by Johann Hari
10 Charles Demers, Vancouver Special, 85.
11 Maté, Hungry Ghosts, 11.
12 Ibid., 9.
13 Ibid., 37.
14 Ibid., 165.
15 Ibid., 141.
16 Maté, Hungry Ghosts, 140.
17 Ibid., 201–2.
18 http://providence.net/bariatrics/internal.php?page=obesity-facts, accessed February 27, 2013, says: “Nearly 70 percent of diagnosed cases of cardiovascular disease are related to obesity.”
19 I originally learned about the report from Sullum, Saying Yes, 15. I then read the original study: see American Psychologist, May 1990, 612–30.
20 Sullum, Saying Yes, 15. If that seems odd, remember the strong evidence showing that childhood trauma can actually physically stunt a child’s growth—and putting them into a loving home can make it start again. See Daniel E. Moerman, Meaning, Medicine and the Placebo Effect, 133.
21 Maté, Hungry Ghosts, 189.
22 Ebony, July 1949, 32.
23 Anslinger, Murderers, 174.
24 Julia Blackburn archives, box 18, Linda Kuehl notes 1, Memry Midgett interview.
25 Julia Blackburn archives, box 18, Linda Kuehl notes, vol. VIII, interview with Peter O’Brien and Michelle Wallace.
26 As explained to me by Liz Evans.
27 Maté, Hungry Ghosts, 75.
28 Ibid., 82–83.
29 Ibid., 84.
30 Ibid., 120.
31 Ibid., 118.
32 Maté, Hungry Ghosts, 21.
33 Ibid., 30.
Chapter 13: Batman’s Bad Call
1 I think I first read about it in Lauren Slater’s brilliant book Opening Skinner’s Box.
2 DeGrandpre, Cult of Pharmacology, 124, 203; Miller, Drug Warriors, 17.
3 There is a similar, and much more commonplace, example of this: 90 percent of addicts who are detoxified in clinics—who, in other words, are looked after until their entire bodies are free of the drug, and all withdrawal symptoms have stopped—go back to using. See Miller, Case for Legalizing Drugs, 30.
4 Miller, Case for Legalizing Drugs, 5–6.
5 This exchange is as recalled by Bruce.
6 Billie Holiday’s withdrawal, as discussed earlier, was so threatening to her life not because withdrawal is inherently life-threatening, but because she was so weak. A person whose immune system is weak can be killed by an ordinary flu.
7 John Henry Merryman, ed., Stanford Legal Essays, 284. http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/3212846/withdrawal-from-heroin-is-a-trivial-matter/, accessed March 3, 2013; http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleID=62279, accessed January 8, 2014.
8 DeGrandpre, Cult of Pharmacology, 29. See also “The Effect of Housing and Gender on Morphine Self-Administration in Rats,” Psychopharmacology 58, 175–79.
9 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kS72J5Nlm8&list=PL6301BC630AE6F23E&index=106&feature=plpp_video, viewed November 1, 2012.
10 This discussion of the experiment is informed heavily by the two original studies of Rat Park by Alexander and colleagues: “The Effect of Housing and Gender on Morphine Self-Administration in Rats,” Psychopharmacology 58, 175–79, and “Effect of Early and Later Colony Housing on Oral Ingestion of Morphine by Rats,” Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behaviour, vol. 15, 571–76.
11 Slater, Opening Skinner’s Box, 165.
12 See “The View from Rat Park” by Bruce K. Alexander, http://globalizationofaddiction.ca/articles-speeches/177-addiction-the-view-from-rat-park.html, accessed November 1, 2012.
13 Slater, Opening Skinner’s Box, 168.
14 Bruce K. Alexander, Globalizing Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit, 195. Although in other interviews and in his writing Bruce has talked about the idea of rats being addicted as a shorthand for their heavily using drugs, he stressed to me that we perhaps need to be more careful with these terms: “What would that look like in a rat? I think the question is moot, really, we just don’t know what addiction would look like in a rat . . . How could you possibly know if a rat was addicted?” Since rats cannot tell us about their psychological state we cannot know about their cravings and longings. We can talk about heavy and compulsive use, which can be measured; but Bruce believes “addiction” also implies a mental state, which we can’t measure in rats. To be clear, “addiction,” when I use it in this chapter about rats, is shorthand for very heavy use when they are in unhappy situations.
15 Dan Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, 49.
16 Reinarman and Levine, Crack in America, 10; Maté, Hungry Ghosts, 142.
17 As reported in the documentary The Most Secret Place on Earth: The CIA’s Covert War on Laos.
18 Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, 50.
