This week, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) fired the latest salvo in the Government’s increasingly farcical response to the manufactured panic around ‘designer drugs’- in other words substances that are created and marketed specifically to get around existing drug laws.

The ‘designer drugs’ story has all the ingredients of the best tabloid moral panics-  an external threat to demonise (count how many of the sensationalist news items mentioned ‘South-East Asian laboratories’), an ’insidious’ technology that has changed society (They bought this filth ONLINE?!?!) and, of course, us feckless, wayward young people, simultaneously victim and villain, falling prey to evil Chinese megachemists cos we’d rather get mwi than get a haircut. Or something like that.

It’s a pretty neat package for establishment figures, both in the media and the state- it sells papers, provides an easy way for the government to look TOUGH ON CRIME, and provides a nice ideological smokescreen for increasing police powers. When the establishment stumbles on a win-win situation like that, the truth often gets lost (or callously exploited, depends on your point of view) somewhere in between hyperbolic headlines and self-serving ‘get tough’ schemes. As we’ve reported here before, the whole mephedrone scare was triggered by um, police getting the name of a drug wrong.

However, government have come to realise that, by their very nature, trying to legislate against designer drugs is basically a fuckin nightmare. Take the near-inconceivable chemical complexity of the human brain, throw in millions of people determined to take drugs and willing to pay for it, then add the internet, and you’ll see that it’s just too cheap, easy and profitable to create and sell new drugs for legislators to keep up.

Which brings me to the ACMD’s proposed solution. The chair of the ACMD, Les Iversen, has recommended that we adopt American-style ‘analogue’ laws, which would make any substance ‘substantially similar’ to a banned drug automatically subject to the same penalties. Sound like a neat catch-all solution to a thorny legal problem? Well, not quite.

For one thing, the American analogue law is horribly vague, with literally no grounding in medicine or chemistry. The wording is so ambiguous that some critics

What our artist thinks designer drugs might do.

have suggested that it technically renders naturally occurring neurochemicals illegal- for example dopamine, which plays a crucial function in every human brain and is synthesised as a medicine, is arguably ‘substantially similar’ to speed or meth.  In the absence of any actual science, the decision on what counts as an ‘analogue’ falls to subjective and socially-determined factors like the class and status of users, how the drug is marketed, and the ‘perceived’ effects (as both scientists and drug users will tell you, how drug effects are experienced is largely dependent on ‘set and setting’- factors like where and with whom you take the drugs and what you expect from them. In other words, perceived effects are largely determined by the previously mentioned social factors.)

What this means in practice is that police and courts make these decisions based on profiles of users and the reasons they take drugs, leading to increased criminalisation and persecution of already-marginalised groups like young people and the very poor. When examined closely, analogue laws present a picture that pretty much gives the lie to the idea that drug laws exist to reduce harm to society, rather suggesting that they’re drug laws for drug law’s sake, seeking to criminalise certain forms of drug use as part of a moral crusade against the social norms of ‘deviant’ sections of society. One Colorado judge ruled that the Analogue Act was ‘unconstitutionally vague’ and that it ‘provides neither fair warning nor effective safeguards against arbitrary enforcement’. A cynical person might suggest that that’s kind of the point.

Now, I personally think it’s unlikely (though not impossible) that the UK will adopt analogue laws. For one thing, they run contrary to the common law principle that you have the right to know beforehand what is illegal and what isn’t. For another, the vague wording makes them notoriously hard to get a conviction under. However the interesting point is that this profoundly unscientific suggestion came from the ACMD, supposedly the body that advises the government on drug science. So how did the independent academic body that once pressured the Thatcher government into setting up needle exchanges, despite the powerfully anti-drug message of coked-up 80s Tories, become an unscientific front for legitimising the War on Drugs?

Just sayin like...

The process arguably began in 2004 under the Blair government. New Labour, as we know all too well, kind of has a thing for manufacturing evidence to support their policies, and the ACMD’s role as, well, people who’re supposed to tell the truth, represented a bit of an obstacle to that. In the wake of the invasion of Iraq, the massively unpopular Labour Government was searching for a nice headline-grabbing distraction that would cast them in a good light, and they landed on the scourge of people giggling and seeing pretty patterns in wallpaper. At that time, although the active ingredient of magic mushrooms was illegal, the law did not prohibit the sale or possession of mushrooms themselves. Labour decided, bastards that they are, that it would be a good idea to launch a crackdown on mushroom use and unilaterally made them a Class A drug without consulting the ACMD. This decision was, in fact, illegal, as the Misuse of Drugs Act that established the ACMD states that they must be consulted on any changes in drug policy.

Heartened by the positive headlines this gathered them, they next decided to contradict ACMD recommendations again, and whipped up a ridiculous media frenzy about so-called ‘super-skunk’, mad dangerous weed that makes you go mental and die. Having manufactured this public health scare, they then stepped in to appear responsible and public-minded and reversed the earlier decision to downgrade cannabis to a Class-C drug. Again without consulting the ACMD, again illegally. This was accompanied by a police crackdown, sniffer dogs on the London underground, and a massively disproportionate rate of conviction for young black men.

By this time it was becoming clear that there had been a cultural shift in government, and that the independent drugs advisory body was basically considered a bit too independent. When the former chairman of the ACMD, David Nutt, presented extensive scientific evidence to the government that Ecstasy and MDMA don’t do sufficient social or medical harm to warrant Class-A status they went one step further than simply ignoring his recommendations and sacked him for causing them embarrassment. This was followed by mass resignations of most of the experienced scientists on the ACMD, outraged at the way their professional integrity had been compromised.

