What is Prohibition? A call to Reformers.
Having engaged with all sides of the drug debate over the last few years, Know Drugs got to wondering how much the general public understands about the words and concepts we hear bandied about so frequently. So we took to the streets to ask if people understand one of the very first terms you need to know when considering the status of different drugs: Prohibition. The film shows what the public had to say.
The views in the final film are entirely representative of the people we spoke to.
The film uses only a small sample of the population but we think it raises interesting questions, particularly for those seeking to reform the drug laws. If the general public has such little awareness of terms which are fundamental to understanding the issues surrounding drug use, how can reformers meaningfully seek to engage people in a complex debate and further expect them to take action?
Mass media has successfully shrouded the drug issue with fear and confusion. The popular consensus still appears to be that ‘drugs are bad’ and that ‘drug users are bad’. There is little distinction between type of drug beyond what are commonly known as ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ drugs and any talk of possible merits of certain banned substances is deemed the path to certain mass-drug taking, widespread addiction and multiple deaths. Messages about the real harms and benefits of different drugs are completely lost.
This hysterical response makes for a good read of a tabloid newspaper and chimes with a desire deep within ourselves to protect others, but does little to address the real facts about drugs, drug use and drug misuse.
The big political parties learned long ago, that in the age of Soundbite Media, the key is to make your message simple and keep it that way. Remember the Tories’ ‘Labour isn’t working’ and New Labour’s ‘Education Education Education’ slogans?
Admittedly, social media is allowing for greater complexity of message – but it is all too easy to mistake preaching to the converted for achieving a shift in public opinion and reaching a new audience.
Presenting solutions which might lead us out of the current mire of unjust criminalisation and imprisonment, wanton discrimination and unnecessary illness, injury and deaths is not something that can be done simply. But drug law reformers do not do each other any favours when it comes to making such in-roads. One wrong word and a ton of people on the ‘same side’ as you will come down on you like a ton of bricks – giving the impression that every word you’ve uttered is wrong/ill informed/misplaced or even deliberately mis-leading. Any sound argument made is obliterated in a hail of criticism from your own ‘friends’. Is it any wonder that in 50 years of the war on drugs (some say 40, some say 100) – the current policy stalemate has simply taken hold and stuck?
This is not to say that a lot of these nuanced arguments are not important. The question is what is the right time and place for them? And if we are still at a stage where the majority of the populace can’t actually tell you what Prohibition is – is tearing ourselves apart discussing for example, precise legal terms doing anything to spread the message that Prohibition isn’t Working?
My advice to reformers: before you say anything ask yourself:
1) Is what I’m about to say constructive ?
2) Am I about to undermine someone who’s point of view I fundamentally agree with and if so can I re-word ?
3) Will this challenge do anything to further wider human understanding of the real problems around drugs and drug use or will it mainly serve to make me feel/appear more important and knowledgeable?
By Cara Lavan
I share your frustration but don’t think that this can be an argument to adopt incorrect paradigms just because they are in common usage, far from being common understandings; they are in truth common misunderstandings. It is amazing to think that the public have so little idea about the law and describe their world in such inadequate and inaccurate terms. I guess you are right in terms of mass communication we need to re-assess how we do this, but I am loathed to even consider ‘dumbing down’ the debate. If anything, it is your observation of how the media have stoked up fears that necessitates more incisive and revealing counters to this. My view has always been that we must be pedantic about details as this is a battle of ideas, ie a war of words. We also must recognise that we are trying more to target intelligent participatory members of the public into becoming mouthpieces for the cause as opposed to trying to get simply everyone to understand what are substantial issues fully. I’m not sure about this concern:
” Any sound argument made is obliterated in a hail of criticism from your own ‘friends’. Is it any wonder that in 50 years of the war on drugs (some say 40, some say 100) – the current policy stalemate has simply taken hold and stuck?”
Is it the case that such arguments are always sound? Sound arguments should withstand proper criticism. Yes anything can be ruined by trolling, but really the issue is not disagreement across the reform movement – it is the lack of any coherent intellectual basis for it. It’s all well and good asking for unity, but actually its right that ideas get shot down if they are naive or incoherent. It’s fine to point out that the protagonists are on the same side, but this really is a battle of ideas and words – perhaps the reason we are still stuck with the impasse is the incoherence of the opposition and its preparedness to buy into illusory constructs such as ‘war on drugs’. It is a frankly offensive depersonalisation of reality, how can anyone for one moment imagine that this is war on objects and not people (thus undermining the whole impetus for transformation with such misguided communication)? So, I want to do what you complain of, to lambast your efforts for using the wrong words, yet words are the very tools we must use for it is nothing more than words that enslaves us. Using the wrong words perpetuates the oppression and propagates the myths that the media and govt revel in, we cannot move towards regulating people fairly from a belief in a war being waged against indivisibly illegal objects.
Darryl’s position has excellent philosophical underpinning:
“You can’t solve the problem you created at the same level of thinking that you created it” – Albert Einstein
Yes, we have all participated in the perpetuation of the problem through shoddy use of thinking: and what is language but crystalized thinking?
Remember: Word Creates World!
Remember, what is prohibited is human action, not drugs!
Only actions can be legalised: use, possession, supply, production, cultivation!
Help end the War on some People who use some Drugs by cleaning up your language and focussing on the human and their actions!
Fx
STAND UP! FIGHT BACK! JOIN THE MOVEMENT!!!! GET MAD AND GET ACTIVE!!!!
Cannabis will NOT become legal WITHOUT YOUR HELP! Don’t wait for others to do the work for you! Get up! Stand up! Stand up for your Right!
The California legalization initiative is in trouble and will not get on the ballot without a major influx of support, volunteers, donations and publicity. YOU can help even if you do not live in California. Find out how:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/cchhi2012/
Nothing will improve until people in California wake up to the reality that this is a civil rights issue. You cannot legalize a plant, its complete nonsense. We don’t even want to approach it from a human angle like this anyway, its not about cannabis, never can be, at its most defined it is about freedom to access peaceful mind states.
I would like to start by saying that it would be easier for fellow readers and commenters to read your blog if you could change/increase the background/foreground contrast ratio. Just saying!
As much as I agree with your observation that some fellow travellers in the Drug Reform Movement tend to “come down on you like a ton of bricks” whenever they do not share your point of view, I do not think that is the main reason, not even a major, reason “the current policy stalemate has simply taken hold and stuck”.
The main reason is that Prohibition and the so-called War on Drugs has been and continue to be approached, even by people in the DRM, not rationally, but ideologically. That is what make the discussion so hard. One would think that the irrationality, inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the current Prohibition regime is so overwhelming that ideology, prejudice and fear should not be match for a evidence based discussion. But nothing is further from the truth. It is like trying to discuss religion or the right to die. No amount of evidence seems to be enough to make people change their pre-conceived, and in the majority of cases, ill-conceived ideas. So, yes, we need to keep arguing, even among themselves. Let’s jjust keep it civilised, and above all, keep it rational!
Gart Valenc
Twitter: @gartvalenc
I meant ourselves.