Prohibitions and psychoactive substances in history, culture and theory 9780367257637, 0367257637

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Prohibitions and Psychoactive Substances in History, Culture and Theory

This volume is a new contribution to the dynamic scholarly discussion of the control and regulation of psychoactive substances in culture and society. Offering new critical reflections on the reasons prohibitions have historically arisen, the book analyzes “prohibitions” as ambivalent and tenuous interactions between the users of psychoactive substances and regulators of their use. This original collection of essays engages with contemporary debates concerning addiction, intoxication and drug regulation, and will be of interest to scholars in the arts, humanities and social sciences interested in narratives of prohibition and their social and cultural meanings. Susannah Wilson is Associate Professor in French Studies at the University of Warwick. Her research focuses on medical cultures of late nineteenthand early twentieth-century France. She is the author of Voices from the Asylum: Four French Women Writers, 1850–1920 (­Oxford University Press, 2010). She held a British Academy Postdoctoral R ­ esearch Fellowship from 2011 to 2014 and currently holds a L ­ everhulme Research Fellowship for a book project on the cultural history of morphine in France.

Warwick Series in the Humanities Series Editor: Christina Lupton

Titles in this Series Rome, Postmodern Narratives of a Cityscape Edited by Dom Holdaway and Filippo Trentin Gender and Space in Rural Britain, 1840–1920 Edited by Gemma Goodman and Charlotte Mathieson Picturing Women’s Health Edited by Kate Scarth, Francesca Scott and Ji Won Chung Knowing Nature in Early Modern Europe David Beck New Jazz Conceptions History, Theory, Practice Edited by Roger Fagge and Nicolas Pillai Food, Drink, and the Written Word in Britain, 1820–1945 Edited by Mary Addyman, Laura Wood and Christopher Yiannitsaros Beyond the Rhetoric of Pain Edited by Berenike Jung and Stella Bruzzi Mood Interdisciplinary Perspectives, New Theories Edited by Birgit Breidenbach and Thomas Docherty Prohibitions and Psychoactive Substances in History, Culture and Theory Edited by Susannah Wilson https://www.routledge.com/Warwick-Series-in-the-Humanities/bookseries/WSH

Prohibitions and Psychoactive Substances in History, Culture and Theory Edited by Susannah Wilson

First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Susannah Wilson to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-25763-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-28972-9 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments List of Contributors Introduction

vii ix xi 1

S usannah W ilson

1 Misconceptualizing Prohibition: Problems with American Cultural Explanations

10

M ar k L awr e nc e S chrad

2 From Universal Relaxant to Oriental Vice: Race and French Perceptions of Opium Use in the Moment of Global Control

33

A ro V e lm e t

3 A Medicine for the Soul: Morphine and Prohibition in the French Cultural Imagination, 1870–1940

51

S usannah W ilson

4 “To Save the Mexican Race from Degeneration”: The Influence of American Protestant Groups on Temperance and Prohibition in Mexico, 1916–1933

71

C e cilia Autri q u e Escobar

5 The Formation of the Levant Hashish Trade and the Rise of Illicit Hashish Consumption in Interwar Palestine

93

H ag g ai R am

6 The Dialectics of Dope: Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra, the Myth of Marijuana, and Mexico’s State Drug Monopoly B e n j amin T. S mith

111

vi Contents 7 Reassessing the “Drug-Free Country”: Drug Abuse, the Soviet State, and Contemporary Russian Drug Policy

133

Pav e l Vasily e v

8 Re-thinking the “War on Drugs”: Reagan’s Militarization of Drug Control

150

Emily C ric k

9 Drug Prohibition and the End of Human Rights: Race, “Evil,” and the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961

170

Koj o Koram

10 Drugs Decriminalization: The Art of Governing Drug Using Populations

190

I an Walmsl e y

11 Prison Everywhere? The Imbrication of Coercive and Pastoral Governance in the Regulation of “Chemsex” and New Psychoactive Substances

209

O liv e r Davis

12 From Harm to Psychoactivity: The Clarity of Morality in the 2016 Psychoactive Substances Act

235

W ill H aydoc k

13 Honor’d in the Breach: Contravention and Consensus in the History of Substance Prohibition

255

S tuart Walton

Index

267

List of Illustrations

1.1 Phrases Related to Prohibition in American Books, 1870–2000 22 3.1 Georges Moreau de Tours, Les Morphinées, (1891) 59 3.2 Eugène Grasset, La Morphinomane, (1897) 60 3.3 Victorien du Saussay, La Morphine: Vices et passions des morphinomanes, (1906) 61 4.1 “The Evils of Booze” 72 4.2 “Hombres comiendo y tomando pulque,” Agustín Víctor Casasola 76 4.3 “Caricatura de un hombre y enfermedades,” Agustín Víctor Casasola 78 4.4 “En las garras del enemigo,” El Mundo Cristiano 79 4.5 “Patriotismo y Prohibición,” Carlos Petrán 80 4.6 “Niñas mostrando un cartel del 1er Congreso Nacional contra el Alcoholismo en la Ciudad de Puebla,” Agustín Víctor Casasola 81 4.7 World Book of Temperance, Wilbur and Sarah Crafts 85 11.1 Still from Chemsex (Fairman & Gogarty, color, 2015) with David Stuart center-frame 211 11.2 Still from Chemsex (Fairman & Gogarty, color, 2015), “G o’clock” in Bournemouth 215 11.3 Still from Chemsex (Fairman & Gogarty, color, 2015), Miguel’s drug-induced psychosis 216 12.1 “Overall weighted scores for each of the drugs” as presented by Nutt et al. in 2010 238 12.2 Transform’s ideal model of regulation (Original concept by Dr John Marks, adapted by Transform Drug Policy Foundation.) 241

Acknowledgments

This volume is the result of a series of workshops funded by a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award, held from 2015 to 2017. These and related events were made possible by the generous support of the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the University of Warwick Humanities Research Fund. We are also grateful to the University of Warwick Institute of Advanced Study, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Department of History and Faculty of Arts Research and Impact Services.

List of Contributors

Emily Crick  is Associate Tutor in the School of Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. She was awarded her PhD from the University of Bristol in 2018. Emily was previously research associate at Transform Drug Policy Foundation and research assistant at the Global Drug Policy Observatory at Swansea University. She has published widely in the area of drug policy. Oliver Davis  is Reader in French Studies at Warwick University. He works on modern and contemporary continental philosophy and cultural and critical theory, including queer theory and critical security studies. He is the author of Jacques Rancière (Polity, 2010) and editor of Rancière Now (Polity, 2013). He is currently working on a book on ‘governance’ in today’s (in)security society. Cecilia Autrique Escobar is a Conacyt Postdoctoral Fellow at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. She is a historian of modern Mexico and is currently working on a book on Prohibition, American Protestants and their influence in Mexico during the 1920s. Will Haydock  is Senior Health Programme Advisor for alcohol and other drugs at Public Health Dorset and a Visiting Fellow at Bournemouth University. His work has been published widely in academic and more popular outlets. Kojo Koram is a Lecturer at the School of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the editor of an upcoming book, The War on Drugs and The Global Colour Line, to be published by Pluto Press in March 2019. Mark Lawrence Schrad  is Associate Professor in the Department of ­Political Science at Villanova University. His most recent book is Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State (Oxford University Press, 2014). Haggai Ram  is Associate Professor in the Department of Middle East Studies in Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. He researches the history of Iran and Palestine-Israel with an emphasis on secularism,

xii  List of Contributors religion, colonialism and popular culture. He is the author of Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israel Obsession (Stanford University Press, 2009). Benjamin T. Smith is Reader in Latin American History at the University of Warwick. He is a historian of modern Latin America, with a focus on Mexico. His current research interests include journalism and the public sphere, the war on drugs, civil society, grassroots politics and the Partido Revolucionario Institucional. Pavel Vasilyev is a Polonsky Academy Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and Junior Research Fellow at Siberian State Medical University. He defended his doctoral dissertation on drug abuse and drug policy in early Soviet Russia at the Russian Academy of Sciences in October 2013. He has published widely on the history of criminal law and drugs. Aro Velmet is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Southern California and Research Fellow at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford. His book, Pasteur’s Empire: Politics and Bacteriology in France, its Colonies, and the World, 1890–1940, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. Ian Walmsley is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of the West of England. His research interests and publications are underpinned by sociological perspectives and focus on problematic forms of drug taking and the regulation of drug users. Stuart Walton is a prominent British writer and researcher in the field of drinking and drug cultures. He is the author of Intoxicology: A Cultural History of Drink and Drugs (revised edition, 2016) as well as a number of other books on philosophy and critical theory.

Introduction Susannah Wilson

Prohibitions and Psychoactive Substances This volume is a new contribution to the lively existing scholarly discussion of the regulation of psychoactive substances in culture and society. The aim of the original project was to bring into dialogue established and emerging scholars from across the world who are working in the arts, humanities, and social sciences on questions of drug consumption and regulation.1 The volume aims to shift scholarly attention away from its traditional Anglo-American emphasis to look at the commonalities shared by regimes of prohibition in an international frame, with individual chapters considering case studies from the 1880s to the present day, and from Western and Eastern Europe, the United States, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Far East. The focus is therefore on the years before and after the agreement of the major twentieth-century international treaties and national legislation on drug regulation, which bookended the two World Wars, and which are explored in the individual chapters. Although intoxication, addiction, and drug regulation have been the object of intense scrutiny for many years, no study has yet focused on prohibitions as ambivalent and tenuous interactions between the users of psychoactive substances and those parties acting as regulators of their use—governments, law enforcement agencies, and medical practitioners. The book offers several strands of analysis: new critical reflections on the reasons prohibitions have historically arisen, the examination of narratives of prohibition and their meanings, and analyses of the functioning of prohibitions in theory and practice. The word “prohibition” is often rejected in the mainstream scholarly literature as an unhelpful term. Virginia Berridge states, “The use of the term prohibition as a category often simply denotes a stance; it means any system of control with which an author does not agree.”2 David T. Courtwright agrees that “prohibition” is a “misnomer” that persists “because the term is usefully loaded” and “unconsciously predisposes the hearer to opposition.”3 “Prohibition” connotes moral disapprobation when cool and impartial analysis of evidence is required; when paralleled with the physiologically and

2  Susannah Wilson medically precise concepts of “intoxication” and “addiction,” it seems loosely defined; slippery; and, in certain contexts, ideologically loaded. Yet the word “prohibition” continues to have intellectual purchase for reasons that are explored in this volume. The term is useful precisely because it highlights the moralism inherent in modern drug discourses. Proponents of strict regulation use the term to highlight the grave moral, social, economic, or medical harms caused by intoxication and addiction; opponents, however, use the term to highlight the costs of prohibitions in the form of draconian limits placed upon individual liberty; stigmatization by class, race, and origin; amplification of adverse health consequences; and maintenance of global inequalities. Whether for or against, commentators generally agree that drug regulation is a crisis of existential proportions—a dimension usefully captured by the term “prohibition.” “Prohibition” refuses to be purged from the scholarly literature, despite its apparent unscholarliness, and remains a potent force in the popular imagination. The term “prohibition” captures something important in the language around drug politics that “regulation,” which implies balance and harmony, does not quite suggest. “Prohibition” intimates moral censure and is paradoxical in ways that are useful to our intervention. As a concept, it is both totalizing and elusive: prohibitions, as this volume demonstrates, are theoretically hermetic but are typically partial, contingent, fragile, and ambivalent. Finally, the term ­“prohibition”—when usefully triangulated with the concepts of “intoxication” and ­“addiction”—helps to cross the historiographical divide between the latter two ideas, producing fruitful new lines of enquiry. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “prohibition” as “The action or act of forbidding; an edict, decree, or order which forbids, prevents, or excludes; the forbidding or condemnation of something; an embargo or restriction against something.” Interestingly, the term usually applies to the buying and selling of consumable substances and other commodities. The concept of prohibition is surprisingly consistent in the different linguistic contexts considered in this volume: for example, Spanish and Portuguese give prohibición and proibição, respectively. Modern French gives us interdiction, although the etymology of the English word “prohibition” stems from the Anglo-Norman and Middle French prohibicion, from the Latin verb “prohibere.” When one moves from dictionary definitions to the specialist literature, prohibition commonly carries strong connotations of moral censure and state power. By contrast, the idea of a “psychoactive substance” has until recently been viewed as a neutral appellation.4 However, “psychoactivity” has come under increased conceptual scrutiny in recent years and is no longer the ideologically dispassionate, descriptive idea it used to be. This is due to the rapid advent of new psychoactive substances (NPS) in the industrialized West: notably, synthetic cannabinoids, stimulants like mephedrone, and the sedatives gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB) and gamma

Introduction  3 butyrolactone (GBL).5 The passing of the controversial UK Psychoactive Substances Act in 2016 created a new legislative framework for prohibitions in the United Kingdom.6 The ban on all substances deemed “psychoactive,” with a limited number of exceptions for culturally sanctioned substances (alcohol, tobacco, and certain foods), amounts to a paradigm shift that merits some investigation and which is addressed in this volume. “Prohibitions” as interpreted in this volume do not so much refer to the effect of drugs on individuals as to how psychoactive substances and their effects are perceived and how prohibitions function (or fail to function) when applied. We are interested in how regulatory responses to psychoactive substances are collectively imagined as a result of the customs and practices surrounding their consumption. Our focus is on the shifts in public opinion that underpin these customs and how regulations, in turn, culturally “frame” substances and shape public opinion. As Toby Seddon has argued, what “drugs” have in common is not their intoxicating, addictive, or psychoactive properties but the way in which they are regulated.7 In other words, prohibition, and not intoxication or addiction, is what has historically brought these diverse substances together.

Intoxication, Addiction, and Prohibitions Historical studies of intoxication and addiction have generally looked at psychoactive substances from one of two perspectives: either from “above” in terms of regulation, politics, and power (the “drug-politics” paradigm) or from “below” as a socio-cultural phenomenon with a multiplicity of meanings and roles (the “drug-cultures” paradigm). The first approach is exemplified by David T. Courtwright in Forces of Habit (2001), in which it is argued that a “psychoactive revolution” occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when a range of new substances were made available and traded as commodities.8 David Musto, in The American Disease (1987), gives an even-handed assessment of the problems of both drug consumption and prohibitions, and has argued that the United States has tended to “oscillate from periods of drug tolerance to drug intolerance.”9 Within the drug-politics paradigm, we find outright prohibitionist accounts supporting tough drug laws;10 accommodationist accounts, which argue that imperfect legislative defenses against harmful and addictive substances are better than none at all;11 and oppositional accounts, which argue for the liberalization of drug laws.12 Some of these also argue that harm-reduction measures emerge from the same place as prohibitions, representing new forms of surveillance and control.13 Other features of the drug-politics paradigm include a recognition of the addictive potential of psychoactive substances, which produces the ongoing need to discipline drug use;14 analysis of the

4  Susannah Wilson role drugs held in generating profit for imperial powers;15 and the role intoxicants play in sustaining imperial power and containing subalterns.16 Courtwright argues that prohibitions are motivated by harm and the perception of deviance; he adds that culturally acceptable “drugs” persist as legal because powerful vested economic interests (as well as culturally mainstream consumers) lobby for them to remain so.17 Accommodationist commentators argue for the adoption of a position of convergence between prohibitionist and liberal positions: the escalation of restrictions on the aforementioned damaging but currently licit substances and de-escalation of the prohibitive apparatus against illicit ones.18 Berridge observes that this convergence is already happening as harm-reduction measures gain traction in relation to illicit drugs, and the consumption of alcohol and tobacco is increasingly discouraged through public health campaigns and punitive taxation schemes.19 The “drug-cultures” paradigm looks more closely at cultures of drug consumption, the various, often co-existing meanings that are attached to drugs, and sees intoxication as a cultural practice with many important social, ritual, and spiritual effects. This focus on cultures of intoxication has brought together historical and anthropological approaches to the question of substance use and gently challenges Courtwright’s “psychoactive revolution” thesis by emphasizing the longue durée aspect of the question, with renewed importance being placed on Classical and Christian discourses in the early modern period. 20 Together, these interventions, while retaining a focus on drugs as commodities and markers of social distinction, importantly refocus attention on drug takers and the practices of intoxication rather than on questions of external control. 21 It is generally agreed that there was a rapid turn towards restricting access to drugs in the later nineteenth century. Courtwright calls this a “psychoactive counterrevolution,” during which the non-medical consumption of psychoactive substances was limited; the changing demands of capitalism meant that intoxication—ergo indolence and idleness—­ became an impediment to a properly functioning modern economy. ­Berridge characterizes the twentieth century as a period of divergence, when certain drugs were singled out as more dangerous and deviant, between two periods of convergence in the history of psychoactive substances.22 The chapters in this volume develop the observation that controls on psychoactive substances were linked to the goal of nation-building and ideas of degeneration in the era of modern medicine, and to the need for a morally and physically robust citizenry to serve this objective. Although informed by an optimistic view of humanity, this perspective was undergirded by anxiety about the erosion of human capability, particularly by social or racial others. In both France and the United States, for example, drug use could be seen as corrupting to the individual in ways that undermined the model of the ideal citizen—whether an upstanding, bourgeois, Republican Frenchman or a hard-working, sober American

Introduction  5 Protestant. 23 The United States has, of course, played a key role in the psychoactive counterrevolution and has dominated global discourses on narcotics since the early twentieth century. The differing emphases of these historical perspectives are conceptually merged in some of the better-known literature in the social sciences, which has long been interested in the symbolic meanings attached to drugs. For example, Jock Young’s The Drugtakers (1971) analyzes the interactions between drug regulators and drug users; he argues that drug taking cannot be understood as a social “problem” without an appreciation of the subjective experience of drug use and the meanings attached to it by users, which are shaped by the active repression of authorities. 24 One area of agreement in the scholarly literature is the role drugs have played in marking social categories of class, race, and gender. Most scholarly interventions also highlight the ambivalence that surrounds psychoactive substances: drugs can be profitable and socially useful, but they can also be disruptive to society. This ambivalence is key to understanding the double standards and hypocrisies of prohibitions: for example, the way in which marginal groups are more heavily stigmatized and penalized for drug possession and use because, in the “ambivalent equation,” they are readily associated with the disruptive rather than the beneficial element of substance use. Michelle Alexander and Loic Wacquant have offered forceful commentaries on the injustices of the US criminal justice system, which, through the twin means of racially profiled sentencing and hyperincarceration, 25 permanently excludes many young black men from American society. Alexander states plainly that drug laws have produced “a new racial caste system” in the United States. 26 However, others have argued, conversely, that changing the law would not be sufficient to erase stigma because racial prejudice pre-exists the law. 27

Prohibitions in History, Culture, and Theory The neat paradigms of the “psychoactive revolution” followed by a “psychoactive counterrevolution” offered by Courtwright form a convincing but perhaps overly stabilized account of the life of psychoactive substances in modern societies. 28 The chapters in this volume develop and depart from Courtwright’s “psychoactive counterrevolution” thesis in two important ways. First, we highlight how prohibitions have historically been indecisive, provisional, and chaotic in ways that have been little explored in the existing scholarship. The legal apparatus prohibiting intoxicants has not been nearly as hermetic or aggressive as is often assumed in standard accounts, on either side of the debate. The volume analyzes examples of states avoiding the pressure to prohibit, failing to do so effectively, experimenting with state monopolies on drugs, maintaining a tough official stance on drugs that conceals a permissive

6  Susannah Wilson reality, and retaining old frameworks of prohibition within new liberalized ones. The second intervention we make is to suggest that prohibitions are transactional and dynamic. Howard Becker defines deviance as “the product of a transaction that takes place between some social group and one who is viewed by that group as a rule-breaker.”29 We demonstrate here that prohibitions share this transactional and interactional quality. As intoxication requires constraint, prohibitions also invite ­contravention—in the Foucauldian sense, power engendering resistance. The chapters are presented according to a broadly chronological logic in order to highlight comparative parallels, with the first nine chapters considering historical case studies from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries and the remaining four having a contemporary focus. The volume opens with Mark Lawrence Schrad’s review ­chapter of the historiography of “Prohibition” in the United States; Schrad argues for the benefits of placing the American experience in global, comparative context rather than extrapolating underlying assumptions from this single case study and applying it to the rest of the world. In Chapter 2, Aro Velmet considers the case of opium in French Indochina and argues that the French developed an elaborate, racialized rhetoric surrounding opium which enabled them to simultaneously justify banning the drug for French consumers while maintaining the Indochinese monopoly. In Chapter 3, Susannah Wilson analyzes the framing of morphine in the French cultural imagination and considers how discourses of prohibition around 1916 were enmeshed with contemporary concerns about model Republican citizenship, degeneration, gender, and self-control. Moving into the interwar and post-World War II eras, in Chapter 4, Cecilia Autrique considers how Mexicans resisted sustained pressure from American Protestants to prohibit the liquor trade. In Chapter 5, Haggai Ram analyzes the illicit Levant hashish trade and argues that it thrived precisely because of the incipient drug regulation systems founded around World War I. In Chapter 6, Benjamin T. Smith examines the pioneering work of Doctor Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra, which resulted in Mexico’s experiment with a state drug monopoly in 1940: a short-lived but historically significant attempt to undermine the exploitative black market in narcotics. In Chapters 7 and 8, Pavel Vasilyev and Emily Crick look, respectively, at how the practical realities of drug use and policy diverged from official discourses in the USSR—the supposedly “drug-free country”—and in the “War on Drugs” of the Nixon and Reagan eras in the United States. In Chapter 9, Kojo Koram highlights the link between drug prohibition and the “racialized other” through an analysis of the qualification of drugs as “evil” in the drafting of the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1961. Chapters 10–12 focus on the current meanings and problems of prohibitions. In Chapter 10, Ian Walmsley looks at the well-documented

Introduction  7 case of the Portuguese decriminalization regime. Walmsley critically examines the assumptions at work in Portugal’s drugs strategy and argues that it conceals the permeation of alternative forms of state power into intimate areas of the social life of citizens. Oliver Davis and Will Haydock, in Chapters 11 and 12, explore the regulation of NPS in the UK: Davis looking at questions of coercive and pastoral governance in the regulation of “chemsex” and NPS in prisons, and Haydock offering a discussion of the problems of regulating drugs according to the assessment of “harm” and the new discursive possibilities offered by the much-criticized concept of “psychoactivity” as an umbrella term. The volume closes with Stuart Walton’s conceptual exploration of the history of consensus and the persistence of contravention in the story of global drug regulation and reflection on the themes connecting the chapters in the volume as a whole. Prohibitions and their contravention are consistently the object of intense fascination. As Becker observes, “What laymen want to know about deviants is: why do they do it?”30 This fascination is, we contend, due to the paradox of self-loss and self-control that characterizes the experience of intoxication. As Withington notes, intoxication always threatens the loss of cognitive and bodily control. 31 We are both attracted to and repulsed by this loss of control, in ourselves and others. Therefore, although people seek out intoxication, they are also driven by and exhibit a need for constraint, which manifests itself in prohibitions. But there is also a great tension between the two, and this volume explores how prohibitions are subject to the same types of ambivalence as the psychoactive substances they are supposed to contain. This volume seeks to better understand what motivates prohibitions, and the factors and resistances that render them unstable and moveable. It is, therefore, an examination of a series of interrelated tensions: between freedom and constraint; intoxication and sobriety; and action and inertia. History tells us that people have always sought out “artificial paradises” but also that the need not to be or remain intoxicated is a major human preoccupation.

Notes 1 The author thanks Aro Velmet for his research assistance and the volume contributors for their comments on the Introduction. 2 Virginia Berridge, Demons: Our Changing Attitudes to Alcohol, Tobacco and Drugs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 7. 3 David T. Courtwright, “The Difference a Word Makes: A Short History of Prohibition,” Addiction 105, no. 7 (2010). 4 Jordan Goodman et al., eds. Consuming Habits: Global and Historical Perspectives on How Cultures Define Drugs, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2007), 9, n. 1. 5 Although GHB is often classed as an NPS, it is already controlled under the UK Misuse of Drugs Act as a Class C substance.

8  Susannah Wilson 6 See these reports that argue the law is unenforceable, www.independent.co.uk/ news/uk/home-news/legal-highs-ban-unenforceable-claim-­pharmacologistsforensics-experts-and-lawyers-a7048536.html, and poorly defined, www. telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/11/drugs-policy-failing-just-look-spice-­ zombies-streets/ [these and all subsequent URLs accessed 7 January 2019]. 7 Toby Seddon, “Inventing Drugs: A Genealogy of a Regulatory Concept,” Journal of Law & Society 43, no. 3 (2016). 8 David T. Courtwright, Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). 9 David F. Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987 [1973]), x. 10 Neil P. McKeganey, Controversies in Drugs Policy and Practice ­(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 11 See Griffith Edwards, Matters of Substance: Drugs: Is Legalization the Right Answer—or the Wrong Question? (London: Penguin Books, 2005), 245; Virginia Berridge, Opium and the People: Opiate Use and Drug Control Policy in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England, Rev. ed. (London: Free Association, 1999). 12 See, for example, Toby Seddon, A History of Drugs: Drugs and Freedom in the Liberal Age (London: Routledge, 2010); Richard Davenport-Hines, The Pursuit of Oblivion: A History of Narcotics (London: Weidenfeld & ­Nicolson, 2001); Gargi Bhattacharyya, Traffick: The Illicit Movement of People and Things (London: Pluto, 2005); Johann Hari, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, (London: Bloomsbury Circus, 2015). 13 See Paul O’Mahony, The Irish War on Drugs: The Seductive Folly of ­Prohibition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008). Others have argued that harm-reduction measures have empowered drug users. See, for example, Alex Mold and ­Virginia Berridge, Voluntary Action and Illegal Drugs: Health and Society in Britain Since the 1960s (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 14 See Courtwright, Forces of Habit and Eva Herschinger, “The Drug Dispositif: Ambivalent Materiality and the Addiction of the Global Drug Prohibition Regime,” Security Dialogue 46, no. 3 (2015), 183–201. 15 See Philippe le Failler, Monopole et prohibition de l’opium en Indochine (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001); James H. Mills, Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade and Prohibition, 1800–1928 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 16 Courtwright, Forces of Habit; Jonathan Crush and Charles Ambler, eds., Liquor and Labor in Southern Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992); Howard Padwa, Social Poison: The Culture and Politics of Opiate Control in Britain and France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, MD, 2010). 17 Courtwright, Forces of Habit. For a skeptical account of the medicalization thesis, see Roy Porter, “The Drinking Man’s Disease: The Pre-History of Alcoholism in Georgian Britain,” British Journal of Addiction 80 (1985), 385–96. 18 Edwards, Matters of Substance, 245. 19 Berridge, Demons. 20 Goodman et al., Consuming Habits; Phil Withington, ed., Introduction to “Cultures of Intoxication,” Special Issue of Past and Present 222, no. 5 ­( January 2014), 9–33. See also Stuart Walton, Intoxicology: A Cultural History of Drink and Drugs (London: Dean Street Press, 2016).

Introduction  9 21 Other works in this vein include Jonathan Herring et al., eds. Intoxication and Society: Problematic Pleasures of Drugs and Alcohol (Basingstoke: ­Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); James Nicholls, The Politics of Alcohol: A History of the Drink Question in England (Manchester, 2009); Joseph F. Spillane, Cocaine: From Medical Marvel to Modern Menace in the United States, 1884–1920 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). 22 Berridge, Demons. 23 On French Republicanism, see Padwa, Social Poison. On the role of ­A merican puritanism, see Emily Crick, “Drugs as an Existential Threat: An Analysis of the International Securitization of Drugs,” International Journal of Drug Policy 23, no. 5 (2012), 407–14; James Mills and P ­ atricia Barton, eds., Drugs and Empires Essays in Modern Imperialism and Intoxication, c.1500 to c.1930 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); and Sue Pryce, Fixing Drugs: The Politics of Drug Prohibition (Basingstoke: ­Palgrave ­Macmillan, 2012). 24 Jock Young, The Drugtakers: The Social Meaning of Drug Use (London: Paladin, 1971). 25 Loic Wacquant, Prisons of Poverty (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 1 and 76. 26 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012), 3. 27 See Joseph F. Spillane, “Making a Modern Drug: The Manufacture, Sale, and Control of Cocaine in the United States, 1880–1920,” in Cocaine: Global Histories, ed. Paul Gootenberg (London: Routledge, 2001), 34–36. 28 Withington, “Introduction: Cultures of Intoxication,” 19. 29 Becker, Outsiders, 10. 30 Ibid., 3. 31 Withington, “Introduction: Cultures of Intoxication,” 14.

1 Misconceptualizing Prohibition Problems with American Cultural Explanations Mark Lawrence Schrad Introduction The Prohibition Era of the 1920s in the United States—with its jazz, gangsters, and speakeasies—is both glamorized and misunderstood. What was alcohol prohibition, and what caused it? I shall argue that both popular and scholarly understandings of prohibition are fundamentally flawed by an over-reliance on the singular case study of the United States. Temperance and prohibition constituted a truly global, progressive movement against the harmful excesses of the liquor traffic, rather than a reactionary “thou shalt not” movement to curtail individual liberty. Rather than generalizing from a single case study, a better approach is to consider the American case in a global, comparative context. By examining temperance motivations around the globe, we can better understand the American historical experience and lay bare the shortcomings in our conventional wisdom.

What Happened: A “Dry” History of Temperance and Prohibition The standard, historical narrative traces the roots of the United States’ “noble” but ultimately failed prohibition experiment—which culminated in the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1919—to the founding of early temperance societies in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Since prohibition was pushed by temperance organizations, the causal logic is that once you get “enough” temperance, prohibition is the outcome. Self-help organizations such as the Independent Order of Good Templars Order of Good Templars sought to reduce inebriety and consumption of strong, distilled spirits (though not fermented beers and wines) through an individual pledge of abstinence. Historical accounts often note t­ emperance’s links to evangelical Christianity and the Second Great Awakening of American Protestantism.1 Moving from suasion to ­legislation, in 1851 Maine became the first state to institute statewide prohibition. Temperance activism emerged with a renewed vigor after the Civil War: the Prohibition Party was founded in 1869, and

Misconceptualizing Prohibition  11 the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), established in 1874, linked temperance with suffragism in the United States, while its international arm—the World’s WCTU (founded in 1883)—made common cause with like-minded movements globally.2 What would prove the most influential prohibitionist organization, the non-partisan Anti-Saloon League of America (ASLA) was established in 1893; a pioneering single-issue organization, it worked within the two-party system rather than fighting it. The ASLA successfully marshaled its material and propaganda resources behind any politician—Republican or Democrat—willing to champion the “dry” cause and actively opposed any “wet” candidate.3 It also made common cause with fellow “dry” travelers internationally, establishing the short-lived World League Against Alcoholism (WLAA) in 1919.4 Patriotic sacrifice and conservation accompanied the U.S.’s entry into World War I, producing a wartime prohibition on distilled spirits (September 8, 1917), and fermented beers and wines (May 1, 1919). 5 Meanwhile, the Eighteenth Amendment passed the Senate on August 1, 1917. Prohibiting the manufacture, sale, or transportation—but not ­consumption—of “intoxicating liquors,” the amendment was ratified with unprecedented speed on January 16, 1919, coming into effect on January 16, 1920. Surprising even some temperance advocates who ­believed prohibition would exclusively target more harmful distilled spirits, Andrew Volstead’s legislation set the limit at 0.5% alcohol by volume, effectively outlawing even light beers. President Woodrow ­Wilson ­vetoed the Volstead Act on October 27, 1919, but his veto was overridden by Congress, paving the way for prohibition nationwide. The immediate blossoming of bootleggers and speakeasies testified to prohibition’s lax observance and enforcement, and sensationalist ­images of corruption and Chicago gangland brutality eroded ­A merican support for prohibition. With the “dry” battle seemingly won with ­prohibition ensconced into the Constitution (from which no Amendment had ever been repealed), temperance support waned, while “wet” organizations such as the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment (AAPA) and Woman’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform (WONPR) pushed to modify the existing legislation.6 Just as World War I had opened a window for dramatic policy change in prohibition, the Great Depression added urgency to the question of repeal: the legalization of the liquor trade, it was argued, would generate both tax revenues and jobs.7 The defeat of “dry” Republican Herbert Hoover by “wet” ­Democrat Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 was the death knell of national prohibition. In February 1933, Congress introduced the Twenty-first (­repeal) Amendment, and by the end of the year, repeal was ratified with even greater speed than prohibition, ending the American experience with national prohibition. This “dry” overview is uncontentious. Where things get interesting is when historians and social scientists go beyond simply describing what happened and try to explain why it happened.