19 Ibid., 48. There’s a useful discussion of drug use by U.S. troops in Vietnam in Valentine, Strength of the Pack, 117–32.
20 Reinarman and Levine, Crack in America, 10; Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld, Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience, 49–50.
21 Maté, Hungry Ghosts, 142. DeGrandpre, Cult of Pharmacology, 117.
22 Maté, Hungry Ghosts, 146.
23 Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, 62. Miller, Case for Legalizing Drugs, 54–55.
24 See Bruce K. Alexander, “The Rise and Fall of the Official View of Addiction,” http://globalizationofaddiction.ca/articles-speeches/240-rise-and-fall-of-the-official-view-of-addictionnew.html, accessed March 12, 2013.
25 See Jessica Warner, Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason.
26 See Nick Reding, Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town.
27 Bruce K. Alexander, “The View From Rat Park,” http://globalizationofaddiction.ca/articles-speeches/177-addiction-the-view-from-rat-park.html, accessed March 12, 2013.
28 http://www.cedro-uva.org/lib/cohen.addiction.html, accessed February 5, 2012. See Peter Cohen, “Is the Addiction Doctor the Voodoo Priest of Western Man?” at http://www.cedro-uva.org/lib/cohen.addiction.html, also published in Addiction Research, special issue, vol. 8, no. 6: 589–98.
29 More recent evidence reinforces this. When there have been heroin shortages in Europe in the twenty-first century, far from getting clean, users have in fact turned to even deadlier intoxicants. See https://reportingproject.net/occrp/index.php/en/ccwatch/cc-watch-indepth/1901-heroin-shortages-drive-users-to-deadly-alternatives, accessed March 30, 2013.
30 DuPont himself did not use the imagery of hijacking or chemical slavery in his speech, and does not like these metaphors, but they recurred at the conference many times.
31 http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events/2011/addiction-what-to-do-when-everything-else-has-failed, accessed December 15, 2012.
32 Matthew E. Brashears, “Small Networks and High Isolation? A Reexamination of American Discussion Networks,” Social Networks 33 (2011): 331–41.
33 Benavie, Drugs: America’s Holy War, 12.
34 Ibid., 11.
35 DeGrandpre, Cult of Pharmacology, 85.
Chapter 14: The Drug Addicts’ Uprising
1 This account of the origins of VANDU is based on my interviews with Bud and others who were there at the time and later—Ann Livingstone, Dean Wilson, Donald MacPherson, Liz Evans, Philip Owen, Gabor Maté, Bruce Alexander, Clare Hacksell, Coco Cuthbertson, Laura Shaver—and writings and documentaries as referenced in the endnotes.
2 http://www.cosmik.com/aa-december99/bud_osborn.html, accessed April 1, 2013.
3 John Armstrong, “Poet had a choice of gutters,” Vancouver Sun, April 6, 1996.
4 Bud Osborn, Hundred Block Rock, 13.
5 Ibid., 26.
6 Osborn, Hundred Block Rock, 33.
7 Ibid., 111.
8 Benavie, Drugs: America’s Holy War, 43.
9 Pisani, Wisdom of Whores, 232.
10 Maté, Hungry Ghosts, 101.
11 Susan Boyd, Donald MacPherson, and Bud Osborn, eds., Raise Shit! Social Action Saving Lives, 92.
12 Ibid., 84.
13 http://www.scribd.com/doc/103641727/Independent-C
ounsel-Report-to-Commissioner-of-Inquiry-August-16-2012, accessed October 25, 2012.
14 Boyd, MacPherson, and Osborn, Raise Shit! 189.
15 Ibid., 35.
16 A good discussion of this process can be found in “The Establishment of North America’s First State-Sanctioned Injection Facility: A Case Study in Cultural Change,” International Journal of Drug Policy vol. 17 (2006): 73–82, available online at http://www.communityinsite.ca/pdf/culture-change-case-study.pdf, accessed April 1, 2013.
17 http://news.streetroots.org/2012/03/14/vancouver-bc-s-drug-revolution, accessed April 1, 2013.
18 As seen in the documentary The Fix.
19 Boyd, MacPherson, and Osborn, Raise Shit!, 19.
20 Greg Joyce, “Downtrodden March in Vancouver,” Edmonton Journal, July 12, 2000, accessed via LexisNexis November 5, 2012.
21 Bud Osborn, Sign of the Times, 26–30.
22 Boyd, MacPherson, and Osborn, Raise Shit! 50.
23 Ibid., 59.
24 Ian Mulgrew, “Health Board’s Rabble-rousing Social Conscience,” Vancouver Sun, July 24, 1999, accessed via LexisNexis November 5, 2012.
