cannabisnews.com: This Is the World on Drugs 





This Is the World on Drugs 
Posted by FoM on March 18, 2001 at 13:16:52 PT
Book Review By Polly Shulman 
Source: Newsday 
A Reviewer's life isn't all lying on the sofa reading novels and eating bonbons. True, I did polish off my Valentine's Day chocolates and "Forces of Habit" simultaneously, in a reclining posture. But I'm sitting up straight as I write this, virtuously sipping green tea. You, perhaps, are lounging at the breakfast table, enjoying the day's first cup of coffee. 
Or maybe you've curled up after dinner with the paper on your knee, a brandy in one hand and a cigar in the other. You may even (God forbid) be puffing on a joint and laughing through your nose, or cutting lines of cocaine along the columns, or resting your hypodermic needle on the paper as you prepare a shot of heroin. As a reader living in the New York metropolitan area, however, you're unlikely to be chewing betel or qat, mild stimulants popular in India and eastern Africa respectively, rather like lattes in Seattle. You're probably not having a peyote vision either, or sipping a kava brew; these drugs haven't spread beyond their homelands (the Mexican desert; the Pacific islands) with anything like the force of tobacco, say, or chocolate. Wherever people live, they find plants capable of altering moods or consciousness when processed properly. Some of these drugs, like tea, spread around the planet with barely a murmur of disapproval. Others, such as opium and its sullen spawn, heroin, have caused wars. Still others - qat, kava - seem to go nowhere much. Why? "Forces of Habit" is historian David T. Courtwright's attempt to address that question. He finds answers in the history of Europeans and their descendants, as they brought new plants home from their voyages of exploration and introduced their own mind-altering favorites - particularly alcohol - around the world, along with their political and economic agendas. He calls the drug-sodden result "the psychoactive revolution." People everywhere have acquired more and more potent means of altering their ordinary waking consciousness, he explains. This revolution, which he calls one of the signal events of world history, "had its roots in the transoceanic commerce and empire building of the early modern period - that is, the years from about 1500 to 1789. 'Forces of Habit' describes how early modern merchants, planters and other imperial elites succeeded in bringing about the confluence of the world's psychoactive resources and then explores why, despite enormous profits and tax revenues, their successors changed their minds and restricted or prohibited many - but not all - drugs." Like Karl Marx and Agatha Christie before him, Courtwright follows the money. Drugs are "the opposite of durable goods": They vanish in a puff of smoke, leaving the user scrambling for the next dose. This makes them extremely valuable consumer goods, for manufacturers, distributors and governments as well - drug taxes have historically made up a large percentage of government resources. By 1885, for example, taxes on alcohol, tobacco and tea accounted for close to half of the British government's gross income. The Opium Wars in China and the American Revolution - remember the Boston Tea Party? - were both sparked at least in part by Britain's hunger for drug tariffs. But drugs aren't merely consumables like soap or beans, with a built-in limit to their appeal. Although soap manufacturers may cajole their customers to lather up more often and more lavishly, a bather can only use so much soap. Users of addictive drugs, however, build up a tolerance; they need more and more of the stuff to achieve the same effect. Related to this rhythm of increased use, argues Courtwright, is a similar arms race, this one technological. Popular drugs begin life relatively mild, as components of wild plants: coca leaves, poppy seeds. But new techniques of purifying the active ingredients and delivering them to the brain bump the drugs into a whole new category. There's a world of difference between the nicotine kick of harsh, slow-burning pipe tobacco and quick, smooth-burning cigarettes, whose smoke can be held deep in the lungs. As the active ingredient of the opium poppy was refined from edible seeds to edible resin, then smoked resin, then morphine and eventually heroin, snorted and then injected directly into the bloodstream, its effects increased with similar drama. It may be hard to overdose on a poppy-seed Danish, but heroin is another thing altogether. The stories all sound similar: Alcohol progressed from mild beer and wine to high-test distilled liquor; cocaine moved from coca leaves chewed raw for a slight kick and relief from altitude sickness, to the crippling highs and lows of crack. Even coffee seems to be going through a similar transformation, the popularity of quadruple espressos and soft drinks spiked with pure caffeine shows. "If the single most important fact about the early modern world was the expansion of oceangoing commerce, that of its modern successor was industrialization. During the 19th century psychoactive discoveries and innovations - the isolation of alkaloids, the invention of hypodermic syringes and safety matches, the creation of synthetic and semisynthetic drug - were married to new techniques of industrial production and distribution. Factories did for drugs what canning did for vegetables. They democratized them. It became easier, cheaper and faster for the masses to saturate their brains with chemicals, making a lasting impression of their most primitive pleasure and motivational systems." Among the most important differences between licit and illicit drugs are their various abilities to help or hinder workers. Coffee breaks make sense in the workplace, since caffeine tends to sharpen the mind, while alcohol doesn't mix well with heavy machinery or heavy thought (the proverbial whiskey bottle in the reporter's bottom drawer notwithstanding). And technological improvements in drug delivery have made a difference too. You can imagine an employer pepping his workers with coca leaves, but cocaine in purer forms would take too much of a toll on productivity. Courtwright, a lively writer with an eye for entertaining details, sees the drugs not just as examples of a pattern, but also as individuals. He traces caffeine plants, for example, from their origins in three continents - tea at the crossroads of India and China, coffee in Ethiopia, cacao in South America and cola in West Africa. "Coffee and America grew up together," he says, describing the cowboys' preference for hot, strong brews. "Frontiersmen of a different sort, the Apollo 11 astronauts, were drinking coffee three hours after landing on the moon. Theirs was history's first extraplanetary drug use." My drug of choice, chocolate, was also a favorite among Europe's decadent classes: "The obese Marquis de Sade was obsessed