Those who did not resign were promoted, and the rest replaced with more compliant figures. The process of eroding the ACMD was now complete. First illegally stripped of its role in forming drug policy, it gradually morphed into a useful propaganda tool for shifting debate rightwards, by making unscientific, reactionary, crackpot suggestions such as those of the last week. This means a further step away from real science forming our society’s attitude to drugs, which in turn means more needless drug deaths, more addiction and ruined lives, more costly and pointless imprisonment, more police repression and racial profiling.

But, just as we saw with mephedrone, you shouldn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

The US government has foiled a terrorist plot involving Iran, Mexican drug cartels, Cuba, Hezbollah, and Osama Bin Laden’s reanimated corpse. Ok, ok they’re actually only claiming the first two.  In news that will bring joy to 24 season writers and Tea Party members, the United States Department of Justice has allegedly exposed an Iranian terrorist plot to strike the heart of America. The Attorney General, Eric Holder outlined an alleged terror plot in which Iranian agents would oversee the assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States as well as a bombing campaign against Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington DC. If that didn’t sound crazy enough, the Iranian’s were alleged to have orchestrated this plan by approaching the Mexican drug cartel Los Zeta’s for help -- the cartel was to be paid $1.5 million and supplied with Iranian opium for carrying out the attacks.

US Attorney General Eric Holder

Unfortunately for the Iranians the Zeta’s contact in this (alleged) plot was in fact a DEA informant -- presumably Jack Bauer on spring break getting MWI in Tijuana. As well as closely fitting the plot of a recent Tom Clancy novel, detailing Taliban collusion with the Juarez Cartel this cartel connection could ostensibly be used for deploying the US army into Mexico, to fight the increasingly brutal drug war going on there -- as one Republican Presidential candidate has already suggested. This would give the United States two wars to fight, one in Mexico alongside Iran presumably. Attorney General Holder announced that in the next few hours, measures against Iran would be outlined -- that could range from sanctions to bombing a fourth Muslim country in ten years.

There are two factors that may spare Iran war -- one is that so far the US Government is accusing “factions” of the Iranian Government as being responsible for the plot, something quite different from saying the actual leadership of the country is behind the assassination attempt. After all it was only a few weeks ago the US accused Pakistani intelligence of supporting insurgents in Afghanistan, despite Pakistan being a US ally. Here it’s specifically it’s the Revolutionary Guard of Iran who are being accused of funding and planning this plot. The Revolutionary Guard are a 125,000 strong armed wing of the Iranian military, whose specific remit is the defence of Iran’s Islamic Revolution -- similar in respects to Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, in their role as the best equipped, most loyal defence of an autocratic regime. Naturally this position gives them significant influence in Iranian society, which means it is possible they could have independently organised a terrorist plot in the United States without the knowledge of  Iran’s President Ahmadinejahd or the real power in the country, the Guardian Council. That’s one reason Iran might not be a gigantic car park by the time I finish typing.

The second reason is that Iran is no Iraq -- bombing, invading and occupying Iran will not be as easy as the invasion of Iraq. And as some of our more eagle eyed readers may have noticed, invading Iraq was not the greatest plan ever. Iran is a regional power in the Middle East with an army that has not been broken under the weight of sanctions and war, as Saddam Hussein’s was by 2003. Also Iran has significant influence outside it’s borders -- namely in Iraq and Lebanon, where Iranian support is provided to the Shia parties of Iraq like SCIRI (The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) and more famously, Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon. Any attack on Iran would result in attacks on US personnel in Iraq and Hezbollah -- which proved it’s competence as a fighting force in the 2006 war on Lebanon -- attacks on America’s ally Israel. Alongside this ability to exert force across the Arab world, Iran would also be able to halt shipping through the Straits of Hormuz -- effectively halting a majority of the world’s oil supplies, potentially tipping the entire world into another recession.

Why would Iran want to kill the Saudi ambassador anyway? Israel seems an obvious enough target, but why target the Saudis? Alongside the well publicized Arab-Israeli conflict, there’s another less well known cold war in the Middle East -- that between the regional powers of Iran and Saudi Arabia. It goes right back to Iran’s revolution itself, which overthrew the pro Western monarch of Iran, The Shah. The Gulf is chock a block full of similar pro Western monarchs -- in Dubai, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, and the biggest one of all, Saudi Arabia. All of these rulers are shit scared at the idea of being overthrown by the poor and dispossessed sections of their society, mobilised under the flag of Islamic revolution.  One most recent example of this was in Bahrain, where the monarchy (who are Sunni Muslims, and the minority of the population) faced an uprising from the population (who are mostly Shiite Muslims). Here the US sided with Bahraini government, who allow the US to station a naval base in the country and turned a blind eye to the Saudi Arabian monarchy’s deployment of armed forces to the Kingdom to suppress the rebels.

Bahrain's uprising, crushed by Saudi troops.

