Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

From Viet­nam and the var­i­ous as­saults on Iraq to Afghanistan and the am­bigu­ous war on ter­ror, many re­cent wars in­volv­ing west­ern pow­ers have been of­fen­sive rather than de­fen­sive. They have al­so been far eas­i­er to start than end. Some so­ci­ol­o­gists con­nect these lengthy wars to what US Pres­i­dent Dwight Eisen­how­er called the Mil­i­tary In­dus­tri­al Com­plex-and the cy­cles of eco­nom­ic pro­duc­tion that co­in­cide with war across many do­mes­tic in­dus­tri­al and fi­nan­cial lev­els.

An­oth­er hard-to-end war that has been waged for 40 years is the war on drugs. Be­gun by Richard Nixon in the 1970s, it was a war forced on the rest of the world. For all its moral over­tones, re­searchers con­nect it to a sim­i­lar thrust for eco­nom­ic growth and what is called the Prison In­dus­tri­al Com­plex.

Like the Mil­i­tary In­dus­tri­al Com­plex, the war on drugs stim­u­lates eco­nom­ic growth through in­creas­es in prison pop­u­la­tions and the need for larg­er jails, staff, tech­nol­o­gy and the like, which in re­cent times has been tak­en up by the pri­vate sec­tor.

Then there is the mas­sive mil­i­tary and law-en­force­ment aid pro­vid­ed by the US for for­eign gov­ern­ments like our own, as well as the emer­gence of whole new in­dus­tries such as drug test­ing and drug re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

In this sense, the drug war gen­er­ates bil­lions for gov­ern­ment agen­cies and em­ploys mil­lions. Cap­i­tal­ists love the war, as the laun­der­ing of bil­lions of US dol­lars through first-world banks in­di­cates. For ex­am­ple, be­tween 2004 and 2007, one of Amer­i­ca's largest banks,Wa­chovia,now owned by Wells Far­go, laun­dered US$378 bil­lionof Mex­i­can drug mon­ey. That is just one bank.

Opin­ions about the war on drugs cov­er the whole spec­trum, from mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty like our own Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce who her­ald the need to keep fight­ing the war to ad­vo­cates for so­cial change who point out the war on drugs is a form of im­pe­ri­al­ism di­rect­ed most­ly against non-white pop­u­la­tions and in­volv­ing mas­sive neo-colo­nial mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion.

That over­whelm­ing sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence demon­strates there is a hi­er­ar­chy of drugs, with some hav­ing far more se­ri­ous side ef­fects than oth­ers (mar­i­jua­na vs co­caine for ex­am­ple) is ig­nored for the pro­duc­tion of a fear that all drugs are evil.

For an­thro­pol­o­gists, this view con­flicts with wide­spread ev­i­dence that across time, near­ly all so­ci­eties and com­mu­ni­ties have wide­spread cul­tures of in­tox­i­ca­tion, in­volv­ing sub­stances pro­hib­it­ed on­ly in the 20th cen­tu­ry. When you think about it, that isn't that sur­pris­ing. Mod­ern liv­ing is drown­ing in le­gal drugs.

Cof­fee, cig­a­rettes, sleep­ing tablets, steroids, and al­co­hol are a few ex­am­ples of the drugs peo­ple take to get through the day. The war on drugs is al­so dis­crim­i­na­to­ry across class and race. Count­less US gov­ern­ment stud­ies show young whites use mar­i­jua­na at high­er rates than young blacks or Lati­nos.

Yet, through­out the US, young blacks and Lati­nos get ar­rest­ed and jailed for mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion at much high­er rates. In New York, Chica­go, and Los An­ge­les, po­lice ar­rest blacks for mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion at sev­en times the rate of whites.

The sit­u­a­tion in T&T is not much dif­fer­ent, with mem­bers of all our dif­fer­ent groups, in­clud­ing our elites and up­per class­es, us­ing drugs but the crim­i­nal penal­ties falling dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly on our low-in­come group mem­bers. Yes, "nice" peo­ple take drugs too. They just don't suf­fer the same so­cial and crim­i­nal penal­ties.

With mar­i­jua­na le­gal­i­sa­tion ini­tia­tives pass­ing in Col­orado and Wash­ing­ton dur­ing the US elec­tion, the sit­u­a­tion has now gone full cir­cle. Cit­i­zens (most­ly "nice" white ones) of the num­ber-one in­vestor in the war on drugs have vot­ed to le­galise drugs (in this case mar­i­jua­na).

Yet those states are not the first to sug­gest so­cial change is need­ed in how so­ci­ety han­dles the ques­tion of drug use. In the con­text of mar­i­jua­na, Hol­land has long had a pol­i­cy of de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion. Por­tu­gal adopt­ed one re­cent­ly. And Uruguay has al­so re­cent­ly de­crim­i­nalised.

Mean­while, the UN Glob­al Com­mis­sion on Drug Pol­i­cy pub­licly came out in favour of end­ing the war on drugs by de­crim­i­nal­is­ing the use of il­le­gal sub­stances. In De­cem­ber 2011 a ma­jor­i­ty of Latin Amer­i­ca's lead­ers meet­ing in Cara­cas al­so called for de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion.

In the Caribbean, Ja­maica pushed to de­crim­i­nalise mar­i­jua­na fol­low­ing the 2000-2001 Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion on Gan­ja chaired by the late an­thro­pol­o­gist Bar­ry Chevannes. The com­mis­sion's rec­om­men­da­tion was a change in na­tion­al law. Yet un­der eco­nom­ic threat to cuts in aid from the US Gov­ern­ment, the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment was forced back from what the ma­jor­i­ty want­ed and what Dr Chevannes showed was es­sen­tial­ly a lo­cal cul­tur­al prac­tice.

Clear­ly, over­whelm­ing sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence re­futes what po­lit­i­cal lead­ers and the me­dia say about the evils of mar­i­jua­na. And while there may not be a sol­id case for the le­gal­i­sa­tion of all drugs, there is cer­tain­ly one for mar­i­jua­na. Not least be­cause wars with­out end hurt more peo­ple than they save.