Saying Yes
A Review of Jacob Sullum's new book
"Saying Yes: In defense of drug use"
"Saying Yes" by Jacob Sullum
Reviewed by Richard Glen Boire
posted at DrugWar.com
August 26, 2003
It's rare that I read books about drug policy.
After just a little exposure to the genre, one finds, over and
over again, the same dates, the same key people, the same arguments
from the government and the same arguments from the policy reform
camp. There is the grand narrative told by the government ("drugs
are bad"), and there is the counter-narrative told by the
reformers ("drug prohibition is worse"). It sometimes
reminds me of how in the late 1970s I'd sometimes adjust our family's
Pong game so that the paddles would continually reflect the pong
ball back and forth, leave for school and return to find the ball
had remained in motional equipoise.
Yet when I heard that Jacob
Sullum was working on a book about drugs and drug policy,
my expectations for something new were lifted. As a senior
editor for Reason Magazine, a publication devoted to intelligent
discussions over how to best allocate power between the government
and the individual, Sullum had penned a number of fairly unorthodox
essays about drugs. I was looking forward to getting more of his
thoughts on a topic that while always in motion, rarely seems
to advance.
"Saying
Yes: In Defense of Drug Use" is the fruit of Sullum's
thinking about drugs and drug policy. Compared to most books in
this genre, "Saying Yes" is refreshing and insightful,
and could well produce some of the traction needed to advance
beyond the policy of Just
Say No-an infantile policy equivalent to "Don't Put that
in Your Mouth."
"Saying Yes" dismantles much of
the exaggeration concerning illegal drugs, leading the reader
to conclude that this or that illegal drug isn't nearly as harmful
as the government has led us to believe.
Sullum's book is anchored in a particular
level of discourse about drugs-the fact-based, medical, scientific,
analytical, reporter level. Sullum's arguments tend to conclude
at the point where he has taken the government's thumb off the
harm scale. While he sometimes takes the government to task for
trying to rig the scale, he seldom explores the government's fundamental
motivations for playing unfairly in the first place.
Rarely does Sullum address drugs or drug
policy from a deeper philosophical or principled perspective.
This is a book about drugs that is grounded in rationality. While
this is the book's strength, it is also its weakness. Empiricism
will only get you so far when the landscape has been constructed
by the irrational forces, deep-seated fears, religion, power,
and money.
An ever-present theme in Sullum's book is
what he calls "voodoo pharmacology" the idea, largely
promoted by the government, that certain drugs have the power
to hijack a person and enslave him or her in an inescapable prison
of craving and compulsion. Sullum's aim is to show that this is
a myth, that only a very small percentage of illegal drug users
become addicts, while the vast majority of people who use illegal
drugs live normal, productive, loving lives.
Jacob Sullum- Reason
Magazine Editor
and author of "Saying Yes."
Sullum's book is filled with valuable insights
derived from deconstructing government statistics about drugs
and drug use. He shows how even the most vilified drugs such as
heroin and crack cocaine are not nearly as addicting as the government
would have us believe.
He adds a new gloss to these statistics by
suggesting that one reason why marijuana is widely perceived as
a "soft" drug, deserving of less stringent controls
than say crack or heroin is, at least in part, because over 30
percent of the US population has tried marijuana and that makes
it very hard for the government to sustain a false stereotype
of marijuana users. In contrast, it is much easier for the government
to maintain a disparaging stereotype about crack and heroin users,
because those drugs are used by a relatively small percentage
of Americans. A drug like LSD, which has been used by roughly
nine percent of the US population at least once, falls somewhere
in the middle; more vilified than marijuana, but less than crack
or heroin.
The bulk of Sullum's book is devoted to logically
demonstrating that most drugs aren't as bad as most people believe.
Sullum never denies that some people do indeed get into problems
with illegal drugs, but he marshals plenty of evidence to prove
that even with the "hard drugs" like crack and heroin
problem users are a small minority of users; the exception rather
than the rule.
"Saying Yes" is best, however,
when Sullum goes beyond the empirical and begins to explore why
even intelligent, responsible, drug users have such a difficult
time getting outside the established frames that define drug use.
