D ru gs

Education without the myths

Melmoth Grant

There is an enormous need in this country for education on drugs — mostly in the form of telling parents what drugs their children are going to encounter and what harm, if any, will be done when they try them. For try them they will, illegal or not, all the Authorities notwithstanding.

Unfortunately, the only sources of information open to most people have shown themselves to be hopelessly irresponsible when it comes to providing the facts about drugs. Parents look to teachers, doctors, clergymen and the media for advice — and receive at best, misinformation and at worst, lies. Young people themselves are undoubtedly better informed.

Last summer, in a three-part series on drugs, the BBC almost reluctantly reported that some four million people in this country had tried cannabis and not become raging assassins. So the hulk of the ensuing programme, could be devoted to another issue, the sensational problems of the heroin users, some 1,500 of Whom were registered at that time, perhaps two or three times that many who were not. In the Programme, this small "problem group" was misleadingly linked to the non-problem mass of smokers simply by talking about them both in the same breath, as I have just done.

Similarly, I recall that the Observer magazine, in a three-part "inquiry on the drug scene" led the article with an enormous colour photo of a cannabis joint and a warning to the average parent that he might find one like it in his child's pocket. Fair enough. But immediately following were shock-horror stories of heroin, pictures of hypodermic needles, and all the old Gerrard Street photos, thus perpetuating the myth of a link between the use of one drug and another. In this way the popular media provide a gross disservice to society, most particularly anxious parents, for almost the only thing these drugs have in common is their illegality and most young people know it. Or should.

Let me put new and old facts into a proper Perspective. Since time began, human beings have shown the need to change the state of their minds periodically, perhaps to change a too-familiar reality. From the child spinning himself in dizzy circles, we do it, we have done It for thousands of years and we will continue to do it. Right or wrong — and I don't see what's wrong with harmless pleasure — we like to get high.

First, it must be clear that all drugs are similar — they alter consciousness or beha

viour: caffeine, nicotine, cannabis, alcohol and heroin are all drugs. We make legal distinctions between them largely on the grounds of familiarity, i.e. the ones which traditionally have been used in our society are legal and the others are not. Unfortunately, a drug's legal position has virtually nothing to do with whether it is chemically strong or weak, potentially dangerous or harmless.

Of course, there are differences between drugs — but these are not the ones which are reflected in law. For instance, despite the fact that they are legal, alcohol and nicotine are among the most poisonous of drugs: alcohol is an intoxicant sometimes used to kill smaller organisms than ourselves; there is enough nicotine in one cigar or one package of cigarettes, if eaten, to kill two adults or several children. I'm not saying we shouldn't drink or smoke, only that these familiar substances are very strong drugs.

Similar in some ways to these two is another drug which is also dangeorus and easy to abuse — heroin. Yet unlike alcohol and despite popular misconception, it is not a drug which is physically dangerous: it does not cause tissue damage or impaired judgement. But heroin is very habit-forming and the fact that it is illegal makes the price ruinously high and the quality dangerously poor. With these burdens you might easily wreck your life and health and wind up in the gutter. But then can you imagine the spectacle if the tobacco and alcohol addicts were to have their habits suddenly declared illegal? Fortunately for them, they are great in number and, I am told, many are highly placed in government and business.

Obviously it is necessary at some point to differentiate between the use of drugs and the abuse of drugs. This is the sort of judgement which each of us makes for himself, usually instinctively and successfully. Most people clearly have no trouble distinguishing between the two, although for some the dividing line can be a fine one, particularly with the more habit-forming drugs such as tobacco, alcohol, the opiates and others: sixteen million prescriptions for tranquillisers and twelve million for barbiturates (sleeping pills) are issued each year in Britain, mostly to middle-aged women. But then you could addict yourself to anything if your need were great enough. Occasionally someone needs help; anyone willing to puncture himself with needles is obviously not well in the first place.

The type of person who is an alcohol casualty in the older generation, someone who abuses liquor, is the type of person who may have a problem with other drugs in the younger generation. This does not mean that alcohol, cannabis or other popular drugs should be banned, any more than cars should be banned because of traffic accidents. I suppose that if you like a glass of beer or wine, there is a possibility that you will 'graduate to the hard stuff,' whisky and brandy and ultimately meths. For that matter, a person addicted to heroin most probably drank alcohol and smoked tobacco first. It does not follow that anyone consuming alcohol, tobacco or pot will use heroin. Almost nobody does.

Another modern myth which needs. exposure to the cold light of reason is the one which claims the existence of a `vvikked killer drug that'll getcha.' On the contrary, drugs are morally inert substances to which people addict themselves for whatever reasons. (The Victorians got it backwards, too, blaming gin for 'mother's ruin.') It is understandable that people who know only the traditional drugs might fear or distrust the ones new to them, but this superstitious dread of the supernatural powers of plants is absolutely mediaeval. People, not drugs, form habits.

Some kind souls, whose liberal instincts at least take them beyond the common view that a drug abuser is merely a degenerate idiot, still make the mistake of blaming substances for the problems people have with them. It is this conventional attitude which allows society to place the blame for illegal and immoral behaviour on the drugs and thus to escape the enormous responsibility of inquiring into the personal problems and social conditions which cause people to addict themselves.

Once the wicked drug 'bogeyman' has been laid to rest and the hysteria subsides, it's amazing how much more familiar the issues appear. .

Similarly, there aren't hard and soft drugs — only people's hard or soft attitudes towards their use. Alcohol would be 'hard' by any criteria: it is potentially addictive both psychologically and physiologically; it is physically harmful; it is the most commonly abused drug. But we are accustomed,to its use — and abuse.