The movement in Bahrain was not Islamist in nature, and a far cry from the Islamic revolution in Iran during the late 70’s -- instead taking it’s inspiration from the secular movement that brought down Mubarak in Egypt. But any mobilisation of Muslims against these Gulf monarchies -- specifically those of the Shia -- will always be linked to Iran by their ruling elites. That’s why there’s a Saudi Arabia/Iran hostility in the Arab world -- a hostility that even sometimes breaks ranks with the traditional Arab/Israeli confrontation, like when Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister described the Shiite and Iranian supported Hezbollah millitia as a “bunch of adventurers” and blamed them, and not Israel for the 2006 war.  Saudia Arabia ’s even shares Israeli and US hostility to Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme -- a wikileaks cable revealed the Saudi King Abdullah was encouraging the US to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Saudi Arabia have -- alongside Israel -- played the role of US ally in the Middle East for decades, and have been armed to the teeth by the West. The United States simply can’t allow the world’s largest oil producer to fall to an Arab nationalist or Islamic revolution. It’s why despite spending $39 billion on arms, the Saudi Arabian army is deliberately kept weak; the weapons are “pre-positioned” to be used by US forces to quash any uprising, and the army is kept weak to stop any coup against the monarchy.

Despite all the hostility between Iran and Saudi Arabia there’s still no guarantee the US Government of all people are honest in this terror accusation -- America has been chomping at the bit for years to attack Iran, and now they may have their pretext. The Iranians would have to have been spectacularly reckless to believe they could blow up the Saudi Ambassador in America’s capital -- particularly through the alleged middlemen of the Zeta’s cartel, a non-political organisation whose only objective is to sell drugs and make money -- without facing retaliation. The Zeta cartel themselves would have a lot to lose by signing up to such a scheme -- almost guaranteed US military assistance to the beleaguered Mexican Government that’s desperately trying to crush them. These accusations against the Zeta’s only serve to make them sound even more like something out of a Bond movie -- the Los Zeta’s Cartel were originally an elite special forces squad in Mexico, who decided that there was a lot more money in drugs so decided to defect to the side of the cartels they used to fight. Their special forces background means they’ve been able to run rings around the Mexican state, and many US government agencies too…

Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. Quality polis, aw the way.

Which brings us to scandal that’s gone unreported this side of the Atlantic, which has embroiled the ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) bureau of the US Government and the Attorney General Eric Holder -- who broke the story about the alleged terror plot. The scandal sounds like something out of a Hollywood movie -- specifically the title -- “Operation Fast and Furious”. This ATF operation didn’t involve Vin Diesel in charge of a carjacking ring though -- instead it was an authorized US Government operation to force gun stores in the US to sell firearms to people with links to drug cartels. Here ATF officers ordered gun stores to sell firearms to criminals, ostensibly so they could be tracked to the leaders of the cartel and convicted on conspiracy charges. But the entire operation was blown when a US Border Patrol guard was shot dead by one of the “Fast and Furious” weapons and an ATF agent blew the whistle. It’s been described as Obama’s “potential Watergate” due to the national scandal of a US Government agency allowing the sale of thousands of firearms to be used to kill on both sides of the Mexican border. Some of the Right Wing in the USA have an easy answer as to why this gunrunning was allowed -- to allow the Democrats to clamp down on gun sales in the States, in the wake of massive violence from the Cartels.

ATF Whistleblower exposes state sanctioned supply of arms to drug cartels

But there is another more convincing -- and sinister- explanation; the US Government is deliberately facilitating the sale of arms to one side in the Mexican drug war -- the Sinaloa Cartel -- in exchange for that organisations assistance in destroying rival cartels. Rival cartels like Los Zetas. Vicente Zambada-Niebla, a top ranking cartel boss extradited to the US went further and claimed the Sinaloa Cartel were actually allowed to transport cocaine across the border without US Government interference. It may sound far fetched, but it’s happened before. The entire crack epidemic which took hold of the USA in the 80’s was orchestrated by the anticommunist Contra rebels in Nicaragua, with the CIA turning a blind eye to their shipments of cocaine to the US that were used to fund their war against the Socialist Sandinista Government.

There’s also been collaboration between US agencies and Latin American Governments with drug cartels in the past. In Colombia, during the hunt for Pablo Escobar the Billionaire drug lord, an organisation called Los Pepes sprung up. Los Pepes ostensibly stood for “People persecuted by Pablo Escobar” but was in reality a front for the Cali cartel who were in competition with Pablo’s Medellin organisation. Los Pepes were vital in helping the US bring Pablo down, as they could wage a war of terror against his family and business associates that the Colombian state was unable (openly) to do. Because Los Pepes were murdering his lawyers, cousins, business partners Pablo was unable to launch a full scale war against the Colombian wealthy for fear his wife and children may be killed (who were refused amnesty by the US).  Previously when Escobar was on the run from the Colombian state he deployed his private army to indiscriminately terrorize the wealthy in Colombia -- with bombings, drive by shootings and kidnappings against the well heeled. This had the desired effect of Colombia’s elite feeling the heat of the drug war and demanding the Colombian Government give in to his demands -- which were effectively to continue running his own business from a luxurious private “prison” he designed, built and staffed.

Coming soon to an ATF bureau near you.

Killing Escobar itself had no real effect on the drug trade. With Escobar removed the Cali cartel simply took over the gap in the market. And then when they were removed, the Mexican’s took over the trade. If Apple stopped producing computers tomorrow people would still buy computers -- it’s just that they would buy them from Dell or Microsoft. The same principle works for cocaine. Remove one supplier and another takes their place. So why were the American’s desperate to destroy Escobar? Largely because he became a threat to the Colombian state and American security itself. Escobar did not keep his head down like the Cali cartel, and carry out business discreetly. Instead Escobar was elected as a Colombian Senator, funded welfare projects for the poor -- and bombed an airline to try and assassinate a Colombian Presidential candidate who threatened him with extradition. This bombing killed US citizens, and was an unacceptable level of violence for a drug lord in the eyes of the US Government.