25 Osborn, Hundred Block Rock, 79.
26 Boyd, MacPherson, and Osborn, Raise Shit!, 89.
27 I know about this moment because it was featured in the excellent documentary The Fix.
28 Ibid. This quote comes from the documentary.
29 http://www.theprovince.com/news/Life+expectancy+Downtown+Eastside/7202585/story.html, accessed November 5, 2012.
30 http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=6ee496bd-5a4c-4bca-8323-42d3f4d91df1, accessed February 27, 2013.
31 Robert Matas, “BC Drug Deaths Hit a Low Not Seen in Years,” Globe and Mail, December 9, 2008, accessed via LexisNexis November 2, 2012.
32 http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Osborn+true+hero+Downtown+Eastside/9816842/story.html, accessed May 14, 2014.
33 I could not make it there, alas. This was described to me by Liz Evans, who was there.
Chapter 15: Snowfall and Strengthening
1 I had been back and forth to Britain all through the researching of this book, but this was the point when I decided to return for good and focus my energies on researching the effects of the drug war outside North America.
2 Namely John Marks, Russell Newcombe, Pat O’Hare, Cindy Fazey, Allan Parry, and Andrew Bennett.
3 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-16355281, accessed April 24, 2013.
4 The best explanation of British drug policy today is in Alex Stevens’s excellent book Drugs, Crime and Public Health: The Political Economy of Drug Policy.
5 http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/oct/31/race-bias-drug-arrests-claim, accessed April 24, 2013.
6 Kohn, Dope Girls, 84–85.
7 Ibid., 129.
8 Ibid., 120.
9 Ibid., 158.
10 Trebach, Heroin Solution, 90.
11 Ibid., 93.
12 King, Drug Hang-Up, 190–207; G. Bammer, “Drug Abuse: The Heroin Prescribing Debate; Integrating Science and Politics,” Science 5418 (1999): 1277–78.
13 Gray, Drug Crazy, 155.
14 Trebach, Heroin Solution, 104.
15 Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues, 182–83.
16 Anslinger archives, box 1, file 10, “New York Forum: Saturday April 28th 1962, Program Transcript.”
17 King, Drug Hang-Up, 212–14; Ambros Uchtenhagen, “Heroin Maintenance Treatment: From Idea to Research to Practice,” Drug and Alcohol Review 30 (March 2013): 130–37.
18 Elizabeth Young, “The Needle and the Damage Done,” Guardian, August 20, 1994.
19 Linnet Myers, “Europe Finds U.S. Drug War Lacking in Results,” Chicago Tribune, November 2, 1995.
20 Gray, Drug Crazy, 158. John Marks, “To Prescribe or Not to Prescribe,” Mersey Drugs Journal (September/October 1987): 5.
21 I first learned this from an excellent series of articles and a documentary The Truth About Heroin, by the British journalist Nick Davies, in 2001.
22 Ed Bradley, “Success of Britain’s Addict Treatment Program,” 60 Minutes segment, December 27, 1992, CBS News transcript.
23 Anslinger archives, box 1, file 8.
24 Will Self, Junk Mail, 92.
25 Sally Woods, “Heroin and Methadone Substitution Treatments,” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Liverpool John Moores University, 2005.
26 Young, “Needle and the Damage Done.”
27 Myers, “Europe Finds U.S. Drug War Lacking.”
28 Edward Pilkington, “The Smack Doctor,” Guardian, October 26, 1995.
29 Ibid.
30 Self, Junk Mail, 91.
31 Bradley, “Success of Britain’s Addict Treatment Program.”
32 Ibid.
33 See Self, Junk Mail, 94.
34 Gabriele Bammer and Grayson Gerrard, eds., “Heroin Treatment: New Alternatives. Proceedings of a Seminar held on 1st November 1991, Ian Wark Theatre, Canberra,” National Center for Epidemiology and Population Health.
35 Davenport-Hines, Pursuit of Oblivion: A History of Narcotics, 275, 282.
36 A good discussion of this subject is found in Harald Klingemann, “Natural Recovery from Alcohol Problems,” chapter 10 of The Essential Handbook of Treatment and Prevention of Alcohol Problems, edited by Nick Heather. See also Satel and Lilienfeld, Brainwashed, 54–56.