12  Mark Lawrence Schrad

Three Generations of Prohibition Studies One virtue of the present volume is that it brings together diverse perspectives from scholars in widely different disciplines, countries, and cultures—divisions which would otherwise bedevil the task of reviewing the prohibition-studies literature. Still, it is possible to differentiate between three “generations” of American prohibition historiography, based on different timeframes, ontological assumptions, and methodological approaches: focusing varyingly on individual, cultural, and institutional factors. The first generation of temperance histories extends from the 1920s to the 1940s and often attributed prohibition to individual temperance leaders,8 or some conspiratorial cabal that “put over” prohibition on the American people while “the boys were fighting overseas.”9 Even those that addressed repeal focused on individual activists, politicians, and businessmen with little concern for the institutional or cultural factors.10 Following World War II, the second generation of prohibition scholarship largely explained prohibition as the consequence of a tumultuous cultural context, pitting social groups against one another. Separately, venerated historian Richard Hofstadter (1955)11 and sociologist Joseph Gusfield (1963)12 forged a new conventional wisdom that prohibition embodied a backlash of conservative, rural, native-born Protestants against increased immigration and urbanization. This scholarship recast temperance as a reactionary, ­Bible-thumping aberration, while repeal became the natural consequence of increased immigration and the rising importance of urban voices and votes.13 One noteworthy exception is James H. Timberlake’s Prohibition and the Progressive Movement (1963), which argued that, by confronting “the growing power of big business on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the mounting discontent of the lower classes,” prohibition was consistent with the moral, economic, social, and political idealism of American progressivism rather than being antithetical to it.14 “If progressivism desired to curb the power of an industrial and financial plutocracy,” Timberlake claimed, “prohibition aimed to remove the corrupting influence of one branch of that plutocracy—the liquor industry.”15 Unfortunately, Timberlake’s corrective is overshadowed by the popular portrayal of temperance and prohibition as touchstones of reactionary bigotry “from sin-obsessed Puritan, to evangelical extremists and Know-Nothings, to nativists and Klansmen, and most recently to ­McCarthyites and anti-abortionists,” as Aaron and Musto described it in the early 1980s. They lamented that such portrayals, “established by dint of repetition, have achieved a kind of incantatory truth and ultimately have been enshrined as pieces of political folk wisdom.”16 Indeed, these second-generation, culturalist understandings inform even contemporary prohibition histories, including James Morone’s Hellfire Nation (2003),17 Daniel Okrent’s Last Call (2010),18 and Lisa McGirr’s

Misconceptualizing Prohibition  13 War on Alcohol (2016),19 which expand upon the notion of prohibition not just as culture clash, but as a weapon against marginalized urban, immigrant, poor, and African-American communities themselves. An important shift occurs with second-generation prohibition ­scholarship: the disappearance of the word “traffic.” Just as it is possible to be in favor of diamonds and be against diamond trafficking, or be in favor of humans but oppose human trafficking, it was entirely consistent for prohibitionists to oppose big business profiting from trafficking an addictive substance, without opposing liquor or those who consumed it. 20 Also, since the old generation of temperance advocates had largely died off, it became easier to vilify them as reactionary zealots. Even today, writers use the same derisive adjectives for prohibitionists that they use to describe international terrorists: they are “ruthless,”21 “extremists,”22 “cranks,”23 “deeply antidemocratic,”24 “fanatics and fools”25 who pose a “threat to individual freedoms.”26 Moreover, we are told they are motivated by “obscurantism, narrow-mindedness, and ­fanaticism,”27 they “stirred Americans’ worst fears about race, class, and religion, all while manipulating scientific studies.”28 Prohibition was a “wrongheaded ­social policy waged by puritanical zealots of a bygone Victorian era.”29 Even beyond the “traffic” question, culturalist/reactionary explanations must confront a bevy of inconsistencies. What are the mechanisms by which culture is translated into policy? How do we understand the “reactionary” roots of the temperance movement in the “progressive” abolitionist, suffragist, and labor movements? How do we account for other, non-absolutist alcohol-control policy options of the day? How does cultural backlash explain the widespread political support for prohibition even beyond Midwestern evangelicals, which would be necessary for the ratification of a prohibition amendment? How can we explain the victory of “reactionary” prohibition in the middle of the Progressive Era? How do we account for the incredible speed of the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment, as well as the even-more swift repeal movement a decade later? Cultures evolve glacially—so using them to explain rapid political fluctuations is perilous. A third generation of scholarship moves beyond culturalist explanations to examine social and political institutions: civil-society movements; political organizations; advocacy networks; and the context of legal, political, and social institutions in which they are situated.30 Historians have examined specific temperance and prohibition organizations to explain prohibition and anti-Prohibition campaign groups to explain repeal.31 Other recent attempts have been made to situate American temperance and prohibition within broader institutional contexts, including the sociology literature on social-movements, 32 American constitutional law, and legislative institutions. 33 Coming from political science rather than history, my own previous scholarship—including this present chapter— departs from these three generations of historiography by understanding

14  Mark Lawrence Schrad both prohibition and repeal as punctuations, or dramatic shifts, within alcohol-control policies, which potentially include liquor licensing, sales restrictions, monopolization, taxation, and other measures to reduce the social harms associated with the liquor traffic.

Prohibition’s Global Dimensions The United States was not the only country to have temperance advocates, nor was it the only one to adopt statutory prohibition. 34 By ­abandoning our “container based paradigms” of national history in order to look globally, we find a dozen countries which adopted some form of prohibition, as a transnational network of temperance ­advocates spanned the globe for much of the late nineteenth century.35 For virtually every country with a strong temperance history, there are insightful secondary ­analyses: Britain,36 Canada,37 Sweden,38 Russia,39 Finland,40 ­Norway,41 and ­India,42 in addition to global histories of ­alcohol ­control.43 ­Problematically, however, the history of temperance and prohibition in any given country is overshadowed by the voluminous literature on American prohibition, with frequent invocations of the American experience, whether appropriate or not. The problem comes in extrapolating the underlying dynamics associated with second-generation, culturalist explanations for American prohibition, and then projecting those assumptions into different national contexts where they make little sense. If temperance and prohibition are understood—as in the American context—to be the result of nativist, protestant evangelicals, how do we explain prohibition in the Orthodox Russian Empire or under the “godless” Soviets? How do we explain the widespread, popular movements to prohibit the liquor traffic in ­­colonial South Africa, India, or secular Turkey, without succumbing to the imperialist temptation of discounting substantive subaltern concerns while attributing sole explanatory power to white protestant missionaries? Indeed, many of the most influential political leaders of the early twentieth century espoused prohibitionist sentiments: Vladimir Lenin, Mahatma Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy, Tomáš Masaryk, Kemal Atatürk, Hjalmar ­Branting, Kaiser Wilhelm II, King Khama of Bechuanaland, and King Fuad of Egypt.44 These are individuals as diverse in their political affiliations as in their religious beliefs. Attempting to cram such diverse experiences into an American-centric framework simply makes no sense. Similar problems bedevil transnational temperance as well. Historians appropriate the logic of a moralizing, cultural crusade from the single case study of the United States and export it to the rest of the world. Accordingly, the global temperance movement was understood as simply a peculiar Anglo-American missionary impulse: an early manifestation of ­American “cultural imperialism.”45 In his Reforming the World: The C ­ reation of America’s Moral Empire (2010), historian Ian Tyrrell argues that the desire

Misconceptualizing Prohibition  15 of Protestant reformers to create a moral world was linked “to the emergence of American imperialism and colonialism…. Cultural expansion in the form of missionaries and moral reform enlarged what could be termed the external ‘footprint’ of the United States in the 1880s and 1890s, creating conditions wherein a more vigorous economic and political expansion could be seriously considered.”46 For second-generation, culturalist understandings, this makes sense: if American temperance/prohibition activists were hell-bent on attacking individual liberty at home for the sake of morality, they would certainly want to impose their beliefs on the rest of the world, too. Right? But that too is misleading. First, such studies focus largely on formal organizations linked to American temperance organizations, such as the World’s WCTU and the WLAA, which only emerged a half century after European transnational temperance organizations.47 More importantly, the global temperance crusade was not “cultural i­mperialism”—if anything it was anti-imperialism. It is not coincidental that the anti-liquor movement was a product of the “age of empires” and that the ­worldwide spread of liquor consumption—like that of opium, cannabis, and t­obacco— was largely a colonial imposition in the first place.48 Comparing across empires, global temperance was as much directed against the power of the imperial Metropole as it was about individual morality. In the British Isles, temperance activism was most widespread in Scotland and Ireland against English liquor impositions.49 In the Romanov Empire, it pitted the Finns, Poles, and Baltics against the Russian heartland.50 In South Africa and India, ­temperance was a weapon of the weak against British colonial ­domination.51 Tomáš Masaryk saw prohibition as vital to Czechoslovakia’s push for independence from the Austro-­Hungarian ­Empire,52 while even the noted inebriate Kemal Atatürk understood prohibition as indispensable in the Turks’ fight against both Ottoman and British domination.53 So, if prohibition was neither a moralizing crusade against individual liberty at home nor a cultural-imperial imposition abroad, then what was it? I would argue that the global war on the liquor traffic was a transnational normative shift about the inappropriateness of benefitting from the addiction and misery of the masses, precipitated in many countries undergoing the upheavals of industrialization and colonial domination. It was an attempt to put the welfare of society ahead of the needs of the state. Whether the beneficiary was the state monopoly, foreign colonists, or the so-called “liquor trust” of corrupt and conniving capitalist brewers and distillers, 54 temperance advocates fought to put individual well-being ahead of profit. Moralizing evangelicals and organized religion were only part of a broad political, social, economic, and cultural coalition, which was consistent with the ethos of progressive, democratic reforms, both in the United States and around the globe. This is how prohibitionists could write books with titles like The Second Declaration of Independence, or a Suggested Emancipation Proclamation from the Liquor Traffic (1913), or Prohibition: An Adventure in

16  Mark Lawrence Schrad Freedom (1928), without any hint of irony. For them, prohibition enabled liberty rather than constrained it. 55 This normative shift was embodied in a transnational movement, which required working within domestic political institutions to translate these changing norms into alcohol-control policies. As a social movement, prohibition sought to harness the power of the state to constrain itself on behalf of the people. This normative shift has been little studied. The historian of vice, David Courtwright, alludes to it in his Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World (2001): in “one of history’s great about-faces,” by the late nineteenth century, the same stratum of Western elites that had long pushed the unregulated global trade in alcohol and drugs acceded to restrictions and prohibitions, often at significant financial loss.56 Why? Courtwright’s explanation focuses primarily on the material interest of elites: that industrialization created powerful entrepreneurs whose business interests were harmed by drunkenness, who balanced out those elites for whom the liquor trade was still profitable.57 While this logic holds merit, it is incomplete: it overlooks the broad-based, transnational movement that underscored the inappropriateness of the state profiting from the misery of society. Like other transnational progressive movements of the day—­socialism/ labor rights, suffragism/women’s rights, anti-colonialism/indigenous rights—prohibitionism sought to remedy inequalities of wealth and power. Not surprisingly, then, these movements reinforced each another, making common cause among “Marx, Jefferson and Jesus,” even as they built upon the religious and missionary foundations for reform both in the United States and around the globe.58 Perhaps the best example of this fusion of evangelical religiosity and democratic reform was the godfather of American progressivism, William Jennings Bryan. The firebrand Presbyterian orator from Nebraska famously railed against imperialism, elitism, and the corrupting power of big business, including the liquor trust that fed upon the helpless. An ardent prohibitionist, “the Great Commoner” argued that the eradication of the booze business “will bring the highest good to the greatest number, without any injustice for any, for it is not injustice to any man to refuse him permission to enrich himself by injuring his fellowmen.”59 In this sentiment—reminiscent of the quintessential Marxist struggle between exploiters and the exploited—he was echoing an argument made in dozens of different languages the world over. It is easy to get lost in the differences between cultures, languages, and religious doctrines. But a broad, comparative approach uncovers a ­striking continuity: opposition to the liquor traffic harnessed the ­persuasive ­morality and material resources of local religions, and sought to ­capture the instruments of statecraft, in the progressive interest of protecting the community and empowering the individual against powerful, exploitative actors. The temperance and prohibition movements have more in common with opposition to the British opium traffic or contemporary efforts to reduce the harms from cigarette smoking, than they do with

Misconceptualizing Prohibition  17 puritanical efforts to legislate morality. By situating the American experience into a global context, rather than extrapolating assumptions about prohibition from the sole case study of the United States, we create a more complete picture of temperance and prohibition as global movements, a better view of America’s prohibition experience, and the shortcomings in our conventional understanding of it. In particular, it highlights the incongruities in the U.S.-centric paradigm—a “reactionary” social movement in the Progressive Era, the disproportionate focus on nonsystematic, culturalist explanations, and the subsequent vilification of temperance advocates.

Sources of Misunderstanding in Culturalist Explanations When did our understanding of temperance and prohibition veer so far off track, and why? I would suggest it is the result of the break between the first and second generation of prohibitionist scholarship, and changing understandings of liberty which ultimately recast and reinforced the negative image of prohibitionists during the 1950s and 1960s. Perhaps this dynamic is best illustrated by William E. “Pussyfoot” Johnson. As a prohibition agent in the Indian Territory, Johnson gained his nickname by making stealthy raids against illegal saloons. And while he is not well known in contemporary histories of American prohibition, this globetrotting head of the WLAA is integral to any international prohibition history. From the WLAA headquarters in London, Johnson circumnavigated the globe twice, networking with dry leaders in royal palaces and revolutionary undergrounds. “Pussyfoot is no moral fanatic, no anemic prince of virtue, no puri-tyrannical old woman, no suburban Torquemada,” declared the London Daily Mail. “He is an organizer behind the scenes, quiet, patient, tactful, energetic…. It just so happens to be his business job of work in life to make the world soft for democracy” (emphasis mine).60 Making “the world soft for democracy” flies in the face of second-generation culturalist vilification of temperance advocates as enemies of freedom. A decade later, in 1929, when Winston Churchill publicly denounced the “arrogance and impotence” of American prohibitionists imposing their morality on others, Johnson fired back.61 He argued that Churchill fundamentally misunderstood prohibition: Any law telling the people what to drink and what not to drink would be overwhelmingly defeated in America. I would fight against such a law myself. What a man eats or drinks is an individual act, so long as nobody is affected thereby. But when a man engages in the business of selling what causes such a vast amount of trouble, society becomes directly and acutely affected, and it has the right and the duty of protecting itself against unsocial acts. Our laws against selling liquor rest upon exactly the same basis as our laws prohibiting the selling of rotten meat, impure milk or dangerous drugs.62

18  Mark Lawrence Schrad Whereas Churchill characterized American prohibition as a moralizing crusade against the individual’s liberty to consume liquor, Johnson explained its original intention as a progressive, community protection measure against the excesses of the liquor traffic. From repeal and the Great Depression until his death in 1945, Johnson’s argument increasingly fell upon deaf ears. It was not just that the prohibitionists were dying off and unable to defend themselves against the vilifications of later generations. The understanding of liberty was fundamentally changing at that time, too. For much of modern European history, John Stuart Mill’s political liberalism was effectively divorced from Adam Smith’s precepts of economic liberalism: “In the Anglo-Saxon world the connection between the two was made only in the mid-twentieth century, notably by Ludwig von Mises and later by his student Friedrich [von] Hayek, who argued that interference with the market implies interference with citizenship rights.”63 In the 1910s and 1920s, journalists could rightly describe prohibitionists like Johnson as making the world “soft for democracy,” because he was. Prohibitionists could describe their own cause as an “experiment in Social Democracy… an attempt to gain relief from a social, rather than a political or legal form of oppression—to gain a new form of freedom”64 without being branded disingenuous. With the growth of Hayekian neoliberalism, however, accusations about constraints on an individual’s rights to consume became even more persuasive to a public more attuned to the liberty of the individual rather than the society. Perhaps it is so easy to demonize temperance advocates because our understandings of liberty have shifted, not theirs, and they did so at a time when nobody was particularly interested in understanding prohibition. Indeed, amidst such changing normative understandings, there was little attempt to correct the culturalist arguments of the emerging second generation, pioneered by Hofstadter and Gusfield. Even according to its detractors, Hofstadter’s 1955 Pulitzer-Prize winning The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. is arguably “the most influential book ever published on the history of twentieth-century America” and has “shaped virtually every discussion of modern American reform” for generations.65 Hofstadter’s central concept is the “agrarian myth”— that Americans have long valorized the small, independent farmer. Consequently, Hofstadter’s surprisingly brief take on prohibition is not framed as community protection or equality, or even of class conflict between oppressed workers and big liquor interests that profited handsomely from their misery—all of which resonated both with the aims of Progressives and Hofstadter’s leftist political philosophy. Instead, it is framed—­dismissively and derisively—as part of American urban-­rural, immigrant, and inter-ethnic conflict, chalked-up to the same “rural Protestant enthusiasm” that begot the Ku Klux Klan.66

Misconceptualizing Prohibition  19 This was Hofstadter’s line, which would be parroted by generations of temperance scholars: Prohibition was a pseudo-reform, a pinched, parochial substitute for reform which had a widespread appeal to a certain type of crusading mind. It was linked not merely to an aversion to drunkenness and to the evils that accompanied it, but to the immigrant drinking masses, to the pleasures and amenities of city life, and to the well-to-do classes and cultivated men. It was carried about ­A merica by the ­rural-evangelical virus: the country Protestant frequently brought it with him to the city when the contraction of agriculture sent him there to seek his livelihood.67 For Hofstadter, temperance was primarily the product of rural reactionaries. Progressive arguments about the necessity of sobriety for democracy or community protection were dismissed: “to hold the Progressives responsible for Prohibition would be to do them an injustice.”68 Instead—setting what would become the conventional wisdom for generations—Hofstadter argued that the evangelicals’ moralizing zealotry combined with the spirit of patriotic sacrifice during World War I to whip the nation into a frenzy: While it was at its pitch the dry lobbyists struck, and when they were finished the Prohibition mania was fixed in the Constitution; and there it remained for almost fifteen years, a symbol of the moral overstrain of the preceding era, the butt of jokes, a perennial source of irritation, a memento of the strange power of crusades for absolute morality to intensify the evils they mean to destroy.69 Instead of challenging this one-dimensional image, subsequent scholarship reinforced it until it became the unquestionable bedrock of prohibition studies. Most notably, sociologist Joseph Gusfield’s Symbolic Crusade (1963)—a touchstone of prohibition studies for generations— argued that the liquor question was exclusively a moral issue, and not a social or economic one.70 Rather than acknowledging the complex motivations for anti-alcohol activism, Gusfield doubled-down on prohibition as solely a moral crusade: “It is within an analytical context of concern with noneconomic issues that we have studied the Temperance movement…. Typical of moral reform efforts, Temperance has usually been the attempt of the moral people, in this case the abstainers, to correct the behavior of the immoral people, in this case the drinkers. The issue has appeared as a moral one, divorced from any direct economic interests in abstinence or indulgence.”71 However, this characterization is partial, if not outright false, both globally and within the United States. T ­ emperance and prohibition were intimately intertwined

20  Mark Lawrence Schrad with the economic consequences of drinking, not divorced from them. Gusfield’s suggestion that temperance was against liquor rather than the liquor traffic falsely places the onus on limiting the individual rather than the debauching trade, and the governments that profited from it. Consequently, prohibitionists were far less concerned with “correcting the behavior of the immoral people” and more interested in protecting them from a state and a traffic that would debauch and debase them. Prohibition’s complex history defies simplistic stereotypes. Globally, there were abstainers who abhorred the thought of coercive prohibition and heavy-drinking prohibitionists. Extrapolating political positions solely from one’s personal temperament is not only shortsighted but also foolish when ignoring the broader range of economic, social, and political concerns. But for adherents to the culturalist logic, such ­nuance—say, a politician who argues for prohibition as necessary to the promotion of democracy and freedom, rather than an assault on it—has to be chalked-up to the brazen hypocrisy or assumed stupidity of the temperance activist. There is no other explanation. Psychologically, this is easy to do if you have already assumed that anti-alcohol activists are history’s villains. That, in turn, becomes even more easy for Americans to do in the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate eras, where trust in government plummeted and politicians and activists are assumed to be disingenuous by nature.72 That assumption is also misguided. But Gusfield does not stop by removing the focus on the liquor traffic in favor of demonizing the individual. He then lumps people into reified and conflicting cultural groups that he assumes utilize moral issues “to preserve, defend, or enhance the dominance and prestige of its own style of living within the total society.”73 If other groups did not bow down to the morals of the dominant cultural group by their own accord, they would have to be disciplined. Thus, for Gusfield: With the development of the Anti Saloon League in 1896, the Temperance movement began to separate itself from a complex of economic and social reforms and concentrate on the cultural struggle of the traditional rural Protestant society against the developing urban and industrial social system. Coercive reform became the dominating theme of Temperance. It culminated in the drive for national Prohibition. The Eighteenth Amendment was the high point of the struggle to assert the public dominance of old middle-class values. It established the victory of Protestant over Catholic, rural over urban, tradition over modernity, the middle class over both the lower and the upper strata.74 These are the blinders of the second generation of prohibition studies: (1) to focus on morality and religion at the expense of economic, social, and political dynamics; (2) to conflate temperance and prohibition as one and the same; (3) to subsume both solely under the umbrella of

Misconceptualizing Prohibition  21 “moral reform”; (4) to equate the anti-alcohol impulse primarily with the sweeping term of evangelical Protestantism and middle-class reactionary conservatism; and (5) to see the primary conflict as between cultural groups rather than between social organizations and the state, which (6) is evidenced primarily by the elimination of the word “traffic” from the battle against the liquor traffic. In subsequent decades, Gusfield built upon these faulty foundations a persuasive explanation that the true goal of so-called moral reformers was to wield morality as a weapon of social control against urban immigrants, minorities, and the poor: a quasi-totalitarian “benevolent repression” that amounted to dictating what these suspect groups could or could not do even with their leisure time and private lives.75 This was all sufficiently plausible that generations of prohibition scholars donned these blinders without question. Prolifically citing both Hofstadter and Gusfield, James Morone’s Hellfire Nation (2003) positions moralizing prohibitionists within “the dark side of the American spirit.”76 As Morone writes, “The holy warriors put aside other goals—prohibitionists had been fighting for a living wage, comparable pay for women and sexual purity from men—and focus on eradicating the one big evil. They scoff at politics as usual, they will not compromise. After all, they see a nation teetering between right and wrong, salvation and perdition.”77 Such complex political, social, and economic issues could not be so easily compartmentalized, much less reduced simply to a quest for piety and purity.Most recently, Lisa McGirr’s The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State (2016) unquestioningly adopts Hofstadter and Gusfield’s truncated view to focus solely on “moral crusaders” and their efforts to foist prohibition on immigrant and poor communities, since “it was, after all, enacted to discipline their leisure in the first place.”78 While it may have had that effect, there is no evidence that disciplining immigrants’ leisure was the prohibitionists’ original intent. Such second-generation prohibition interpretations are not completely wrong, they are just limited. Their scholarly investigations are largely thorough and rigorous, but by simply invoking the logic and authority of Gusfield and Hofstader, rather than scrutinizing their faulty assumptions, they promote an incomplete and stilted understanding of the prohibition experience. The shortcomings of this paradigmatic understanding are evident, as accomplished scholars struggle to reconcile what Hofstadter and ­Gusfield say motivated the anti-liquor movement, versus what the prohibitionists themselves actually said. For instance, when Harvard historian Lisa ­McGirr describes how, in 1914, Texas senator Morris Sheppard introduced to the Senate what would become the Eighteenth Amendment, she writes, “Without any apparent sense of contradiction, he backed the constitutional amendment, declaring ‘I am not a prohibitionist in the strict sense of the word…. I am fighting the liquor traffic. I am against the saloon, I am not in any sense aiming to prevent the personal use of drink’”79

22  Mark Lawrence Schrad (emphasis mine). If one assumes that the motivation of prohibitionists is to wield political power, to punish the underclass, and to discipline the leisure of immigrant and minority communities, then of course this sounds like a contradiction. The easiest way to square such incongruous sentiments is to dismiss and vilify the dry forces—to paint them as idiots, hypocrites, or liars—and assume that a century later, “we” know better what motivated prohibitionists than they actually knew themselves. As a consequence, the scorn and disdain for long-dead and well-meaning social activists perpetuate themselves anew—not based upon the prohibitionists’ actions but rather on our inability to understand them. After all, the most influential organization in achieving national prohibition was the Anti-Saloon League, not the Anti-Leisure Drinking League. ­Perhaps the Anti-Saloon League was actually against the saloon, which was a very real institution that caused very real social problems. Maybe temperance took aim against the drink traffic, as they claimed, rather than against the drinker. With the advent of “big data,” we can track these changing understandings of prohibition over time. Through their digitization efforts, Google Books has an accessible dataset of over fifteen million published books, comprising some five hundred billion words.80 Limiting the corpus to English-language books published in the United States from 1870 through 2000, our Ngram phrase search produces the following data, presented here as a time-series graph (Figure 1.1):

Figure 1.1  Changing Language Usage Over Time: Phrases Related to Prohibition in American Books, 1870–2000. Source: Google Books Ngram Viewer, https://books.google.com/ngrams/. Michel, Jean-Baptiste, et al. “Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books,” Science, 331, no. 6014 (2011), 176.

Misconceptualizing Prohibition  23 The most striking feature of the graph is that the two phrases “liquor traffic” and “drink traffic” were once overwhelmingly dominant in the published literature a century ago, but have all but disappeared from our lexicon today. (Indeed, “liquor traffic” was actually used ten times more frequently than the other phrases—it was necessary to deflate the numbers by the power of 10 just to get them to fit on the same graph.) Relatedly, today’s common parlance, “alcohol prohibition,” has gained ascendency in the literature only in the past thirty to forty years, since the 1970s and 1980s. Of course, the subject of the phrase “alcohol prohibition” is the substance—the alcohol itself—rather than those who profit from its sale and trafficking. Even during the so-called Prohibition Era, writers referred to the traffic exponentially more frequently than to “alcohol prohibition.” Interestingly, despite the disappearance of “traffic” and the recent ascendency of “alcohol prohibition,” liberal arguments about the individual’s “right to drink” remain remarkably consistent over time (with a yearly frequency around 2.0 × 10 −9). Perhaps nothing more vividly demonstrates the discursive shift emerging from this second generation of culturalist studies of prohibition than this disappearance of the focus on the liquor traffic and the liquor seller, and the shift in focus to the alcohol itself. There is much to be learned from removing these culturalist blinders and opening up to the variety of political, economic, social, and moral aspects that motivated individuals to focus on controlling alcohol, both in the United States and around the globe. We need to better unpack the complex motivations of anti-liquor activists by looking beyond the United States, to highlight differences and similarities, and not consider America as exceptional. Consider the words of “Pussyfoot” Johnson in his later years, expounding the same sentiment as Morris Sheppard and other prohibitionists: I think the label ‘prohibitionist’ should be properly defined. I am not a prohibitionist at all, in the full sense of the word. I am for prohibition of the liquor traffic, for reasons which I consider good and unanswerable, but beyond that I am, in every instinct and inclination, an ardent anti-prohibitionist…. I never have proposed or supported a law forbidding a man to take a drink, or to eat spoiled meat. But I think it urgently necessary to have laws which will prohibit a butcher from selling spoiled meat. And I think it equally as important to have laws which prohibit the sale of liquor. This is entirely a different matter. The question of individual rights and good or bad taste no longer is involved. When a man opens an establishment for the sale of liquor or rotten meat for human consumption, he performs a social act. Society is then directly concerned and is charged with the duty of protecting itself. I would place the traffic in intoxicating liquors on exactly the same basis as the sale of spoiled meat, impure drugs or adulterated foods.81

24  Mark Lawrence Schrad For reference, both the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Federal Meat ­Inspection Act were passed in 1906, and are hailed as monuments of progressive consumer- and community-protection law. The same Progressive Era that witnessed the prohibition of alcohol also saw the ­Harrison Narcotics Act (1914), the Federal Trade Commission Act (1914), the Clayton Anti-Trust Act (1914), the creation of the Federal Reserve (1913), the ­expansion of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and a myriad of progressive reforms, all of which sprung from the same ethos of protecting the individual against political and corporate abuse and exploitation.82 The Eighteenth Amendment is frequently vilified as the only ­A mendment that allegedly curtails individual freedom. It was one of four amendments ratified in rapid succession between 1913 and 1920, all born of the same progressive spirit. Proponents argued that the S­ ixteenth Amendment (1913)—permitting Congress to levy an income tax—would compel the super-rich to bear their fair share of the tax burden.83 The Seventeenth Amendment (also 1913) provided for the direct election of U.S. senators to break the power of corrupt politicians and corporate ­interests—­vocally championed by (prohibitionist) William Jennings Bryan to awaken “a more acute sense of representation to the people.”84 It was immediately followed by the Nineteenth Amendment (1920), which empowered women with the vote, which was likewise supported by prohibitionists like the WCTU. And yet we are still expected to see prohibition as an anomaly: a sermonizing “thou shalt not” in the middle of a Progressive Era of democratization and empowerment. In reality, all of these reforms were cut from the same cloth. Such original perspectives also cast new light on debates as to whether prohibition either “failed” or “worked.” With the Eighteenth Amendment being the only constitutional amendment to be repealed, it is natural to conclude that America’s so-called “noble experiment” was a policy failure. Some scholars, however, cite diminution in drunkenness and improvements in social statistics from the 1920s onward in suggesting more variegated outcomes.85 If we understand prohibition as combatting the predatory capitalism of the liquor traffic (rather than liquor itself), the prohibition experience brought unquestionable improvements. Following repeal, alcohol-­control reverted to the individual states—many of which quickly adopted government monopolization or municipal control over the retail liquor trade.86 The state liquor store was patterned on “Gothenburg” systems from Scandinavia, which removed the private profit motive that encouraged drink sellers to amplify their profits by maximizing consumption. The disreputable, pre-prohibition saloon is gone, too. While the term “saloon” nowadays evokes nostalgia for a romanticized past, by contemporary standards, the saloon of old was “a noxious institution, in fact inextricably bound up with prostitution, gambling, police corruption and crime.”87 Post-prohibition restaurants, taverns, and bars are strictly licensed, inspected, and controlled. If the

Misconceptualizing Prohibition  25 ­ nti-Saloon League and the proponents of the Eighteenth object of the A Amendment was indeed to get rid of the institution of the saloon and its worst excesses, it is hard to argue that they failed, even following the amendment’s repeal.

Conclusion Most of the literature on prohibition is—and has been—generated by American scholars and journalists who focus exclusively on the singular case study of the United States. This makes sense, because it is perhaps the most interesting case, with the most extensive history, and most easily accessible information. But it is logically fallacious to extend from that singular case study to the entire range of global temperance and prohibition experiences. As we have seen, this flawed approach—­particularly evident in the second generation of prohibition scholarship—leads to demonstrably misguided appraisals. Explaining temperance and prohibition as predominantly a conservative/­ reactionary religious movement against the rights of the individual obscures the rich history of temperance and prohibition as a secular and progressive movement. Recognizing this reality promises greater insights into this era, both in international perspective and within the American case study as well.

Notes 1 Ian Tyrrell, Sobering Up: From Temperance to Prohibition in Antebellum America, 1800–1860 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979), 164–7. 2 Ian Tyrrell, Woman’s World, Woman’s Empire: The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in International Perspective, 1880–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991). 3 K. Austin Kerr, Organized for Prohibition: A New History of the Anti-­ Saloon League (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985). 4 Susan Mary Brook, “The World League against Alcoholism: The Attempt to Export an American Experience,” Master of Arts, University of Western Ontario, 1972). 5 Richard Hamm, Shaping the Eighteenth Amendment: Temperance Reform, Legal Culture, and the Polity, 1880–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 240. 6 David E. Kyvig, Repealing National Prohibition, 2nd ed. (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2000). Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (New York: Scribner, 2010). 7 Mark Lawrence Schrad, “Constitutional Blemishes: Understanding ­A merican Alcohol Prohibition and Repeal as Policy Punctuation,” Policy Studies Journal 35, no. 3 (2007). 8 Charles Merz, The Dry Decade (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1931). ­Peter H. Odegard, Pressure Politics: The Story of the Anti-Saloon League (New York: Columbia University Press, 1928). 9 Lawrence F. Abbott, “Personal Liberty? Yes—but the Saloon? Never,” The Outlook, May 17, 1922, 91.

