Both American drug policy and its current iteration as a “war” on drugs are historical phenomena that should be amenable to study. One of several impediments to any study of human activity that’s been declared illegal is identification of those who engage in it because they might face prosecution or other adverse consequences. In essence, Proposition 215, which had been bitterly opposed by all federal and state agencies charged with drug law enforcement, was (and still is) a plea for reconsideration of the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, authored by AG John Mitchell in 1969 and signed into law by President Nixon in 1970. The context in which Nixon had been elected in 1968 one in which older Americans were being shocked by the behavior of adolescents and young adults who were rejecting traditional social norms, openly using “marijuana” and other drugs, while refusing to fight in an undeclared war that was claiming the lives of more draftees every month. One of the ways that division between youth and their elders was dramatically illustrated was the savage beating of young “hippies” by Chicago Police during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
The American drug policy the hippies were flouting had been based on two similarly deceptive pieces of legislation (unusual transfer taxes). The older (Harrison, 1914) authorized the arrest of physicians for writing unapproved prescriptions and the more recent (MTA, 1937) essentially targeted drug possession. In 1969, shortly after Nixon took office, the Supreme Court rather unexpectedly declared the MTA unconstitutional, thus mandating further legislation. What emerged was the CSA, a law that embraced the earlier muddled notions about “addiction” without soliciting modern input from Medicine. The restrictions of the earlier laws were simply intensified and reasserted as Public Health. Adding insult to injury, the Attorney General was given sole authority for listing which agents (“substances”) would be listed as “Schedule One” (categorically illegal). Thus did a flagrant tautologybecome medically uninformed policy by act of Congress.
Interestingly enough, after Nixon’s own commission went against his express wishes by recommending that marijuana be studied for its medical benefits, Nixon summarily rejected their recommendation with the same tautology. An uncritical press let him get away with it and he went on to defeat George McGovern by a landslide later that year. Ironically it wasn’t until the Watergate break-in eventually led to the unraveling of his Presidency that Nixon an his AG were held accountable for their lies; but not for the MTA.
Most disappointing is that tapes revealing Nixon’s complicity in the scandal would end up being sealed for another thirty years. In the meantime the CSA has done great damage through its agencies: the DEA created by executive order in 1973 and NIDA, by the same mechanism in 1974, have both become high-profile agencies with vested interests in expanding their influence and budgets with tax dollars while demonizing addiction as a “disease” about which they alone possess the most reliable knowledge and for which there can be only one permissible outcome (abstinence).
Among several things my limited study of pot users has made clear is that not only has the drug war failed, those who insist on its necessity lack a basic understanding of marijuana, the “substance” they seem most determined to keep illegal. That pot will ultimately become legal is all but certain, but how long that will take is itself uncertain because repudiation will of such a major policy would require Congress to acknowledge a major policy error.
However, now that the first Boomers are aging into Medicare; I’m confident their ranks will eventually include enough people who are either current users or who had once been able to get “high” to end its prohibition for the most basic of political reasons: Congress listens carefully to Senior Citizens.
Doctor Tom