37 Self, Junk Mail, 93.
38 Miller, Case for Legalizing Drugs, 53.
39 Bradley, “Success of Britain’s Addict Treatment Program.”
40 Bulletin on Narcotics, January–April 1954, 6.
41 Marks, “Paradox of Prohibition.”
42 John Marks, “The North Wind and the Sun,” Proceedings of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, vol. 21, no. 3 (July 1991). Heroin prescription has a considerably better success rate than methadone prescription. In the only randomized heroin and methadone prescription trial, 71 percent of patients given methadone dropped out, compared to just 26 percent of heroin patients. The methadone patients were also far more likely to have committed crimes and to be using their drug heavily. See Woods, “Heroin and Methadone Substitution Treatments,” and Uchtenhagen, “Heroin Maintenance Treatment.”
43 He explains this both in his interview with me (see Russell Newcombe audio) and in Nick Davies’s brilliant documentary The Truth About Heroin.
44 Marks, “Paradox of Prohibition.”
45 Marks, Paradox of Prohibition, 7. This phenomenon had in fact been noticed before, by another doctor. In the late 1950s in the United States, Dr. Walter Treadway wrote: “It is known that addicted individuals, having acquired a supply, are very apt to dispose of part of it for a consideration, thus assuring their own future purchases. It is also known that these addicted peddlers, or addicted pushers as they are often called, may assiduously endeavor to recruit new addicts, often for the same reason.” See King, Drug Hang-Up, 178.
46 Marks, “North Wind and the Sun.”
47 Pat O’Hare, “Merseyside, the First Harm Reduction Conferences, and the Early History of Harm Reduction,” International Journal of Drug Policy 18 (2007), 141–44.
48 http://fair.org/press-release/media-downplay-bigotry-of-jesse-helms/, accessed April 26, 2013.
49 Marks also discusses this here: http://www.runcornandwidnesweeklynews.co.uk/runcorn-widnes-news/runcorn-widnes-local-news/2010/08/19/dr-john-marks-talks-about-the-controversial-harm-reduction-drug-treatment-programme-in-widnes-55368-27086372/, accessed November 28, 2012.
50 Woods, “Heroin and Methadone Substitution Treatments,” 45–46.
51 Marks, “Paradox of Prohibition.”
52 Peter Carty, “Drug Abuse: The End of the Line,” Guardian, December 10, 1997.
53 John Marks, “Preventing Drug Misuse,” Psychiatry Online, vol. 1, issue 7, paper 2.
54 The history of these street scenes is summarized well in Ambros Uchtenhagen, “Heroin-Assisted Treatment in Switzerland: A Case Study in Policy Change,” Addiction, doi: 10.111/j.1360-0443.2009.02741.x.<
br />
55 Joelle Kuntz, Switzerland: How an Alpine Pass Became a Country, 7.
56 http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/blog/2007/aug/02/itsillegaltowhatofficer, accessed January 22, 2012.
57 See Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues, 137.
58 Joanne Csete, From the Mountaintops, 17; Uchtenhagen, “Heroin-Assisted Treatment in Switzerland: A Case Study in Policy Change.”
59 Interview with Dr. Ambros Uchtenhagen. He also describes his mission there in “Heroin-Assisted Treatment in Switzerland: A Case Study in Policy Change.” See also O’Hare, “Merseyside,” 141–44.
60 Csete, From the Mountaintops, 18; Uchtenhagen, “Heroin-Assisted Treatment in Switzerland: A Case Study in Policy Change”; Ambros Uchtenhagen, “The Medical Prescription of Heroin to Heroin Addicts,” Drug and Alcohol Review 16 (1997), 297–98.
61 When I was introduced to Jean by Dr. Rita Manghi and her colleagues at the clinic in Geneva, he agreed to speak on the condition that I do not use his real name or post the audio of the interview online. The reason he gave for this is that his story involved him admitting to criminal acts from before the law was changed—such as drug-smuggling—for which the statute of limitations has not passed. For that reason, this is the only instance where I am not posting the audio for these quotes on the website. The conversations were recorded and the audio has been provided to Bloomsbury. Dr. Manghi also confirmed to the publishers in writing that she introduced me to several patients in her clinic, and they included “Jean.”
62 “Narcotic Addiction,” Spectrum magazine, March 1, 1957, 139.
63 The Narcotics Officer’s Handbook, 79–80. Anslinger also makes this point in The Murderers, 219.
64 Csete, From the Mountaintops, 19.
65 Over a three-year period, of the 353 patients leaving the heroin program studied in Prescription of Narcotics for Heroin Addicts: Main Results of the Swiss National Cohort Study (Uchtenhagen et al., 6), 83 left to choose an abstinence-based therapy. See Uchtenhagen et al., Prescription of Narcotics, 7.
66 There was a slight language barrier between us, but this is my best understanding of the metaphor.
67 http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1926160,00.html, accessed January 22, 2013.