26  Mark Lawrence Schrad 10 Fletcher Dobyns, The Amazing Story of Repeal; an Exposé of the Power of Propaganda (New York: Willett, Clark & Company, 1940). Ernest R. Gordon, When the Brewer Had the Stranglehold (New York: Alcohol Information Committee, 1930). 11 Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Random House, 1955). 12 Joseph Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963). 13 Norman H. Clark, Deliver Us from Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1976). Andrew Sinclair, Prohibition: The Era of Excess (Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co., 1962). 14 James Timberlake, Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 1–2. 15 Ibid., 1–2. 16 Paul Aaron and David Musto, “Temperance and Prohibition in America: A Historical Overview,” in Alcohol and Public Policy: Beyond the Shadow of Prohibition—Panel on Alternative Policies Affecting the Prevention of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, eds. Mark Moore and Dean Gerstein (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1981), 127–8. 17 James A. Morone, Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003). 18 Okrent, Last Call. 19 Lisa McGirr, The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the ­A merican State (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016), xviii. 20 See, for instance: Lilian Lewis Shiman, Crusade against Drink in Victorian England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 76–77. William E. Johnson, Confessions of “Pussyfoot” Johnson (Cooperstown: New York State Historical Society, n/d), XX, 13–14. 21 Reid Mitenbuler, Bourbon Empire: The Past and Future of America’s Whiskey (New York: Viking Press, 2015), 170. 22 Okrent, Last Call, 99, 171. 23 Shiman, Crusade against Drink, 90. 24 McGirr, War on Alcohol, 17. 25 Okrent, Last Call, 269. 26 McGirr, War on Alcohol, 120. 27 Johan Bergman, quoted in: Mark Safstrom, The Religious Origins of Democratic Pluralism: Paul Peter Waldenström and the Politics of the Swedish Awakening 1868–1917 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016), 198. 28 Mitenbuler, Bourbon Empire, 170. 29 McGirr, War on Alcohol, 248. 30 Jack Blocker, Jr., American Temperance Movements: Cycles of Reform (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1989). Jack Blocker, Jr., Retreat from Reform: The Prohibition Movement in the United States, 1890–1913 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976). 31 On these various movements, see: Kerr, Organized for Prohibition; Lisa M. F. Andersen, Politics of Prohibition: American Governance and the Prohibition Party, 1869–1933 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Tyrrell, Woman’s World, Woman’s Empire; David M. Fahey, Temperance and Racism: John Bull, Johnny Reb, and the Good Templars (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996); Kyvig, Repealing National Prohibition; David E. Kyvig, “Women against Prohibition,” American Quarterly 28, no. 4 (1976). 32 Hamm, Shaping the Eighteenth Amendment. 33 Ann-Marie Szymanski, Pathways to Prohibition: Radicals, Moderates, and Social Movement Outcomes (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).

Misconceptualizing Prohibition  27 34 W. J. Rorabaugh, Prohibition: A Very Short Introduction (New York: ­Oxford University Press, 2017). 35 Mark Lawrence Schrad, “The Transnational Temperance Community and the Regulation of the Alcohol Traffic,” in Transnational Communities: Shaping Global Economic Governance, eds. Marie-Laure Djelic and Sigrid Quack (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). On global, transnational, and comparative challenges to the “container” approaches to national history, see: Sebastian Conrad, What is Global History? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 4–5, 37–41. 36 Brian Harrison, Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in England, 1815–1872 (London: Faber and Faber, 1971). Shiman, Crusade against Drink. 37 Greg Marquis, “‘Brewers and Distillers Paradise’: American Views of Canadian Alcohol Policies, 1919 to 1935,” Canadian Review of American Studies 34, no. 2 (2004). 38 Lennart Johansson, Systemet lagom: Rusdrycker, interesseorganisationer och politisk kultur under förbudsdebattens tidevarv 1900–1922 (Lund: Lund University Press, 1995), Bror Lyckow, En fråga för väljarna? Kampen om det lokala vetot 1893–1917 (Stockholm: Stockholms Universitetet, 2001), Walter Thompson, The Control of Liquor in Sweden (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935). 39 Patricia Herlihy, The Alcoholic Empire: Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), Mark Lawrence Schrad, Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), Kate Transchel, Under the Influence: Working-Class Drinking, Temperance, and Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1895–1932 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006). 40 John Wuorinen, The Prohibition Experiment in Finland (New York: ­Columbia University Press, 1931). 41 Max Henius, Modern Liquor Legislation and Systems in Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden (Copenhagen: L. Levison Junr. Akts., 1931). 42 Robert Eric Colvard, “A World without Drink: Temperance in Modern India, 1880–1940,” PhD diss., University of Iowa, 2013. 43 David T. Courtwright, Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). Rod Phillips, Alcohol: A History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014). 4 4 Mark Lawrence Schrad, Dry Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2019). 45 See, for instance: Ian Tyrrell, “Prohibition, American Cultural Expansion, and the New Hegemony in the 1920s: An Interpretation,” Histoire sociale/ Social History 27, no. 54 (1994). Ruth Dupré, “The Prohibition of Alcohol Revisited: The U.S. Case in International Perspective,” Cahier de recherche 4, no. 11 (2004). Marquis, “‘Brewers and Distillers Paradise’: American Views of Canadian Alcohol Policies, 1919 to 1935.” 46 Ian Tyrrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 4. 47 See: Schrad, “Transnational Temperance Community.” 48 Courtwright, Forces of Habit, 11–14. Phillips, Alcohol, 4–5. 49 Shiman, Crusade against Drink, 22. Johnson, “Confessions,” XIII, 4–5. 50 Schrad, Vodka Politics, 118–26. 51 Charles van Onselen, “Randlords and Rotgut 1886–1903: An Essay on the Role of Alcohol in the Development of European Imperialism and Southern African Capitalism, with Special Reference to Black Mineworkers in the

28  Mark Lawrence Schrad

52 53

54 55

56 7 5 58 59 60 61

62

63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

73 74 75

Transvaal Republic,” History Workshop 1, no. 2 (1976), 33–89. ­David ­Fahey and Padma Manian, “Poverty and Purification: The Politics of G ­ andhi’s Campaign for Prohibition,” The Historian 67, no. 3 (2005): 494. Ernest Gordon, The Anti-Alcohol Movement in Europe (New York: Fleming H. Revel Company, 1913), 315–16. Karel Čapek, Talks with T.G. Masaryk, trans. Michael Henry Heim (New Haven, CT: Catbird Press, 1995), 238. Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking: Debating the Place of Alcohol in Early Republican Turkey,” Political Geography 50 (2016): 54–56. Canan Balkan, “The Anti-Alcohol Movement in the Early Republican Period in Turkey,” Bogaziçi University, 2012. See, for instance: Richmond P. Hobson, The Truth About Alcohol (­Washington, DC: Government Publishing Office, 1914), 22. Emmett D. Nichols, The Second Declaration of Independence, or a ­S uggested Emancipation Proclamation from the Liquor Traffic (Boise, ID: Emmett D. Nichols, 1913). Harry S. Warner, Prohibition: An Adventure in Freedom (Westerville, OH: American Issue Press, 1928). Courtwright, Forces of Habit, 167. Ibid., 178. Here, I borrow from both McGirr, War on Alcohol, 28, and Jim Bissett, Agrarian Socialism in America: Marx, Jefferson, and Jesus in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1904–1920 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999). Quoted in: McGirr, War on Alcohol, 29. Quoted in: “Our ‘Pussyfoot,’ England’s Hero and Pest,” Literary Digest (1919), 48–51. Winston Churchill, “What I Saw in America of Prohibition,” London Daily Telegraph, December 2 1929. Anti-Saloon League of America Series, ­Temperance and Prohibition Papers, Ohio Historical Society, Box 5, Folder 3—Winston Churchill (Reel 8). “Has Prohibition Failed? ‘Pussyfoot’s’ Reply to Mr. Churchill.” January 15 1930. (Unpublished manuscript.) Anti-Saloon League of America Series, Temperance and Prohibition Papers, Ohio Historical Society, Box 5, Folder 3—Winston Churchill (Reel 8). Anu-Hanna Anttila and Pekka Sulkunen, “The Inflammable Alcohol ­Issue: Alcohol Policy Argumentation in the Programs of Political Parties in ­Finland, Norway and Sweden from the 1960s to the 1990s,” Contemporary Drug Problems 28, no. 1 (2001), 66. Warner, Prohibition: An Adventure in Freedom, 23–24. Alan Brinkley, “Richard Hofstadter’s the Age of Reform: A Reconsideration,” Reviews in American History 13, no. 3 (1985), 462. Hofstadter, Age of Reform, 293. Ibid., 289–90. Ibid. Ibid., 292. Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade, 1. Ibid., 2. Robert Wuthnow, “United States: Bridging the Privileged and the Marginalized?” in Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society, ed. Robert D. Putnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 69–73. Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade, 3, 10–11. Ibid., 7. Joseph Gusfield, “Benevolent Repression: Popular Culture, Social Structure and the Control of Drinking,” in Drinking: Behavior and Belief in Modern

Misconceptualizing Prohibition  29

76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

86 87

History, eds. Susanna Barrows and Robin Room (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). Morone, Hellfire Nation, 8. Ibid., 11. McGirr, War on Alcohol, xviii. Ibid., 11–12. Jean-Baptiste Michel, et al., “Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using ­M illions of Digitized Books,” Science, 331, no. 6014 (2011), 176. Johnson, “Confessions,” XX, 13–14. McGirr, War on Alcohol, 22. Ibid., 23. Ralph A. Rossum, Federalism, the Supreme Court, and the Seventeenth Amendment: The Irony of Constitutional Democracy (Lanham, MD: ­L exington Books, 2001), 191. Jack Blocker, Jr., “Did Prohibition Really Work? Alcohol Prohibition as a Public Health Innovation,” American Journal of Public Health 96, no.2 (2006), ­233–43. Wayne Hall, W. “What Are the Policy Lessons of National Alcohol Prohibition in the United States, 1920–1933?” Addiction 105, no. 7 (2010), 1164–73. Mark Lawrence Schrad, Political Power of Bad Ideas: Networks, Institutions, and the Global Prohibition Wave (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 154. John C. Burnham, “New Perspectives on the Prohibition ‘Experiment’ of the 1920s,” Journal of Social History 2, no. 1 (1968), 53.

Bibliography Aaron, Paul, and David Musto. “Temperance and Prohibition in America: A Historical Overview.” In Alcohol and Public Policy: Beyond the Shadow of Prohibition—Panel on Alternative Policies Affecting the Prevention of ­Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, edited by Mark Moore and Dean Gerstein, 127–81. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1981. Andersen, Lisa M. F. The Politics of Prohibition: American Governance and the Prohibition Party, 1869–1933. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Anttila, Anu-Hanna, and Pekka Sulkunen. “The Inflammable Alcohol Issue: Alcohol Policy Argumentation in the Programs of Political Parties in Finland, Norway and Sweden from the 1960s to the 1990s.” Contemporary Drug Problems 28, no. 1 (2001): 49–86. Balkan, Canan. “The Anti-Alcohol Movement in the Early Republican Period in Turkey.” Masters dissertation, Bogaziçi University, 2012. Bissett, Jim. Agrarian Socialism in America: Marx, Jefferson, and Jesus in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1904–1920. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. Blocker, Jack, Jr. American Temperance Movements: Cycles of Reform. ­Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1989. ———. Retreat from Reform: The Prohibition Movement in the United States, 1890–1913. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976. Brinkley, Alan. “Richard Hofstadter’s the Age of Reform: A Reconsideration.” Reviews in American History 13, no. 3 (1985): 462–80.

30  Mark Lawrence Schrad Brook, Susan Mary. “The World League against Alcoholism: The Attempt to Export an American Experience.” Master of Arts, University of Western ­Ontario, 1972. Čapek, Karel. Talks with T.G. Masaryk. Translated by Michael Henry Heim. New Haven, CT: Catbird Press, 1995. Clark, Norman H. Deliver Us from Evil: An Interpretation of American ­Prohibition. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1976. Colvard, Robert Eric. “A World without Drink: Temperance in Modern India, 1880–1940.” Doctoral Dissertation, University of Iowa, 2013. Courtwright, David T. Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Dobyns, Fletcher. The Amazing Story of Repeal; An Exposé of the Power of Propaganda. New York: Willett, Clark & Company, 1940. Dupré, Ruth. “The Prohibition of Alcohol Revisited: The U.S. Case in International Perspective.” Cahier de recherche 4, no. 11 (2004): 1–28. Evered, Emine Ö., and Kyle T. Evered. “A Geopolitics of Drinking: Debating the Place of Alcohol in Early Republican Turkey.” Political Geography 50 (2016): 48–60. Fahey, David M. Temperance and Racism: John Bull, Johnny Reb, and the Good Templars. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996. Fahey, David, and Padma Manian. “Poverty and Purification: The Politics of Gandhi’s Campaign for Prohibition.” The Historian 67, no. 3 (2005): 489–506. Gordon, Ernest. The Anti-Alcohol Movement in Europe. New York: Fleming H. Revel Company, 1913. ———. When the Brewer Had the Stranglehold. New York: Alcohol Information Committee, 1930. Gusfield, Joseph. “Benevolent Repression: Popular Culture, Social Structure and the Control of Drinking.” In Drinking: Behavior and Belief in Modern History, edited by Susanna Barrows and Robin Room, 399–424. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. ———. Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963. Hamm, Richard. Shaping the Eighteenth Amendment: Temperance Reform, Legal Culture, and the Polity, 1880–1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Harrison, Brian. Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in ­England, 1815–1872. London: Faber and Faber, 1971. Henius, Max. Modern Liquor Legislation and Systems in Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Copenhagen: L. Levison Junr. Akts., 1931. Herlihy, Patricia. The Alcoholic Empire: Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Hobson, Richmond P. The Truth About Alcohol. Washington, DC: Government Publishing Office, 1914. Hofstadter, Richard. The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. New York: Random House, 1955. Johansson, Lennart. Systemet Lagom: Rusdrycker, Interesseorganisationer Och Politisk Kultur under Förbudsdebattens Tidevarv 1900–1922. Lund: Lund University Press, 1995.

Misconceptualizing Prohibition  31 Johnson, William E. Confessions of “Pussyfoot” Johnson. Cooperstown: New York State Historical Society, n/d. Kerr, K. Austin. Organized for Prohibition: A New History of the Anti-Saloon League. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985. Kyvig, David E. Repealing National Prohibition. 2nd ed. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2000. ———. “Women against Prohibition.” American Quarterly 28, no. 4 (1976): 465–82. Lyckow, Bror. En fråga för väljarna? Kampen om det lokala vetot 1893–1917. Stockholm: Stockholms Universitetet, 2001. Marquis, Greg. “‛Brewers and Distillers Paradise’: American Views of C ­ anadian Alcohol Policies, 1919 to 1935.” Canadian Review of American Studies 34, no. 2 (2004): 135–66. McGirr, Lisa. The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016. Merz, Charles. The Dry Decade. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1931. Mitenbuler, Reid. Bourbon Empire: The Past and Future of America’s Whiskey. New York: Viking Press, 2015. Odegard, Peter H. Pressure Politics: The Story of the Anti-Saloon League. New York: Columbia University Press, 1928. Okrent, Daniel. Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. New York: Scribner, 2010. Phillips, Rod. Alcohol: A History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. Rorabaugh, William J. Prohibition: A Very Short Introduction. New York: ­Oxford University Press, 2017. Rossum, Ralph A. Federalism, the Supreme Court, and the Seventeenth Amendment: The Irony of Constitutional Democracy. Lanham, MD: ­L exington Books, 2001. Safstrom, Mark. The Religious Origins of Democratic Pluralism: Paul Peter Waldenström and the Politics of the Swedish Awakening 1868–1917. ­Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016. Schrad, Mark Lawrence. “Constitutional Blemishes: Understanding American Alcohol Prohibition and Repeal as Policy Punctuation.” Policy Studies Journal 35, no. 3 (2007): 437–64. ———. The Political Power of Bad Ideas: Networks, Institutions, and the Global Prohibition Wave. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. ———. “The Transnational Temperance Community and the Regulation of the Alcohol Traffic.” In Transnational Communities: Shaping Global Economic Governance, edited by Marie-Laure Djelic and Sigrid Quack, 383–421. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. ———. Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the ­R ussian State. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Shiman, Lilian Lewis. Crusade against Drink in Victorian England. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988. Sinclair, Andrew. Prohibition: The Era of Excess. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co., 1962. Szymanski, Ann-Marie. Pathways to Prohibition: Radicals, Moderates, and Social Movement Outcomes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.

32  Mark Lawrence Schrad Thompson, Walter. The Control of Liquor in Sweden. New York: Columbia University Press, 1935. Timberlake, James. Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900–1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963. Transchel, Kate. Under the Influence: Working-Class Drinking, Temperance, and Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1895–1932. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006. Tyrrell, Ian. “Prohibition, American Cultural Expansion, and the New ­Hegemony in the 1920s: An Interpretation.” Histoire sociale/Social History 27, no. 54 (1994): 413–45. ———. Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire. ­Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. ———. Sobering Up: From Temperance to Prohibition in Antebellum America, 1800–1860. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979. ———. Woman’s World, Woman’s Empire: The Woman’s Christian ­Temperance Union in International Perspective, 1880–1930. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. van Onselen, Charles. “Randlords and Rotgut 1886–1903: An Essay on the Role of Alcohol in the Development of European Imperialism and Southern African Capitalism, with Special Reference to Black Mineworkers in the Transvaal Republic.” History Workshop 1, no. 2 (1976): 33–89. Warner, Harry S. Prohibition: An Adventure in Freedom. Westerville, OH: American Issue Press, 1928. Wuorinen, John. The Prohibition Experiment in Finland. New York: Columbia University Press, 1931. Wuthnow, Robert. “United States: Bridging the Privileged and the Marginalized?” In Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society, edited by Robert D. Putnam, 59–102. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

2 From Universal Relaxant to Oriental Vice Race and French Perceptions of Opium Use in the Moment of Global Control Aro Velmet Introduction The emergence of global drug prohibition is generally dated to the Shanghai commission of 1909, which was followed by the Hague convention of 1912. While empires in Asia had long relied on opium trade for revenues, a political about-face took place in the early twentieth century. The Chinese, trying to reform a stagnant empire where opium use had become a sign of backwardness; the British, who feared the political consequences of China’s collapse and felt the pressure of domestic interest groups; the Americans, who sought to contain opium consumption in mainland United States; as well as European missionaries and moral reformers led the push, which culminated with a global ban on opium trade by the beginning of the Great War. Over a period of a few years, the conventional wisdom goes, an international order committed to opium trade was replaced by one committed to extinguishing it.1 Yet states who were neither opium producers (like British India) nor catalyzed by fears of Chinese immigration and moral reformism (like the United States) developed more complicated responses to this shift, in both rhetoric and practice. The French Empire, which critically relied on the opium trade for the financing of its colonization of Indochina, committed to neither a prohibitionist nor an anti-control position. The French in Indochina had established a monopoly on opium sales which, alongside similar monopolies on rice wine and salt, enabled the state to collect revenue and funnel profits from mostly Chinese businesses into French hands. 2 Even though French diplomats praised the new movement towards control in their rhetoric, they were not about to do away with their primary colonial cash cow. This chapter looks at how French arguments defending the opium monopoly changed with the arrival of the modern drugs regime. Instead of charting a switch from pragmatism to prohibition, the following analysis argues that French experts in Indochina experimented with discourses that portrayed opium as a harmless, and possibly even beneficial drug for

34  Aro Velmet Frenchmen and Vietnamese alike, before committing to racialized arguments that rendered opium as harmful for Frenchmen, but necessary for the Vietnamese. Ultimately, French opium discourse came to reinforce the idea of the mission civilisatrice, claiming that Third Republic citizens had to maintain their entrepreneurial and militarist qualities as colonizers, while Orientals had to rely on opium because of their introverted constitution until they were lifted out of their docile states by the civilizing process.3 In the British context, too, experts talked about the therapeutic effects of opium on Indians, while decrying its abuse by Europeans. Unlike the French, British officials emphasized the effects that curtailing the opium monopoly would have on political stability and argued that opium might help “appease” the indigenous population of India by mitigating feelings of hunger and deprivation.4 At stake in this essay, however, is not the uniqueness of the French opium discourse, but the specific ways in which it shifted and was racialized in the wake of the Shanghai and Hague conventions. International opium regulation provided an opportunity for French officials to work out a racialized concept of “anti-narcotic imperialism” which justified both the continuation of the opium monopoly in the age of prohibition, and reified imperial hierarchies of labor and civilization. 5 Understanding how anti-narcotic imperialism came to dominate French colonial life requires a transnational lens that captures colonial fiscal policy, metropolitan morality policing, and international geopolitics in the same frame.6 Ironically, French officials, opium manufacturers, and retailers all believed that they would remain relatively unaffected by the new regime, since Indochina did not cultivate poppies or sell opium abroad. In practice, the geopolitical shift contributed to a profound discursive shift in both colonial Indochina and metropolitan France.

Opium Law and Culture in Pre-Convention Indochina As the French consolidated their power in Indochina in the 1880s, they largely adopted taxation systems and middlemen in place before their arrival, such as the alcohol licensing system implemented by king ­Norodom in Cambodia, or opium contracts established in the provinces of Tu Duc in Annam-Tonkin.7 Opium smoking had for a long time been outlawed under the Nguyễn dynasty, but, in the 1860s, war ­concessions forced the Vietnamese regime to begin selling tenders of production or ­dealing ­directly with individual Chinese producers.8 French officials in ­Cochinchina adopted a similar model, signing contracts with a small number of large producers, who then supplied most of the region. Both attempts at initial regulation were incomplete at best; contraband ­retained a huge market share, and tax revenues were disappointing. In Indochina, opium was predominantly consumed by Chinese immigrants, and Vietnamese and Cambodian upper classes. Under the old regime, the French state purchased raw materials in the form of Dutch

From Universal Relaxant to Oriental Vice  35 cheese-sized boules from the Benares-Benares region of British India.9 Unprocessed opium was then sent to a giant Chinese factory in Saigon (smaller factories existed in Annam; in Langson and Haiphong; and in Laos, in Luang Prabang). The drug was consumed in two forms, as chandoo smoked in opium dens by the wealthy, and as dross, residue scraped from used pipes, which contained small quantities of the intoxicant and could be smoked or mixed with wine.10 Opium dens were run by Chinese proprietors and contained minimal furniture, a few statues of deities, and sofas for the smokers. French administrators were confident that the majority of opium smokers were Chinese businessmen and migrant laborers, although evidence from criminal proceedings shows that many Vietnamese mandarins and French soldiers also engaged in the practice. Statistics on opium usage were unreliable, but most estimated around 20%–50% of the Chinese population and about 10% of the Vietnamese population as regular opium consumers.11 In 1907, the French estimated that 85,000 regular smokers each consumed about 2 kg of opium per year.12 In the 1890s, Governor-Generals Jean-Marie de Lanessan and Paul Doumer began to monopolize the intoxicant industries as part of a broad fiscal reform. The central challenge of all French colonies was balancing their budgets. “The colonies must pay for themselves” was the promise the colonial lobby had made to the nation, and administrators could not rely on Paris to bail them out, if they ran over budget, at least theoretically. At the same time, business interests in the South demanded more substantial infrastructure investments to facilitate trade and enable industrialization, leading the Doumer administration to borrow nearly two hundred million francs in 1898 to finance public works.13 Direct taxes, such as the land tax or the corvée, were collected by village chiefs (the ly truong) and covered only a fraction of the population. Cadastral registers, such as they were, had not been updated since the time of the Nguyễn dynasty. The French had no accurate information on population numbers. Although Doumer attempted to individualize tax collection and increase the tax base, the lack of bureaucratic infrastructure and the reliance on the ly truong made this task nearly impossible.14 From 1882 to 1891, the Tonkin province cost metropolitan France nearly half a billion francs.15 Rationalizing and broadening direct taxation could not solve the French fiscal problem. For de Lanessan and Doumer, drug monopolies were an ­attractive ­alternative with precedents in both Europe and Asia. In France, ­Jean-Baptiste Colbert had established a tax farm monopoly on tobacco in 1674. Similar monopolies existed in Spain, Portugal, and the Hapsburg Empire, and in German and Italian states already in the eighteenth century.16 In the nineteenth century, British and Dutch colonies in Asia established staterun monopolies which could extract more revenue by appropriating profits that had previously gone to license-holders and by eliminating common

36  Aro Velmet forms of tax evasion.17 Monopolies appealed to Doumer, but they had to be justified to politicians in Paris, who saw them as anathema to principles of free trade, and to businessmen in Indochina, who would be excluded from profits made by a state monopoly.18 Arguments defending the monopoly therefore followed an economic calculus, balancing moral, fiscal, and public order concerns. In general, officials deemed other sources of tax revenue more socially disruptive: a gambling tax would, for instance, place the state’s revenues on a “vice even more nefarious than opium,” some officials thought, and one that was not checked by long-standing tradition.19 Since the opium monopoly mostly burdened Chinese consumers, any alternative tax would have to be calibrated similarly in order to avoid upsetting the delicate balance of colonial order. 20 Other arguments focused on the monopoly as a guarantor of p ­ ublic safety. The obvious alternative to a state-run monopoly was to ban opium altogether. This, however, “would not prevent the drug from e­ ntering the colony over the Sino-Tonkinese border.”21 The state was a­ lready struggling to contain the movement of contraband in the ­northern provinces. Complete prohibition would have meant, according to the rapporteurs, “putting a premium on contraband.”22 Indeed, officials generally believed that opium “should not be considered a social evil that one must combat without delay.”23 In fact, they believed that, for the Vietnamese, it could be rather useful. “Many use opium in moderation, which, given the climate and the conditions of existence for the users, presents them with more advantages than obstacles,” wrote the Lt. Governor of Cochinchina in his defense of the monopoly in 1907. 24 Frenchmen, too, reported using the drug to survive the tropical climate, which cohered with the medicinal, anesthetic uses of the drug in France. Yet the uses of opium for medicinal purposes were bound to expand, coming to encompass not only dysentery and fevers, but also general ennui. “I was alone, occasionally smoking, not too much so as to not arrive at reckless joy, but enough to taste of beauty in absolute calm,” suggested the colonial writer Jean Renaud. 25 Of course, opium smoking was a geographically specific practice. Commentators explained its prevalence in the Far East either by h ­ istorical accident, as a natural reaction to the warm and humid climate, which opium smoking could render tolerable, or as the result of the Muslim ban on alcohol, which had made the drug popular among the Ottomans, who then spread it to China and Indochina.26 In principle, there was nothing especially dangerous or peculiar about opium. Jean-Marie de Lanessan, Governor-General of Indochina in the 1880s, called the practice “a habit neither better nor worse than smoking or drinking; it just has the disadvantage of being less easy to satisfy.”27 Albert Calmette, the bacteriologist charged with modernizing the production process, listed opium alongside alcohol and tobacco as products which “render

From Universal Relaxant to Oriental Vice  37 our lives more agreeable, more peaceful. […] They provide us with sleep, with dreams, and sometimes with forgetting.”28 Opium was seen as an Oriental manifestation of the universal desire for stimulation, a “physiological law common to all races, which countless remarkable examples have historically confirmed.”29 Deriving revenue from the vice was no more suspect than the taxation of absinthe, aperitifs, or wines in France. For those who wanted to do away with the monopoly, the founder of the Colonial Institute, Joseph Chailley, suggested, “Gentlemen of the Metropole, you go first [tirez les premiers]!”30 Other commentators emphasized the benefits of opium smoking, which they saw as more civilized and healthful than French vices. Paul Bert reminded that opium was the basis for the production of ­morphine, the most powerful anesthetic at the time, and that many experts ­believed that the drug was first invented by the Chinese, “the most ­ancient ­civilization of the world, to whom popular legend attributes the ­invention of opium as well as gunpowder.”31 Local officials noted that instances of opium abuse in their provinces were no higher than levels of ­alcoholism in France and that opium produced considerable benefits from the perspective of public health and public administration—it rendered intoxicated consumers calm and quiet rather than aggressive and loud, a not insignificant concern for officials struggling to pacify the colony and recruit a docile workforce. Administrators acknowledged that many Frenchmen consumed opium as well. When G ­ overnor-General ­Rosseau outlined his plans to “not have among the functionaries ­alcoholics, ­opiomanes or homosexuals,” the response was allegedly, “So what you want, ­monsieur, is an evacuation.” It was a phrase that many critics in France eventually delighted in quoting back at the colonial administration as proof of its moral failure.32 The government’s cautious sympathy for opium drew on a longer French history of association of the drug with liberation of the imagination on the one hand and privileged resource for knowing Asia on the other hand.33 The works of Nerval, Baudelaire, and Rimbaud inspired dozens of writers to travel to Indochina in search of the exotic visions those poets described in their oeuvre. Often, they described opium smokers as relaxed, their bodies “floating, as though carried by clear, calm and cool waters, detached from the material life with its troubles [ennuis], its difficulties, its heartbreak, misery and inanity”—words that were echoed in the reports of the state’s pro-monopoly representatives.34 Like Baudelaire, French defenders of the practice in Indochina were aware of the risks of opiomania but also saw how “Opium the infinite enlarges/And lengthens all that is past measure/It deepens time, and digs its treasure/With sad, black raptures it o’ercharges/The soul, and surfeits it with pleasure.”35 In this climate, regulating the opium monopoly, while dismissing prohibition, was easy to justify. The monopoly did not differ in principle from existing taxes on alcohol in France. While the substance’s history

38  Aro Velmet and effects were geographically specific, they were not seen as racially specific. Opium held similar promises—and dangers—for Frenchmen, Vietnamese, and Chinese alike. Moreover, the French could boast of having top scientists at the Pasteur Institute of Saigon applying the latest bacteriological knowledge to rationalizing the production of chandoo, making it more hygienic, reducing its noxious side effects, and rendering the substance more easily controlled. 36 Properly managed, one writer stated, “the pleasures of opium could become practically harmless.”37 Over the course of the 1890s, the Société Fermière, a French company run by a former customs agent, gradually acquired monopoly rights over production in all the regions of Indochina, bringing the opium industry completely under French control.