Sullum suggests (but only quickly) that because
there is so much political, legal, and social pressure to abstain
from using illegal drugs, that many people who do use them are
quite anxious about doing so and as a result, commonly feel driven
to justify their drug use. For some, this manifests as a need
to frame their drug use as "medical" or "religious"-
two categories that abstainers of illegal drugs might appear more
willing to accept.
Sullum writes: The search for excuses reflects
the lingering suspicion that drug use is sinful without a special
justification. Yet the desire to alter one's consciousness appears
to be a fundamental aspect of human nature. Like sex, it is nothing
to be ashamed of, but it needs to be constrained by moral principles,
which means getting beyond the unthinking blanket rejection of
drugs.
At another point Sullum also expresses frustration
(but again without much elaboration) with drug policy reformers
who rely almost exclusively on harm-reduction
arguments (e.g., the war on drugs does more harm than good), calling
attention to the fact that such reformers have an almost universal
tendency to stress that they are opposed to drug use. The bumper
sticker statement "Drug use is bad, but the drug war is worse,"
epitomizes this position.
Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico,
and a darling of the drug reform movement was a poster-child for
this position, calling drugs a "handicap" and a "bad
choice," and telling a group of college students, "I
hate to say it, but the majority of people who use drugs use them
responsibly." Sullum rightly wants to know why, since most
people do in fact use drugs responsibly, Gary Johnson "hates
to say it."
former governor Gary Johnson
Echoing the point made by Thomas
Szasz (most recently in his book "Pharmacracy"),
Sullum identifies the evolution of modern medicine as largely
responsible for the current bifurcation that divides "good
drugs" from "bad drugs." If a drug changes the
way a person thinks or elevates a person's mood, it is taboo unless
it is being used to improve a medical deficit. Nonmedical use
of drugs, including nonmedical use of prescription drugs, is viewed
as 'abuse" by the government and by most of the medical establishment.
This is the uneasy tension that exists with
respect to marijuana. More and more Americans seem willing to
accept marijuana's use within a medical framework, but they remain
deeply concerned that some people will make bogus medical claims
in order to simply get high. Indeed, as Sullum points out, the
medical model for drug use is now so overgrown that it has prompted
some school districts to coerce parents to place their children
on Ritalin in order to attend school. In other words not only
does a medical imprimatur make drug use acceptable, a medical
purpose can be enough to force a person to take a drug.
Sullum rightly asks why it is that "legitimate"
drug use must satisfy a medical model. Why can't we recognize
that there are perfectly good nonmedical reasons for why a person
might want to use a drug? Why is it so hard for most people to
accept that drugs can be used responsibly for the express purpose
of enhancing the senses, boosting mood, occasioning a pleasant
evening, or eliciting a spiritual experience? As Sullum notes,
all of these uses of drugs are legitimate. Indeed Sullum is weary
of creating hierarchies that characterize some reasons for using
drugs as acceptable, but others as unacceptable.
Sullum writes: Seeking a medical or religious
exemption from drug prohibition amounts to asserting that my use
of this substance is important, that it deserves respect in a
way that more frivolous uses do not....The urge to offer such
excuses is based on the sense that drug use is morally suspect
without an elaborate and serious sounding defense....Wine drinkers
generally do not feel compelled to proclaim that their beverage
was endorsed by God, that it relieves anxiety or reduces their
risk of heart disease. They simply say, "I like a nice glass
of wine."
It is in these portions of "Saying Yes,"
where Sullum moves into a more principled examination of drug
use, that he is at his best. Yet, just as Sullum begins to travel
off the beaten path, the book concludes, leaving one feeling the
textual equivalent of a dreaded drug under-dose.
Nevertheless, for dissipating much of the
hype surrounding the dangers commonly associated with illegal
drugs, "Saying Yes" is the best book since Andrew
Weil's "The Natural Mind." It is hard to imagine
an open-minded person reading Sullum's book and coming way from
it without a much more informed understanding of why so many intelligent
people choose to use illegal drugs.
-----
-Review by Richard Glen Boire
Richard Glen Boire is director and chief legal counsel of the
Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics
(http://www.cognitiveliberty.org).
