the reward center of your brain, causing the elevated or euphoric feeling.
In nature, your brain does not come in contact with oxycodone, and that’s why it finds it very hard to adapt to Oxycodone usage.
Your body wishes to experience the dopamine release more often, and that is how you get addicted.
The opioids get you addicted, but they are also the most effective at masking pain. So the usage must be heavily regulated. However, in spite of the prescription law in the US that has been enforced since 1998, the number of cases of oxycodone abuse in America is still increasing.
Oxycodone is undoubtedly a dangerous drug. So, let’s look into some ways to distribute it effectively and safely.
Effective Ways to Safely Distribute Oxycodone
I think that it is important not to abolish oxycodone usage, but to find ways in which it can be administered safely. Information and knowledge are key to preventing addiction. It is imperative that patients are properly counseled, and informed unambiguously, of the addictive nature of oxycodone and the dangers of overuse, before a doctor prescribes it. People who are aware of the dangers of oxycodone usage are less like to abuse the drug.
Allowing only government managed oxycodone dispensaries, may narrow down the possibilities of corruption among doctors, such as making deals with cartels.
Finding national, instead of international sources, will reduce illegal entry of this drug. Also this will allow tighter and more focused security on smaller transports.
Dispensation of the drug must be controlled by issuing only a few days dosage of pills at a time and implementing ration cards linked to government issued IDs to ensure limited and safe access and responsible usage of the drug for those who need absolutely need it as well as to make it easier to trace and detect abuse cases.
Therapy should be made mandatory for patients prescribed the drug for the entire usage period to reduce over usage of the drug. A therapist can help the patient overcome addiction while using the drug. Doctors should be required to do regular year long follow ups on patients they have prescribed oxycodone to, so addiction or relapses can be treated in a timely manner.
Rehabilitation programs for those showing signs of addiction are necessary precautions. Group therapy with specialists can help slowly ween possible addicts off the drug.
Marijuana might be an effective rehabilitation drug, as it has no permanent side-effects. It is also not as addictive as oxycodone but has a similar euphoric effect. Marijuana does not actually contain opioids, but it interacts with the same part of the brain as opioids
Fentanyl For Cancer Patients
Fentanyl is an effective pain killer, 50 times stronger than most opioids, like oxycodone and a 100 times stronger than morphine. It is lethal in doses greater than two milligrams, every twelve hours. It is given to cancer patients in the USA.
Although it is legal for cancer patients, because it is cheap and strong, drug traffickers find it profitable peddle it to addicts. Additionally, they adulterate other opioids with fentanyl, to make them more addictive. This results in thousands of overdoses as people are unaware of the presence and dangers of fentanyl.
Fentanyl needs to be better regulated. Majority of drug overdose deaths are because of fentanyl. Governments are unable to regulate it’s usage effectively. 70,601 overdose deaths were reported in 2021.
Cancer patients need to be properly guided in the use of fentanyl. Finally, finding alternatives to fentanyl should be a priority so that it’s usage can be further restricted.
Therapeutic and Punitive Action
Current Penalty-Based System
Drug addiction is disease, where the brain undergoes certain changes due to repeated drug usage, These changes inflict intense bodily suffering unless the drug usage continues and escalates. Therefore, overcoming severe addiction requires medical intervention.
Despite this fact, people continue to believe a penalty based system might prevent repeated usage of drugs. Penalties have almost no effect on addicts and instrumental users. Addicts are desperate to get their hands on drugs and will manage to do so in jail, even through life-threatening means.
75% of prisoners in England and Wales had, at taken illegal drugs whilst in prison.. On top of that, almost 68% of offenders re-offend within a three years of their release. From 1990 to 2017 the number of drug-related cases has increased by 33.5%, despite drug related laws. (sources?)
Current drug laws also create problems like overcrowding of jails.
Prisons in over 118 countries are above their maximum capacity with 11 countries at more that double maximum capacity. 85% of the US prison population has a substance use disorder, or was incarcerated for a crime involving drugs or drug usage. US jails are at over 100% capacity.
Decriminalizing drug usage could reduce the money made by illegal drug empires, and increase the funding for awareness programs and rehabilitation centers for drug addicts.
However, drug trafficking must remain a criminal offense that can lead to jail time. Trafficking is the only way people gain access to a steady a drug supply.
Aside from punitive action, what other steps can we take? Is rehabilitation that much more successful? Let’s look into rehabilitation centers.
Rehabilitation Centers: Future for Drug User?
A handful of countries worldwide have already implemented or at least partially implemented treatment instead of jail time for drug users. Switzerland being one of these countries, uses heroine in waning amounts to ween addicts off for free. In Thailand, rehab centers have an 85% success rate at treating patients.
Countries which have directed their resources towards setting up rehabilitation centers and other forms of drug therapy have been successful at lowering drug case rates and reducing addiction relapse rates.
The US has some excellent rehabilitation centers, but the good ones are expensive, and there are far too few of them. On average, the USA has approximately a 50% post-rehab recovery-rate. The urgent drug situation in the Americas requires immediate action to reduce drug usage and eliminate cartels. The best way to do this is by establishing free or inexpensive, quality rehabilitation centers all around the country.
In India, smoking is the main problem. Top rehabilitation centers in India have an 82% success rate, which is fairly high compared to other places around the world.
Making inexpensive rehab available to all, is an effective way to increase productivity of a society as well. How? It will reduce the number off addicts, and help them rebuild their lives focusing on economic prosperity and social integration, thus contributing to the social and economic development of the country at large.
Although changing from prisons to rehab requires a lot of capital, it is a wise and profitable investment in the future of a country.
Kid's Bouquet 
Lovely article, I got to know so much more. It sounds more like an Essay though. Still, I give it 10 out of ten.
Yours,
Hapoos
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