The Age of Prohibition Dawns While the state in Indochina was getting into the opium business, other states were looking to get out. The United States, in particular, was concerned about the social and political effects of the opium trade. Migrant laborers from China had brought opium smoking to California in the mid-nineteenth century, raising the ire of religious authorities and moral reformers. After the Civil War, opium smoking began to increase among white Americans, either due to social mixing with Chinese communities or through the use of medical opiates as gateway drugs. On the West Coast, opium acquired a reputation as a foreign drug, while on the East Coast, it became the drug of the poor and the licentious, commonly associated with the underworld.38 San Francisco and Virginia City passed the first anti-opium laws penalizing smoking in 1875 and 1876, and Congress first attempted passing national legislation in 1880. Though supported by evangelicals and progressives, these efforts either failed or remained unenforced.39 But at the turn of the century, Americans could also look abroad. After the Spanish-American war, the United States took control of the Philippines and inherited with it the opium monopoly first established by the Spanish, serving over 700,000 Chinese migrants. The monopoly was almost immediately repudiated by American officials and citizens alike. The International Reform Bureau, a missionary organization, proposed prohibiting alcohol and opium use for “the child races which civilised nations are essaying to Christianise.”40 Theodore Roosevelt’s administration quickly embraced this position and moved to ban drug consumption for “uncivilised elements” in 1902. Suppressing the opium monopoly did little to curb consumption, however, since contrabandists were more than capable of stepping up to the plate. The solution, Charles Henry Brent, chair of the presidential opium commission and Episcopalian Bishop of Manila, surmised, was to organize an international movement against the drug trade.41

From Universal Relaxant to Oriental Vice  39 The United States found powerful allies in China and Britain. ­Britain, which had fought two wars with China over the right to export Indian opium to the Celestial Empire, was now seeking to crack down on the trade, as moral reformers and a Liberal government in London put pressure on imperialists and traders. In China, Confucian Han scholars, seeking to win back influence from the reigning Manchu, began to link opium consumption with military defeat and advocate for prohibition. In the wake of Chinese losses in the two Opium wars, in the ­Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, and the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, the integrity of the Empire appeared weak. After decades of stagnation under the ­Manchu, China needed reform, and modernization-minded Qing elites began with curtailing “backwards” cultural practices like foot-binding and opium. They, too, discovered that international trade hampered the success of their policies.42 Largely on the initiative of these three powers, an international drug conference was convened in Shanghai in 1909.43 The Shanghai conference delivered a strongly worded report encouraging participating governments to condemn non-medicinal opium use to “prohibition or careful regulation,” but little in the way of actual commitments.44 While metropolitan governments, in Britain, France, and elsewhere, were in principle sympathetic to curtailing the opium trade, the conference delegations were dominated by colonial officials, who had no interest in losing one of their principal sources of revenue. The British demanded that participating countries conduct internal studies charting the extent of opium and morphine abuse. The French adopted a wait-and-see approach, assuming that the greatest opium trader in the region, China, would not be able to deliver on its promise of prohibition, rendering any conclusion of the convention dead on arrival.45 Seeing that the Great Powers were in no hurry to implement the recommendations of the convention, American leaders quickly proposed another conference, this time in The Hague. French officials considered their strategies, including abstaining from the conference, but as the tides of international opinion were turning, the Foreign Ministry concluded that if “England and China agreed to proceed with the suppression of opium cultivation, we would have to bear the consequence exactly as if we had signed the treaty, and we would bear the same costs without having the moral benefit of participating in this enterprise of improving hygiene that stands before us.”46 With the participation of the British and French delegations, the Hague conference delivered a promise to phase out opium while limiting and regulating the use of opiates in medicine.47 Support for prohibition was growing within metropolitan France as well. Historically, opiate use in France had been the domain of the middle and upper classes, particularly women and doctors who got acquainted with the drug as a medical product. This changed with the colonization of Indochina and the proliferation of recreational opiates in

40  Aro Velmet the military. By the 1910s, newspapers in the Metropole were publishing articles with headlines like “a national threat,” “a scandalous monopoly,” and “a poison for victors and defeated alike.”48 According to one polemic from 1913, Toulon, the site of the French navy, counted no less than 163 opium dens, with others sprouting across the port towns of Cherbourg, Rochefort, Marseilles, Nice, and elsewhere.49 “Did we acquire colonies so that they would poison us?” asked one French deputy. 50 Commentators listed in stark terms the terrible effects of “opiomania.” Opium, like alcohol, weakened the body and caused tuberculosis, and it threatened those with “wrecked brains and weak constitutions” as well as those deceived by the constant “need for new sensations” and “underground literature.”51 Anti-opium discourse elevated opium smoking to a national danger by its association with the army. Open and clandestine consumption in the French military posed a threat to national security, the moral health of the military (already set into question by the Dreyfus Affair), and the quality of the French citizenry writ large. It was a literal danger: soldiers in an opium haze might forget themselves in drug-induced daydreams when they were supposed to be ever-vigilant on their posts. 52 “What kinds of mistakes might the commander of a naval unit make in this state of enfeebling hallucination?” asked one commentator.53 It was a danger to honor: under the pretext of “the spleen and interminable exile of long colonial missions,” soldiers at opium dens were tempted not only by the drug itself but also by “women with exotic names,” resulting in “a loss of reputation, of honor, of money, of entire careers.”54 Finally, opium represented the wider crisis of the French military: some critics reminded readers of “the Jewish officer Ullmo, a kinsman of Alfred ­Dreyfus, who was convicted of espionage in Toulon,” who claimed to have committed his crimes under the spell of opium. 55 In this light, the emphasis on the “foreign” character of the drug took on special meaning, symbolizing yet another threat to the integrity of the military. 56 Opium deprived Republican citizen-soldiers of their rationality and prevented them from working towards the public good, instead tempting them to indulge in private vices. Opium became, for many in the Metropole, a danger to “French sources of vitality.”57 International and national criticisms reinforced each other. ­Commentators in the Metropole pointed to the Shanghai and Hague conferences, asking why France could not follow the example set by ­Japan, China, and the United States in taking steps towards s­ uppressing the opium monopoly. 58 Yet Indochinese administrators remained ­intransigent. The colonial budget relied on opium revenues, and the ­concessions made to The Hague were largely cosmetic, involving a ban on opium cultivation (which, in Indochina, was non-existent), and imports from China (which were largely illegal and difficult to enforce). 59 The opium monopoly remained in place.

From Universal Relaxant to Oriental Vice  41

Making Anti-Narcotic Imperialism French legislators in the Metropole and in Indochina were faced with a contradiction between rising anti-narcotic discourse, and the opium monopoly propped up by pragmatic arguments about fiscal need and claims about the benign nature of opiomania. Colonial administrators were not deaf to metropolitan calls for reform, realizing that they needed domestic support in negotiating at international conferences. References to the “once again vigorously surging […] movement against opiomania in the Metropole, caused by the ravages the drug is causing in France in some maritime or colonial milieux” abound in official ­correspondence.60 ­Defenders of the monopoly needed new arguments. In the wake of the Shanghai and Hague conferences, anti-narcotic imperialism was fully articulated. Officials commissioned two extensive reports, which charted the extent and severity of opium use: the Hardouin report of 1907 and the Brenier report of 1911. These reports developed racialized ideas about the severity and consequences of opium use, allowing officials to limit opium bans to French officials and indigenous intermediaries, while maintaining the monopoly which mostly serviced Chinese customers. The reports reproduced old ideas about the economic importance of the monopoly, while developing a new language that portrayed “Orientals” as particularly accustomed to opium use. Indeed, these and subsequent reports added a new justification for French rule in Indochina: the opium habit of South and Southeast Asians made visible their introverted and docile constitution, while the French preference for extravert drugs, namely wine, only showed their fitness for military and economic domination. Resurrecting ideas of opium as a privileged site for “knowing Asia,” officials described opium smoking as an “Oriental vice.” “The Chinese have enjoyed the drug for many years, and the race has not degenerated,” wrote one analyst. “Centuries of experience” had taught the Chinese to moderate their use, wrote another.61 Rich Chinese merchants were seen as particularly sophisticated, many of them smoking three to four times a day without “any discernible physical or intellectual effects.”62 While limiting opium consumption for Europeans was a solid public health measure, for “people that have used opium since time immemorial […] such measures would be both ineffective and bad politics.”63 The long history of opium smoking made the drug difficult to eradicate, rapporteurs concluded. Over centuries, Chinese and Vietnamese consumers were thought to have built up social defense mechanisms and biological tolerance that moderated the ill effects of the drug. “Perhaps,” one official speculated, “opium is to a degree necessary for the physiology of some yellow races.”64 The corollary to the argument was that prohibition would prove an unreasonable burden. “The Annamite is not a slave to the Black Idol, he smokes occasionally during celebrations or

42  Aro Velmet when enfeebled by an illness […] In most cases, overly restraining or prohibiting opium use would go against ingrained habits, anchored in mores cultivated over a hundred generations, it would remove from the native medicine cabinet often the best and most active drug. […] A prohibition would constitute a true act of inhumanity.”65 The contrast between well-adjusted Oriental users and inexperienced European users became particularly important for officials. Reports portrayed European users as “neophytes” who lacked the experience of controlling their passions, and for whom opium was a slippery slope to worse vices. For Europeans, “the boredom of the brousse,” the lack of a social and sexual life created the temptation to turn to opium, and from there “to morphinomania and cocainomania.”66 Dreams induced by smoking in Frenchmen were not pleasant, but induced “­nightmares.”67 The director of the Indochinese customs board, in 1936, described the difference in the following manner: “The Asian smokes opium because he finds this sort of intoxication appropriate to his taste for the negative joys of contemplative and dreamful life. The European smokes because of a physiological need, following physical distress, or also following moral distress, ennui, intellectual torpor.”68 Opium ­complemented ­Oriental character and culture, while pushing Frenchmen to indulge in their worst excesses. The apparent effects of opium use reinforced the relationship between Europeans as military conquerors and Asians as docile laborers. Rapporteurs noted that the majority of opium smokers in Indochina were Chinese coolies in Cholon, a number of the Chinese upper classes, and very few Vietnamese.69 The “national poison of the Chinese” ­rendered them “active workers, excellent laborers, well informed tradesmen, industrious and prolific.”70 Here, officials drew on old stereotypes about the effects tropical climate had on mental constitution, and discourses of Chinese deficiency which portrayed opium smoking as a ­sophisticated, ancient, but also outdated and constricting habit.71 As before, in ­moderate ­quantities, opium smoking was seen to help those “with a very active lifestyle or those doing hard manual labor, the coolies at the rice fields, at sawmills, and other industries populated largely by the C ­ hinese.”72 Like alcohol in Europe, it was seen as particularly useful for the working class, enabling them to bear the weight of their labor.73 It helped highlanders to “escape fevers and dangers brought by the mountain waters.”74 And while the abuse of opium was seen to lead to intellectual and physical torpor, the fact that only the middle and upper classes could afford the expensive drug soothed French concerns about the potential productive costs of opium usage. The hierarchy between French and Oriental consumers was reinforced by a teleology which correlated diminishing opium use with European civilization. Many officials argued that a better alternative to prohibition would be to allow the development of the colonies to run its course,

From Universal Relaxant to Oriental Vice  43 and opiomania, a relic of quieter times, would disappear by itself. In the words of one administrator: “The passion for opium in Tonkin is in decline. Ambition, the necessities for the fight of life, the desire to appear converted to Western ideas has distanced young educated people from the habit.”75 Civilizing activities, such as adopting proper rules of hygiene, participation in organized sports, literature, cinema, and general education, were all seen as means for combating opiomania.76 The path of the civilizing process itself led away from opium and towards more refined, and less noxious cultural pursuits. Predictably, anti-opium measures in Indochina remained partial and were largely directed against the colonizers, rather than the colonized. In 1907, officials banned opium smoking for functionaries and stopped issuing new licenses for opium dens, although existing dens could remain open. In 1915 and 1916, as the Hague convention was being put into effect, the price of monopoly opium was increased 20% in certain regions, and sales quotas were gradually lowered in regions deemed less likely to be serviced by contraband. And yet the monopoly itself persisted, delivering over ten million piastres, a quarter of the general budget to the Indochinese Union in the 1920s.77 Here, as elsewhere, prohibition had a politics: banning opium meant engaging in anti-narcotic imperialism, keeping the drug from the civilized Frenchmen while permitting it to help line their coffers with subaltern money.

Conclusion Of course, racialized arguments about opium use existed before the era of International Conventions, nor did everyone accept anti-narcotic imperialism and the Orientalized monopoly in the decades after The Hague. Catholics, most notably, continued to speak out against the hypocrisy of “offering others a vice that one repudiates with oneself.”78 The aim of this chapter has not been to provide a comprehensive survey of opium discourse in colonial Indochina, but rather to show how, in response to local, metropolitan, and international pressures, French officials and their experts worked out a new, racialized logic that justified maintaining the monopoly for Oriental consumers in particular, and distinctions of imperial civilization in general. The varieties of reports, surveys, and analyses produced in preparation for international conferences should be seen not as attempts to chart a pre-existing reality of opium use, but rather as strategic instruments that constructed a set of assumptions allowing the French to balance moral, economic, and imperial concerns in a way that appeased both international regulators at The Hague, moral critics in France, and the needs of the Indochinese budget. The Hardouin and Brenier reports did not collect specific data on opium usage (though, of course, data, too, has politics), but relied, rather, on the impressions of low-level

44  Aro Velmet administrators, prefects, and residents as sources of objective knowledge. These arguments, once aggregated, made their way into official correspondence, diplomatic language, and metastudies which cited the reports as authoritative even decades down the line. The reproduction of expert knowledge therefore erased the origins of these arguments in the French struggle to argue for the survival of the opium monopoly in the anti-narcotic moment of the 1910s and rendered them as objective descriptions of Indochinese reality. The case of anti-narcotic imperialism highlights a widely studied feature of French colonialism: the tension between a universalism and racialized particularism woven into the very fabric of the civilizing ­mission.79 Rather than opposing “theory” and “practice,” or describing a fundamental contradiction within the discourse of the civilizing mission, I propose that anti-narcotic imperialism was a flexible construct, owing to the multiplicity of drug discourses circulating in metropolitan France and on the international stage. Opium was a mind-expanding intellectual experience, a privileged way of knowing Asia, but also an inward looking and reality-consuming danger, and a vice fit for a specifically Oriental constitution and culture. All these arguments circulated in late nineteenth-century France and could be mobilized to justify French policy. When international and colonial interests intertwined, race was the tool with which this Gordian knot could be untangled.

Notes 1 Howard L. Padwa, Social Poison: The Culture and Politics of Opiate ­C ontrol in Britain and France, 1821–1926 (Baltimore, MD: Johns ­Hopkins University Press, 2012), 4; David T. Courtwright, Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 179–86; William B. McAllister, Drug Diplomacy in the ­Twentieth Century: An International History (London: Routledge, 2000), 16–35; James H. Mills, Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade and Prohibition, 1800–1928 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). David Courtwright has highlighted the inadequacy of the term ‘prohibition’ for characterizing the modern drugs regime, yet the term continues to have purchase. “The Difference a Word Makes: A Short History of Prohibition,” Addiction 105, no. 7 (2010), 1174–5. All translations are by the author. 2 For an overview of the alcohol monopoly, see Gerard Sasges, “Contraband, Capital, and the Colonial State: The Alcohol Monopoly in Northern Viet Nam, 1897–1933,” PhD diss., University of California Berkeley, 2006; for overviews of the opium monopoly, see Philippe le Failler, Monopole et prohibition de l’opium en Indochine: Le pilori des chimères (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001); Yvette Bision, “Le monopole des stupéfiants,” PhD diss., Université de Paris X-Nanterre, 1993. 3 On the civilizing mission, see Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The ­Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (­Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997). 4 Paul C. Winther, Anglo-European Science and the Rhetoric of Empire: Malaria, Opium, and British Rule in India, 1756–1895 (Lanham, MD:

From Universal Relaxant to Oriental Vice  45 Lexington Books, 2003); David Arnold, Toxic Histories: Poison and Pollution in Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 5 I draw here on Howard Padwa’s concept of anti-narcotic nationalism. Padwa, Social Poison, 7–8. 6 Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, “Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda,” in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 1–57. 7 Pierre Brocheux and Daniel Hémery, Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858–1954 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 93. 8 Bernard-Marcel Peyrouton, Étude sur les monopoles en Indo-Chine. Thèse pour le doctorat (Paris: Émile Larose, 1913), 140–4; Le Thanh Khoi, Le ­Viet-Nam: Histoire et Civilisation (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1955), 369. 9 Albert Calmette, “De quelques industries de Cochinchine et des ­perfectionnements scientifiques a y introduire,” Bulletin de la ­Société de ­Géographie commerciale 24 (November 1894), 655; Chantal Descours-­ Gatin, Quand l’opium financait la colonisation de l­’Indochine: ­L’Élaboration de la régie générale de l’opium (1860 a 1914) (Paris: ­l’Harmattan, 1992), 144–7. 10 Lauret, “Monopoles de l’Indochine et leur remplacement,” 8–11, INDO GGI 8456, Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer (ANOM), Aix-en-Provence, France. 11 Lauret, “Monopoles de l’Indochine et leur remplacement,” 12, INDO GGI 8456, ANOM; Rapports et Proces-Verbaux du Comité International de l’Opium (Shanghai, 1909), 124 INDO GGI 8769, ANOM; Georges Geoffray, Reglementation des régies Indochinoises. Tome premier. Opium, Alcools, Sels (Haiphong: Imprimerie commerciale du Colon Francais, 1936). 12 “Étude sur la consommation de l’opium en Cochinchine,” INDO GGI 42996, ANOM. 13 Peyrouton, Étude sur les Monopoles, 76–77; Lauret, Report to the Gov. Gen., “Monopoles en Indo-Chine et leur remplacements” published in 1909, 75, INDO GGI 8456, ANOM. 14 Brocheux and Hémery, Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 78–80, 91–92. 15 Ibid., 80. 16 Jacob M. Price, “Tobacco Use and Tobacco Taxation: A Battle of Interests in Early Modern Europe,” Consuming Habits: Drugs in History and Anthropology, eds. Jordan Goodman, Paul Lovejoy, and Andrew Sherratt (London: Routledge, 1995), 167–8. 17 Courtwright, Forces of Habit, 152–5. 18 For a biographical sketch of Doumer, who went from a provincial ­working class mathematics teacher to the Chamber of Deputies, to the ­governor-general of Indochina, and, eventually, to become the president of France, see Amaury Lorin, Paul Doumer, governeur général de l’lndochine (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004). 19 Resident of Chia-Thien, report to the Resident Superior of Annam, 31 Aug. 1907, GGI 42994, ANOM. 20 Lt. Gov of Cochinchina to the Gov. Gen. of Indochina, 7 Feb. 1908, GGI 42996, ANOM. 21 Pièces relatives au projet de rachat du monopole des alcools, de l’opium et du sel en Indohchine par l’administration 1909–1910, 68, GGI 8456, ANOM. 22 Pièces relatives au projet de rachat du monopole des alcools, de l’opium et du sel en Indohchine par l’administration 1909–1910, 69, GGI 8456, ANOM. 23 Lt. Gov of Cochinchina to the Gov. Gen. of Indochina, 7 Feb. 1908, GGI 42996, ANOM.

46  Aro Velmet 24 Lt. Gov of Cochinchina to the Gov. Gen. of Indochina, 7 Feb. 1908, GGI 42996, ANOM. 25 Jean Renaud, Mirages d’exil (Paris: Grasset, 1914), 131. 26 René De Saint-Mathurin, La Ferme de l’Opium au Tonkin, Mémoire prénsenté a la Commission extraparlementaire (Paris: L. Woestendieck, 1896), 1. 27 Jean-Louis de Lanessan, L’Expansion coloniale de la France (Paris: F. ­A lcan, 1886), 581. St-Mathurin, owner of the opium monopoly, regularly compared opium to tobacco use in France. Saint-Mathurin, Ferme de l’Opium a Tonkin, 1. 28 Albert Calmette, “De quelques industries de Cochinchine,” 654. 29 Gide, l’Opium, 7. 30 Joseph Chailley, La Revue Indigène, 30 Dec. 1907, 491. 31 Gide, l’Opium, 105. 32 Richard Millant, La Drogue: Fumeurs et mangeurs d’Opium (Paris: René Roger, 1910), 296; see also quotations in “L’Opium,” Paris-Journal, 23 April 1913, FP 9 PA 10, ANOM. 33 See Chantal Descours-Gatin, “Opium et finances coloniales: la formation de la régie générale de l’opium en Indochine (1860–1914),” PhD diss., Université de Paris VII, 1987. 34 Jean Ricquebourg, La Terre du dragon (Paris: E. Sansot, 1907). 35 Charles Baudelaire, “The Poison,” Poems of Baudelaire, trans. Roy ­Campbell (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952). 36 On Albert Calmette’s experimentation with opium fermentation, see “Des diverses préparations de l’Opium à la bouillerie de Saigon, rapport au ­Gouverneur général de l’Indochine,” 1898, GouGoch, IB.29/017, V ­ ietnamese National Archives II (VNA-II), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. 37 Albert de Pouvoirville, L’Esprit des races jaunes: Sept éléments d’homme et la pathogénie Chinoise (Paris: Chamuel, 1895). 38 David Courtwright, Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 65–77. 39 Courtwright, Dark Paradise, 78; for cocaine see Joseph F. Spillane, ­“Making a Modern Drug: The Manufacture, Sale, and Control of Cocaine in the United States, 1880–1920,” in Cocaine: Global Histories, ed. Paul ­Gootenberg (London: Routledge, 2001), 34–36. 40 Reverend Wilbur Crafts, cited in Thomas Dormandy, Opium: Reality’s Dark Dream (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 202. 41 Dormandy, Opium, 203–5. 42 Frank Dikötter et al., Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China ­(London: Hurst and Company, 2004), 104–11. 43 On the International Opium Conventions, see David F. Musto, The ­American Disease: Origins of Narcotics Control (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973), 24–53; Joy Mott and Philip Bean, “The Development of Drug Control in Britain,” in The Control of Drugs and Drug Users: Reason or Reaction? ed. Ross Coomber (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998), 31–48; Gregory Blue, “Opium for China: The British Connection,” in Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839–1952, eds. Timothy Brook and Bob Tadashi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 31–54. 4 4 Rapports et Procés-Verbaux du Comité International de l’Opium ­(Shanghai, 1909), 84, INDO GGI 8679, ANOM. 45 In particular, Gov. Gen. of Indochina to Messrs. Brenier and Cornillon, delegates at the Shanghai conference, 27 Feb 1909, INDO GGI 43070, ANOM. 46 Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Minister of the Colonies, 4 Nov. 1910, INDO GGI 43064, ANOM.

From Universal Relaxant to Oriental Vice  47 47 Convention International de l’Opium a la Haye, 1911–1912, INDO GGI 43064, ANOM. 48 Le Matin, 22 April 1913; Le Petit Journal, 24 April 1913; La Bataille ­Syndicaliste, 4 May 1913, FP 9 PA 10, ANOM. 49 “Un peril national,” Le Matin, 22 April 1913, FP 9 PA 10, ANOM. 50 “Les ravages de l’opium dans la marine,” Le Petit Journal, 24 April 1913, FP 9 PA 10, ANOM. 51 “L’Opium en Indochine,” Les Affaires Coloniales, 1 March 1913, FP 9 PA 10, ANOM. 52 “Contre l’opium,” La France, 30 April 1913, FP 9 PA 10, ANOM. 53 “Les fumeries d’opium au Parlement,” La Plus Grande France, 15 May 1913, FP 9 PA 10, ANOM. 54 “L’Opium: Réponse à M. Claude Farrere,” Le Matin, 13 May 1913, FP 9 PA 10, ANOM. 55 “La question de l’opium,” La Libre Parole, 16 May 1913, FP 9 PA 10, ANOM. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid.; For opium as a clandestine vice, see “Comment se pratique le commerce de l’opium,” Le Matin, 23 April 1913, FP 9 PA 10, ANOM. 58 “Revue de la presse coloniale et métropolitaine,” La Presse Coloniale, 29 April 1913; “L’Opium,” Paris-Journal, 23 April 1913; “Une Conférence Internationale de l’Opium,” La Presse Coloniale, 12 July 1913, FP 9 PA 10, ANOM. 59 Official telegram, Gov. Gen. of Indochina to the Ministry of the Colonies, 2 Dec. 1911, INDO GGI 1430, ANOM. 60 Letter of the Governor-General to the Résident superieur of Tonkin, h ­ ighlighting the “once again vigorously surging […] movement against ­opiomania in the Metropole thanks to the ravages the drug is causing in France, in some maritime or colonial milieux.” 3 October. 1913, INDO GGI 43007, ANOM. 61 Letter of the Inspecteur des Services Civils to the Lt. Gov. of Cochinchina, 14 Dec. 1907, INDO GGI 42996; “Politique indochinoise de l’opium,” ­Director of the Douanes & Régies to the Governor General, July 1922, INDO GGI 43070, ANOM. 62 “Rapport présenté par M. Hardoin au nom de la Commission chargée de la question de l’opium en Indochine, 1908,” INDO GGI 43003, ANOM. 63 Letter of the Governor-General to the Resident Superior of Tonkin, 3 Oct. 1913, INDO GGI 43007, ANOM. 64 Dir des Douanes et Régies to Gov. Gen. De l’Indochine, “L’Opium—­ Question d’Ordre International—Au regard de la Société des Nations,” 13 Sept. 1922, GGI 43070, ANOM. 65 Dir des Douanes et Régies to Gov. Gen. De l’Indochine, “L’Opium—­ question d’ordre international—au regard de la Société des Nations,” 13 Sept. 1922, GGI 43070, ANOM. 66 Séverin Abbatucci, Les Prisonniers de l’opium (Paris: Fournier, 1934), 34 67 Ibid., 35. 68 Geoffray, Réglementation des régies Indochinoises. Tome premier. Opium, Alcools, Sels, 22, see also Abbatucci, Les Prisonniers de l’opium, 14. 69 Indochinese delegates at the Shanghai conference, report, 18 Nov. 1908, INDO GGI 43070, ANOM. 70 Gov. Gen of Indochina to Minister of the Colonies, 7. Oct 1921, INDO GGI 43070, ANOM. 71 For worries about the ennervating climate of the tropics, see Warwick Anderson, Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race and Hygiene in the Philippines (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 130–56; Eric Jennings, Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Climatology,

48  Aro Velmet

72 73 74 75 76

77 78 79

and French Colonial Spas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); for the Chinese deficiency argument, see Ruth Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). Hardouin report, 1908, INDO GGI 43003, ANOM. Lt. Gov of Cochinchina to the Gov. Gen. of Indochina, 7 Feb. 1908, GGI 42996, ANOM. Extrait du rapport politique par le Resident de Bac Kan, May 1901, GGI 8510, ANOM. Hardouin report, 1908, INDO GGI 43003, ANOM. Examen par les Administrations et Service indochinois des vingt suggestions présentées dans la conclusion du tome 1er du Rapport de la Commission d’Enquete de la Société des Nations sur le controle de l’opium a fumer en Extreme-Orient, 10 Sept 1931, INDO GGI 43025, ANOM. Chantal Descours-Gatin, Quand l’opium financait la colonisation de l’­ Indochine: L’Élaboration de la régie générale de l’opium (1860 a 1914) (Paris: l’Harmattan, 1992), 223. “Contre l’opium!” La Tribune Indochinoise, 4 Dec. 1929, INDO GGI 42885, ANOM. These tensions have been explored in Conklin, A Mission to Civilize; James Patrick, Daughton, An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Fanny Colonna, “Educating Conformity in French Colonial Algeria,” Tensions of Empire 346–70.

Bibliography Archives Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence, France. (ANOM) Vietnamese National Archives II, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. (VNA-II) Abbatucci, Séverin. Les Prisonniers de l’opium. Paris: Fournier, 1934.

Primary Sources Baudelaire, Charles. Poems of Baudelaire. Translated by Roy Campbell. New York: Pantheon Books, 1952. Calmette, Albert. “De quelques industries de Cochinchine et des perfectionnements scientifiques a y introduire.” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie commerciale. 24 (November 1894): 654–9. de Lanessan, Jean Louis. L’Expansion coloniale de la France. Paris: F. Alcan, 1886. de Pouvoirville, Albert. L’Esprit des races jaunes: sept éléments d’homme et la pathogénie chinoise. Paris: Chamuel, 1895. De Saint-Mathurin, René. La Ferme de l’opium au Tonkin, Mémoire présenté à la commission extraparlementaire. Paris: L. Woestendieck, 1896. Geoffray, Georges. Règlementation des régies Indochinoises. Tome premier. Opium, Alcools, Sels. Haiphong: Imprimerie commerciale du Colon ­Francais, 1936. Peyrouton, Bernard-Marcel. Étude sur les monopoles en Indo-Chine. Paris: Émile Larose, 1913. Renaud, Jean. Mirages d’exil. Paris: grasset, 1914. Ricquebourg, Jean. La Terre du dragon. Paris: e. Sansot, 1907.

From Universal Relaxant to Oriental Vice  49 Secondary Sources Anderson, Warwick. Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race and Hygiene in the Philippines. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Arnold, David. Toxic Histories: Poison and Pollution in Modern India. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Bision, Yvette. “Le monopole des stupéfiants.” PhD diss., Université de Paris X-Nanterre, 1993. Brocheux, Pierre, and Daniel Héméry. Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858–1954. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Brook, Timothy, and Bob Tadashi, eds. Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839–1952. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Conklin, Alice. A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Coomber, Ross, ed. The Control of Drugs and Drug Users: Reason or Reaction? Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998. Cooper, Frederick, and Ann Laura Stoler. Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Courtwright, David T. Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in ­A merica. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. ———. “The Difference a Word Makes: A Short History of Prohibition.” Addiction 105, no. 7 (2010): 1174–5. ———. Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Daughton, James Patrick. An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880–1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Descours-Gatin, Chantal. “Opium et finances coloniales: la formation de la régie générale de l’opium en Indochine (1860–1914).” PhD diss., Université de Paris VII, 1987. ———. Quand l’opium financait la colonisation de l’Indochine: L’élaboration de la régie générale de l’opium (1860 à 1914). Paris: l’Harmattan, 1992. Dikötter, Frank, Lars Peter Laamann, and Xun Zhou. Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China. London: Hurst and Company, 2004. Dormandy, Thomas. Opium: Reality’s Dark Dream. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. Goodman, Jordan, Paul Lovejoy, and Andrew Sherratt, eds. Consuming Habits: Drugs in History and Anthropology. London: Routledge, 1995. Gootenberg, Paul, ed. Cocaine: Global Histories. London: Routledge, 2001. Jennings, Eric. Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Climatology, and French Colonial Spas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Khoi, Le Thanh. Le Viet-Nam: Histoire et Civilisation. Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1955. Le Faillier, Philippe. Monopole et prohibition de l’opium en Indochine: Le ­pilori des chimères. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001. Lorin, Amaury. Paul Doumer, governeur général de l’lndochine. Paris: ­L’Harmattan, 2004. McAllister, William B. Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century: An International History. London: Routledge, 2000.

50  Aro Velmet Millant, Richard. La Drogue: fumeurs et mangeurs d’opium. Paris: René Roger, 1910. Musto, David F. The American Disease: Origins of Narcotics Control. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973. Padwa, Howard L. Social Poison: The Culture and Politics of Opiate Control in Britain and France, 1821–1926. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. Rogaski, Ruth. Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in ­Treaty-Port China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Sasges, Gerard. “Contraband, Capital, and the Colonial State: The Alcohol ­Monopoly in Northern Viet Nam, 1897–1933.” PhD diss., University of ­California Berkeley, 2006. Winther, Paul C. Anglo-European Science and the Rhetoric of Empire: ­M alaria, Opium, and British Rule in India, 1756–1895. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003.

