How is that supposed to work?

Suppose you have a family member, let’s call her Auntie Ellie, who is a law-abiding citizen who has a medical condition that is not deadly, but does cause severe pain. Suppose another family member, Cousin Rob is in prison for a crime, let’s say he held up a bank. He was not high at the time of the crime, and didn’t claim in his trial that he only robbed the bank to get money to support his drug habit. People in the prison where Cousin Rob is incarcerated are routinely tested for illegal drugs, a process that is disruptive to the prison routine and costs money to do. But every year, in facilities with the most restrictive security measures the bureau of prisons can devise, there are inmates who test positive for drugs.

For over a century now, our country has been perpetuating an experiment in controlling the behavior of the population by using the force of the criminal justice system to restrict and punish certain uses of certain mind-altering products. While the prohibition of alcohol was scrapped as a failed project after 13 years that were as far as could be imagined from the paradise of full employment, empty jails, empty mental hospitals and uniformly harmonious domestic lives, prohibition of drugs has continued, and continues to expand in terms of the types of drugs restricted and the punishments legislated.

The only drug that has ever been available in the U.S. but is virtually impossible to find (there are maybe a couple of attempts to smuggle small amounts into the country per year) is Quaaludes. This was not a success of investigations rooting out and eliminating the sources, prosecution of makers or users, or of government-produced “education” campaigns. At the time Quaaludes became popular among club goers, there were no generics, as the patent was still in effect. Convincing one extremely profitable business to give up producing one product in the name of a noble goal seems to have worked in this one instance.No other drug that is popular for non-medical use has been eliminated from circulation in America.

More and more useful drugs used by generations of Americans without harm, from opiates to amphetamines, to Sudafed, are increasingly difficult for law-abiding citizens to access.

Now consider the fact that even though more than half of the inmates incarcerated in our country are in for drugs, and that this group represents a tiny minority of those Americans who have consumed illegal drugs. We’ve spent over a Trillion Dollars since 1971, locked up millions of people, and still, getting caught, prosecuted and jailed for drugs is an unlikely event in the life of an American drug user. This makes our current drug laws, prosecutions and punishments inherently unfair. This inherent unfairness undermines respect for the law.

Another aspect of our current drug prohibition laws and enforcement that demonstrate unfairness is the dropping of drug charges. Can you picture an episode of “Law & Order” in which the charge of murder is dropped in exchange for information about drug sales? But how many fictional plots – and real cases – involve dropping drug charges because the individual can provide information about someone else’s crime?

Our laws allow for very severe penalties – to the point where it’s possible for a murderer to do less time than someone on a nonviolent drug conviction. One fact that demonstrates the injustice of the severity of current drug prohibition laws is the Rube Goldberg style work-arounds created to protect people caught for violating drug laws by diverting some drug violators into “treatment.” This treatment is not a medical response to an infection, traumatic injury, birth defect, genetic mutation or other bodily malady – it’s not even restricted to people who have actually caused damage to their bodies via over-use of a drug or drugs. The treatment is basically a re-education process designed to convince participants that their drug use is the result of a disease that they didn’t bring on themselves, and convince the public that the government is “doing something about the drug problem.”

In 1914, when the Harrison Act brought restrictions on sale of opiates to American jurisprudence, assurances were made that legitimate medical use of opiates was not the target of prohibition, and such use would not be affected. But here we are, 104 years on, and law-abiding patients with documented medical conditions that cause severe pain are obliged to sign and adhere to pain contracts that include restrictions such as getting all pain treatment from one doctor, all prescriptions from single pharmacy, no more than a 4 week supply at a time, face-to-face meetings with the pain clinic at least once a month, urine tests to prove they consume and don’t sell their meds. Deviating from the contract can result in being denied certain medications in the future. And that’s if the patient lives in a place where prescriptions for pain are not limited to a certain number of days.

We have reached the point that the prohibitionists of the early 20th century promised would never happen: law-abiding patients deprived of pain treatment, not for reasons to do with the patient’s own health, but in service of the war on drugs.

So now tell me, exactly how is it that depriving Auntie Ellie of medication for pain – severe pain that can’t be cured – is going to advance the goals of the war on drugs. Other than there not being a bottle of pills that could be taken during a burglary, how does her untreated pain in any way affect the behavior of other people? Are criminals going to feel bad she’s in pain and foreswear opiates in solidarity with her? Or are the drug warriors giving up even the veneer of logic and just engaging in sympathetic magic?