Given the accusations against Los Zetas -- that they were approached by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to conduct terrorism - could the ATF be repeating the strategy used by previous US administrations to bring down Escobar? Perhaps Los Zetas have now become a threat to the national interests of the US in the same way Escobar was, and the US Government is willing to fund and assist a rival cartel to see their removal. There’s already been accusations that the Mexican Government has not prosecuted it’s war on drugs against the Sinaloa cartel to the same extent that it fight Los Zetas. It’s possible these accusations against Los Zetas to justify US military intervention against a well organised drug cartel manned by former special forces.

It might even be just the stimulus package the ailing Obama administration needs -- invade Mexico and Iran, and kickstart your economy with World War 3.

What have Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse got in common? And no I’m not asking you to skim the surface of your brain and find the ‘obvious’ ‘members of the 27 club’ option. Please, dig a little deeper than that. In fact you’ll probably need to dig a lot deeper as the press very rarely ever speaks about the reason I’m looking for. Any ideas yet? They were all Junkies? Nope, not quite the answer I was looking for either.

The answer I was looking for is this: They were all people society branded as nothings. People who the media clung to in their darkest moments, not because it helped the sufferer, but because it helped keep the journalists pay cheques coming. People society pushed aside as worthless when they were the people who instead needed help most. I’m not sure the majority will ever see or even attempt to understand this side of the story. And what’s worse is they’re less likely to do so when the deceased was a celebrity.

I struggle to understand what goes through the minds of most. Does becoming famous these days automatically remove you from filing under the term ‘human being’? Last time I checked that wasn’t the case. So why should a celebrity death, if caused by alcohol or heroin, be deemed lesser than the death of someone who hasn’t been ‘blessed’ with fame? Fame doesn’t buy you a life of happiness and sanity. It’s sugar coated. Often sold to the less stable minded as an ultimate goal, a goal of happiness and fulfilment. The reality of it is sort of similar to a box of chocolates. When first opened you’re spoilt for choice but after you quickly scoff the contents you’re always left with the same end product. A box. An empty shell. Just because someone has made the ‘choice’ to become famous, which by the way often isn’t completely the case, doesn’t mean they’re now in a realm above the rest of our race. So now ask yourself this question, ‘What stable minded person would want ultimate fame?’ I doubt after thinking through everything that word represents you’d still want to jump on the celebrity bandwagon. So why do we have such high expectations of how these people should deal with addiction compared to the norm? If money can’t buy you happiness, it’s not going to be able to buy you sanity or the ability to think straight? If you’ve hit a low and can’t see a way out surely money will ultimately be your downfall, not your saviour. If you look at it that way celebrity addicts should actually be treated and viewed with the same eyes as others.

'The Scheme'

Take a look at ‘The Scheme’ for instance. These people who need the most support and help just get kicked to the kerb and deemed useless. Really they’ve little or no chance of changing their lives because society makes it nearly impossible for them to do so. Many of them turn to drugs because they’re so depressed and there is ‘nothing better for them to do’. The ‘go out and do something about it card’ can be played all you like but the bottom line is that for these people it’s probably going to do jack shit. Not because they’re not trying but because society doesn’t want to listen. Any of this sound familiar? If not I’d be willing to bet a tenner you’ve not actually read any of the article posted above. Although on the opposite ends of the scale money wise I think both circles are extremely similar. I don’t believe the celebrity lifestyle allows for a happier life. I’d almost be inclined to say the opposite. However, my point is this: Both circles are lonely and very difficult to get out of.

You could say that we’re unable to help these people, celebrity or not and I’d partially agree with you. We as a whole are unable to make anybody do anything. We can’t demand they go to rehab until ‘better’ and we certainly can’t do any of the leg work for them, but surely when we see a person in desperate need we can stop making circus shows out of them purely for our own entertainment. Selling a story about a persons downfall will always make more money but reading about how much of a mess, waste of space and shit head you are on a daily basis isn’t really going to help with self esteem and therefore really isn’t going to conclude with someone desperately trying to get clean. It’s a little disturbing to think that the human race is one of the only species – if not the only species – who’d rather see another fall in order to make oneself feel better about ones own situation. Doing so doesn’t physically affect our lives but it drastically and negatively affects another’s. So surely even we can see that parading those in most need of shelter isn’t helping anyone. Yet unfortunately it seems we just don’t, and let’s be honest here, probably won’t ever give a shit.

In the case of Amy Winehouse, and many others like her, there’s another factor in the equation, that factor being self-harm. What the media treat as a tasty piece of gossip and the majority treat as an act of an attention seeking nobody, is actually often a genuine cry for help. They are often left to suffer in silence due to the fact they’re led to believe their wellbeing/ existence isn’t at all cared for. Now, if you’re deluded enough to believe addicts are in it for the extreme high and happiness it brings them, the ultimate fucking party, then surely the addition of self-harm into the mix should spark some confusion, and ultimately a change in opinion? Why would somebody so high on life feel the need to attempt to self-destruct? Is there a possibility that the drugs are and were always part of the self-destruction process?

In today’s society addicts are viewed as people who should be shoved to the side, and eventually forgotten about. They’ve made their choice in life and should be left alone to pay the price. I think that the fact the masses believe this to be the case should prove society to be more of a demon than the drugs themselves. Drug problems will not be solved by pushing them under the carpet, and continuing to hide a real, often painful issue in plain sight isn’t going to improve matters. Until we realise this fact nothing will be bettered and addiction will continue to be a dilemma. During our lifetime we will all encounter highs and lows and have entirely different ways of dealing with them, celebrity or not. Whether the addict is rich, poor or famous, at the end of the day we’re all human.

