In the late ’00s I was friends with a cocaine dealer. Everyone I knew thought he was a great guy.

Since we were in the same social circle, I was also acquainted with dozens of his customers. Only one of them arguably had a cocaine problem, and he was not an out-of-control addict.* His friends merely thought he used cocaine too often and spent too much money on it. Cocaine’s interference with this customer’s job was minimal. It was certainly not any more of a hindrance than his periodic binge drinking.

I once asked the dealer about dealing with addicts. He said he refused to sell to them. Out-of-control users were a nuisance. They would come to his place at odd hours unannounced and could be obnoxious and loud. Dealing with these people was dangerous because he wanted to stay as covert as possible to avoid police attention.

The Myth

One of the countless myths underpinning the drug war is that drug dealers “push” drugs on people. This is an asinine stereotype for a couple reasons. First, due to criminalization demand almost always outweighs supply. There is no need for dealers to aggressively sell their product. As the comedian Chris Rock has said:

Drugs sell themselves. It’s crack. It’s not an encyclopedia. It’s not a fucking vacuum cleaner. You don’t really gotta try to sell crack, OK? I’ve never heard a crack dealer go, “Man, how am I going to get rid of all this crack? It’s just piled up in my house.” (6)

(For more of Chris Rock’s opinions on drug dealing go here.)

Second, drug dealing is an illegal activity. Dealers do not want to pester non-drug users for fear that they might report them to the police. Dealers are more wary of their clients than their clients are of them. This reluctance is particularly true for pushing drugs on children. Contrary to their demonic portrayal in the media, dealers are not evil and many of them do not think drugs are appropriate for kids. Also, it would be a stupid risk to take considering most children have guardians watching them and scant income.

When I worked as a public defender, I asked several of my colleagues with decades of experience if they had ever seen a drug dealer prosecuted for selling to a juvenile under the harsh school-zone mandatory-minimum sentencing guidelines. None of them had ever heard of it happening. It was frequently police officers baiting dealers into selling to adults in a school zone or adult deals going down at the periphery of one. Because the zone extended over three football fields from any school land, one of my marijuana-dealing clients did not even know he was in a school zone. In another school-zone case an adult deal went down in a private apartment.

Researchers have long known that the drug pusher was largely a myth, but it was not until a 2000 survey that it was quantified. This survey of drug-treatment patients found that less than 1% of them had been introduced to drugs by a professional dealer. In contrast, 19% had been introduced to drugs by a family member. (5)

The Propaganda

Despite this finding, supposedly objective news outlets continue to refer to drug dealers as pushers. A recent New York Daily News article opened with the following sentence, “Fourteen suspected drug pushers were arrested Thursday morning for operating a narcotics ring in two Brooklyn bodegas ….” (2)

The popular media and the government are even worse. Here are some graphic examples from different eras:

A 1971 Green Lantern comic book:

(4)

An award-winning 1994 Partnership for a Drug-Free America public service announcement that bizarrely claimed young kids have to run past drug dealers or else they will be forced to do drugs. It ends with the narrator saying, “To Kevin Scott and all the other kids who take the long way home. We hear you. Don’t give up.”

A 2007 billboard in Central Pennsylvania:

For more examples see “The Aggressive Drug Dealer” page at TVTropes.org.

* This dependence rate is not surprising as cocaine dependence rates are similar to alcohol’s. (1) In addition, the social group that the dealer and I shared had several characteristics that ameliorate addiction risk. They were older, had above-average intelligence, and were not impoverished. (3)

Sources

1. James Anthony, Lynn Warner, & Ronald Kessler, “Comparative Epidemiology of Dependence ….,” Exp. Clin. Psychopharmacol., 1994, 2(3), p. 251.
2. Sarah Armaghan, “Police Nab 14 in Drug Ring Operating Out of Brooklyn Bodegas,” NYDailyNews.com, 27 Apr. 2012. LINK
3. Robert Arthur, “Addictive Personality and the Non-Randomness of Addiction,” Narco Polo (blog), 5 Oct. 2011. LINK
4. Green Lantern, Vol. 2, #85, Aug. 1971. LINK
5. “One in Five Drug Abusers Needing Treatment Did Drugs with Parents,” PRNewswire, 24 Aug. 2000. LINK
6. Chris Rock, Bring the Pain (1996).