3 A Medicine for the Soul Morphine and Prohibition in the French Cultural Imagination, 1870–1940 Susannah Wilson Introduction Opium has historically occupied a privileged place in the European Romantic imagination through its association with artists and writers who celebrated the psychoactive effects of hashish and opium—from Charles Baudelaire’s and Thomas De Quincey’s personal narratives to the infamous experiments of the Parisian “Club des Hashischins” in the 1840s.1 The development of the hypodermic syringe in the early 1850s brought opium’s derivative, morphine, into general medical use later in the century. 2 Morphine’s “heyday” as a mainstream drug in France can be situated between the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, when it was widely used to ease the pain of the wounded and dying, and the early twentieth century, when, following the 1912 Hague Convention, the French government imposed a separate regime of control in the form of the Law of 12 July 1916.3 Between these dates, access to morphine was controlled by loose regulations that were designed to restrict access to poisons. Most morphine users were introduced to the drug by doctors, and medical prescriptions could be used repeatedly by patients and exploited by unscrupulous pharmacists.4 In the 1870s, doctors generally did not consider morphine to be a problematic substance; in the two decades that followed, however, this perception changed, and m ­ orphine developed a rich and complex cultural profile. 5 The lines between licit and illicit use became blurred, with doctors initially distinguishing between “innocent” iatrogenic users, often termed “morphinistes” or “morphinisés,” and “guilty” luxurious users, more commonly known as “morphinomanes.”6 By the 1890s, however, prolonged use beyond temporary medical necessity was generally considered to be a sign of underlying moral weakness.7 Nineteenth-century industrial processing had brought changes to the way in which intoxicating substances were produced and imagined. Substances considered “natural” and therefore intrinsically “good” in their less refined states—such as opium, wine, and beer—came to be conceptually opposed to corrupting, “industrial” substances, such as ether, morphine, and pure alcohols.8 This natural/artificial dichotomy offered

52  Susannah Wilson a means of attaching intrinsic meaning to the ritual, social, and legal limits placed upon traditional intoxicants. The rise of morphine also coincided with a paradigm shift away from the Romantic celebration of uncontrolled, dream-like states of mind, towards a renewed preoccupation with self-mastery, rationality, and the masculine cult of the will within the European cultural elite.9 The morphine “epidemic” was therefore a discrete, time-bound, and observable phenomenon that confronted Republican France with a disturbing vision of itself, and which troubled the politics of good citizenship and personal agency.10 Morphine use generated observational narratives as it spread through polite society and the medical world, and this made the ground fertile for changes in public opinion and for official acts of prohibition. It is the purpose of this chapter to examine some of these narratives. Virginia Berridge has argued that cultural shifts and the regulation of drugs are intertwined: “[I]ncreased regulation […] impacts on culture and helps to change it; and that cultural change in turn opens the door for further regulation. It is an iterative process.”11 In France, the unrestricted supply of the drug created a situation in which morphine injecting became more visible in and disruptive to public and private life. This chapter considers a range of documents that reflect and respond to elements of this emergent morphine subculture; it demonstrates that French people expressed an especially high level of concern with morphine use on account of its visibility, availability, and the conflict between the drug’s effects and ideas about model Republican citizenship. Specific controls on narcotics (stupéfiants) in France were introduced during the First World War, after the 1914 Harrison Act in the US and alongside the 1916 amendment to the Defence of the Realm Act in ­Britain,12 partly in response to the spread of drug use in the armed forces that the international prohibitionist apparatus sought to address.13 But in France, these restrictions were also supported by a negative shift in public opinion away from celebrating “artificial paradises” that would hold until the countercultural movements of the 1960s.14 The French believed that the enemy was deliberately distributing morphine, dubbed the “poison boche,” in order to weaken the nation,15 and they were acutely sensitive to any threat to the stability of the Third Republic and the nation’s military might. Historians of psychoactive substance use and drug regulation in France have observed, first, that morphine injecting was visibly on the increase in the last decades of the nineteenth century.16 France in 1916 differed from Great Britain, whose pragmatic maintenance-­substitution system was based on the perception that opiate abuse was a limited and ­diminishing problem. Second, it has been argued that France’s ­draconian legal ­apparatus—under which substitution treatments would be introduced very late—was driven as much by powerful fantasies linked to the reductive stereotype of the toxicomane, the medical term

A Medicine for the Soul  53 for “drug addict” most enthusiastically promoted by the French press, as by the complex, ­everyday realities of morphine and heroin use.17 Third, French citizens were also expected to direct their efforts towards the common good and to exhibit control over the “passions”: opiate use compromised the ­masculine ideal of autonomy and self-­control, and—­associated with sensuality and excess—was perceived to be a threat to the strength of Republican values.18 This chapter considers three examples of the cultural framing and imagining of morphine use in France in order to describe the movements of public opinion which helped to underpin the 1916 French legislation. First, I consider morphine abuse where it was first observed: within the medical profession. I analyze doctors’ observations published in medical treatises alongside fictional accounts of addiction within their ranks in the context of beliefs about masculinity and the cult of the will. Second, I look at the figure of “la morphinée,” or the depraved female addict, in fin-de-siècle art, literature, and the press, in the context of cultural ­commonplaces relating to feminine evil, prostitution, emancipated women, and female sexuality. Finally, I consider the twentieth-century backlash against drug restrictions articulated by two important countercultural critics and unrepentant heroin users, Antonin Artaud and Roger Gilbert-Lecomte.

Morphine, Masculinity, and the Medical Profession In 1947, medical historian Norman Howard-Jones argued that the medical profession had been “extraordinarily slow” to recognize the dangers of morphine addiction in the late nineteenth century, despite being aware of the problem of opium-eating, because “many physicians did not care to admit their own addiction.”19 The majority of medical treatises on the morphine habit were written after 1885 by Parisian alienist doctors with some connection to the Salpêtrière hospital, one of the city’s principal public asylums. Many of the doctors who studied “morphinomania” were themselves addicts, or had previously been, or had observed morphine abuse among their colleagues. This close-hand perspective is interesting, and these doctors followed in the footsteps of their elder colleagues who had experimented with drugs in the 1840s when the discipline of psychiatry was developing.20 Morphine addiction within the medical profession was admitted to be a problem, and while some doctors did openly advocate restricting access to the drug, the question of prohibition was rarely explicitly linked to doctors’ addictions. 21 The tone of writing on the issue is measured and sympathetic, and medical addicts were viewed differently to “luxurious” users outside the medical profession. In 1885, alienist physician Benjamin Ball, who had studied under the degeneration theorist Bénédict-Augustin Morel and the hysteria professor Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière, developed an expertise on

54  Susannah Wilson morphine addiction, writing, “One enters into morphinomania through the door of pain […] through the door of sorrow, worry and fatigue […] and through the door of pleasure [volupté].”22 In French, the concept of “volupté”—best known through Baudelaire’s phrase “luxe, calme et volupté”—carries connotations of “sensual pleasure” and is commonly evoked in discussions of recreational or luxurious use. 23 Ball highlights here three ways in which morphine may be linked to failed m ­ asculinity: the inability to withstand pain could be construed as a lack of the ­virtue of stoicism, 24 sorrow is a heightened emotion, fatigue suggests an absence of physical vigor, and “volupté” connotes failing sexual self-­ restraint or excessive appetite. Medical case studies on morphinomanie paint a picture of a profession pushed to the limits of masculine endeavor. Ball and his fellow commentators are broadly sympathetic towards the problem of addiction within their ranks, which they explain in three ways: first, as a means of seeking “oblivion” in the face of devastating personal and professional failure; second, for intellectual stimulation; third, as relief from everyday occupational stress. 25 There are therefore both positive and negative functions attributed to morphine use: the removal of stress and sadness, and the provision of stimulation. Accounts of doctor addicts present us with a clear “type” of man who is vulnerable to morphine: the sensitive, perhaps melancholic, highly intellectual and deep-­thinking doctor with a turbulent mind and unsteady emotions. Although the figure of the doctor marries with the image of ideal masculinity—­ rational, self-disciplined, skeptical, controlled, virtuous, and devoted to his ­profession—these images of addiction show a quite different side to nineteenth-century masculinity. One of the reasons for this, doctors argued, was that medicine was a uniquely arduous profession. Dr. Paul Rodet, director of a h ­ ydrotherapy establishment in Auteuil (Paris), wrote a prize-winning essay on morphinomania in 1897 in which he observed, “One is surprised at first to find that a great majority of morphinomaniacs are doctors. Yet, when one thinks about this a little, it is no longer surprising if one considers the ­degree to which we are exposed to overwork in the ­medical ­profession.”26 Rodet says that young doctors are particularly vulnerable, as the vicissitudes of the career push them to seek “artificial sources of consolation.”27 Dr. Ernest Chambard, himself a morphine user who died after contracting tetanus from an infected needle, even compares the doctor’s occupational stress to the ordeal of the common prostitute. 28 Chambard argues that for every doctor crowned in professional glory, there is another who is “crushed by work that is barely remunerated, and humiliated by the desperate and sometimes shameful demands of their clientele. […] Medicine is the most glorious science, the noblest of professions, it is true, but also the vilest of occupations.”29 In juxtaposing clinical examples of doctor addicts with prostitutes who use

A Medicine for the Soul  55 morphine in order to face up to the grueling demands of their nightly labors, Chambard brings into sharp focus the everyday struggles of ­doctors to measure up to the standards expected of them. Morphine is also identified as a powerful stimulant, required to help doctors cope with the intellectual demands of their work. Dr. Georges Pichon, another prominent expert who fell victim to the drug that he studied, argues that men of letters and physicians will take morphine in proportion to the “cerebral activity” demanded of them and that intellectually superior people need artificial stimulation. 30 Ball, who notes that intellectual work almost always requires a stimulant, such as alcohol or caffeine, corroborates this view and that clinical professionals “often prefer morphine.”31 He says, “No one is more vulnerable to contracting this lethal habit than the doctor,” calling it a “professional disposition.”32 All this is relevant to the question of prohibition, because doctors were thus able to locate the cause of morphine addiction in the arduous demands of their work, which diminished the core of masculinity they possessed, rather than in individual moral failings. Discourses of prohibition were more likely to be directly focused on those perceived to be animalistic and “uncivilized”—women (especially prostitutes), the proletariat, and the racially inferior. In the obituaries of Chambard and Pichon, penned by admiring colleagues and published in the prestigious journal the Annales medico-psychologiques, morphine abuse is only hinted at obliquely; however, more clearly referenced are the individual emotional and intellectual sensibilities of the men who succumbed to the “poison” they had spent their professional lives studying. Chambard is described as an “elite mind” but one who suffered unbearable grief after the loss of his wife: “This man of elite intelligence was also a man of the heart […] Chambard’s work was also the cause of his loss. Science, such as he loved it, knows magnificent summits, but also terrible precipices, and he fell into one of these precipices.”33 Similarly, Pichon is described as being pursued by a terrible “mal” that he was unable to shake off: “To great qualities of mind, Pichon also added rarer ones, those of the heart; he showed a rare level of fragility of feeling, a limitless devotion to his friends, a constant kindness towards his inferiors and above all an infinite goodness towards the sick.”34 These observations, and particularly the striking reference to the hypersensitivity of the typical morphine user, reveal admiration, but also anxiety about the frail edifice of masculinity presented by these men. Sensibility, a virtue prized by the Romantics, is here cast as a fatal weakness. Medicine is the paradigmatic occupation of the rational, modern, male-dominated, urbanized society—anything that degraded the profession was thus to be feared. There is a marked contrast between the sympathetic way in which doctor addicts are dealt with in the medical literature and the moralizing tone of fictional accounts, such as Léon Daudet’s classic “detox” novel,

56  Susannah Wilson La Lutte (The Struggle, 1907).35 Daudet was a medically trained writer of fiction, an ardent monarchist known in for his anti-Republican, reactionary, and later anti-Semitic views, and his novel tells the story of a doctor who self-medicates with morphine for symptoms of tuberculosis. As a first-person narrative, the view cast over the period of addiction is one of self-reproach in view of the narrator’s destructive inability to resist temptation and conquer his passion for morphine. Despite having a bona fide medical pretext for starting to use morphine, the novel follows a narrative of salvation where a young protagonist in denial of his ­addiction moves from a life of vice and debauchery in the company of women of ill-repute—via religious enlightenment, medical detoxification in Germany, 36 and mountaintop retreat with a hermit Catholic priest— to an existence of moral purity under the life-affirming influence of the appropriately named “Blanche.” The doctor’s propensity for ­morphine is aligned with his old life of moral and physical feebleness, led in the company of a dissolute “Jewess” called Minna Sem—who functions in the text as a cipher and personification of the seductive drug—and he is duly rewarded for his renewed self-possession by being cured of tuberculosis. Daudet’s narrator presents two versions of himself: the good doctor and the bad doctor, who loses his professional integrity by abusing his power, and the robust man and the weak man, whose masculine strength is compromised; the novel ultimately offers a simplistic message celebrating the triumph of the will over the forces of evil. Morphine abuse within the medical profession was considered to be fundamentally different to other categories of use: it was not strictly therapeutic, but it was understandable and could theoretically be managed with discipline and treatment informed by a belief in masculine self-command and sobriety which the figure of the nineteenth-century doctor epitomized. These examples illustrate the paradoxes of modern masculinity and how it relates to morphine: morphine was a useful medical tool and a symbol of progress, but it also threatened to destroy many of its luminaries. The image of the emasculated and depleted toxicomane was the polar opposite of the vigorous and disciplined doctor, and in this sense, as a profession, medical men had an ideal to look towards and a negative model to fear.

Morphine, Femininity, and La Morphinée of the Fin-de-Siècle While there was a conflict between the effects of morphine and the idea of the autonomous nineteenth-century man, in the case of French women, the same model of self-possession did not apply: virtuous femininity consisted in self-effacement and devoted motherhood.37 The family was the central unit of French society, formalized in the Napoleonic Civil Code of 1804, according to which woman’s role was legally codified as

A Medicine for the Soul  57 subservient to men; Republican marriage was also defined as a relationship of ownership of the woman by the man. Women were not expected to pursue their own interests or to seek pleasure.38 The relationship between women and morphine was, therefore, deeply symbiotic: unlike men, the “normal” state of woman in the French imagination already had much in common with pathologically intoxicated states. Morphine is commonly personified as female and is metaphorically feminine: seductive, corrupting, monstrous, and enfeebling. Therefore, the logic of prohibition meshes with the stereotype of “la morphinée” that emerged in the 1890s. If morphine abuse within the medical profession was a regrettable but correctable habit, “luxurious” use was more threatening because it was located outside the medical sphere of influence. These views were commonly expressed in the press, visual culture, and popular literature. Morphine, a painkiller, is a paradoxical substance—at once a “miracle remedy” and the “sickness of the century.”39 Many discussions of morphine dwell on these axes of pleasure and pain, good and bad. In French, morphine is associated with pleasure via the concept of la ­volupté or sensual pleasure. Consequently, Liedekerke has argued that in the popular imagination, morphinomania was viewed as, “above all, a feminine/female passion [un vice féminin].”40 It is likely that the statistical importance of female morphine abuse is exaggerated.41 Yet this is the impression created by the press and literature, and it was, therefore, an important cultural belief. The adjective “féminin” in French means both female and feminine, so morphine is here associated with both women and the metaphorical processes of feminization, specifically via the concept of “la morphinée” from the late 1880s onwards. One of the earliest examples of “la morphinée” is from 1881 in one of Jules Claretie’s satirical columns on Parisian life and manners, “La Vie à Paris,” published in the center-left daily newspaper, Le Temps. Claretie confidently associates women with morphine: “Women, of which some […] claim triumphantly their rights, have for a number of years now won one right in particular, a new and very fatal one that I shall call the Right to morphine.”42 Claretie reproaches women for seeking oblivion in the face of difficult life experiences: “Alas! They give up their very selves [“leur moi”], these poison-lovers, these drunkards of morphine whose number is increasing terribly.”43 Vice is defined as the defeat of reason and the dissolution of the self. Claretie here ignites contemporary anxieties about the loosening of traditional hierarchies and changing gender roles, notably the stereotype of the “New Woman.”44 In a further example, on 1 June 1886 socialist columnist and popular fiction writer, Georges de Labruyère, asserted in Le Figaro 45 the view that women were more susceptible to addiction: Morphinomaniacs belong generally to the female sex. There are few male morphinomaniacs, because man is better defended against it,

58  Susannah Wilson he works and smokes. […] Morphine […] relieves their nerves, consoles their sorrows, and sends them off to sleep in dreams of fortune and pleasure. Once habituated, the [female] morphinomaniac no longer even fights it and does not wait for a pretext, a hot flush, a bit of a migraine, in order to administer to herself the precious liquor.46 Men are “better defended” because they possess a core of self-control that women do not; women go directly to the drug for pleasure and oblivion because they cannot “fight” temptation. The examples ­chosen—of women who reach for morphine because they are either menopausal (“a hot flush”) or hypochondriacs (“a bit of a migraine”)—are examples of defective women who naturally display weakness. The press further perpetuated this perception, and there is little discernible difference between commentators from different sides of the political divide.47 A piece on “Morphinomanes,” published in Le Gaulois in 1890, claims, “Morphinomania’s main victims are women, and […] woman is as adept at satisfying her passions as she is weak at resisting them.”48 The article presents brief portraits of male and female morphinomanes for reasons of “sickness,” “spleen,” “for the heart,” “fashion,” and “curiosity.” The women are given physical portraits where the men are designated by the roles of poet and statesman—by implication drawn to the drug for intellectual stimulation—and women resort to morphine because of ennui. In the example of “spleen,” the journalist writes, “30 years old. Blonde. Very slim, very graceful. Pretty, but a little faded. Bored.”49 This type of morphine abuser uses it as a “pastime.” She likes the pretty paraphernalia associated with the Pravaz syringe and takes morphine if she has nothing better to do: dinner in town, the opera, or a ball to attend.50 Aging and disappointment also drove women to morphine: “Older than 30. Brunette. Cold beauty. Ardent temperament. Has experienced life […] One day fell out with someone […] or came up against cruel indifference. The shock was so brutal she was as if broken by it.”51 By 1896, medical commentators were also repeating the view that women were the core of the problem. In the section “Bloc-Notes ­Parisien,” signed by the anonymous satirical commentator “Tout-Paris” (Parisian high society) in the daily newspaper Le Gaulois, a “famous” but unnamed doctor is cited: “Women form the majority in this army of unbalanced people and I don’t hesitate to believe that at least 30,000 of them appear in the total figure.”52 Female addicts were also associated with the weakening of the French “race.” In the illustrated Sunday supplement to the Petit Journal of 21 February 1891, a tableau by Georges Moreau de Tours (son of the psychiatrist) accompanies a text contemplating the consequences of a lack of strong moral direction in young women (Figure 3.1):

A Medicine for the Soul  59

Figure 3.1  Georges Moreau de Tours, Les Morphinées (1891).

Two women, both young and beautiful, have given themselves over to this terrible passion. One of them is already under the influence of the poison, she sleeps; the other is preparing to join her in the land of nightmares, she is injecting herself with morphine. The painter ought to have depicted them haggard, their reputations blackened, as they will be in several months; perhaps might he thereby have contributed to curing those desperate people who, in their criminal insanity, are in the process of polluting the pure blood of France. […] Whoever has drunk will drink, as they say; whoever has injected, will inject. And during this time, our beautiful nation, once so strong and brave, will fall into decline. 53 The figure of “la morphinée” personifies France in a state of moral surrender. “Morphine abuse is intellectual suicide, it is the impotence of the body.”54 Here, a clear double standard emerges: where morphine use for the purposes of intellectual and physical stimulation for doctors is ­justified—or at least rationalized—in the case of women, intellectual and bodily degeneration is emphasized. As morphine is personified as female, women are also transformed into semi-human creatures with extraordinary sexual power. Painter and society illustrator Albert Matignon produced an oil painting “La morphine” (1905), which according to Bram Dijkstra “showed her to be half-virgin and half-vampire while in the throes of an opium dream

60  Susannah Wilson

Figure 3.2  Eugène Grasset, La Morphinomane (1897).

among the paraphernalia of her addiction.”55 Eugène Grasset’s 1897 lithograph of “La morphinomane” would be more naturalistic, offering a window onto the experience of drug-taking from the woman’s perspective.56 An arresting and intimate portrait of addiction, it captures a fleeting moment of tension before the rush of the drug through the woman’s body. The subject’s nervous, wrinkled brow; the vacant stare that suggests silent pain; teeth clenched over her lip; the index finger of the right hand poised to squeeze the morphine through the loaded syringe; the crab-like left hand gripping her thigh to assist the thrust of the needle. The boudoir scene, with hews reminiscent of Toulouse-Lautrec’s paintings of prostitutes, is suggestive of the demi-monde—for Dijkstra, the image is “chilling in its clinical accuracy” (Figure 3.2).57 Morphine is also personified in an extraordinary book jacket illustration, drawn by Manuel Orazi, for Victorien du Saussay’s sensationalist novel Morphine: Vices et passions des morphinomanes (1906). 58 ­Morphine is a vampiric, sphynx-like, semi-human, powerfully sexualized nude figure, adorned with jewels. The image is clearly racialized through its semi-animalistic representation: a serpent bracelet crawls up her arm, and a golden necklace dangles provocatively between her bare breasts; her claw-like fingers are clad with rings, and her ecstatic gaze engages the viewer with defiant triumph. Significantly, there is a complete absence of male morphine use in the iconography (Figure 3.3).

A Medicine for the Soul  61

Figure 3.3  B  ook jacket illustration for Victorien du Saussay, La Morphine: Vices et passions des morphinomanes (1906).

As we might expect, as the press is littered with examples of morphine-­ addled women, la morphinée also crops up regularly in popular literature in two broad types: on the one hand, bored and dissatisfied ­upper-class women and on the other hand, “emancipated” women for whom the drug was a symbol of egoistic rebellion. There is already a substantial critical literature on popular novels, so I will dwell on two illustrative examples here that link to our question of how currents of public opinion may have been influenced by the reductive stereotype of “la morphinée” whose purpose was to warn against the consequences of deviance.59 In the novel L’Évangéliste by Alphonse Daudet (father to Léon D ­ audet), a story about a woman who loses her daughter to a Protestant religious cult, morphine is mentioned briefly in a scene that depicts an all-­female “morphine club” or “morphine salon.” Its members are all women who have suffered physically or experienced boredom, trauma, and disappointment: When they get together, each one of those ladies brings her little silver case, with its needle, and the poison… and then, crack! In the

62  Susannah Wilson arm, in the leg… it doesn’t send you to sleep, but you feel fine… Unfortunately the effect wears off each time, and you have to increase the dose.60 These women, like the menopausal failures and hypochondriacs depicted by Labruyère, need morphine to take them away from life’s disappointments in order to “feel fine,” but the implication is that they have failed in their function as women in their pursuit of oblivion. In decadent fiction, the morphinée tends to appear in the background as a wallpaper figure in the Parisian demi-monde, an accepted fashion and “a key accessory in the femme fatale package.”61 We also find examples of rebellious and emancipated female characters who shamelessly use morphine for pleasure and stimulation. For example, in Catulle Mendès’s novel, Méphistophéla, the protagonist Sophor ­d’Hermelinge is a lesbian and sadistic morphine addict who flaunts her vice.62 ­Metaphors of living death are evoked to describe d’Hermelinge: she is ­“cancerous,” “buried alive,” zombie-like, and yet unrepentant of her deviant lifestyle: ­“Imperturbable, haughty, formal, one might say, the baroness Sophor d’Hermelinge, with her sinister fixedness, with the pallor of an ill-­resuscitated corpse, seems to be the deathly pale Empress of some macabre Lesbos.”63 She is perverse and proud of her status as an invert— liberated from the constraints of tradition. Where opium served a positive function for the Romantics, in a counterdiscursive turn, morphine’s purpose in decadent representations was to achieve “oblivion and death,” and it was inscribed in a “bizarre cult of the artificial and the morbid”64 that would, as we shall see, continue well into the twentieth century. Literature and visual culture show that morphine became a key factor in the representation of the femme fatale, at once an appealing and repulsive character. In certain sections of society, the drug became a part of everyday life, and taking oneself off to inject was equally as routine an event as powdering one’s nose. The morphinée had much in common with the garçonne or the emancipated woman of the early twentieth century. Morphine was for women of the avant-garde an important marker of status and distinction. Yet women could also be denatured by morphine: it stopped them from being good wives and mothers and robbed them of their youth and beauty, linking the drug to common anxieties about degeneration and the strength of the French nation.

Prohibition and Its Discontents If the prohibition of morphine in France was facilitated by shifting attitudes towards the substance, and its association with the medical concept of the “toxicomane,” it was inevitable that voices of dissent would rise up to challenge these ideas. In this final section, I consider two examples of such countercultural voices: the avant-garde poets and defenders of

A Medicine for the Soul  63 ­ ilbert-Lecomte. morphine and heroin use, Antonin Artaud and Roger G Artaud was a revolutionary artist, known in the ­t wentieth century for his experimental theater and poetry; Gilbert-Lecomte was a minor poet; and both were loosely associated with the Surrealists. Artaud was a complex figure who suffered both physical and mental illness, and who wrote with searing insight about his distress.65 Both men thought they would die young, and true to their own expectations Gilbert-Lecomte died in 1943 at the age of 36 from an infection caused by contaminated needles, and Artaud in an asylum in 1948, aged 51. As apologists for rather than celebrators of morphine use, they differ from the nineteenth-­ century Romantic celebrators of intoxication and offer a vision of the human condition that is at once visionary and despairing. Artaud and Gilbert-Lecomte also share similarities with both the medical and decadent accounts of morphine use, considered earlier in this article, by conceiving of morphine use in terms of both personal responsibility and self-control but also in terms of the positive functions of death, destruction, and oblivion. The two authors make similar yet subtly different cases against prohibition. Gilbert-Lecomte’s acerbic, allegorical essay, Monsieur Morphée, published around 1929,66 aimed not to change minds—a goal he dismisses as futile—but to take down rhetorically the (as he saw it) impoverished thinking behind the prohibition of intoxicating substances. He says that drug use will always be a minority pursuit, but a necessary one for individuals seeking out a state he describes as “death-in-life.” For Gilbert-Lecomte, drugs make life bearable for acutely sensitive people with self-destructive urges. He also urges his reader to consider “the inoffensive reality” of drug use rather than the crude caricature of the toxicomane which is peddled by a cynical, morally conservative press, and which had been spawned by the nineteenth-century image of the “morphinomane.”67 If we did so, we would see that “their lives are carefully regulated […] that they have the same preoccupations as other mortals, and that their “vice” does not play a greater, more devastating or more damaging role in their existence than any other less bizarre vice, such as masturbation.”68 Gilbert-Lecomte emphasizes that drug users are not seeking “volupté,” or sensual pleasure, but simply “a change of state, a new climate in which their consciousness of being would be less painful.”69 The emphasis is firmly phenomenological, on the lived experience of drug users, and Gilbert-Lecomte argues that legislators fundamentally misunderstand these experiences. This account of the appeal of morphine has parallels with the analyses of doctor addicts, which offer similarly thoughtful and sympathetic explanations for doctors’ addiction based on the ideas of intellectual stimulation and the need for oblivion. Artaud published two essays on the drug question in 1925: an open letter to French legislators and an essay published in the periodical

64  Susannah Wilson La Révolution surréaliste.70 Artaud echoes Gilbert-Lecomte’s arguments on the futility of prohibition and on drug use as a minority pursuit. He argues that a person has the right to be the judge of his own pain and to self-medicate as he sees fit. Artaud calls this “a matter of conscience” and claims that legislators have no “right to dispose of the pain of men.”71 The final section of Artaud’s open letter explores the idea of “angoisse,” which in French means both anguish and anxiety, in its various manifestations. Like Gilbert-Lecomte, Artaud’s piece has a phenomenological focus on the experience of pain. Morphine is legally sanctioned as a medicine, but doctors have no right to monopolize it: it should belong to everybody. Artaud re-claims access to opiates from the medical profession, which has invented the toxicomane and brought about prohibition and, to his mind, impoverished the lives of drug users. Ultimately, Gilbert-Lecomte and Artaud’s narratives are valuable because they speak from the heart and from informed personal experience. They offer a radically different vision of the purpose of human existence, of what it means to be alive, than those who criticized drug use. They do not, however, celebrate the positive effects of morphine use in the tradition of the nineteenth-century Romantics. Its function as an intellectual stimulant is defended, but the prohibition of 1916 and the enduring strength of the idea of “toxicomanie” seem to have forced these commentators into a defensive position in which they needed to argue for the necessity of access to drugs rather than the pleasures they bring. For those who defended the choice to use morphine, the drug was a necessary evil, or a crutch for the weak, rather than a truly expansive experience. Their sensitivities bring them close to the positions of doctor addicts Chambard and Pichon, and this analysis shows there is continuity between medical commentators who tried to understand doctors with addiction to morphine and avant-garde writers seeking to demystify the experiences of pleasure-seeking addicts. Both highlighted the importance of personal choice and self-control, but also admitted the frailty of masculinity. Morphine use, refracted through a range of cultural discourses and imagined in different ways, could be either culturally sanctioned or framed as deviant. The examples examined in this chapter show that morphine was negatively imagined for reasons linked to gender norms, and concerns about morphine linked closely to broader anxieties relating to the modern condition, urban life, and the changing roles of men and women. Morphine was seen as a paradoxical substance which could both bolster and undermine masculinity; it could be attached to beliefs about woman’s naturally deviant nature yet also seen as a substance that fatally undermined traditional roles or framed as an agent of emancipation. It seems clear that restrictions on morphine came about in 1916, not only because of international pressures but also because of factors that were unique to France and which related directly to models of ideal

A Medicine for the Soul  65 masculinity, femininity, Republican citizenship, and the cult of the will. The context of war and the mass mobilization of the population, however, gave these ambient concerns focus and legislative urgency.

Notes 1 An earlier version of this essay appears in Contemporary French Civilization 44, no. 4 (2019). Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (Oxford: ­Oxford University Press, 1985 [1821]); Jacques-Joseph Moreau (de Tours), Du ­hachisch et de l’aliénation mentale (Paris: Fortin Masson, 1845); Charles Baudelaire, Les Paradis artificiels (Paris: Poulet-Malassis, 1860). On the English Romantic poets, see Alethea Hayter, Opium and the Romantic Imagination (London: Faber & Faber, 2015). 2 Thomas Dormandy, Opium: Reality’s Dark Dream (London and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 120; Howard Padwa, Social Poison: The Culture and Politics of Opiate Control in Britain and France, ­1821–1926 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 40–41; Norman Howard-Jones, “A Critical Study of the Origins and Early Development of Hypodermic Medication,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 2, (Spring 1947). 3 Formally known as the “Loi du 12 juillet 1916 concernant l’importation, le commerce, la détention et l’usage des substances vénéneuses notamment l’opium, la morphine et la cocaïne.” Reproduced in Jean-Jacques Yvorel, “La loi du 12 Juillet 1916: première incrimination de la consommation de drogue,” Les Cahiers dynamiques no. 56 (2012). On the international conventions, see Virginia Berridge, Opium and the People: Opiate Use and Drug Control Policy in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century England, Rev. ed. (London: Free Association Books, 1999), 239–42. 4 Jean-Jacques Yvorel, Les Poisons de l’esprit: drogues et drogués au XIXe siècle (Paris: Quai Voltaire, 1992), 237–41; Emmanuelle Retaillaud-Bajac, Les Paradis perdus: drogues et usagers de drogues dans la France de L’entredeux-guerres (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2009), 10–11. On the 1845 poisons law, passed in the wake of the Marie Lafarge poisoning affair, see Jean-Jacques Yvorel, “De la loi ‘Lafarge’ à la loi de 1916. Aux origines de la pénalisation des stupéfiants,” Psychotropes 22, no. 2 (2016). 5 Yvorel, Les Poisons de l’esprit, 111–2. 6 All translations are by the author. A German doctor, Levinstein, first drew this distinction in 1877: see Dormandy, Opium: Reality’s Dark Dream, 170. Ernest Chambard (in La Morphinomanie (Paris: Reuff, 1890), ix–x) dismisses the morphiniste/morphinomane distinction as meaningless, because the end result is the same. Paul Regnard (in Les Maladies épidémiques de L’esprit (Paris: E. Plon, 1887), 313) uses the term “morphiniste” in the title of his work but in the text exclusively uses “morpinomane,” distinguishing between “natural and honest” addictions and those influenced by “fashion.” Pichon (in Le Morphinisme (Paris: O. Doin, 1889), 22–23) distinguishes between ‘morphinisés’ (medical users) and ‘morpinomanes’ (luxurious users). 7 Padwa, Social Poison, 40–49. 8 Christian Bachmann and Anne Coppel, Le Dragon domestique: Deux siècles de relations étranges entre l’Occident et la drogue (Paris: ­A lbin Michel, 1989), 41. 9 See Théodule Ribot, Les Maladies de la volonté (Paris: F. Alcan, 1884); Christopher E. Forth, Masculinity in the Modern West (Basingstoke: Palgrave

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19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Macmillan, 2008); Robert A. Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Sander L. G ­ ilman, Difference and Pathology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985). Padwa, Social Poison, 67–85; Patrick Maugeais, “Sainte Morphine, fléau de l’humanité,” Histoire, économie et société 7, no. 4 (1988): 587. Certainly by 1892, in his series of fictionalised case studies, Maurice Talmeyr (in Les Possédés de la morphine (Paris: Plon, 1892), 2) was calling morphine “a scourge” that was “more diabolical” than opium. Virginia Berridge, Demons: Our Changing Attitudes to Alcohol, Tobacco and Drugs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 5. DORA was passed in 1914; in 1916 it was amended with, among other provisions, Regulation 40B which introduced these controls. Retaillaud-Bajac, Les Paradis Perdus, 7–28. Ibid., 11–12. Yvorel, “La loi du 12 Juillet 1916,” 129. Padwa, Social Poison, 67. Retaillaud-Bajac, Les Paradis perdus, 14–23; Bachmann and Coppel, Le Dragon domestique, 157. Padwa, Social Poison, 49. Opium was linked to treason through the Ullmo spy scandal which saw French official secrets shared with the enemy by an opium addict; see Venita Datta, Heroes and Legends of Fin-de-Siècle France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Howard-Jones, “Hypodermic Medication,” 232–4. Although writing in a British context, Howard-Jones also leverages a number of French- and ­German-language sources to substantiate his observations. Moreau (de Tours), Du hachisch et de l’aliénation mentale. Specifically, concerns about morphine addiction were outlined in Mesures à prendre pour diminuer la morphinomanie, a specially commissioned report authored by doctors Brouardel, Motet, Ballet, and Vibert for the Garde des Sceaux (Minster of Justice) and reproduced in Paul Brouardel, Opium, morphine et cocaïne (Paris: Baillière, 1906), 139–46. Brouardel et al. recommended tightening up pharmaceutical regulations to prevent prescriptions from being used repeatedly. As early as 1883, alienists raised concerns about “the deplorable facility” with which morphine could be acquired, leading people into addiction and crime: see Motet, “Morphinomanie,” Annales d’hygiène publique et de médecine légale 3 no. 10 (1883), 33. Benjamin Ball, La Morphinomanie (Paris: Asselin et Houzeau, 1885), 11–12. Charles Baudelaire, “L’Invitation au voyage,” in Les Fleurs du Mal (Paris: Bibliothèque des curieux, 1924 [1857]), 69–70. According to Nye, this was part of the ancien régime honor code; see Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor. Pichon, Le Morphinisme, 23. Paul Rodet, Morphinomanie et morphinisme: mœurs, symptômes, traitement, médecine légale, (Paris: F. Alcan, 1897), 3. Winner of the 1896 Falret Prize, French Academy of Medicine. Ibid., 44. On Chambard’s death, see: Anon, “Notice Nécrologique du Dr Ernest Chambard,” Annales médico-psychologiques no. 11 (1900). Chambard, La Morphinomanie, 42. Pichon, Le Morphinisme, 23. Ball, La Morphinomanie, 11.