Ye may have noticed over the New Year a prison riot in England, with prisoners staging an uprising over searches for contraband booze. What wasn’t reported as much was that in the USA a much bigger and more important protest by prisoners -- a one day strike, which crossed racial lines as Black and White prisoners refused to work for one day in protest at prison conditions in the USA, with demands for a living wage, decent healthcare, nutritional meals, access to rehabilitation, fair parole hearings and family visits.

The prison industry in the United States is big business as outlined here -- “prison workers provide ninety eight percent of the total market for equipment assembly services.  They produce ninety three percent of paints and paintbrushes, ninety two percent of stove assemblies, forty six percent of body armor, thirty six percent of all home appliances, thirty percent of all microphones, headphones, and speakers, and they even manufacture twenty one percent of all office furniture”.

Prisoners don’t only make commercial goods, they’re also an important part of the US Military Industrial Complex -- they produce “100% of all helmets ammunition belts, bullet proof vests, Identification tags, shirts, pants tents, bags and even canteens are produced by prison labour”. This means that by jailing a large whack of it’s own population the United States can afford to keep supplying it’s massively overstretched military maintain bases around the world and invade other countries.

This massive industry has been used by the largest corporations in the USA to undercut workers rights and make a killing -

* A Washington company “hired” prisoners to wrap software for Microsoft.
Golden arches, golden shackles? Oregon inmates produce electronic menu boards for McDonalds.
* In New Mexico, inmates take hotel reservations by telephone. California convicts took TWA airline reservations over the phone — during a flight attendants’ strike.
* Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest of the nation’s 88 private prison operators, teamed up with Company Apparel Safety Items in the first partnership between a private prison and a private manufacturer.
* Next time you’re turning the lights down and getting all comfy, consider this: Prisoners in South Carolina made lingerie for Victoria’s Secret.

Using prisoners as virtual slave labour has meant that for once, the practice of American jobs being outsourced to the Third World has reversed, for example an assembly factory in Mexico and sweatshop in Indonesia were closed down with their trade brought back to the USA -- because even prisoners can be paid less than workers in the developing world, as little as 25c an hour.

Not only can companies in the USA get prisoners to make all their crap on the cheap, they can actually run prisons themselves. Since the 1980’s the private prison industry in the USA has boomed (more on this later).

As the US prison population skyrocketed, the ruling class in the United States did what it always does, and pointed to the free market for a solution to it’s jailing of millions of it’s own citizens; It let private prisons ease the burden on the Federal Government. The problem is that even the US Bureau of Justice says the efficiency savings private prisons were meant to make ““have simply not materialized.” What happened was that a spate of violent prisoners escaped because privatised prisons cut corners for profit -- just like Railtrack in the UK, privatisation of what should be a not for profit social service resulted in a disastrous risk to people’s safety.

This graph makes sense when you realise the War on Drugs kicked off in 1980.

The reason the prison industrial complex has grown to become such a massive part of the US economy is simple -- the prison population in the United States has quadrupled in the past 20 years. The USA imprisons more people than any other country in the world at any time in human history. With only 5% of the world’s population, the USA has almost 25% of the world’s prison population. A whopping 2,500, 000 Americans are behind bars.

Despite this massive increase in prisoners, reports of crime have actually decreased in the same 20 years. The right-wing in the USA claims the two are related -- more people in jail, less violent offenders on the streets. But the overwhelming majority of prisoners in the USA are held for non-violent crimes.

The massive increase in jailed Americans is due to the beginning of the “War on Drugs” in the 1980’s. Just like the prohibition of alcohol in the 20’s, politicians in the US used the massive crack cocaine epidemic that hit the states as an excuse to jail hundreds of thousands of people, so they could pose as being tough and win votes for fighting a “war” (this was during the Cold War where fighting an actual war abroad to win elections was frowned upon by the Soviet Union).

The majority of people arrested were not drug dealers though -- they were actually drug users. The penalty for drug use in the USA makes the UK look like Bob Ainsworth’s psychedelic drug paradise -- you can get 5 years without any chance of parole for possessing 3.5 ounces of smack/5 grams of crack.

This means those jailed for drug offences are predominantly poor and Black. As well as looking back to the war on alcohol, the “War on Drugs” helped reintroduce another American tradition; making lots of Black men slaves -- almost 40% of the US prison population is made up of Black males, despite them only making up 12% of the population.

While black males were jailed en masse, many of the people who were actually responsible for letting crack into the United States were protected because crack cocaine helped to fund anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua. The CIA actively assisted the distribution of crack cocaine in the USA so they could illegally arm these rebels, and unlike their victims, none of them have ever done any jail time for it.

At least one polis gets it.

The war on drugs itself was biased against Black males, with people who smoked crack (the cheap form of cocaine taken by poor folk, a lot of whom were also Black) being treated much more harshly by the Justice system than cocaine in it’s pure form (the kind of cocaine taken by people in the Justice system). For example you’d need to get found wi 500 grams of pure cocaine to get the same punishment (5 years) as someone wi 5 grams of crack. Cocaine is a hell of a drug (for jailing lots of folk).

The War on Drugs, and the massive increase in prison population and jailing of Black males means there are more Black men in jail than in college than the USA. SSY is still waiting for Mr-Change-You-Can-Believe-In to rectify this situation but we won’t hold our breath. As Stephen Fry outlines below, keeping lots of young black guys in jail makes a few white guys in Washington a lot of money.

