Pyle: America is hooked on a deadly anti-drug drug
The names we give things have a great power over how we think about them. Ever since Richard Nixon declared a “War on drugs” in 1971, the United States has gone ever further down the road of applying a military solution to a public health problem.
One might have thought that Nixon, already up to his armpits in Vietnam and having declared that he would “not be the first president to lose a war,” would not have launched another unwinnable conflict. But Nixon, like leaders before and since, could be more interested in appearing tough than in being wise.
Our approach to drug abuse has thus taken on the language of war. The weapons of war. The clothes, the tactics and the success measures of war. And it all makes about as much sense as sending the Pentagon to stamp out diabetes or schizophrenia.
America’s drug policy is best understood, not in military terms, but in the language of addiction. Our government is so riddled with classic symptoms of rationalization, denial and paranoia that what is called the drug war would be better understood as the anti-drug drug, a highly addictive substance that, once in your veins, never lets go.
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More people were arrested last year for cannabis possession than for all violent crimes combined.
Only in the U.S. does our government declare war on a plant and lose.
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