A Medicine for the Soul  67 32 Ibid. 33 “Notice nécrologique du Dr Ernest Chambard,” 332–3. 34 Anon, “Notice nécrologique du Dr Georges Pichon,” Annales médico-­ psychologiques 1893, no. 17 (1893): 329–30. 35 Léon Daudet, La Lutte (Paris: E. Fasquelle, 1907). 36 Regnard advocated the use of “centres of detoxification,” which were not available in France as they were in Germany, as well as new laws restricting access to morphine. See Les Maladies épidémiques de l’esprit, 337. 37 Yannick Ripa, La Ronde des folles (Paris: Aubier, 1986). Ripa argues that the woman at the heart of the bourgeois family was the model of psychiatric normality. 38 Jean-Paul Aron, ed. Misérable et glorieuse: la femme du XIXe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1980), 8. Aron notes that Bonaparte, when discussing the ‘Code civil’ at the Council of State, declared, ‘if there is one thing that is definitely not French, it is that they [women] can do as they please.’ 39 Arnould de Liedekerke et al., La Belle époque de l’opium (Paris: Éditions de la différence, 2001), 123. 40 Ibid., 114–15. 41 Berridge argues that the emphasis on female morphine use in English medical writing is not really evidenced in the case histories, which are evenly divided between male and female cases. Berridge, Opium and the People, 148–9. 42 Jules Claretie, La Vie à Paris, vol. 2 (Paris: Victor Havard, 1881), 379. 43 Ibid., 381. 4 4 Mary Louise Roberts, Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-de-­Siècle France (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 25. James F. ­McMillan, France and Women, 1789–1914: Gender, Society and Politics (London: Routledge, 2000), 141–2. 45 Known today as a Gaullist, right-wing newspaper, during the period of the Third Republic Le Figaro was more moderate. For example, it took a pro-Dreyfus line during the Affair and published articles by left-wing novelist Émile Zola. 46 Labruyère, “Les Morphinomanes,” Le Figaro, 1 June 1886. 47 Literary scholars have also noted that we cannot straightforwardly align antifeminism with social conservatism, and feminism with ‘progressive’ social movements. See Edgard Pich, ‘Littérature et codes sociaux: l’antiféminisme sous le Second Empire,’ (pp. 167–82) in ed. Louis Devance, “Femme, ­famille, travail et morale sexuelle dans l’idéologie de 1848,” Special Issue of Romantisme no. 13–14 (1976), 167–82. 48 “Morphinomanes,” Le Gaulois, March 12 1890. 49 Ibid. 50 The fetishization of drug-taking equipment by women is also observed in Zambaco, “De la morphéomanie,” L’Encéphale. Journal des maladies mentales et nerveuses 2 (1882), 429. 51 “Morphinomanes,” Le Gaulois, 1890. 52 “Qui se morphine le plus?” Le Gaulois, 30 October 1896. 53 “Les Morphinées,” Le Petit journal: Supplément du dimanche, 21 February 1891, 8. 54 Ibid. 55 Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 359. The Matignon image was unavailable for reproduction, but a good-quality image can be viewed here: https://art.rmngp.fr/fr/library/artworks/albert-matignon_la-morphine_huilesur-toile_1905. [This and all subsequent URLs accessed 7 January 2019].

68  Susannah Wilson 56 Grasset was a celebrated engraver and decorative artist, known for his illustrations of the Folies Bergère cabaret: madparis.fr/francais/musees/ musee-des-arts-decoratifs. 57 Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity, 359. 58 Victorien du Saussay, Morphine: vices et passions des morphinomanes (Paris: Méricant, 1906). 59 See Liedekerke et al., La Belle Époque de l’opium, 78–115 and Laura Spagnoli, “Under the Influence: Literature, Drugs, and Modernity in France ­(1870–1914),” Unpublished PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania. 60 Alphonse Daudet, L’Évangéliste (Lausanne: Flammarion, 1966 [1883]), 255. 61 Liedekerke et al., La Belle époque de l’opium, 118–19. 62 Ibid., 119–20. 63 Catulle Mendès, Méphistophéla (Paris: Séguier, 1993 [1890]), 552–4. 64 Liedekerke et al., La Belle époque de l’opium, 78. 65 In Artaud’s letters from the Ville-Evrard asylum, the author is obsessed with acquiring heroin. See Antonin Artaud, Lettres: 1937–1943 (Paris: ­Gallimard, 2015). 66 Roger Gilbert-Lecomte, Monsieur Morphée, empoisonneur public (n.p.: Fata Morgana, 1998). Claude Sernet’s preface to the 1966 edition of the essay (reproduced at the end of the 1998 edition) says it was first published around forty years previously in a periodical that has since been lost (on p. 56). 67 Ibid., 35. 68 Ibid., 37. 69 Ibid., 45. 70 See Antonin Artaud, ‘Lettre à Monsieur le législateur de la loi sur les stupéfiants’ and ‘Sûreté générale, la liquidation de l’opium’ in Œuvres (Paris: ­Gallimard, 2004), 114–16 and 126–7. 71 Ibid., 114.

Bibliography Primary Sources Anon. “Notice Nécrologique du Dr Ernest Chambard.” Annales médico-­ psychologiques no. 11 (1900): 330–335. ———. “Notice Nécrologique du Dr Georges Pichon.” Annales médico-­ psychologiques no. 17 (1893): 328–30. Artaud, Antonin. Lettres: 1937–1943. Paris: Gallimard, 2015. ———. Œuvres. Paris: Gallimard, 2004. Ball, Benjamin. La Morphinomanie. Paris: Asselin, 1885. Baudelaire, Charles. Les Fleurs du Mal. Paris: Bibliothèque des curieux, 1924 [1857]. ———. Les Paradis artificiels, opium et haschisch. Paris: Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, 1860. Brouardel, Paul. Opium, morphine et cocaïne. Paris: Baillière, 1906. Chambard, Ernest. La Morphinomanie: étude clinique, médico-légale et thérapeutique. Paris: Reuff, 1890. Claretie, Jules. La Vie à Paris. Vol. 2. Paris: Victor Havard, 1881. Daudet, Alphonse. L’Évangéliste. Lausanne: Flammarion, 1966 [1883]. Daudet, Léon. La Lutte: Roman d’une guérison. Paris: E. Fasquelle, 1907. De Quincey, Thomas. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. Oxford: ­Oxford University Press, 1985 [1821].

A Medicine for the Soul  69 Gilbert-Lecomte, Roger. Monsieur Morphée, empoisonneur public. n.p.: Fata Morgana, 1998. Mendès, Catulle. Méphistophéla. Paris: Séguier, 1993 [1890]. Moreau (de Tours), Jacques-Joseph. Du hachisch et de l’aliénation mentale: études psychologiques. Paris: Fortin Masson, 1845. Motet. “Morphinomanie.” Annales d’hygiène publique et de médecine légale 3, no. 10 (1883): 22–36. Payot, Jules. L’Éducation de la volonté. Paris: F. Alcan, 1894. Pichon, Georges. Le Morphinisme. Paris: O. Doin, 1889. Regnard, Paul. Les Maladies épidémiques de l’esprit: sorcellerie, magnétisme, morphinisme, délire des grandeurs. Paris: E. Plon, 1887. Ribot, Théodule. Les Maladies de la volonté. Paris: F. Alcan, 1884. Rodet, Paul. Morphinomanie et morphinisme: mœurs, symptômes, traitement, médecine légale. Paris: F. Alcan, 1897. Saussay, Victorien du. Morphine: Vices et passions des morphinomanes. Paris: Méricant, 1906. Talmeyr, Maurice. Les Possédés de la morphine. Paris: Plon, 1892. Zambaco. “De La Morphéomanie.” L’Encéphale: Journal des maladies mentales et nerveuses 2 (1882): 603–65.

Secondary Sources Aron, Jean-Paul, ed. Misérable et glorieuse: La femme du XIXe siècle. Paris: Arthème Fayard, 1980. Bachmann, Christian, and Anne Coppel. Le Dragon domestique: deux siècles de relations étranges entre l’Occident et la drogue. Paris: Albin Michel, 1989. Berridge, Virginia. Demons: Our Changing Attitudes to Alcohol, Tobacco and Drugs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. ———. Opium and the People: Opiate Use and Drug Control Policy in ­Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England. Rev. ed. London: Free Association Books, 1999. Datta, Venita. Heroes and Legends of Fin-de-Siècle France: Gender, Politics, and National Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Devance, Louis. “Femme, famille, travail et morale sexuelle dans l’idéologie de 1848.” Romantisme no. 13–14 (1976): 77–103. Dijkstra, Bram. Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Dormandy, Thomas. Opium: Reality’s Dark Dream. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. Forth, Christopher E. Masculinity in the Modern West: Gender, Civilization and the Body. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Gilman, Sander L. Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985. Hayter, Alethea. Opium and the Romantic Imagination. London: Faber & Faber, 2015. Howard-Jones, Norman. “A Critical Study of the Origins and Early Development of Hypodermic Medication.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 2 (Spring 1947): 201–49. Liedekerke, Arnould de, Olivier Frébourg, and Patrick Waldberg. La Belle ­Époque de L’opium. Paris: Éditions de la Différence, 2001.

70  Susannah Wilson Maugeais, Patrick. “Sainte Morphine, Fléau De L’humanité.” Histoire, économie et société 7, no. 4 (1988): 587–608. McMillan, James F. France and Women, 1789–1914: Gender, Society and ­Politics. London: Routledge, 2000. Nye, Robert A. Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Padwa, Howard. Social Poison: The Culture and Politics of Opiate Control in Britain and France, 1821–1926. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. Pick, Daniel. Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder c. 1848–1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Retaillaud-Bajac, Emmanuelle. Les Paradis perdus: drogues et usagers de drogues dans la France de l’entre-deux-guerres. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009. Ripa, Yannick. La Ronde des folles: femme, folie et enfermement au XIXe ­Siècle 1838–1870. Paris: Aubier, 1986. Roberts, Mary Louise. Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-de-Siècle France. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Spagnoli, Laura. “Under the Influence: Literature, Drugs, and Modernity in France (1870–1914).” Unpublished PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania. Yvorel, Jean-Jacques. “De la loi ‘Lafarge’ à la loi de 1916. Aux origines de la pénalisation des stupéfiants.” Psychotropes 22, no. 2 (2016): 11–23. ———. “La loi du 12 Juillet 1916: première incrimination de la consommation de drogue.” Les Cahiers dynamiques no. 56 (2012): 128–33. ———. Les Poisons de L’esprit: drogues et drogués au XIXe siècle. Paris: Quai Voltaire, 1992.

4 “To Save the Mexican Race from Degeneration” The Influence of American Protestant Groups on Temperance and Prohibition in Mexico, 1916–19331 Cecilia Autrique Escobar Introduction The American moral and cultural expansionism that peaked at the end of the nineteenth century was part of a grassroots movement known as the Social Gospel, a Protestant crusade that advocated an expanded role for the state in confronting social problems, guided by Christian e­ thics. 2 In 1908, the Federal Council of Churches decided to leave theology aside and focus instead on unity and cooperation in social service. The Council adopted the Social Creed of the Churches, committing to social justice and reform as a means to attain salvation.3 The federal government was not the impetus behind the American prohibitionist regimes of narcotics and alcohol, established in 1914 and 1920, respectively (the latter repealed in 1933); it was instead the ­result of Protestant activism that prioritized addressing vice and ­poverty. None of the Presidential Administrations of Wilson (1913–1921), ­Harding (1921–1923), Coolidge (1923–1929), and Hoover (1929–1933) assumed this fight as part of its foreign policy.4 It was, rather, American ­missionaries and religious organizations at home and abroad, “moral reformers,” who led the battle in favor of prohibitionist regimes. 5 Their national and international campaigns have left a lasting legacy, instilling across societies a moral framework for understanding alcohol and drugs and shaping global public policy. The global policy of prohibition has different meanings according to historical and cultural moments. The case of Mexico is a good example: at the beginning of the twentieth century, alcohol prohibition was not an option in Mexico. Drinking was culturally accepted; in spite of the problem that alcoholism represented, Congress deemed difficult enforcing its proscription, and instead, it was considered a health problem. Regulation and education were the answer to constraining the human desire to seek intoxication. Economic resources were a key reason; the alcohol business brought significant income to government treasuries that were bankrupt after the Revolution of 1910. In contrast, the government

72  Cecilia Autrique Escobar joined The Hague Convention because the trade and consumption of narcotics did not represent a social or political problem at the time. However, today, more than a hundred years later, the meaning of drug prohibition has shifted. With the drug war that peaked in the 1980s, the narcotics trade has grown, and because of its proscription, profits go to underground markets, creating powerful interest groups that violently challenge enforcement of the existing prohibitionist regime. Increased drug trafficking into the United States has resulted in greater corruption and violence in Mexico. The distance between the theory of prohibition and the practice of enforcing it has grown exponentially.

American Temperance Movements and Their Fight against Alcohol and Drugs The U.S. battle against liquor and narcotics that accelerated in the 1890s was a social reform movement without precedent. Directed by civil ­society groups like the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), founded in 1874, and the Anti-Saloon League (ASL), created in 1893, as well as the Protestant churches, mainly the Methodists and Baptists, their grassroots efforts encompassed a movement that changed the n ­ ation. The transnational movement included the close coordination of volunteer organizations, among them the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, the King’s Daughters, and the Good Templars6 (Figure 4.1).

Figure 4.1  “The Evils of Booze.” Ohio Prohibition Campaign Cartoon.7

Influence of American Protestant Groups  73 American moral reformers at the end of the nineteenth century began to turn their attention beyond national borders. Sweeping economic and social changes—industrialization, rapid immigration flows, ­urbanization—coincided with a surge in poverty and alcoholism, among other social problems. American Protestant groups assumed a new, expansive responsibility: a social mission to improve economic and social conditions for all. Individuals sought to attain not merely their own salvation, but that of society as a whole.8 This drive was known as the Social Gospel,9 a key goal of which was to impose Protestant culture and values beyond the American frontier. This mission coincided with the objective of extending the U.S. economic empire, which began in 1898, after the Spanish-American War and the acquisition of territories in the Philippines, Guam, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Social reformers supported political changes such as universal suffrage, the right to divorce, women’s and children’s rights, and labor laws, with the aim of ameliorating poverty and inequality and achieving a world based on Protestant moral values. Central to their worldview was the idea that people must avoid vice, which caused physical and moral degeneration; thus, the importance of fighting the use of substances that affected the character and moral integrity of individuals, such as drugs and alcohol.10 The American missionary project of establishing a moral and ­Christian world aligned with the goals of American imperialism. However, as Ian Tyrrell explains, “moral reform groups and missionaries often thought of their work as analogous to empire – but a kind of ­Christian moral empire that rose above ‘nation’, and one nobler in aspiration than the grubby motives of gold and glory.”11 Their vision was a form of non-­ territorial “empire” based in networks of American voluntary citizens’ groups working in the United States and abroad—a transnational movement that included non-governmental exchanges facilitated by increasing cooperation between nations and modern communications.12 Protestant reformers organized international congresses and a v­ ariety of initiatives to fight vice. Wilbur Crafts, one of the most powerful ­Protestant figures, established the International Reform Bureau in 1895 and served as its superintendent for twenty-eight years. The Bureau opened offices to promote the battle against narcotics and alcohol in countries such as Canada, Japan, India, Australia, China, and Great Britain, and, in 1906, formed a British Council designed to direct the fight against opium from Washington, D.C. American Protestant groups succeeded in enacting the prohibition of opium in the new American territory, the Philippines, in 1908. Social reformers presented opium prohibition as a humanitarian battle, one to defend the native races from degeneration. There was an economic objective to their work as well: to limit European power in the Far East. Thus, fighting the opium trade fulfilled two objectives: promoting Protestant moral values and fostering free trade in Asia, in accordance with the Open Door Policy.13

74  Cecilia Autrique Escobar Opium prohibition was the first fight won by American evangelicals, led by Reverend Charles Brent, who served as the Episcopal Church’s first Missionary Bishop of the Philippines (1902–1918) and organized the first Shanghai Opium Commission in 1909 and The Hague Opium Convention of 1912. The opium fight led by the Protestants was well received by President Theodore Roosevelt; it was the first project where the government collaborated with the evangelicals, and a victory for the moral reformers.14 The signing of the Convention established the idea of prohibition globally. Besides opium, the use (for non-medical or “illegitimate” purposes) and export of morphine, heroin, and cocaine were proscribed.15 National legislation was a requirement of The Hague Convention, and the resulting passage of the Harrison Act in 1914 in the United States marked another turning point in the history of drugs. William Jennings Bryan, an Episcopalian, was the Democratic Party’s nominee for President three times and Secretary of State (1913–1915). He favored woman’s suffrage, the income tax, and worker’s rights, and aligned himself closely with the missionaries, becoming the driving force behind the national debate. The Harrison Act established stricter controls over the trade of opium, morphine, heroin, and cocaine; only pharmacologists and doctors could prescribe them for therapeutic uses. By 1919, a medical framework for evaluating drugs began to give way to a moral one. In the eyes of the public, drugs also began to be associated inextricably with crime.16 As part of the evangelicals’ intention of exporting their cultural ­values, American missionaries formed international branches for their ­organizations. The WCTU created the World Woman’s ­Christian ­Temperance Union (WWCTU) in 1884; the ASL established the World League Against Alcoholism (WLAA) in 1919, which aimed to influence worldwide public policy. Bryan spoke at a conference on ­alcoholism in 1918 in Columbus, Ohio, where he advocated “exporting the gift of ­prohibition to other countries, turning the whole world dry.”17 At the Paris Peace Conference that followed World War I, American missionaries, represented by the Methodist Ernest Cherrington, Brent, and the recently formed WLAA, helped influence the legislation under discussion. They introduced two issues related to alcohol and narcotics: the establishment of limits on European sales of alcohol to their African colonies and the requirement that all signatories of the Treaty of Versailles were obliged to adhere to The Hague Convention, conceived by Brent as a means of bringing opium from national to international control.18

Drugs and the Case of Mexico In Mexico, drug prohibition was gradually institutionalized in the first decades of the twentieth century. Since colonial times, drugs, doctors, and pharmacies had been regulated by the Spanish state, a practice that continued after Mexico’s independence;19 hence, the principles of

Influence of American Protestant Groups  75 The Hague Convention were not a complete novelty. The revolutionary government of Francisco I. Madero joined the Convention in 1912, but Mexico’s political volatility prevented its ratification until 1924; the law was officially made public in 1927. 20 In contrast to alcohol, widely consumed and a major societal concern, narcotics—and its prohibition—triggered little public debate in Mexico. President Madero probably saw his decision to sign The Hague Convention as a means of presenting a “modern” Mexico to the world after the Revolution. Limiting the consumption of drugs and alcohol formed part of his program “to save the Mexican race from degeneration” and to educate vice-free and responsible citizens. 21 The prohibition of narcotics passed with little, if any, opposition; drugs were not a central issue for the Mexican Congress, the press, or society. 22 President Venustiano Carranza (1917–1920), sympathetic to the Protestant campaigns for moral reform, 23 proscribed marijuana in 1920. 24 The use of cannabis and other drugs remained limited; mainly two ­lower-class groups, prisoners and soldiers, consumed marijuana. But the country’s leadership and the press saw narcotics through much the same lens as alcohol—its consumption had a detrimental effect on the well-­ being of society as a whole. 25 The same American moral reform coalition that had led the international drug prohibition fight would next turn its attention to the more difficult battle against alcohol. Among its leaders were Bryan, Brent, Frances Willard, and Anna Gordon, both leaders of the WCTU; Wayne Wheeler, the strategist of the ASL and author of The Volstead Act; 26 Cherrington, main editor of the ASL; James Cannon, the prominent ASL Democrat; and Crafts, who coordinated the lobbying efforts of the Protestant reformers in Washington, D.C. Led less by government officials than activists, by the 1920s, the mission of controlling the production, consumption, and trade of psychoactive substances had become an important tenet of American diplomacy.

Alcohol and the Case of Mexico The transnational movement of American Protestant groups against ­alcohol stretched across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin ­A merica. As the U.S. next-door neighbor, Mexico was no exception; U.S. ­Protestant churches, missionaries, and civil rights groups played a key role in promoting temperance in Mexico in the 1920s. American Protestant churches established formal missions in ­Mexico beginning in the 1870s, after President Benito Juárez declared religious tolerance in the Constitution of 1857 and fortified the law with his victory in the Guerra de Reforma against conservatives in 1861. The ­Mexican Revolution (1910–1917) forced Protestant groups to curtail their activities. During the ensuing peace process—and as the Social

76  Cecilia Autrique Escobar Gospel movement peaked in influence at home—they resumed their work in Mexico with great impetus. American civil organizations were also present in Mexico. The WWCTU and the WLAA influenced the battle against alcohol during the nation-state building period following the Mexican Revolution. The Revolucionarios Constitucionalistas, Mexico’s dominant political group beginning in 1915, welcomed Protestant ideas and values; their leaders included Presidents Venustiano Carranza, Adolfo de la Huerta, Álvaro Obregón, and Plutarco Elías Calles. American missionaries participated in the Pan-American Conferences that began in 1889 in Washington, D.C. Led by the United States, the Conferences attempted to create an international cooperative body across the Americas and the Caribbean. Participants discussed commercial, ­political, and cultural issues as well as education, public health, alcoholism, and drugs. A major theme of the fifth Pan-American Conference in 1923 in Santiago de Chile was the anti-alcohol movement. The Chilean president Arturo Alessandri invited a discussion of measures to decrease the consumption of liquor in the region “following the U.S. example,” which he believed “summarized in one [Constitutional] Amendment the ­clamours of a race that defends its physical and moral integrity.”27 The new governing groups in Mexico and American Protestants forged a natural moral alliance: all shared the goal of establishing a morally and physically regenerated citizenry, free of vice—a necessary prerequisite for building a modern nation. Both Mexican Constitutionalists and American Protestants were convinced that temperance was fundamental to improving the nation’s moral values and that fighting alcohol consumption must be one of the modern State’s primary goals (Figure 4.2).

Figure 4.2  Drinking Pulque. 28

Influence of American Protestant Groups  77 Congressional discussions on the writing of the new Constitution in 1916–1917 included considerable debate on alcohol consumption and alcoholism. Participants debated the extent to which the production, consumption, and trade of alcohol should be regulated. The revolutionaries’ political program was informed by “progressive” ideas pairing science and moral values; concerned by alcohol’s impact on the “degeneration of the race,” they set about improving the health and hygiene of the population, especially the popular classes. A central question concerned the balance between prioritizing the well-being of the majority and individual freedoms: could the state justify intervention in the control of liquor consumption based on the greater good of society, or did drinking alcohol constitute an inviolable individual right? The economic impact of alcohol regulation was another key consideration. Taxation and licensing from the production and trade of alcohol represented important public revenues, yet an important percentage of these were spent on health and judicial matters to attend to alcoholics and their violence and crime. Congress further debated the entity in charge of regulating alcohol—some members proposed the federal government, through the Health Council (Consejo de Salubridad); others argued it should be the responsibility of each state to regulate as each saw fit. In these discussions, alcohol was often mentioned alongside gambling, bullfights, and drugs—activities that the Constitutional Revolutionaries saw as degenerate. Debates often split into two camps, referred to here as the Radicals and Moderates. The former favored alcohol prohibition and argued that it should be established in the new Constitution; the latter advocated stricter regulation, which would consider both the alcohol industry’s economic benefits and citizens’ individual liberties. José María Rodríguez, a medical doctor, President of the Health Council and a close friend of President Carranza, initially served as Mexico’s most prominent radical reformer before shifting his views to the opposite camp. Rodríguez referred to “alcoholism as an illness of the race.” Along with drug consumption, he claimed, “nine tenths of the lower classes were alcoholics” and argued that crime in Mexico was among the worst in the world because of drunkards. 29 According to the doctor, alcohol consumption in the country was “30 litres per person annually.”30 After advocating support for banning alcohol, Rodríguez revised his position, proposing a more “gradual” approach to alcoholism; consumption could be limited through regulation in semi-public spaces. He explained that prohibiting the production and trade of pulque, an alcohol beverage made from fermenting the maguey (agave) plant, would distress an important industry, exacerbating unemployment and diminishing government revenue at a time of economic hardship.31 In the end, the government elected to increase control of alcohol production and consumption, not to prohibit it, and to give the newly created Health Department the authority to determine anti-alcohol

78  Cecilia Autrique Escobar

Figure 4.3  Drinking was associated with illness and decay. 32

measures. Article 117 of the Constitution established that individual Mexican states were responsible for writing their own legislation to combat alcoholism. The result was a powerful new health agency, guided by directives set by the President, and illustrative of a broader path to an increasingly centralized state (Figure 4.3).

The Protestants in Mexico In 1918, the Methodist Church declared a new mission: the promotion of voluntary abstinence from alcohol and drugs and the advancement of alcohol prohibition worldwide.33 All Protestant churches shared this goal; the five main congregations in Mexico (Northern and Southern Presbyterians, Northern and Southern Episcopal Methodists, and the Congregationalists) decided to form a common front against alcohol, agreed upon at the Cincinnati Convention of 1914. They hoped an ­interdenominational alliance would overcome their small presence in Mexico—only 1% or 2% of the population were Protestants. A united front would better enable them to stand up to the dominant Catholic Church34 and to advance their social agenda through education. Their shared goal of changing Mexico’s morals and culture to improve the nation through a conscientious, vice-free citizenry led the Constitutional Revolutionaries and Protestants to work together in educational programs and anti-alcohol campaigns. 35 In 1918, Protestant churches and Mexican Constitutionalists together founded the Asociación

Influence of American Protestant Groups  79

Figure 4.4  “In the Tentacles of the Enemy,” Mexico trapped by alcohol. 36

Anti-Alcohólica Nacional (National Anti-Alcohol Association), which would give the movement a non-religious character and hence reach a larger public. 37 Among the participants in the association were Mexican doctors, teachers, government bureaucrats, and prominent members of Mexican society. The head of the Health Department, Doctor Alfonso Pruneda, 38 was given the responsibility of formalizing the Association, which was led by the Mexican Methodist leader Epigmenio Velasco, director of the weekly interdenominational publication El Mundo ­Cristiano. The plan was to organize anti-alcohol campaigns in schools, give public conferences, and distribute propaganda (Figure 4.4). Epigmenio Velasco represented Mexico at the International Congress of Temperance in Washington, D.C., in September 1920, where he discussed the Mexican government’s commitment to “coordinate work and to develop a national campaign against alcohol,” in accordance with the “approved plan and resources committed by the WLAA” in 1919. 39 By then, all Protestant churches in Mexico were members of this international organization. The WLAA proposed publishing a newspaper advocating temperance and organizing a national anti-alcohol campaign,40 though their plan was never accomplished.41 In spite of this, Protestant reformers in Mexico published newspapers and brochures, hosted conferences across the country, formed a­ ntialcohol leagues, and taught temperance in their schools and churches. Their campaigns targeted a wide cross-section of society: the middle and working classes, both urban and rural; women and children; and white-collar workers, such as teachers and bureaucrats. The missionaries argued that drinking affected not only the individual but also society

80  Cecilia Autrique Escobar as a whole. When men wasted their salaries in saloons, it left women and children in poverty. Alcohol was a poison, they claimed—it turned workers into poor slaves, doomed to destitution.42 The evangelicals considered newspapers their primary means of disseminating their values and highlighting their “civilizing mission.” The most important of these publications during the 1920s were the weekly El Mundo Cristiano (1919–1928) and the monthly magazine La Nueva Democracia (1920). Writers argued that the production and sale of alcoholic beverages should not be legal since drinking went “against society”; in their view, the rights of an individual should never usurp the collective rights of society. Prohibition was considered an “act of patriotism”: battling alcohol meant defending the existence of all races and nations, and protecting their economic and social well-being.43 Whereas alcohol consumption was seen as an obstacle to the material progress of society, it also precluded people’s salvation. Their argument affirmed that producers and sellers of liquor were responsible for all the negative consequences of alcohol consumption.44 The idea that the responsibility for the use of psychoactive substances should be placed on the producer, rather than the consumer, remains prevalent today (Figure 4.5).45

Figure 4.5  T he responsibility for drinking alcohol was laid on saloonkeepers not on consumers.46

Influence of American Protestant Groups  81 By 1920, the National Anti-Alcohol Association (NAA) and the ­ rotestant churches had helped establish at least twenty anti-­alcohol P leagues, spread across nine states and Mexico City.47 Leagues were established in three other states in 1921 and 1922.48 Following the Children’s Congress in Mexico City in 1921, the NAA established ­anti-alcohol teachings in public schools.49 Alongside Velasco, prominent Mexican evangelicals Andrés Osuna, Moisés Sáenz, and Jonás García contributed to the alcohol fight, organizing educational campaigns. 50 Osuna published a manual titled Alcoholismo in 1929, written for an audience of elementary and middle school children (Figure 4.6).51 Missionaries and Protestant churches also collaborated with other Mexican organizations to promote temperance, including local anti-­ alcohol campaigns in Chihuahua (1920), Mexico City (1920), and San Luis Potosí (1923). The most vigorous Protestant campaign took place in Chihuahua, a border state with the United States. The Governor Ignacio C. Enríquez (1920–1923), a Constitutionalist, attempted to introduce a dry law in 1920. Following the Revolution, politicians across Mexico were concerned with restoring political control, rebuilding the economy, and incorporating social reforms proposed by the working classes that fought in the war. Leaders of border states faced another task: the

Figure 4.6  Children played an important part in anti-alcohol campaigns. 52

82  Cecilia Autrique Escobar U.S. Prohibition of alcohol had made places like Chihuahua attractions for Americans in search of liquor, gambling, and prostitution. In the 1920s, Mexican border towns grew around the tourist “vice industry.”53 ­Casinos, saloons, and hotels—along with gambling, prostitution, and the illegal smuggling of drugs and alcohol—appeared on an unprecedented scale.54 These businesses represented important fiscal resources for all states, through licenses and other taxes. For border states, especially Chihuahua, where agriculture, cattle raising, and mining were devastated by the civil war, this was especially true. Nonetheless, Enríquez—a believer in President Obregón’s mission of fighting vice—supported the NAA and the Protestant churches in their campaign for alcohol prohibition in the state.55 He explained to the representatives of the NAA that he was confident that the problem of lost revenue from alcohol taxes and licenses could be overcome because alcoholics would no longer be a drain on state funds. 56 In the end, in spite of the Protestants’ efforts, the prohibitionists were not successful. The alcohol industry proved to be better organized in lobbying the chambers of commerce; it convinced Congress to undertake a plebiscite, wherein the people could decide if they wanted a dry state. 57 Protestant reformers argued that there was not enough time to organize an efficient state-wide campaign and protested undue influence by the Catholic Bishop, who had told his followers “not to vote for the cause because Protestants were involved.”58 Rumors that the members of the NAA were “employees of the Americans” further hampered the prohibitionist cause. 59 Enríquez abandoned his earlier ideas on the financial cost-benefit analysis of prohibition; the economic conditions of Chihuahua were so precarious that he had no other option but to continue relying on the proceeds of the vice industry.60 Despite the setback, prohibitionists revised and broadened their efforts. Three years later, at the Workers Convention of Chihuahua, laborers talked again about imposing a dry law nationwide and passing stricter regulation on alcohol consumption and trade, as well as collaborating with the NAA to promote anti-alcohol education in schools. Workers in other states also expressed their support.61 Protestant groups continued their temperance work, suggesting economic alternatives to substitute revenues from the alcohol industry; in lieu of the production of pulque, they proposed that the fibers of the cactus could be used to produce textiles. They applauded when President Calles—who had established the dry law during his governorship in Sonora (1915–1920)— introduced the income tax in 1925, as the United States had in 1913.62 In their newspapers, they discussed the domestic economy, claiming “a worker would spend a fourth of his salary when he was sober, one third

Influence of American Protestant Groups  83 when he was a moderate drinker, and four fifths when he was a drunkard, leaving his family without bread and education.” Evangelicals continued to work with the NAA in spite of economic and other difficulties, propagating the idea that “temperate men were corporally and spiritually superior.”63 A major turning point in the fight against alcohol occurred during the Presidency of Emilio Portes Gil (1928–1930), who had previously supported temperance and had shuttered saloons during his tenure as Governor of Tamaulipas (1925–1928). Portes Gil established a nationwide anti-alcohol campaign; this time, the campaign would not be led by civil society or Protestants, but by the federal government. Former participants, including Ernestina Alvarado of the White ­R ibbons (of the WCTU),64 joined the new Federal organization called the Comité ­Nacional de la Lucha Contra el Alcoholismo (National ­Committee for the Fight Against Alcoholism). The alcohol fight became part of ­Mexico’s process of political centralization; the Committee ­encompassed representatives from industrial and workers ­organizations, government agencies, and even the press.65 Portes Gil’s national anti-alcohol plan attempted to contain the growth of “vice centres” and to foster sports and temperance education in schools and workers associations. He left in charge of the campaign the existing woman’s anti-alcohol leagues.66 Protestant reformers, most notably Methodist groups like Unión Femenil Metodista Mexicana, continued their temperance work in collaboration with the NAA.67 Enabled by the consolidation of political power in a centralized State, Portes Gil sounded a triumphant note: his government had succeeded in “­i mprov[ing] the race and the future of Mexico” and “redeem[ing] the social promises of the Mexican Revolution.”68

American Temperance Organizations and their Influence on the U.S.-Mexican Border The U.S. consular communications of American and Mexican border states during the years of U.S. Prohibition (1920–1933) reveal that the American temperance movements against alcohol and drugs were characterized by remarkably diverse associations. The overwhelming “vice and immorality” in border towns like Tijuana, Mexicali, Ciudad Juarez, and Nogales prompted American Protestant groups to demand that the U.S. and Mexican governments change their policies. Civil society groups as far-ranging as the WCTU, the YMCA, the ASL, Rotary Clubs, the local press, real estate associations, chambers of commerce, and the Ku Klux Klan wrote letters. All of them shared a single goal: asking the American and the Mexican governments to limit, in one way or another, access to alcohol on the southern side of the border.

