My personal drug guru is an avuncular Briton named David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist and a professor at Imperial College in London. His 2012 book Drugs Without the Hot Air is the most rational and comprehensive approach to public health and drug use I have come across. A cheat sheet: Drug abuse can be a problem, but it is never a crime. Marijuana may as well be sold in cafés; heroin and cocaine are extremely harmful; LSD and ecstasy have untapped medical potential, if only researchers could study them.
Lest you assume that Dr. Nutt is a doctor in the Timothy Leary fashion, he puts his own drug consumption at the occasional glass of wine. He has won a slew of awards, and has the appearance of a cuddly grandpa. As Canada dives into the intricacies of the Liberal promise to legalize marijuana, I recommend that policy makers, skeptics and alarmists make some time to browse his extensive body of work.
Yes, he has good arguments that the negative health consequences of marijuana are usually overblown and that it is helpful in treating a number of health conditions. But the depth of his thinking goes beyond arguing that bud is not all that bad.
He has developed what he calls a "rational," 16-point measure of the potential impact of drugs on public health, which includes direct personal consequences, effects on other people, addiction, crime and so on. In calculating which drug causes the most sweeping destruction to individuals and communities, time and again, he and other researchers land on the demon alcohol.
It is a pretty easy argument to make. The Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse estimates the public cost of alcohol-related harm in this country to be just less than $15-billion a year, including $3-billion or so in law-enforcement costs. One-third or more of inmates in Canadian prisons for murder, assault or sexual assault say they drank the day they committed their crime (compared with 3 per cent of sexual-assault offenders who say they used illicit drugs). As well, alcohol is a known carcinogen.
I would be a boozy hypocrite if I argued, as Dr. Nutt does, that alcohol should be more expensive and/or sold only at licensed establishments with reduced hours. (He is developing a substitute that has a "relaxing" effect on the nervous system but will not cause extreme intoxication). I am a big fan of liquor, and wine, and beer, and I have been known to enjoy all three in succession. I think Ontario's move toward increased wine and beer access is fair for retailers, and will make it much less stressful to attend dinner parties. It might be better for society, but I would selfishly resist any attempt at reducing my adult right to drink.
What I take from Dr. Nutt's research, and what I wish policy makers would pay attention to, is the complicated matrix of intoxicant use, abuse and sales (legal or otherwise), as well as short- and long-term health, and the criminal justice system.
Addiction is an issue of mental health, and treating it as such would help break its often generational cycle. The legal classification of individual inebriates is rarely equal to how much harm they cause, and the enforcement of drug laws is unfairly targeted toward low-income, racialized communities while privileged offenders too often escape justice.
Most users of most drugs enjoy themselves without harm, most of the time. That does not mean the government should sell vaporizers packed with pot from vending machines, as some alarmists are suggesting might happen, but it does require a more honest assessment of what drug policy is really about.
Dr. Nutt was an adviser to the British government until 2009, when he was sacked for publicly disagreeing with its official stand on a number of drugs. Marijuana was being reclassified as the most serious of drugs, which he basically said was stupid; he also wrote an opinion piece arguing that taking ecstasy was about as dangerous as riding a horse. He argues, regularly, that our reluctance to deal with the social ills caused by alcohol is because it is big business, which is why multinational booze companies take the time to refute him.
It is somewhat amusing to hear these things from an amiable fellow who has never rolled a joint. But his message is clear, and serious: Drugs, and the politics around them, affect people. Crime and morality and big bucks are involved, but let's first aim to do no harm.