The following excerpt is from Chris Rock’s stand-up comedy special Bring the Pain (HBO, 1996):

Legalize it, man. All drugs should be legal. All drugs should be legal. Why? ‘Cause people wanna get high. That’s right. People thinking about getting high right now. People like “Damn, how much longer to the show?” People love to get high, man.

You could get rid of all the illegal drugs in the world and it won’t mean shit. People want to get high. You can get rid of all the crack, all the herb, all the blow. You know what would happen? People would just think of new ways of getting high. That’s right. Guys would go in their basement and become scientists. “Check this out. Check this out. You know, you get a baby’s bottle, right? Fill it up with a little gasoline and dead lima beans and suck it. You’ll be fucked up.”

That’s right, man. Now we got the war on drugs. Bullshit. The war on drugs is bullshit. Just another way to get more mother fuckers in jail. That’s all it is. That’s all it is.

Drug dealers don’t really sell drugs. Drug dealers offer drugs. I’m 30 years old. Ain’t nobody ever sold me drugs. Ain’t nobody ever sold nobody in this room some drugs. Was you ever in your life not thinking about getting high and somebody sold you some fucking drugs. Hell, no!

Drug dealers offer, “Hey man, You want some smoke? You want some smoke?” If you say “no,” that’s it. Now Jehovah’s Witnesses on the other hand. Shit. Yo man, drug dealers don’t sell drugs. Drugs sell themselves. It’s crack. It’s not an encyclopedia. It’s not a fucking vacuum cleaner. You don’t really gotta try to sell crack, OK? I’ve never heard a crack dealer go, “Man, how am I going to get rid of all this crack? It’s just piled up in my house.”

Yesterday, the White House drug czar, R. Gil Kerlikowske, wrote an article that implies drugs cause crime. He based this on the fact that more than half of adult male arrestees test positive for at least one drug. This does not mean that drugs cause crime.* It means that drug use, like tattoos, correlates with criminal behavior. One of the reasons for this correlation is that criminalization and media propaganda can statistically link anything with crime – even bananas.

This Banana Effect can be demonstrated by a hypothetical scenario. In an imaginary United States bananas are made illegal and every media source begins spouting that eating bananas is irresponsible, dangerous, and horrible for one’s health. Responsible, law-abiding, health-conscious citizens would stop eating bananas. Surveys of banana eaters would start to show that they commit more crimes and are unhealthier than non-banana eaters. Bananas did not change. The population using them changed.

This is exactly what happened when drugs were criminalized at the beginning of the 20th century. An opiate authority at the time was Dr. Charles Terry. He wrote, “… a very large proportion of the users of opiate drugs were respectable hardworking individuals in all walks of life, and … only about 18% could in any way be considered as belonging to the underworld.” (1)

Numerous studies have discovered that drug-using criminals are usually criminals before their drug use begins. One study found that a heroin user’s first arrest typically occurs 18 months before heroin use starts. (3) The exorbitant costs of drugs caused by criminalization undoubtedly drive some addicts to crime, however, most addict-criminals were criminals first. The drugs and crime nexus is driven more by the population using the drugs than by the drugs themselves.

* Kerlikowske knew he did not have evidence of causation which is why he used the weasel word “link” instead of “cause.”

Note: I am presenting the Banana Effect in the next edition of You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos, and assume that I am not the first person to have recognized it. If you know of someone who has already coined a term for self-selection bias due to the influence of the media and/or criminalization please contact me so that I can give proper credit.

Sources

1. Opiates include drugs like morphine and heroin. Mike Gray, Drug Crazy (1998), p. 53.
2. R. Gil Kerlikowske, “Study: More Than Half of Adult Male Arrestees Test Positive for at Least One Drug,” HuffingtonPost.com, 17 May 2012. LINK
3. Richard Miller, Case for Legalizing Drugs (1991), pp. 60, 189.