84  Cecilia Autrique Escobar In response, the U.S. government tried to avoid using official channels; the State Department position was that alcohol regulation south of the border was an internal matter of Mexico.69 That did not satisfy the civil organizations, which constantly pressured the State and the Treasury Departments with a variety of demands. Among their requests were the establishment by the Mexican government of a “dry zone” of 80 km on its side of the border.70 Others proposed an early closedown of border crossings, which they claimed would protect Americans, in particular youngsters, who crossed to Mexico to drink and gamble, and to contain smuggling, which increased during the late hours.71 While the two governments seriously considered both proposals, only the latter was applied: beginning in 1924, crossings in California and Texas were closed from 9pm until 7am.72 Petitions that would require more draconian ­regulation—the prohibition by the State Department of young men crossing the border without an adult, the permanent closure of the port of entry at San Diego, shutting border crossings on Sundays in order to keep Americans away from Mexican bars, gambling, and prostitution— were all rejected. In both countries, attitudes about race and class influenced the debate about alcohol consumption and its regulation. Since the time of Spanish rule in Mexico, narratives about alcohol were linked to race. Discriminatory attitudes prevailed against consumers of pulque, the fermented cactus drink popular among the indigenous and lower classes of the center and southern regions of the country. The surge of Italian Irish, Polish, Chinese, and Latin American immigrants to the United States during the nineteenth century fueled discrimination often manifested in ethnic stereotypes of alcoholism. Both Mexico and American leaders considered alcoholism to be a problem of the lower classes. As Pyke describes in his book on stereotypes in the United States and Latin ­A merica, the logic of American white supremacy held that alcoholism was an exclusive problem of immigrants, of those not considered “white and civilized.” Puritans believed that the use of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs represented a lack of civilization and was an obstacle to human progress (Figure 4.7).73 In the case of Mexico, elites began to foster a moral “renovation” during the time of the Porfiriato (1876–1910). The group known as the científicos tried to eradicate the consumption of pulque, with the aim of achieving a modern nation. So, too, did the Revolucionarios, who believed that drinking precluded the working classes from progress, since a large portion of their income was spent on the white drink, with negative economic and social consequences.74 Crime and poverty were associated with the pulquerías or pulque houses, which tended to be more strictly controlled than the bars and restaurants catering to the elite. The efforts of both Mexican Revolutionaries and American social reformers successfully changed popular attitudes toward alcohol in the 1920s.

Influence of American Protestant Groups  85

Figure 4.7  “Liberty Darkening the World.”75

Conclusion In Mexico, alcohol prohibition was never adopted as a national policy. Nonetheless, Mexican civil society welcomed the fight against alcoholism, since it was seen as a widespread problem across the country. The new political elite ultimately failed to end liquor consumption, although saloons and gambling were intermittently prohibited and drinking more strictly regulated. The main obstacle was economic: licenses and other taxes meant public revenues and government funds were always scarce, especially following the destruction of the civil war. Thus, even if the Constitutionalistas wanted to eliminate bars and gambling, and in spite of considerable pressure from Protestant groups, economic need prevailed. Alternative proposals to improve tax revenues without a reliance on the alcohol industry, such as transforming the pulque industry into other products and the introduction of the income tax in 1925, proved insufficient. American Protestant activities in Mexico declined over time. But with the repeal of prohibition in the United States in 1933, the global evangelism of the WCTU ended “not with a whimper, but with a bang,” as Tyrrell describes.76

86  Cecilia Autrique Escobar American missionaries, however, “sowed seed” from which other movements would sprout.77 Narcotics prohibition is a prime example of their prevailing influence in Mexico. In stark contrast, a more sensible policy was adopted toward alcohol: alcoholism was to be limited through regulation and education and considered as a public health issue rather than a criminal one. The economic benefits of taxation would go to the national and local governments, and not to criminal groups and black markets, as has been the case with drugs since the beginning of prohibition.78 The case of Mexico illustrates how the global policy of prohibition has a shifting meaning depending on historical and cultural moments. Narcotics in the early twentieth century represented merely a footnote in public policy in Mexico, for there was little thought or debate given to prohibition. Nonetheless, American Protestants and reformers, guided by their moral values, successfully championed a global drug prohibition ­regime—even though these values have never been shared worldwide. The failure of this prohibitionist regime, with all its negative and violent consequences, has reopened the debate. For the first time, the question of drug prohibition is in the Mexican public policy spotlight. In November 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing the recreational consumption of marijuana to four individuals; in December 2016, Congress approved the medicinal use of cannabis, and in October 2018, the Supreme Court voted the fifth ruling allowing the use of recreational marijuana.79 After more than a hundred years of failure, the meaning of prohibition is shifting. At last, drug tolerance seems to be gaining some leeway.

Notes 1 This chapter is a result of the research for my dissertation: “La Prohibición del alcohol en Estados Unidos y sus efectos en México, 1920–1933,” PhD diss., Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2016. I would like to thank Catherine Mansell Mayo and Benjy Mercer-Golden for their comments on previous versions of this chapter. Also to the British Academy and Susannah Wilson of The University of Warwick for their financial support in the Prohibition workshops. 2 Susan Curtis, A Consuming Faith, The Social Gospel and Modern ­A merican Culture (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001), 2–3. 3 The Federal Council of Churches included Baptists, Congregationalists, Disciples of Christ, Quakers, Lutherans, Mennonites, Methodists, Moravians, Presbyterians, Brethren, among others (Curtis, Ibid., xx.) 4 Preston explains the central role of religion in the United States. Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith, Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Anchor Books, 2012), 6–14. 5 Ian Tyrrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 3. 6 Ibid., 8. 7 Cartoon of World War I Era, http://blog.newspapers.library.in.gov/wp-­ content/uploads/2015/08/Hun-Rule-Association.jpg. This and all subsequent URLs cited accessed November 15, 2018. 8 See Mark Schrad’s chapter in this volume.

Influence of American Protestant Groups  87 9 For a detailed explanation of the Social Gospel, see Susan Curtis, A Consuming Faith. 10 This relates to eugenics, race degeneration, and issues with self-control also mentioned in Susannah Wilson’s chapter in this volume. 11 Tyrrell, Reforming the World, 4. 12 For a detailed explanation, see Tyrrell, Reforming the World. 13 The Open Door Policy (1899) aimed at promoting equal opportunity for international trade in China. 14 Tyrrell, Reforming the World, 146–65. 15 Only twelve countries attended the Convention. Four signed with reservations, arguing that main producers did not participate. Eight were full signatories. Due to U.S. pressure, by 1914, forty-four states ratified the Convention. Antonio Escohotado, La Historia General de las Drogas, vol. 3 (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1989), 249–53. 16 For an analysis of the ethical vs. legal debate, see Escohotado, La Historia General de las Drogas, 254–68. 17 Edward Behr, Thirteen Years That Changed America (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1996), 72–73. 18 Article 295 of the Treaty of Versailles established that signatories are bound to ratify the Hague Convention. See Daniel J. P. Wertz, “Idealism, Imperialism and Internationalism: Opium Politics in the Colonial Philippines, ­1898–1925,” Modern Asian Studies 47, no. 2 (2012): 467–99. The U.S. Congress did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles, Escohotado, La Historia General de las Drogas, 252–3. 19 Isaac Campos, Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 181–201. 20 In Mexico, all laws and treaties have to be published in The Diario ­O ficial de la Federación to become valid. The 1912 law: “Decreto por el cual se promulga la Convención Internacional del Opio …” was published in ­Diario Oficial on March 18, 1927. José Domingo Schievenini Stefanoni, “La ­Prohibición de la Marihuana en México, 1920–1940,” Masters diss., Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, 2012, 57. 21 During his short presidency (1911–1913), Madero proposed an (unsuccessful) campaign against pulque. 22 I agree with Campos in that “the drug war would not become a central political concern until later in the century”; yet it was during these earlier years— when marijuana had limited presence in Mexican life—that “its central role” was determined in that “future war.” Campos, Home Grown, 227. 23 Carranza proscribed alcohol consumption in different places, including in Mexico City during a typhus epidemic in 1915–1916. He implemented ­anti-alcohol campaigns in Ciudad Juárez and Piedras Negras. Berta Ulloa, La Constitución de 1917 (Mexico: Colegio de México, 1983), 28. 24 The law was called: “Dispositions on the Cultivation and Commerce of Substances That Degenerate the Race,” published on March 2, 1920. It banned production and trade of marijuana. 25 For a well-documented explanation of the association of alcohol and marijuana, the lack of scientific basis in the common understanding of their effects, and their linkage to violence and crime, see Isaac Campos, Home Grown, 81–121. 26 Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (New York: Scribner, 2010), 41–42, 52, and 110–1. 27 Samuel G. Inman, Hacia la solidaridad americana (Madrid: Daniel Jorro Editor, 1924), 321. Inman was a moderate and important evangelical figure in these conferences and in Latin America.

88  Cecilia Autrique Escobar 28 Agustín Víctor Casasola, “Hombres comiendo y tomando pulque,” (­ México, D. F., [circa 1920]), México, Archivo Casasola, Fondo A, núm. inv. 5559. SINAFO. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. 29 January 19, 1917, Diario de los Debates del Congreso Constituyente de Querétaro de 1916–1917, https://archive.org/stream/DiarioDeDebatesDel CongresoConstituyenteQuertaroDe1916-1917.ToMoI/, 1768, 1773–1774. 30 January 16, 1917, Ibid., 1776. 31 January 25, 1917, Ibid., 2207–8. 32 Agustín Víctor Casasola, “Caricatura de un hombre y enfermedades,” (Mexico City, [circa 1920]), Archivo Casasola, Fondo A, num. inv. 141450. SINAFO. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. 33 Frank M. Thomas, Doctrinas y disciplina de la Iglesia metodista episcopal del Sur: 1918 (Nashville, TN: Smith & Lamar, 1920), 337–8. 34 The winning Revolutionaries were strongly anticlerical and had a power struggle with the Catholic Church, which dominated all aspects of life in Mexico (98% of the population was Catholic). The Catholic Church launched a broad social program in Mexico from 1913 to 1924, based on the encyclical Rerum Novarum of Pope Leon XIII (1891), that had a similar mission as the Social Gospel of the Protestants, to improve the moral and material conditions of workers through organizations known as the Círculos Católicos Obreros. Catholics were also concerned about alcoholism and fostered temperance leagues, yet it was never an option to cooperate with Protestants on any issue. In this context, the alliance between Protestants and the winning Revolutionary faction became a reasonable option. María Gabriela Aguirre Cristiani,¿Una Historia compartida? Revolución Mexicana y Catolicismo Social, 1913–1924 (Mexico: Instituto Mexicano de Doctrina Social Cristiana/ITAM/UAM, 2008), 1929. 35 The overlap with Protestant moral values and prohibitionist stances toward alcohol and other vices can be identified among some of the Constitutional Revolutionaries, for example: Francisco Ibarra, Francisco Múgica, David Pastrana, Jesús de la Torre, Cayetano Andrade, Cándido Avilés, Miguel Alonso Romero, and Daniel Guzmán. January 20, 1917, Diario de los Debates del Congreso Constituyente de Querétaro de 1916–1917, https:// archive.org/stream/DiarioDeDebatesDelCongresoConstituyenteQuertaro De1916-1917.ToMoI/, 2381–422. There were “ten elected [Mexican] Protestant delegates” to the Constitutional Congress and the Methodist ­A ndrés Osuna proposed that “the churches organized a committee of ­Mexican ministers to represent the interests of the Protestants,” Deborah Baldwin, Protestants and the Mexican Revolution: Missionaries, Ministries, and Social Change (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 166–7. Osuna and other Protestants worked in Carranza’s government, particularly in the education sector. 36 “En las garras del enemigo,” El Mundo Cristiano, IV, no. 17 (Mexico City, April 28, 1921): 1. Reproduction authorized by ©Dirección de Archivo e Historia. Iglesia Metodista de México. Fondo Hemerográfico. Ciudad de México. 37 El Mundo Cristiano, 3, no. 21, (Mexico City, November 18, 1920), 488. 38 Doctor Pruneda was the president of the Universidad Popular Mexicana that held as its mission the expansion of culture to the popular classes. M ­ orelos Torres Aguilar, Cultura y Revolución. La Universidad Popular Mexicana (Ciudad de México, 1912–1920) (México: UNAM, 2009). 39 El Mundo Cristiano, 2, no. 4, (Mexico City, January 22, 1920), 710.

Influence of American Protestant Groups  89 40 “Denies Dry League Will Fight Tobacco,” New York Times, August 4, 1919, http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf. 41 This was probably due in part to the political context in Mexico. President Carranza, who had backed the Protestant projects, was murdered in May 1920. Epigmenio Velasco met with interim President Adolfo de la Huerta and with Presidential candidate, Álvaro Obregón, and Plutarco E. Calles, Secretary of War. They all agreed to continuing to work on the same policy to fight alcohol, but evidently liquor campaigns were not a priority during such difficult times after the civil war. See El Mundo Cristiano 3, no. 4 (Mexico City, July 22, 1920), 95; and 3, no. 16 (Mexico City, October 14, 1920), 365. 42 The same rhetoric surrounded opium consumption in the Far East, see Aro Velmet’s chapter in this volume. 43 El Mundo Cristiano 7, no. 5 (Mexico City, February 1, 1923), 88–89. 4 4 Ibid., 3, no. 9 (Mexico City, August 26, 1920), 199. 45 Ibid., 5, no. 1 (Mexico City, July 7, 1921), 396. 46 Illustration by Carlos Petrán, a Presbyterian who collaborated with workers’ associations and anti-alcohol education. “Patriotismo y Prohibición,” El Mundo Cristiano, 3, no. 9 (Mexico City, August 26, 1920): 199. Reproduction authorized by ©Dirección de Archivo e Historia. Iglesia Metodista de México. Fondo Hemerográfico. Ciudad de México. 47 Ibid., 2, no. 26 (Mexico City, June 24, 1920), 1183. 48 National Anti-Alcohol Association to María Tapia de Obregón, Mexico, 10 February, 1922, Fondo Obregón-Calles, Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), 816-A-46. 49 El Mundo Cristiano, 7, no. 5 (Mexico City, February 3, 1921), 106. 50 Moisés Sáenz and Andrés Osuna to Fernando Torreblanca, Mexico, 6 ­August, 1924, Fondo Obregón-Calles, AGN, 814-A-119. 51 Andrés Osuna, El Alcoholismo (Mexico City: Sociedad de Edición y ­Librería Franco Americana, 1929). 52 Agustín Víctor Casasola, “Niñas mostrando un cartel del 1er Congreso ­Nacional contra el Alcoholismo en la Ciudad de Puebla,” México, D. F. (sic), Octubre 1936, Archivo Casasola, Fondo A, num. de inv. 141467. SINAFO. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. 53 Paolo Riguzzi, Las relaciones México-Estados Unidos, 1756–2010, vol. 2, (México: UNAM/SRE, 2012), 231–34. 54 Ciudad Juárez was known as the “Monte Carlo of America.” The owners, staff, and clients of these vice businesses were mostly American citizens. ­Steven Bender, Run for the Border: Vice and Virtue in the U.S. Mexican Border (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 57–60. This led Edwin E. Grant of the State Law Enforcement League of California to write to the Secretary of State, expressing the organization’s concern about the immorality and bad figure that American citizens represented in Mexico. Grant to the Secretary of State, California, October 14, 1924, WNA, 812.711129. 55 In 1920, President Obregón ordered the shutdown of all gambling houses at the border. Alfonso Pesqueira to Obregón, Fideicomiso Archivo Plutarco Elías Calles y Fernando Torreblanca (FAPECT), México, July 9, 1920, 11030400, exp. P-010/637, inv. 2653; and Miguel Alessio Robles to Torreblanca, Mexico, July 26, 1920, 11030400, exp. A-15, A-010 and H 24/22, inv. 2038. Obregón´s decision was not entirely for moral reasons. The economic revenue from these businesses gave the States independence from the central government, so it was likely also a matter of political control. In the case of Enríquez, his loyalty and friendship with Obregón were decisive. In

90  Cecilia Autrique Escobar

56 7 5 58 59 60

61 62 63 64

65 66 67

68 69 70

71

72 73

addition, the United States had not yet recognized Obregon´s Administration; it was thus important to take into account the interests of the temperance groups, whose political pressure was considerable. El Mundo Cristiano, 4, no. 17, (Mexico City, April 28, 1921), 398 and 405. Ibid., 4, no. 83 (Mexico City, April 7, 1921), 340. Ibid., 4, no. 17 (Mexico City, April 28, 1921), 404–6. Ibid., 4, no. 14 (Mexico City, April 7, 1921), 349. James Stewart to the State Department, Washington National A ­ rchives (WNA), September 6, 1922, 812.40622/21; John Dye to the State ­Department, WNA, November 16, 1922, 812.40622/23; and Dye to State Department, February 24, 1923, WNA, 812.40622/28. El Mundo Cristiano, 8, no. 50 (Mexico City, December 11, 1924), 1182. Ibid., 9, no. 6 (Mexico City, February 5, 1925), 152–3. Ibid., 7, no. 8 (Mexico City, February 22, 1923), 121–122. Ernestina Alvarado was a teacher and president of the Sociedad Femenil Mexicana de Temperancia from 1922 to 1930, Anna Macías, Against All Odds: The Mexican Feminist Movement to 1940 (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 1982), 113. “Contra el Alcoholismo,” El Universal, (Mexico City, May 21, 1929), in FAPECT, series 0313, exp. 95, leg. 18/52. Francisco Lazcano, “La Campaña Anti-alcohol en México,” Oedipus, Revista Maconica de Maior Cirulacao, 50, Anno 4º, (Brazil, Bahia, September 1929): 12, in FAPECT, series 0313, exp. 213, inv. 524. “Programa de la XXII Convención Evangélica,” El Abogado Cristiano Ilustrado, Segunda Época, XLV, num. 25, (Mexico City, June 20, 1929), 3. By then the interdenominational alliance of the Protestant churches had fractured, El Mundo Cristiano went out of print. Quoted in “Labores del Comité Nacional de la Lucha Contra el A ­ lcoholismo, desde su creación hasta la fecha,” Mexico City, September 30, 1930, in FAPECT, exp. 11, inv. 322, 0313, leg. 2/16. Undersecretary Joseph Grew to Secretary of State, December 4, 1924, WNA, 812.711129; and internal communications of the State Department, November 8, 1924, WNA, 812.711129/13. Chandler (WCTU Yuma) to Charles Hughes, September 27, 1924, WNA, 812.711129/13. President de la Huerta talked to Epigmenio Velasco about presenting an initiative of a dry zone to Congress. See El Mundo Cristiano 2, no. 16 (Mexico City, October 14, 1920), 365; Ibid., 4, no. 9, (Mexico City, April 28, 1921), 388. Angie Miller (WCTU-Brawley) to Secretary of State, April, 1924, WNA, 812.40622/63; Charlotte Preston (WCTU-Imperial Valley) to President ­Calvin Coolidge, March 25, 1923, WNA, 812.40622/54; Methodist Episcopal Church of Southern California to Senator Ashurst, April 1924, WNA, 812.40622/69; YMCA to State Department, March 27, 1924, WNA, 812.40622/60; L. D. McCartney, (ASL) to Coolidge, Arizona, September 25, 1923, WNA, 812.40622/86; G.A. Platt (Rotary Club of Calexico) to Senator Shortridge, May 15, 1923, WNA, 40622/27; L.D. McCartney to President Coolidge, Douglas, Arizona, September 25, 1923, WNA, 812.40622/35; President of the Ku Klux Klan of Calexico to Senator Shortridge, Calexico, May 12, 1922, WNA, 812.40622/31; Ku Klux Klan of Calexico to Secretary of State, Charles E. Hughes, Calexico, May 15, 1922, WNA, 812.40622/32. State Department to Treasury, February 28, 1924, WNA, 812.40622/42. Frederick Pike, The United States and Latin America, Myths and Stereotypes of Civilization and Nature (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992), 52–53, 58–59.

Influence of American Protestant Groups  91 74 Mario Barbosa Cruz, “La persistencia de una tradición: Consumo de pulque en la ciudad de México, 1900–1920,” in Cruda Realidad. producción, consumo y fiscalidad de las bebidas alcohólicas en México y América Latina, siglos XVII–XX, eds. Ernest Sánchez Santiró, (Mexico: Instituto Mora, 2007), 213–42; and Mario Ramírez Rancaño, El Rey del Pulque, Ignacio Torres Adalid y la industria pulquera (Mexico: UNAM & Quinta Chilla Ediciones, 2012), 57, 63. 75 Wilbur and Sarah Crafts, World Book of Temperance, (Cover) International Reform Bureau, 1908, Reproduction authorized by ©Dirección de Archivo e Historia. Iglesia Metodista de México. Biblioteca Fondo Reservado. Ciudad de México. 76 Tyrrell, Reforming the World, 112. 77 Preston, Sword of the Spirit, 192. 78 For drawbacks of prohibition, see Gabriela Recio, “Drugs and alcohol: US Prohibition and the Origins of the Drug Trade in Mexico, 1910–1930,” Journal of Latin American Studies 34, no. 1 (February 2002), 21–42. 79 In Mexico when the Supreme Court rules five consecutive cases in the same way it becomes a valid law to all courts of the land. Its decision was based on human rights and harm reduction, and was the result of the work of civil ­society organizations, led by México Unido Contra la ­Delincuencia, A.C., www.mucd.org.mx. The legal strategy was headed by Andrés ­Aguinaco, Aguinaco and A. Barra, International Journal of Drug Policy 50 (2017), 9–10.

Bibliography Primary Sources Washington National Archives, College Park, Md, and Washington, D.C. Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico. Fideicomiso Archivo Plutarco Elías Calles y Fernando Torreblanca, Mexico. Archivo de Historia, Iglesia Metodista de Mexico, A.R., Mexico. Archivo Casasola, SINEFO, Mexico.

Secondary Sources Baldwin, J. Deborah. Protestants and the Mexican Revolution. Missionaries, Ministers, and Social Change. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. Bastian, Jean-Pierre. Los Disidentes. Sociedades protestantes y revolución en México, 1872–1911. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1989. Behr, Edward. Thirteen Years That Changed America. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1996. Campos, Isaac. Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. Curtis, Susan. A Consuming Faith: The Social Gospel and Modern American Culture. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001. Escohotado, Antonio, La Historia General de las Drogas. Madrid: Alianza ­E ditorial, 1989. Osuna, Andrés. El Alcoholismo. Mexico City: Sociedad de Edición y Librería Franco Americana, 1929.

92  Cecilia Autrique Escobar Okrent, Daniel. Last Call, The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. New York: Scribner, 2010. Pike, Frederick. The United States and Latin America: Myths and Stereotypes of Civilization and Nature. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992. Preston, Andrew. Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy. New York: Anchor Books, 2012. Ramírez Rancaño, Mario. El Rey del Pulque: Ignacio Torres Adalid y la industria pulquera. México: UNAM/Quinta Chilla Ediciones, 2012. Ruiz Guerra, Rúben. Hombres Nuevos: Metodismo y modernización en M ­ éxico (1873–1930). México: Cupsa, 1992. Sánchez Santiró, Ernest, ed. Cruda Realidad: producción, consumo y fiscalidad de las bebidas alcohólicas en México y América Latina, siglos XVII–XX. México: Instituto Mora, 2007. Schievenini Stefanoni, José Domingo. “La Prohibición de la Marihuana en ­México, 1920–1940.” Masters diss., Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, 2012. Tyrrell, Ian. Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. ———. Woman’s World, Woman’s Empire: The Woman’s Christian ­Temperance Union in International Perspective, 1880–1930. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1991.

5 The Formation of the Levant Hashish Trade and the Rise of Illicit Hashish Consumption in Interwar Palestine Haggai Ram Introduction In 1982, the Israeli army invaded Lebanon. It remained in partial ­control of the country’s southern border region until 2000, when it was ­redeployed to the internationally recognized border. The ­occupation opened (or rather reopened) the gates wide for hashish flows from ­L ebanon to Israel’s territory, and from there to Egypt.1 As a young man from the southern Lebanese town of Marjayoun conveyed to an Israeli reporter in 1984: The Israeli invasion was the best thing that ever happened to the hashish business in Lebanon. Until then it was dangerous to deal with it. Great risks. It was especially dangerous when the drugs were transferred through Syria, Jordan, the West Bank to Egypt. Too many hands, too many partners, small profits. The sea was no less dangerous. The Israeli navy was reaching Tyre and Sidon in recent years, and closed the option of reaching Sinai by sea. 2 Surely, the young man was overstating his case: illicit hashish flows from Lebanon to Egypt through the territory now ruled by the State of Israel are hardly a new phenomenon in the modern history of the Levant. In fact, such illicit hashish flows across the region can be traced back to the early interwar years. This chapter explores the formation of the border-crossing Levant hashish trade in the interwar years and its implications for illicit hashish consumption in mandatory Palestine. Part 1 argues that this transregional trade was a product of unintended consequences. It was brought about by incipient drug regulatory systems founded immediately before but mainly after World War I, especially by the League of Nations. As far as the Middle East was concerned, these systems limited Egyptbound hashish supplies from Greece. This transformed Palestine into a critical link in the supply chain stretching from Lebanon-Syria in the north to Egypt in the south. Part 2 explores the ramifications of this turn of events on recreational hashish smoking in Palestine. Prior to the

94  Haggai Ram British mandate, Palestinians resorted to hashish smoking on a ­limited scale. As Palestine emerged as a transit route from Syria-­L ebanon to Egypt, ­hashish use increased significantly among Palestine’s urban ­working-class Arab population, confirming that proximity to and availability of drugs matter, at least to some degree. Lastly, I draw these two arguments together within the volume’s conceptual framework of prohibitions, arguing that prohibitions often lead to unintended consequences that ironically ­exacerbate the very problems they set out to resolve.

