by Johann Hari
I was using “decriminalization” to mean the decriminalization of personal drug use by individuals—so you wouldn’t be arrested or jailed for having, say, a bag of coke or some LSD for personal use. And for me, “legalization” means that the sale of the drug would be reclaimed from criminal gangs, and transferred to stores and pharmacies (or some other legitimate route).
So based on my initial interview with him and using these as my working definitions, I couldn’t see how Mason’s position was not opposed to legalization beyond marijuana and alcohol, so I kept asking questions. In response to these requests for clarification, Mason suggested I clarify my description of his position by stating only that he thinks legalization of other drugs is “unlikely.” I asked him to explain his position further. I had taken from our initial conversation that he thought most other drugs should not be legalized—but now it seemed he was saying only that they probably would not be legalized.
He continued to argue that the term “legalization” is meaningless, and suggested that legalizing a drug is different to regulating a drug. To me, legalization and regulation are synonymous—they mean the same thing. Legalization is a process of setting up a regulatory framework in which a drug can be sold and consumed.
But to Mason they are not. In the end we agreed a form of words that we both believe is accurate to describe his position, and that’s what I use in this chapter—that he thinks other drugs could and should be legalized, but not in the same way as marijuana.
I wanted to lay out all this information here so the reader can reach their own conclusions, but also because I thought it might be useful to explain to readers that even someone as informed and committed and smart on this issue as Mason doesn’t agree with some of the terms I am using here to describe the solutions. One part of the fight to end the drug war, it occurred to me from this email conversation with him, will be getting agreement on how to describe the alternatives. Even people who essentially agree—like Mason and I—can end up having apparent disagreements because we haven’t reached a consensus on what these words mean.
27 http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_cause_most_harm, accessed January 6, 2014; http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61462-6/, accessed March 30, 2014.
28 http://www.vox.com/2014/7/3/5868249/colorado-governor-who-opposed-legalizing-pot-now-says-its-going-fine, accessed July 3, 2014.
29 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/28/hickenlooper-signs-colora_n_3346798.html, accessed January 2, 2014.
30 https://news.yahoo.com/colorado-governor-marijuana-legalization-221049661.html, accessed July 4, 2014.
31 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB20001424052748703559504575630760766227660, accessed January 14, 2014.
Conclusion: If You Are Alone
1 I first thought of this image of an alternative drug war graveyard when reading Adam Hochschild’s amazing history of the resistance to the First World War, To End All Wars, in which he imagines a graveyard for all the resisters.
2 http://www.release.org.uk/blog/drugs-its-time-better-laws, accessed January 14, 2014.
3 Sloman, Reefer Madness, 34.
4 I think I picked up this formulation—don’t give up, get up—from the Australian campaign group Get Up, which was cofounded by my friend Jeremy Heimans.
5 I think it was Julia Blackburn, Billie Holiday’s biographer, who first talked to me about how Billie Holiday’s songs make people strong—it’s a formulation I love and that really stayed with me.
6 Yolande Bavan interview.
7 Julia Blackburn archives, “The Story of Billie,” article V, by William Dufty, box 18, file VII.
8 Interview with Juan Fraire Escobedo, recalling his mother’s words.
9 Anslinger, Murderers, 172–73.
10 http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/joe_mccarthy.htm, accessed February 24, 2013.
11 Sloman, Reefer Madness 258.
12 Anslinger, Murderers, 173.
13 http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/history/e1970/drugswashdc.htm.
14 McWilliams, Protectors, 187. Even Anslinger’s highly sympathetic biographer, John McWilliams, calls this “an incredible irony for the man who devoted his adult life to the enforcement and control of such narcotics.” See ibid.
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