Well done American ruling class, I see what you’ve done there.

There are some cases where encouraging folk to work in prison is something Socialists should support -- it keeps them active, it can help rehabilitate them, teach them new skills and prepare them for life outside. But the fact is right now, rehabilitation in the United States isn’t just frowned upon as being too liberal, it’d be a hammer blow to large parts of the economy. Societies are ordered by what makes money for the people in charge of it, and there’s no motivation to stopping the Justice system from jailing millions of folk in the USA -- the opposite in fact.

People on the conservative right in the USA often attack Socialists for all the dodgy stuff that happened in the Soviet Union -- one of which was the Gulag, a massive Prison Industrial Complex which used to exist in Russia. Aside from the fact we don’t actually support that, the Gulag system in the Soviet Union was a massive white elephant which lost the Soviets millions of roubles as prisoners dug meaningless canals to nowhere. These projects were quickly scrapped by the Soviet leadership after Stalin kicked the bucket.

In contrast, the US Prison Industrial Complex is very, very profitable for the people who can get a cut out of it. The War on Drugs may have failed to stop drug use in the USA but it has been a roaring success for the shareholders of hundreds of companies, private prisons and military suppliers who have jailed drug addicts to use as slaves.

People who commit the worst, most violent crimes of murder, assault, rape etc shouldn’t be anywhere else but behind bars but those Americans who get addicted to drugs should get help from their Government to go clean, instead of working for years in the 21st century equivalent of cotton picking.

Santa wants a half ounce off of the bad kids

As we stand just teetering on the edge of crimbo, pressies wrapped and looking forward to watching Her Majesty address us for another year SSY would like to make our own festive greeting to our readers, outlining how one of the holiday season’s family favourites is in fact a SERIAL DRUG USER.

I am of course talking about Santa. In retrospect maybe we should have suspected someone who believes reindeer can help him fly across the entire Earth in one day to assist him in his mission in life – delivering presents to a set list of nice children probably was a bit high. Associate drugs wi Santa though, and most people will look at you like a dog thats been shown a card trick.

Almost everyone has heard of the urban rumour that Coca Cola (itself a drink which used to have cocaine in it, your favourite) invented Santa as a big red and white fat jolly guy. While Coca Cola did a lot of advertising that promoted Santa in that image to the American public consciousness, they didn’t invent him. So that’s not Santa’s drug connection.

The reality is much more weird – Santa as we know him doesn’t derive from Coca Cola but magic mushrooms. His red and white suit is a reference to amanita muscaria, a red and white species of mushroom that grew in northern europe, and has hallucinogenic properties. Pre-Christian tribes used to take these mushrooms to have a good time in the days before you could watch funny animals do things on you tube or play COD:Black Ops.

Santa’s dress and demeanour also point to having a taste for psychedelic mushrooms; he looks like a shaman wi his big beard and belly, and he always has that nice contented happy face, laughing away like someone all cheery on shrooms.

Even the Reindeers got in on the fun – eating the shrooms and having a general prance about, which is probably where they got the idea of having Reindeer being able to fly Santa about. Also because the mushrooms active ingredient – the bit that makes you trip – is not broken down in the body, it’s still present in piss. Some folk wanting to get high would actually drink the piss of reindeer who had eaten the shrooms, hence the phrase “lets get pished” (think I might just have a pint though to be honest).

The political point to take from this is that drug use has always been a part of human society and influences lots of our culture, traditions, and holidays – Christmas included. It’s only relatively recently in human history with the establishment of centrally run capitalist states that folk have tried to ban, prohibit and demonise drugs and their use.

Today in the UK, Santa’s favourite drug magic mushrooms is registered as a Class A drug – that’s the most severe level, putting shrooms on the same level as HEROIN, meaning you will do more time for possessing them than a rape drug. Bonkers.

When we look at a chart on drug use done by an actual proper scientist, the level of harm – both social and personal – mushrooms do they’re slightly less dangerous than Gregg’s cheese and onion pasties.

Keep granny off the sherry and get her toking instead, it's for her own good.

So as you come together tomorrow, to celebrate Christmas with family and friends, whilst watching President Ahmadinejahd deliver his festive greetings, remember that you are helping to fight against the war on drugs with Santa, Donner, Blitzer, Prancer, Rudolph and the rest of the gang.

In the past year and a bit or so, there’s been a real momentum challenging the establishment view on drugs –  that drugs are all bad and that a civilised society has to keep them prohibited. The head of the Royal College of Physicians, former Police chiefs and of course SSY favourite former ACMD chair David Nutt have all attacked this viewpoint and called for drugs to be either legalised or in some way regulated.

Your typical psychoactive/methamphetime drug user.

Recently another name can be added to this star run down – that of Bob Ainsworth, the former Defence Minister in the last Labour Government.  Bob’s called for drugs to be decriminalised, with different substances being legalised and other prescribed. This is the same argument SSY has made; legalise soft drugs like cannabis which cannot be reasonably considered any worse than alcohol, but put heroin on prescription so that it can be prescribed in a controlled environment to addicts and therefore remove an addictive drug from the control of dealers.

The facts are that Britain already had a system of prescribing heroin to addicts which was known as the “British method” because unlike the USA it treated drug abuse as a medical issue. This practice was wound up in the late 60’s, and since then heroin use in the UK has skyrocketed. Instead of addicts being able to get clean drugs in a controlled environment from the state, they get it from drug dealers  and fund their habit from burglary, mugging etc.