Cannabis is a drug which, if used in moderation, is apparently neither harmful nor addictive. It is smoked to produce a mild sense of euphoria, leading those who distrust. pleasure to suspect it of being perhaps 'psychologically addicting.' But if you examine this term closely you will realise that it is a negative, clinical way of describing something somebody else does because he likes it. How many of us are addicted to tea and television?

The Wootton Report on drugs (have you read It?) is prefaced by an amusing description of how great was official concern in the nineteenth century at the growing popularity of tea int.his country. If cannabis is more like tea than it is like heroin, and I think it is, why are people still being misled to the contrary?

The whole issue of drugs is an emotionally charged one involving not only the use of substances which could be harmful but also the attitude of young people towards their elders, the law and authority in general. Picking my way through this morass, I have already fallen into the bog of having to discuss the heroin problem' while trying to make a case for those who like their glass of beer or joint of grass or even (ugh!) that most insidious of vices, a cigarette of tobacco (provided, of course, that it's limited to consenting adults in private). Yet the junk scene accounts for only a few thousand people in a population of fifty million, about equivalent to the number of quadruple amputees who must live somewhere in this country. Meanwhile four million people have safely blown some smoke, lived to tell about it and, a fact at least as significant, have had to engage in illegal activities to do so. And here I am talking about the need for drugs education to grow with drugs use, about the need for facts and not propaganda. Lack of information has never inhibited the state from declaring certain weeds illegal nor the bureaucrats from putting them in categories, schedules and otherwise shuffling them around. And I am afraid that even now if research data doesn't fit conclusions already drawn by the authorities, it will be ignored. This is what happened to the findings of commissions appointed in turn by Canadian, American and British governments to study the influence of drugs on the individual and society. The reports the politicians got were not the ones they wanted to hear. These studies represented years of work by men and women of considerable integrity and it is irresponsible of governments to spend the public's money on expert advice which is then ignored.

The official reaction to the experts' recommendations for more liberal laws has been to weasel with compromise: penalties for the use of cannabis have been slightly reduced; penalties for dealing have been made even more severe. Well, where is the stuff supposed to come from then? As in the days of alcohol prohibition in Canada and America, govern ments actually aid and abet organised crime by pouncing upon something for which there is a social demand and making it illegal, somewhat scarce and very high-priced.

What is odd and interesting about cannabis is that the stuff is distributed almost always from friend to friend or comes, at most distant, from the friend of a friend. Because of the danger, no other system can endure. A vast underground cell structure has thus grown up over the years; with literally millions of people being involved in dealing to a greater or lesser extent. With all these otherwise responsible citizens engaged in illicit activity, the legendary figures of the wicked dope pusher and his innocent victims must dwindle and disappear.

Still the daily papers invite us to rejoice every time a cannabis smuggler is caught. Can you imagine how people really feel? It's time to change another idea to make it coincide with reality: a serious dealer provides a useful social service to the point where he has already become a minor folk hero.

Meanwhile, the police go baying about like the Hounds of Judgement, the politicians keep their heads down and anxious parents despair of finding anyone to turn to for advice or even information. Well, what is being done about drugs education? If this society can't prevent the use of drugs, and it can't and shouldn't, then it must educate to ensure intelligent use and to discourage abuse. Immediately looms the spectre of Old Chalky lecturing on the Evils of the Indian Hemp. Actually, I find the prospect of an Official Drug Education Policy, with all that that would entail, so intimidating that I am not capable of recommending it. But if we are to have our alcohol, cannabis, tobacco and so on in an adult society, and have them we will, then provision should be made to supply information on the subject.

Of course, children are already protected as much as is thought necessary or possible from exposure to the legal drugs, gambling and pornography, which interest their elders. But I think they are better off being taught about the facts of life than they are suffering the hypocrisy of official spokesmen or the misinformation of well-meaning parents and teachers. As matters stand, a child is told that cannabis is bad and will rot his mind and lead to junk and the gutter — and when he finds out that four million people, including half the kids at school have proved this to be a damned lie, then who is he to believe about something like, say, heroin?

What can be done? Again, despite the obvious need, I hesitate to recommend that the problem be handed to the drones in central administration. Already, a big bureaucracy is doing its little. If you are a junkie and are an officially registered person and you come at a certain time then, all things being well, you will be duly processed.

In suggesting this I am quite aware that communities and neighbourhoods, particularly in the cities, are areas of society whose role has declined over the years of increasing social centralisation. However, lately there are encouraging signs of regeneration at the local level: interest and action in the arts, in urban improvement and even land development. If this heartening trend continues, it could provide the appropriate atmosphere for dialogue and discussion on other issues when necessary.

I certainly hope so because I am afraid that, as with sex education, the effect of an overall official doctrine on drugs would be to raise more problems than it would resolve. Furthermore, I think we should not make the mistake of looking to the traditional experts — administrators, counsellors, doctors—for the answers to entirely new questions. At best they will honestly admit that they don't know either, and at worst the issue will become settled in the ooze and silt of an established bureaucracy.

A kid who freaks out from too much something-or-other needs Tender Loving Care and to hell with departmental policy. When you find yourself out near the edge of your mind on an acid trip, there's nothing like a hospital ward for pushing you off. What you really need is to curl up with tea and sympathy: But how many people Out There know that?

What is being done about drugs education? Not much.

Melmoth Grant is a Canadian university lecturer on sabbatical here in Britain