with it in all its forms. From prison he badgered his wife for ground chocolate, creme au chocolat, chocolate pastilles and even cacao butter suppositories to soothe his piles." This lively writing spices up a serious take on a grave subject. While Courtwright sees licit substances like tea and illegal heavy-hitters like cocaine as two ends of the same spectrum, he's by no means trying to minimize the dangers of drugs. Rather, he wants to lay out the history clearly - perhaps partly hoping that if policy setters understand how drug use spread so widely and deeply, they'll be better equipped to fight it. And kava, betel, peyote, qat? "They missed, so to speak, the historical window of opportunity, open from the late 15th through 19th centuries, but since closing rapidly." If a psychoactive plant did not achieve global cultivation and use by the end of the 20th century - perhaps it doesn't travel well, like betel, or is hard to cultivate, like peyote - it may well have missed its chance, says Courtwright. New synthetic drugs, he expects, will out-compete the mild, plant-based highs, and may well give even the high-test ones a run for their money. FORCES OF HABIT: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World, by David T. Courtwright. Harvard University Press, 277 pp., $24.95. Source: Newsday (NY)Author: Polly Shulman Published: March 18, 2001Fax: (516) 843-2986Copyright: 2001, Newsday Inc.Address: 235 Pinelawn Rd., Melville NY 11747Contact: letters newsday.comWebsite: http://www.newsday.com/Forum: http://www.newsday.com/forums/forums.htm
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Comment #4 posted by kaptinemo on March 20, 2001 at 05:11:10 PT:
Some important points, though
Among the most important differences between licit and illicit drugs are their various abilities to help or hinder workers. Coffee breaks make sense in the workplace, since caffeine tends to sharpen the mind, while alcohol doesn't mix well with heavy machinery or heavy thought (the proverbial whiskey bottle in the reporter's bottom drawer notwithstanding). And technological improvements in drug delivery have made a difference too. You can imagine an employer pepping his workers with coca leaves, but cocaine in purer forms would take too much of a toll on productivity.This is very telling. Courtwright has made a slam dunk here, friends. He has with a single sentence laid bare a huge chunk of the reason why your boss is pee-his- pants scared at the prospect of his workers using. And why he wants to control your life outside the workplace. But not for the reasons you might think. A hint: it has very little to do with job safety; few people show up to work drunk. Or stoned, for that matter. Simply because it is so deleterious to your work.No, the reason is something else:It became easier, cheaper and faster for the masses to saturate their brains with chemicals, making a lasting impression of their most primitive pleasure and motivational systems." And also, in the case of some drugs, make them think.Consider: employers in some fields like mine are always exhorting employees to 'think outside of the box'. But what happens when an employee goes so far out of the box that he starts to question the very nature of the 'the box'? Especially when he starts to question the rationale of even having a box? Or of allowing someone to keep you in a 'box'? Very dangerous thinking that strikes terror into the heart of any authoritarian-based structure...like corporations. And governments. Can't have people questioning the legitimacy of either!Which is why so many businesses were for alcohol Prohibition. They didn't want their worker drones getting uppity and telling the boss that he was no better or smarter than they were, and therefore had no right to try and tell the workers how to run their lives.But with the collapse of alcohol Prohibition, the bosses realized that it was better to have a drunken, dull-witted person which is easier to manipulate than someone who has partaken of something that excites the ol' neurons and get the mental juices flowing. Which is why alcohol is 'okay' but cannabis isn't. Especially because of the long term damage done to the body by alcohol use, those who are addicted to it often remove themselves from the pool of people you have to pay pensions to, simply by dying. Very handy, when you think about it.So, drink up, Joe Sixpack! And I'll see you at the next corporate Two-Minute Marijuana Hate Meeting brought to you by the (liquor supported) PFDFA!
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Comment #3 posted by MegaStoner on March 19, 2001 at 15:11:36 PT
re:strange review
Dan,,It was indeed a strange review...sort of deeply shallow
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Comment #2 posted by Dan B on March 19, 2001 at 11:26:38 PT:
Strange Review
You can imagine an employer pepping his workers with coca leaves, but cocaine in purer forms would take too much of a toll on productivity. No I can't. Coca leaves are every bit as unlawful to own as processed cocaine, which is why the American Government is destroying thousands of acres of plants instead of only going after the processed stuff. Furthermore, I can't speak for crack, but I know that a good many of the so-called "movers and shakers" (those who keep the big businesses growing ever faster) are the major market for cocaine precisely because it helps them to be more productive. As for the "God forbid" comment, I actually thought the author was being ironic until I read further and realized Polly's folly of blanketing all drugs with the adjective "dangerous." I now realize that she's being politically correct (at best), or just incredibly stupid. The only indication that the author's intent is to use his history to help fight the war on some drugs is Polly's personal declaration:Rather, he wants to lay out the history clearly - perhaps partly hoping that if policy setters understand how drug use spread so widely and deeply, they'll be better equipped to fight it.Maybe that's her hope, but I doubt that was David T. Courtwright's reason for writing the book. It sounds more like an attempt to show that drugs are drugs are drugs, and you can't just arbitrarily say some are always "good" and some are always "bad." His point seems to be that any policies attempting to regulate the production of plant-based matter are based not on sound reasoning or some misguided attempt to "help" people, but on money, pure and simple. The irony of this book review is that the reviewer has completely misunderstood the point of the book.Dan B
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Comment #1 posted by zenarch on March 19, 2001 at 07:15:41 PT
why "God forbid"?
"You may even (God forbid) be puffing on a joint and laughing through your nose, . . . ."Why would God Forbid what God has blessed us with?I thank God for the beloved herb.
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