SSY welcomes Bob’s conversion, but it’s a shame he couldn’t have done anything about the UK’s unwinnable drug war when he was a Minister. Perhaps it was his experience as Minister of Defence during the ongoing war in Afghanistan that he saw how much money various warlords could make out of the heroin trade. It’s no exaggeration to say that it’s been the heroin addiction of Europe that has basically funded the entire conflict in Afghanistan, from the Soviet occupation to the NATO occupation today.

Unsurprisingly Bob has been attacked for his new stance by Ed Miliband, showing that on this issue (alongside many others) he doesn’t represent even a cosmetic change for New Labour. But the fact that ex-Ministers are now backing drug legalisation and prescription shows that our ideas can no longer be tarred as just those of loonies. Ending the drug war is an idea whose time has come.

One possible candidate for the new ACMD

As previously reported by SSY, the government isn’t generally too keen on scientific advice when it comes to formulating drug policy. When the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, and independent body advising the government on drugs legislation, recommended against Cannabis being reclassified as a class B drug, the Labour government went ahead and done it anyway. When the same body said that Ecstasy, a class A drug, should be downgraded, they ignored that advice too. The former chair of the ACMD and SSY hero Professor David Nutt was even sacked after a pamphlet he produced said that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than cannabis, LSD and Ecstasy. Now we have a new government, and they’ve finally come up with a solution to the fact that none of their drug policies agree with the scientific evidence – get rid of the scientists all together!

That’s right – if a proposed amendment to the Misuse of Drugs law passes, it will remove the requirement for scientists to be included in the committee. After years of ignoring all the evidence when it comes to drugs anyway, this policy looks like it could be signed into law. It’s a well known fact that policy on drugs is driven by the tabloid newspapers more than what is useful – this year’s mephedrone ban was brought in after a series of deaths reported in the media attributed to the drug. The most famous of these cases, the deaths of Louis Wainwright and Nicholas Smith, put huge pressure on the government to ban the drug – it was later discovered that they had not been taking mephedrone at all. By removing the need for scientists on the ACMD, the government is making an admission that they don’t care about science when they make decisions that criminalise thousands of people – only about pandering to the media lies and propaganda about drugs.

As SSY has always argued, legalisation and regulation, based on scientific evidence of harms, is the only sensible drug policy. Drugs would be purer and safer, production would be taken out of the hands of criminal gangs, and people could be given information about each drug’s harm that isn’t based on scare stories. Removing scientists from the ACMD further reduces its importance and relevance, and means the government can carry on doing whatever it likes about drugs without scrutiny from people who actually know what they are talking about. Whilst not all the scientists on the ACMD support legalisation, they support an evidence-based drugs policy – something that it’s obvious the government couldn’t care less about.

You heard it here first kids; drugs are bad. It may come as a surprise that Alcohol comes on top of this list of harmful drugs composed by the former governmental adviser David Nutt’s new outfit; but what is more surprising is that some of the drugs on this list are actually considered illegal by our society. In this short series we will cover the benefits of some of the above offending substances that have been recently discovered by the scientific community and also have a chat about how this list would look if we adopted a sane drug policy.

In this instalment we’ll go with the biggies, and by any definition these are all addictive drugs that harm their users as well as the rest of us: Alcohol and Heroin.

Statistically you are far more likely to be hurt by getting on a horse.

Alcohol is legal, meaning that:

a) The tax on booze pays for the hospital/polis time that ensues.

b) The harm it does is significantly less than if it were prohibited.

(America found this out the hard way in the Noble experiment from 1920-1933. In this time criminals became rich selling largely contaminated alcohol across the length and breadth of society, whilst this did almost nothing to the amount that Americans drank, it turned John Doe into a criminal and it turned the law into a standing joke. Useful graphs illustrating the point courtesy of the University of Albany here.)

The title of this article is a quote from John Marks, a radical GP who after the prohibition of heroin decided to prescribe it in the early 90s to addicts around his surgery in Liverpool. Addicts in this trial didn’t need to steal or bring new customers to their dealers in order to feed their addiction and so committed 93% less theft, burglary, and property crimes. The number of new addicts also saw a huge drop as drug dealers stayed away from the area, knowing there was no point in being there. Marks allowed addicts to escape the cycle of criminalisation and instead live normal lives with jobs and kids and matching luggage and all the rest.

The headline is from a paper where Marks slammed our drugs policy as ‘harm maximisation’ and ‘inhuman’, and that our laws are basically a carbon copy of the American Christian-fundamentalist inspired policy of prohibition. Most retired police officers will admit that prohibition has been a gigantic waste of time, and indeed leading doctors have ceded that prohibition of the most dangerous drugs has done more harm than good.

The Scottish Socialist Party stands for the prescription of Heroin; a move that would topple powerful criminal enterprises, protect our citizens from addiction and allow us to divert resources away from expensive and ineffectual policing and towards saving our public services from spending cuts.

Tune in next time when we look at how scientists have found that 30-hour trips can break addiction, X can blast away shell-shock and how even middle-aged, middle class Christians can after a year agree that an afternoon in a drug experiment gave them ‘the most meaningful experience of their lives’.