David Macdonald argues in his 2007 book, Drugs in Afghanistan, that Afghanistan’s increased drug usage is driven by an impoverished battle-scarred population trying desperately to relieve its suffering.* Western-led efforts to universally criminalize drugs are futile because distressed people will always be able to find chemical relief.

As an example, Macdonald notes that in Afghanistan even the ubiquitous scorpions can be used for intoxication. Tartars in Bamiyan province prepare scorpions by smashing them between stones and letting them dry. The main part of the tail, with the sting, is then crushed into a powder and smoked with tobacco and/or hashish (marijuana).

A friend of Macdonald’s who witnessed a man smoke scorpion in the Afghan town of Peshawar described the reaction:

The effect was instantaneous with the man’s face and eyes becoming very red, “much more than a hashish smoker” …. He also seemed very intoxicated but awake and alert, although he stumbled and fell over when he tried to rise from a sitting position …. the smoke tasted “sweeter” than that of hashish, although … it smelled foul, and the intoxicating effect lasted much longer. (1, p. 247)

As with most drugs, anecdotal reports of scorpion’s effects vary widely. It is likely that the numerous Afghan scorpion species have divergent psychoactive properties. Scorpion has been reported to keep one awake, cause severe headaches, and rival the effects of a “strong mescaline trip.” (1, p. 248) One Kabul man who had smoked between 20 and 30 times reported the effects to last three days. During these periods he had difficulty opening his eyes, his head spun, and he had constant visual hallucinations.

Globally, scorpion smoking is still rare. The failure of the war on other drugs has not driven people to seek it out … yet. If drug war success sparking scorpion use sounds unbelievable, in India’s Western states police crackdowns on mainstream illicit drugs have already led to “sting sellers.” A police officer in the city of Bharuch said:

Because of our successful drives against the sellers and addicts of alcohol, opium, cough syrup, and heroin in urban areas, young people are flocking on the highways to try the new craze of scorpion stings. (2)

The futility of drug criminalization may become comically clear if more drug war “victories” bring about a war on arachnids.

* Macdonald is a sociologist who has specialized in drug control for over 20 years. From 1999 until his book’s publication in 2007 he served as the demand reduction adviser for the UN drugs control program in Afghanistan with UNODC and also with the Ministry of Counter Narcotics in Kabul.

Sources

1. David Macdonald, Drugs in Afghanistan: Opium, Outlaws, and Scorpion Tales (2007).
2. “New Drugs Craze Has a Scorpion Sting in the Tail,” Scotsman.com, 25 Apr. 2004. LINK

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Under its brutal rule there were public executions and amputations weekly. Music, television, dancing, and public laughter were banned.* (2, 3) Women could not go out in public unless they were completely covered with a burqa and escorted by a male relative. Women caught with finger polish had their finger tips cut off.

In 1997 the Taliban Supreme Court ruled that, “the addicts of illegal drugs should be referred to the hospital/treatment center to receive proper treatment. If an addict after receiving treatment and being rehabilitated restarts using drugs, in this case he will be entitled for receiving punishment [sic].” (2)

In practice, the Taliban’s edict was not effective as Afghanistan had almost no rehabilitative services at the time. Nonetheless, the fact that the Taliban’s extremist leaders expressed more humanity than the United States federal government on this issue is remarkable.

* There were loopholes. For example, religious songs without instrumentation were allowed, as well as patriotic chants such as “Taliban, O Taliban, you’re creating facilities, you’re defeating enemies.” (1)

Sources

1. Nadya Labi, “Rhythmless Nation,” Time.com, 15 Sep. 2001. LINK
2. David Macdonald, Drugs in Afghanistan: Opium, Outlaws, and Scorpion Tales (2007), pp. 47-50.
3. Physicians for Human Rights, “The Taliban’s War on Women,” 1998. LINK (PDF)