***SSY in no way encourages young people to experiment with illegal drugs. This piece aims to illustrate the insanity of our drug policies only.***



Yesterday’s mid-term elections in the United States saw the whole of the House of Representatives, one third of the Senate, and various state legislatures up at the polls. The big story has been the Republicans taking control of the House, and a number of high profile victories for the crazy far-right conspiracy theorists that make up the Tea Party. Elsewhere, the Democrats have retained slim control of the Senate. Widespread disillusionment with Obama’s failure to deliver the ‘chaaaange’ he’d promised, alongside a radicalisation of the Republican grassroots through the Tea Party, is largely being blamed.

The exception to this right-wing tide sweeping America seems to have been California, where the Democrats held onto both their Senate seats, and gained the Governorship back from the GOP (The Governator RIP). In California, however, there was another election going on which has been the subject of much attention over the past few months, since it qualified to get on the ballot back in March. This was Proposition 19, a proposal to legalise, tax and regulate the manufacture and use of cannabis.

Unfortunately, Prop 19 fell yesterday, but it was a close run battle, with 46.3% -- nearly 3.3 million -- voters favouring legalisation, and 53.8% against. The bill had attracted widespread support, backed by a number of high profile former police chiefs, medical professionals, district attorneys, trade unions, politicians from all ends of the spectrum, and even the guy who invented Gmail. But lining up on the other side was an equally high number of police chiefs, politicians, big business, nearly every newspaper in the state, and Arnie himself. The state attorney general had also vowed to use the full force of federal authority to crack down on the legalisation.

The opposition to Prop 19 ran a ridiculous scaremongering campaign, claiming that if it passed that the state’s entire workforce, from school bus drivers to teachers, would suddenly be incapacitated by pot, that streets would be flooded with ‘marijuana advertisements’ and that the proposals are a ‘jumbled, legal nightmare’. Much unlike current drugs laws then!

Although the vote was lost, Prop 19 campaigners are heartened by the huge support that they did gain, and have succeeded in bringing arguments against drug prohibition into the mainstream. Cannabis use is already a huge grey area in the state, where there’s a thriving medical marijuana business. But there’s still tens of thousands of arrests relating to cannabis every year -- 78,000 in 2008. It’s particularly notable that the legalise campaign received big support from black civil rights organisations like the NAACP -- drug prohibition is a civil rights issue, with the arrest figures speaking for themselves: in LA, 10% of the population is black, but are 30% of cannabis-related arrests.

California borders on part of Mexico, where the drug war continues to bring daily death and destruction to millions of peoples lives. A new approach is needed, and although the proposition fell, it was nonetheless an important step forward in the fight to bring an end to the madness of global drugs prohibition.

California: where retired police officers do TV adverts for legalising weed

Then try and win the war on drug addicts – that seems to be the stance taken by “Project Prevention”, a US based “charity” that’s come to the UK to offer £200 cash to any drug addict in exchange for being sterilised. They were featured in the news a few months ago, after a group of them harassed a mother (who was not a drug addict) coming out of Possilpark health centre and offered £200 in exchange for being sterilised.  Now they’re making that offer to any drug users in Glasgow, Bristol, Leicester or London who wants to take it up.

One man featured in the BBC’s report took up Project Prevention’s offer because he felt he would be totally unable to raise a child – as a drug addict that’s not surprising. If drug addicts do want to have a vasectomy/abortion etc to stop them having a child they don’t want then it should be accessible for them on the NHS, and is an understandable and in most cases a sensible decision for people going through a physical need for drugs that dominates their life.

What Project Prevention does is quite different from sensible birth control though – it’s about attacking drug addicts without doing anything practical to either help addicts get off the drugs or take the drugs out of communities. It’s also led by folk who obviously have a stereotyped view of people living in poor areas as being drug users – like when they offered  a non-drug user money in exchange for sterilisation, just cos she came out of a health centre in Possilpark.

The money itself is obviously designed as a lure for people in the most desperate and miserable state in their lives. How many people, thinking clearly would get rid of their ability to have kids forever for £200? The only reason people will take that cash is because they are desperate for money for drugs. Project Prevention must know that, and obviously don’t care their efforts are helping FUND drug abuse and drug dealers in the USA and now want to do the same in the UK.

Most drug use in the UK and USA that is severely damaging to infants – in practice crack cocaine and heroin – has not always existed. Heroin use in Scotland skyrocketed in the 80’s as a side effect of mass unemployment and de industrialisation. In the USA crack flooded into predominantly Black areas, who suffered the same collapse in industry – alongside a deliberate ignorance of the Contra drug dealers who shipped crack into the USA.

SSY says drug abuse should be dealt with as a social emergency and an illness – in the first case, proper jobs should be funded for people living in areas with high levels of drug abuse to make moving into drugs and dealing less appealing.

Secondly, those who are drug users – specifically heroin users, given that is by far and away the most damaging illegal drug in Scottish society – should be given pharmaceutical heroin on prescription. This would allow them to take a drug which is not impure, in a safe environment away from parks etc with children, and would mean that heroin dealers would lose their power very rapidly. What heroin addict would risk jail for stealing money to buy an inferior product after all? This also naturally means the burglaries, muggings and thefts by heroin addicts trying to feed a habit would also drop.

This heroin on prescription programme was viciously attacked by political parties in Holyrood, but it is not a fringe view – there are many police officers who support it. The programme itself was already tried in the English town of Widnes, where there were no recorded heroin related deaths and a 93% drop in drug related crime.

And it would also mean less addicts who would decide to sell their ability to have kids for a pittance to some opportunistic predators posing as a charity. With proper support, after some years they may be in a position to have and support children instead of having that choice forever taken from them in the most desperate times of their life.