How Did the Levant Hashish Trade Come About? Psychoactive substances were very common in the daily lives of people in the Ottoman Empire. In addition to wine (which, although religiously prohibited, was a favorite beverage of the upper classes), the main drugs in use in Ottoman society were opium and its derivatives and cannabis or hashish, and these substances were used to medicinal, religious, and recreational ends.3 Although neither Ottoman legal texts nor the Ottoman penal law prohibited psychoactive substances, their use was considered immoral. Yet in 1725, a sultanic decree forbade hashish smoking, and in the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottoman state, perhaps also with an eye to appeasing European critics of alleged Ottoman decline, carried out ­legal reforms to regulate the flow and use of certain intoxicants.4 However, as old habits die hard, these measures fell well short of rooting out hashish consumption.5 The Italian princess Cristina Trivulzio Di ­Belgiojoso, who was exiled to the Ottoman Empire in 1850–1855, p ­ rovides a vivid testimony of the open nature of hashish use in late ­Ottoman Syria: The use of this narcotic is widespread in Syria. If you meet a man whose eyes are dull and unsteady, whose face is lean, lips pale and thin, be assured that you are facing a hashish eater or drinker. If you see two such men facing each other at the table of a café, blowing clouds of smoke at each other without saying a word, you can be sure that those two types are in the middle of a hashish orgy.6 This account by the princess is most likely embellished and should be treated with caution. But even if taken at face value, there is ample reason to believe that hashish use in late Ottoman Egypt was more widespread and more deep-rooted than in Syria. Indeed, Egypt has been intimately associated with hashish since the Middle Ages. Like in many other places in the Muslim world, the Egyptian lower classes turned to this substance as an alternative to forbidden wine but also because hashish was easier to produce and cheaper to procure than wine.7 So rooted was this social practice that periodical campaigns by Egyptian authorities to prohibit hashish usually culminated in failure.8 The first ban on hashish in Egypt in the modern period was enforced by the Armée d’Orient officers during the short-lived French occupation

Formation of the Levant Hashish Trade  95 of that Ottoman province in 1798–1801. The ban was intended to deter French soldiers from indulging in local cannabis products. A universal ban on hashish products soon followed.9 Still, what had been inherent to local Egyptian tradition and customs from the Middle Ages, could not be quelled conclusively by virtue of a brief occupation. This explains why Egypt’s Khedival rulers reinstated the ban on hashish in a series of decrees during the 1860s and the 1870s.10 This latter ban responded to the concerns of the budding Egyptian middle classes, the effendiya, for whom hashish use by the working classes tarnished Egypt’s image as a modern nation.11 When the British occupied Egypt in 1882, they adopted the existing ban. They did so reluctantly and against their better judgment, because their Indian experience had taught them that such entrenched practices as hashish use would render prohibition impossible to achieve.12 Additionally, in the interwar period, “white drugs” (heroin and cocaine) eclipsed hashish as Egypt’s main drug problem, with “hashish dens… giving place to the emaciated shadows of heroin addicts slinking about round the offal bins.”13 Hence, what prompted the establishment of Egypt’s Narcotics Intelligence Bureau (CNIB) in 1929, with the illustrious Russell Pasha as its head, was the desire to eliminate the traffic in heroin and cocaine, rather than the hashish trade.14 Even so, at the turn of the century, the British were worried about uncontrollable illicit hashish flows into Egypt. Egypt’s long ­borders, the ingenuity and audacity of smugglers, the corruption of the ­E gyptian enforcement forces, and the demand for the drug by ­E gyptians  – all these, as the British in Egypt complained, rendered the task of cutting off incoming hashish supplies practically impossible to achieve.15 At that time, hashish was smuggled into Egypt from various ­countries (e.g., Cyprus, Turkey, Sudan), but mostly, it arrived in boats sailing the Mediterranean Sea from small islands of the Greek Archipelago.16 As Lord Cromer, the British Consul-General in Egypt in 1883–1907, pointed out, “The whole of the hashish consumed in Egypt comes from Greece”; “it is difficult to do very much more than we already do in Egypt. What is wanted is that Greece should prohibit the cultivation of hashish.”17 It was for this reason that the British exerted constant pressure on the Greek government to ban hashish cultivation so as to “stop the introduction of hashish [in Egypt].”18 A partial understanding was reached in 1913. In it, the Greeks made allowance “to restrict in various ways the cultivation and sale of hashish,” as Lord Kitchener, the British ­Consul-General in Egypt in the years immediately before the Great War, informed his Foreign Minister.19 Significantly, in this agreement, the Greeks also permitted Egypt to “execute… search warrants where Greek subjects were suspected of smuggling this drug.”20 This was intended to partially remedy the pernicious effects of the Capitulations regime,

96  Haggai Ram whereby foreigners could be prosecuted in Egypt only by their respective consulate, placing them above Egyptian law. The 1913 agreement limited the ability of Greek nationals in Egypt – such as drug smugglers and café owners – to carry out their hashish businesses with impunity. 21 The abolition of the Capitulations would have to wait until 1937. Yet, in 1925, the League of Nations second International Opium Convention imposed controls over a wider range of drugs, including, for the first time, cannabis. 22 This further cast doubt on the feasibility of hashish cultivation in Greece. The convention went into effect in 1928, and four years later, in 1932, the Greeks abolished cannabis cultivation, thereby putting an effective end to the traditional smuggling route to Egypt across the Western Desert from Cyrenaican ports. 23 A final death blow to Egypt’s Greek hashish supplies was dealt in the 1937 Montreux Convention, which abolished the Capitulations, allowing for “only one law [to be] applicable to narcotic offences, whether committed by Egyptian or by foreigner.”24 Russell Pasha crowned the convention as “the year’s event of the greatest importance.”25 In 1929, Russell recalled that when he first entered the Egyptian government’s service in 1902, “hashish came [to Egypt] entirely from Greece.” “In about 1907,” he continued, “certain persons began the experiment of growing it in the Lebanon district of Syria.” As Greece was gradually coming around to curtailing hashish cultivation in the course of the 1920s, Russell added, “the cultivation in the Lebanon increased enormously and reached an annual production of 1,500 to 2,000 kilos….” That hashish, he concluded, “was and is almost entirely exported to Egypt.”26 Egypt’s turn to Syrian and Lebanese-grown cannabis to compensate for the loss of Greek supplies inevitably led to a shift in supply routes to Egypt, which from this point on had to pass through Palestine. When Britain was assigned the mandate over Palestine, the country was already functioning as a “transit route” in the drug trade that unfolded in the Levant between Lebanon-Syria and Egypt, emerging as the most important hashish way station in the region. 27 A 1947 British report put it is as follows: “Hashish [is]… the main drug illegally transported through Palestine for the onward passage to Egypt, [and] in the majority of cases… hashish [is] arriving from Syria and the Lebanon.”28 This circumstance had significant effects on the nature and magnitude of recreational hashish smoking in mandatory Palestine.

The Rise of a (Under)World of Hashish Smokers in Mandatory Palestine Hashish consumption in late Ottoman Palestine appears to have been negligible. It is indeed likely that hashish was used in moderation in Palestine, in much of the same way that opium was used in moderate quantities

Formation of the Levant Hashish Trade  97 in nineteenth-century England, without any fatal “loss of c­ ontrol.”29 For lack of reliable sources, I base this argument on c­ ircumstantial evidence. Yitzhak Shami’s 1927 novella Vengeance of the Fathers is a good example of this.30 Born in 1888 in Hebron to a ­Damascene silk merchant and a Hebronite Sephardic mother, Shami is representative of “a forgotten milieu of those [Levantine] Jews who… shared language and culture with their Muslim and Christian compatriots in greater Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, as early as the Ottoman administrative reforms of 1839.”31 Thus, although he eventually embraced Zionism and wrote in Hebrew, in his works of fiction, Shami repeatedly strove to construct an Arab voice and to portray the Arabs from the inside, even though these portrayals were oftentimes highly critical.32 This empathy with the Arabs of Palestine explains why until very recently Shami was absent from the list of the great names of modern Hebrew prose, and why his works were all but forgotten.33 Vengeance of the Fathers is Shami’s most important work of fiction, and it is currently considered “one of the highest pinnacles of modern Hebrew literature.”34 The plot is based on real events, as Shami himself points out in a footnote.35 Although he does not provide a historical time frame for the novella, all internal clues point to the late Ottoman period on the eve of the Great War.36 The story begins with preparations for the annual spring festival of Nabi Musa, a major event in the life of Muslims in Palestine until the mid-1920s, when processions of pilgrims from all over Palestine converged on the presumed tomb of Moses (located some 25 miles east of Jerusalem). Three major groups travel from Jerusalem, Hebron, and Nablus – each with its own leader and flag-bearer, drummers and musicians, lancers, and fencing champions. The novella’s hero is the leader of the Nablus group, Nimr Abu al-Shawarib (“The Mustached One”), who is provoked into killing the leader of the Hebron group. Fearing blood vengeance, al-Shawarib flees into the wilderness and ends up in Cairo a shadow of his former self. Shami’s “descriptions of the [Cairo] setting, the misery of exile and the power of remorse are incandescent.”37 Indeed, during his Cairo sojourn al-Shawarib unwisely spends the little money he had, suffers acute outbreaks of depression, and becomes addicted to hashish. Seeing distressing visions, he decides to return to Palestine to seek the pardon of both Hebronites and the prophets buried in Hebron. As al-Shawarib climbs down into the prophets’ burial cave, he is struck dead by the “vengeance of the Fathers.” Nearly each one of Shami’s stories is concerned with the gradual downfall of a single individual.38 What distinguishes Vengeance of the Fathers from his other stories is that in the former hashish plays a crucial role in the protagonist’s ultimate demise. During his exile in Cairo, al-Shawarib sinks ever deeper in despair and regret for his actions and finds “refuge… in the arms of hashish”:

98  Haggai Ram [He] would rush to shut himself up in his room and inhale the ­amazing and intoxicating smoke, gulp after gulp. Hashish – more than all the amulets and charms given to him by hajjis and saintly dervishes – seemed to him to be a sure and effective means of relieving his pains, dulling his afflictions and subduing the endless moments of fear to twilight and slumber. And the more he took of this poisonous and malignant drug, the more impaired his health became, and the more his condition worsened.39 Shami devotes nearly half of the latter part of the novella to depressing portrayals of al-Shawarib’s hashish-induced disintegration in ­Cairo’s darkest alleys. It is perhaps not coincidental that Shami situates the hashish smoking scene in Cairo – “the promising and alluring city far away”40 – rather than in Nablus or Hebron or Jerusalem or Jaffa. I ­argue that the main reason for this is that hashish use in late Ottoman ­Palestine was a very limited phenomenon. Early 1920s mandatory Palestine did not appear to have turned to hashish any more than in the immediate pre-mandatory period. The first nonfiction book ever written on crime in interwar Palestine should lend credence to this argument. Published in 1924, the book, Crime and Criminals in Palestine, was written by a Jaffa-born Ashkenazi Jew, ­David Tidhar, who was a Palestine Police officer turned private ­detective turned Zionist activist. As will be seen, in the 1930s, Tidhar also ­provided inspiration for the first series of crime fiction ever published in Hebrew, with Tidhar serving as the series’ fictional hero. In Crime and Criminals in Palestine, Tidhar enumerates the various “ethnic groups” (‘edot) inhabiting Palestine and the “penchant” of each one for criminal activity.41 To say that Tidhar’s account is extremely Orientalist would be an understatement. Hence, he begins by asserting that Jews (both of European extraction and veteran Sephardim), together with Palestine’s European inhabitants – that is, “the sons of ­England, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Russia and so forth” – are “the most progressive law-abiding people in the country”; they are “learned” and “civilized,” and “there are hardly any criminals among them.”42 On the other hand, Palestinians of nearly all classes and denominations (urbanites and villagers, laborers and peasants, Muslims, Christians, Bedouins, and Druze) are, according to Tidhar, natural-born criminals. Besides being “ignorant,” “idle,” “negligent,” “illiterate,” “hotblooded,” “deceitful,” “innocent of the necessities of culture,” “prone to emotions and nervous disorders,” and being “acquiescent to thugs and fist wielders,” the criminal activities of Palestinians, Tidhar claims, are numerous: “theft, beating, stabbing and murder,” “organ amputation,” “arson,” “robbery,” “daughter kidnapping,” and “perjury.” Even Christian Arabs, Tidhar asserts, although many of them are “thorough in education,” are known to be engaged in criminal activities such as

Formation of the Levant Hashish Trade  99 “intoxication, bickering, beating, stabbing, embezzlement, forgery, theft and sometimes murder as well.”43 Significantly, Tidhar makes no mention of any drug offenses in his list of crimes allegedly perpetrated by the Arab inhabitants of the country. This resounding silence may suggest that recreational hashish smoking was (still) not prevalent in Palestine at the time of the book’s publication (1927). This began to change in the course of the 1930s, as Egyptian demand for Lebanese- and Syrian-grown cannabis increased, and as more and more Egypt-bound hashish supplies passed through Palestine’s territory. In 1933, a forensic expert at the Palestine Police Criminal Investigation Department (CID) called attention to the fallout of increased hashish smoking in Palestine arising from the country’s evolution into a critical link in the Levant hashish trade to Egypt. He wrote, “During its transit through Palestine, a certain amount of hashish is placed on the local markets for home consumption. It is sold [locally] in either pure or adulterated form….”44 Indeed, it is apparent that from the 1930s onward, hashish smoking gathered momentum in Palestine’s urban centers.45 Hence, one comes across multiple press reports in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, which, although anecdotal and nondescript, call attention to increased ­hashish smoking in such cities as Jaffa, Haifa, Jerusalem, Acre, Nablus, and ­Tiberius. For instance, in 1935, a concerned reader informed the editor of The Palestine Post that in Jerusalem, there were “not one, but dozens of hashish addicts… to be found in the Old City,”46 and press reports in 1936 estimated that in Jaffa alone there were “more than 5,000 hashish smokers [indulging in the illicit substance] in seven special places, mostly in the Old City.”47 At the same time, several men and women were regularly arrested while wandering these cities’ streets in a state of hashish intoxication. For instance, “an Arab youngster was riding a bicycle. He ran into a wall and was injured. The police took him to the hospital where it was found that he was intoxicated from hashish smoking.”48 Additionally, minuscule quantities of hashish were often seized on the persons of individuals – 0.7 g here, 1.5 g there – quantities that befit individual use, not large-scale hashish trafficking.49 On other occasions, the substance was “confiscated while it was being smoked.”50 What was the identity of Palestine’s hashish smokers, and what is exactly meant by “special places” where they consumed the forbidden substance? Like in so many other regions in the world, the decisive majority of hashish users in Palestine were the urban working classes. 51 As I discuss elsewhere, Jews (either veteran Sephardim or East European Zionist immigrants) tended to steer well clear of the substance, because they considered it an abominable Oriental vice (in much of the same way as the white middle classes in the U.S. at about the same time were averse of marijuana because of its association with “alien” Mexicans).52 Yet, in contrast, perhaps, to India and Egypt, where the middle classes

100  Haggai Ram eschewed cannabis use, 53 in interwar Palestine, the rising middle classes were also not immune to this habit, though probably not in any substantial numbers. 54 Two types of venues emerged in 1930s Palestine’s urban centers that served hashish for recreational use. The first type were makeshift ­“hashish-smoking clubs,”55 which were located in run-down neighborhoods, and the second type were coffeehouses. Regarding the former, aside from smoking hookahs and hashish cigarettes mixed with tobacco and playing cards, 56 we don’t really know much about what went on inside these establishments. Still, a glimpse into these recreational activities can be gleaned from Hebrew-language crime fiction in the interwar Palestine. This genre debuted in Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s, a period known as the “Golden Age” of crime fiction, when detective fiction soared in popularity all over the world. 57 Like its counterparts elsewhere, this genre’s popularity among Jews in Palestine stemmed from rising anxieties about crime in the post-World War I era. 58 As such, it provided radical dramatizations of real criminal activities that occurred in Palestine, activities which Zionist historiography tended to downplay and sometimes ignored altogether.59 The fight against a ring of hashish traffickers operating in the ­L evant provides the storyline in The Blue Crosses: The Tales of Hashish ­S mugglers, a 1932 booklet which features the fictional (and at the same time real-life) detective David Tidhar, whom we met previously.60 In his pursuit after the ring, Tidhar ends up in a hashish den located in an Arab quarter of Haifa’s lower city. Arriving at the hashish den’s entrance, he knocks on the door with a secret tap upon which the door opens “swallowing Tidhar into its open mouth.” Upon entering the premises, Tidhar “walked through a narrow and foul-smelling corridor and entered a wide-open room. The room was dim and he could not make out anything.”61 As Tidhar’s eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he noticed various people either sitting down or lying down; others were s­ moking hookahs, and the rest were lying motionlessly as if dead. Their lips mumbled meaningless broken words and syllables, their faces glowing with silly smiles… Within two hours all the guests were fast asleep. The only sounds were fleeting words and unintelligible roars coming out of the sleeping men’s mouths.62 Yet hashish clubs-cum-dens were not the main venue of recreational hashish smoking in Palestine; like elsewhere in the Levant, coffeehouses were. This is not surprising. Coffeehouses in the Middle East have been linked to drug consumption since the sixteenth century, and in fact, drug use was among the factors that dealt a serious blow to the reputation of these institutions.63 Such reputation was not always fair.

Formation of the Levant Hashish Trade  101 Cafés in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ottoman Istanbul or Cairo or Aleppo, for example, were not necessarily wanton or disreputable spaces, but “places of business and leisure, an extension of the street or market, a venue of entertainment, a space of courtship, an arena of communication, a place in which to read and a realm of distraction.”64 Yet it cannot be denied that besides acts of “frivolous sexuality,” t­ aking drugs was one of the most unseemly pleasures in coffeehouses in the ­Ottoman Empire.65 This circumstance, in turn, reinforced European b ­ elief in the “luxurious, effeminate, and corrupt nature of oriental societies.”66 With the passage to modernity, the association of these institutions with drug consumption became the object of severe denunciation by the indigenous middle classes, who viewed them as epitomes of the lower classes’ incivility and retrogression. Hence, in the late nineteenth c­ entury, members of the Ottoman-Egyptian “self-civilizing, ­self-colonizing elite,” described Egyptian cafés as “the source of numerous infections and d ­ iseases, and a refuge for the unemployed and the indolent, especially in those places noted for the consumption of hashish.”67 The growth of café culture in late Ottoman Palestine and its ­expansion in the interwar period have received at least partial scholarly ­attention.68 It is my contention that this expansion may have been linked to the emergence of Palestine as a major depot of hashish in the Levant. ­I ndeed, it may not have been a coincidence that coffeehouses and recreational hashish consumption (together with small-scale gambling, the performance of music, and prostitution) converged in the course of the interwar period. Like elsewhere in the Levant, the unscrupulous if not promiscuous disposition of these coffeehouses was particularly conspicuous in port cities (such as Jaffa and Haifa).69 It is certain that hashish was served to patrons in these cafés. Take, for example, a provisional café that operated at the annual Muslim festival of Nabi (Prophet) Rubin (Reuben, son of the biblical Patriarch Jacob) – which was located, until its destruction in 1948, some 9 miles south of Jaffa. A report on the 1934 festival alleged that One of the [festival’s] tents is used as a café to spend time in honest pleasures, but those who wish to indulge in dishonest pleasures can do that as well. Not far from the police tent which calls for the eradication of hashish in the country, a few young men were sitting in the café tent smoking hashish surreptitiously. Each one of them would order a hookah and offer it to his companions for a toke.70 Press and British reports also tell us about “certain low-class cafés” in Palestine’s towns that offered hashish to clients either openly or ­stealthily and that certain cafés at the heart of Tel Aviv, “the first Hebrew city,” also began to serve hashish to Jewish clients, although this may have been an exception to the rule.71

102  Haggai Ram That venues of recreational hashish smoking were a thorn in the side of the British authorities in Palestine is beyond doubt. That is why café patrons and café owners were routinely arrested due to hashish smoking and hashish possession,72 and why the police conducted numerous coordinated raids on cafés in various cities (Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Nablus) at the same time.73 That these venues elicited the concern by the British authorities can also be gleaned from the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance, issued by the Government of Palestine in 1936. Article 14 of the ordinance, which did not appear in the earlier Ordinances of 1925, 1928, 1932, and 1936, was designed to contend with a situation previously not known: “offences in connection with premises used for sale or smoking of opium and hashish.” The added Article criminalized any person who used such premises for “the purpose of the preparation of opium or hashish for smoking,” as well as “for the purpose of opium or hashish smoking.”74

Conclusion Before the interwar years, hashish hardly played any part in ­Palestinians recreational lives. While the smoking of cannabis (and opium) had been an important part of Indian and Egyptian recreational, medicinal, and religious practice for centuries, in Palestine, this was simply not the case. This state of affairs changed in the course of the mandatory ­period due to the country’s emergence as a major junction in the Levant ­hashish trade along the axis of Lebanon-Palestine-Egypt. With some of the Egypt-bound supplies left behind for the local market, access to and availability of hashish caused significant rise in consumption mainly by the country’s urban working-class Arab population. By the 1930s, hashish smoking spread throughout Palestine’s towns and cities, and venues of consumption – hashish dens, coffeehouses – proliferated in these towns. Recreational hashish smoking, however, did not create in Palestine a “cannabis-oriented culture”75 of the likes the British had encountered in India and Egypt. Indeed, that hashish use in interwar Palestine may have been comparatively limited, even though it had a clear upward trajectory, can be cautiously ascertained by two types of silence. The first is that the upward trend in hashish smoking was not reflected in official British reports to the League of Nations Opium Advisory Committee throughout the mandatory period. On the contrary, these reports reiterated time and again, year after year, in almost identical wording, that “addiction… has not been a serious problem in Palestine, where there is only a very limited market for narcotic drugs of any kind. The most common of such drugs in this country is hashish, but addicts are few”; “there is little evidence of drug addiction in Palestine but ­hashish is smoked by a few of the lower classes.”76 While I don’t doubt the sincerity of these assessments,

Formation of the Levant Hashish Trade  103 I argue that they are misleading if not read in the context of Britain’s two a­ dditional colonial possessions at the time, India and Egypt. Although substantially increased hashish consumption in Palestine can be traced back to the early 1930s, the extent of this phenomenon, even at its peak, was negligible when compared to cannabis consumption in India or in Egypt. Second, there are silences lurking in Palestinian public discourse as well. In neighboring Egypt, “a growing indigenous bureaucracy, an ­emerging medical profession, educated in Egypt itself, and a growing middle class, the effendiyya, produced its own debates on hashish prohibition,” and these were published in the local Egyptian press.77 In ­Palestine, on the other hand, there was no continuous and systematic (Arab) middle-class preoccupation with the putative dangers and harms of hashish use. ­Although Palestine’s Arabic press carried succinct, nondescript reports about hashish seizures and hashish offenders, I have found only one ­editorial that was concerned with the phenomenon of drug ­consumption and its harms in P ­ alestinian society.78 This silence perhaps d ­ emonstrates that the ­Palestinians’ ­middle-class spokespersons – who, like their ­Egyptian ­counterparts, may have believed that hashish undercut progress and ­civilization – did not ­consider hashish consumption to be a serious problem that required unusual and immediate intervention. My underlying argument – that the rise in hashish recreational use in Palestine was directly linked to the formation of the trans-Levant ­hashish trade in the interwar years – bears direct relevance to this ­volume’s ­conceptual framework regarding prohibitions. There is no doubt that international legal structures prohibiting and/or regulating narcotics in the interwar years, particularly the League of Nations, enjoyed “small successes.”79 For the most part, however, these structures proved to be no match for illicit drug flows between states, as “League reformers pushed manufacturing for the illicit market ever more irrevocably into the hands of… criminal entrepreneurs.”80 These smugglers moved quickly across established and incipient political borders to exploit weak points in the system of international law enforcement, making sure that the closure of one drug source would quickly be replaced by another.81 In the case explored here, the disruption of Egypt-bound hashish supplies from Greece was offset by supplies to the same destination from Lebanon and Syria, ensuring that the Levant in general and Palestine in particular (i.e., weak points in the system of international drug control) would become theaters of extensive border-crossing illicit hashish smuggling operations. To add insult to injury, this turn of events also created (or at least exacerbated) the habit of recreational hashish smoking in Palestine. If there is any lesson to be drawn from my discussion here, then it is that supply droughts brought about by prohibition and regulation are not likely to last forever and might actually create additional, unintended problems. The League of Nations is justly credited for midwifing the first anti-cannabis prohibition-cum-regulation regime in the world. To the

104  Haggai Ram extent that Egypt was concerned, this did not stop hashish flows into the country. On the contrary, it caused the creation of alternative outlets for that trade, which continued with a vengeance. In his memoirs, Russell Pasha admitted to the futility of these prohibitory efforts. He wrote that despite substantial sums of money spent on the prevention of hashish smuggling, the authorities managed to seize no more than 10% of the illicit drugs that were smuggled into Egypt via Palestine.82 Indeed, in his memoir, Joseph Broadhurst, Palestine Police CID commander in the years 1924–1930, bemoaned “the immensity of the smuggling problem that faced the Palestine Police.”83 In the process, he provides a telling testimony of the British authorities’ dismal p ­ erformance in combating the Levant hashish trade on Palestine’s ­territory. Describing in painful language the kinds of smuggling operations that took place along this axis of Lebanon-Palestine-Egypt, Broadhurst notes with exasperation the so-numerous “smugglers of originality” who, by virtue of having been “born with great natural cunning,” had “played so many tricks on the Police” and “gave us endless trouble.” He went on to say, “By every manner of trick hashish is smuggled over the ­Syrian-Palestinian frontier, through Palestine, across the burning Sinai Desert, over a lonely part of the Suez Canal and up to Cairo.”84 In the final analysis, then, border-crossing illicit hashish flows that traversed Palestine in the onward journey to Egypt presented the British formidable challenges far more acute than local hashish smoking ever was.

Notes 1 Jonathan Marshall, The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War, and the International Drug Traffic (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), 136–7. 2 Cited in “Lebanon-Israel Drug Connection,” Journal of Palestine Studies 13, no. 4 (1984): 169. 3 Marinos Sariyannis, “Law and Morality in Ottoman Society: The Case of Narcotic Substances,” in The Ottoman Empire, the Balkans, and the Greek Lands: Toward a Social and Economic History, eds. Elias Kolovos, Phokion Kotzageorgis, Sophia Laiou, and Marinos Sariyannis (Istanbul: The Isis Press, 2007), 310. 4 Ibid, 315. 5 Moreover, the Ottoman Empire kept up its international opium trade to feed the consumption of Europeans in the continent and in the colonies. 6 Cristina Belgiojoso, Harems, Hashish, and Holy Men (Amazon Digital Services, INC, [1858] 2012), Chap. 54, Kindle. 7 Ahmad M. Khalifa, “Traditional Patterns of Hashish Use in Egypt,” in ­C annabis and Culture, ed. Vera Rubin (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), 195–205; Franz Rosenthal, The Herb: Hashish versus Medieval Muslim ­Society (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 131–2. 8 Ibid, 132–5. 9 Terry Crowdy, French Soldier in Egypt, 1798–1801: The Army of the Orient (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2003), 20–22.

Formation of the Levant Hashish Trade  105 10 Liat Kozma, “Cannabis Prohibition in Egypt, 1880–1939: From Local Ban to League of Nations Diplomacy,” Middle Eastern Studies 47, no. 3 (2011): ­4 44–5; Gabriel G. Nahas, “Hashish and Drug Abuse in Egypt during the 19th and 20th Centuries,” Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine 61 (1985): 429. 11 Kozma, “Cannabis Prohibition,” 446. 12 See e.g. Lord Herbert Kitchener to Sir Edward Grey, 3 January, 1914, in further correspondence respecting the affairs of Egypt [Henceforth FCRAE], 1914, FO/407/182, 2. 13 Sir Thomas Russell Pasha, Egyptian Service, 1902–1946 (London: J. ­Murray, 1949), 222. On Egypt’s “white drugs” problem in the interwar years, see Liat Kozma, “White Drugs in Interwar Egypt: Decadent P ­ leasures, ­Emaciated Fellahin, and the Campaign against Drugs,” Comparative ­Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 33, no. 1 (2013): 89–101. 14 James H. Mills, Cannabis Nation: Control and Consumption in Britain, 1928–2008 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 38. 15 See e.g. Lord Cromer to Marquees of Salisbury, 5 March 1900, in FCRAE, 1900, FO/407/155, 41; Cromer to Marquess of Lansdowne, 1 March, 1901, in FCRAE, 1901, FO/407/157, 45. 16 Kitchener to Sir Edward Grey, 3 January, 1914, in FCRAE, 1914, FO/407/182, 2. 17 Cromer to the Marquess of Lansdowne, 15 March 1905, in FCRAE, 1905, 110–111; Cromer to Sir Edward Grey, 8 March, 1906, in FCRAE, 1906, FO/407/165, 135. 18 Ibid. 19 Kitchener to Grey, 3 January, 1914, in in FCRAE 1914, FO/407/182, 1–2. 20 Memorandum communicated by Mr. Cheetham, 21 April, 1913, in FCRAE, 1913, FO/407/180, 154. 21 On Greek nationals in Egypt who had engaged in the illicit hashish trade, see Henry de Monfreid, Hashish: A Smuggler’s Tale (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1946). 22 Robert Kendell, “Cannabis Condemned: the Proscription of Indian Hemp,” Addiction 98 (2003): 143–51; James Mills, Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade, and Prohibition, 1800–1928 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 152–87. 23 Mills, Cannabis Nation, 38. 24 League of Nations Archive (LNA), Opium Advisory Committee (OAC), C.195.M.105; O.C./A.R.1937/5, The Montreux Convention and its bearing on narcotics offences, in Annual Report for the Year 1937 submitted by the CNIB, 20 May, 1938, 68. 25 LNA, Russell Pasha, “Introductory Note,” in ibid, x. 26 LNA, OAC, box 3204, dossier 8003, document 12735, Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, Production of Hashish in Syria; Russell Pasha, “Report on Hashish Cultivation in Syria,” 11 June, 1929, x, 2–3. See also Cyrus Schayegh, “The Many Worlds of ‘Abud Yasin; or, What Narcotics Trafficking in the Interwar Middle East Can Tell Us about Territorialization,” The American Historical Review 116, no. 2 (2011): note 3. 27 Haggai Ram “Travelling Substances and Their Human Carriers: Hashishtrafficking in Mandatory Palestine,” in A Global Middle East: ­Mobility, Materiality and Culture in the Modern Age, 1880–1940, ed. Liat Kozma et  al. (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014), 201–28; and Haggai Ram ­“Hashish Traffickers, Hashish Consumers, and Colonial Knowledge in Mandatory Palestine,” Middle Eastern Studies 52, no. 3 (2016): 546–63.

106  Haggai Ram 28 Israel State Archives, M-24/322, “Report by the Inspector General of the Palestine Police for the Calendar Year 1947 on the Traffic of Dangerous Drugs.” 29 Virginia Berridge, Opium and the People: Opiate Use and Drug Control in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England (London: Free Association Books, 1999), 193–4. 30 Yitzhak Shami, Vengeance of the Fathers (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Mitzpeh, 1927). 31 Salim Tamari, “Ishaq al-Shami and the Predicament of the Arab Jew in ­Palestine,” Jerusalem Quarterly File 21, no. 10 (2004): 11. 32 Hannan Hever, “Yitzhak Shami: Ethnicity as an Unresolved Conflict,” ­Shofar 24, no. 2 (2006): 132. 33 Eliyahu Shamir and Joseph Zernik, “The Jewish-Arab Writer Who Was ­Forgotten in Israel and Adopted by Palestinians,” Ha’aretz, 26 July, 2013. 34 Yigal Schwartz and Joseph Zernik, “Epilogue,” in Yitzhaq Shami, Life’s Mill (in Hebrew), (Or Yehuda: Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan, Dvir, 2015), 305. 35 Shami, Vengeance of the Fathers, 93. 36 For example, a “Turkish officer” is mentioned a few times in the story (as in page 85), and at one point the protagonist, a reluctant murderer, is warned that he might be tried and “hanged in the streets of Stambul ­[ Istanbul]” (p. 99). 37 Merle Rubin, “Luminous Tales of a Bygone Middle East,” Los Angeles Times, 22 January, 2001, http://articles.latimes.com/2001/jan/22/news/­cl-15491. This and all subsequent URLs cited accessed November 21, 2018. 38 Schwartz and Zernik, “Epilogue,” 336. 39 Shami, Vengeance of the Fathers, 110, 131. 40 Ibid, 105. 41 David Tidhar, Crime and Criminals in Palestine (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Tzion, 1924). 42 Ibid, 22–23. 43 Ibid, 18–20. 4 4 A. E. Harwich, “A Method of Detecting Hashish,” The Palestine Police Magazine 1 (1933): 14. 45 Edward Horne, A Job Well Done: Being a History of the Palestine Police Force 1920–1948 (Essex: The Anchor Press, 1982), 472. 46 “Readers’ Letters: Cure for Hashish Addiction,” The Palestine Post, 26 ­February, 1935. 47 “Hashish Smokers in Jaffa,” Davar, 3 November, 1936; Al-Khamis, 1 ­November, 1936, italics are mine. 48 “A Misfortune,” Do’ar HaYom, 9 August, 1928. See also Al-Karmil, 6 May, 1937. 49 See, for example, NA (U.S.A), 867N.111-867N.114 Narcotics/75, Seizures in Palestine during May 1938, 28 August, 1938. 50 LNA, OAC, C.402.M.140; O.C. 279, Traffic in opium; seizures in Palestine, 18 August, 1925. 51 See, for example, NA (U.S.), 867N.111-967n.114 Narcotics/75, 1928 ­Dangerous Drugs Ordinance, in Annual reports by the Governments for 1935; NA (U.K.), CO 814/4-0008, Department of Health annual report for the year 1930. 52 Ram, “Hashish Traffickers.” 53 On the Indian and Egyptian middle classes’ condemnation of cannabis, see Nile Green, “Breaking the Begging Bowl: Morals, Drugs, and Madness in the Fate of the Muslim Faqīr,” South Asian History and Culture 5, no. 2 (2014): 226–45; and Kozma, “Cannabis Prohibition.”

Formation of the Levant Hashish Trade  107 54 Salim Tamari, “Wasif Jawhariyyeh’s Jerusalem,” in The Storyteller of ­Jerusalem: The Life and Times of Wasif Jawhariyyeh, 1904–1948, eds. Salim Tamari and Issam Nassar (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2014). 55 See e.g. “Smuggling Hashish and Opium through Haifa,” Davar, 3 May, 1937; “A Club of Hashish Smokers in Jaffa,” Davar, 22 March, 1936; ­al-Karmil, 6 April, 1938. 56 LNA, Malcolm Delevingne to Madam [Rachel Eleanor Crowdy], box 3204, dossier 8003, document 8003, 23 October, 1926. 57 Martin Edwards, The Golden Age of Murder: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story (London: HarperCollins 2015). 58 Paul Knepper, International Crime in the Twentieth Century: The League of Nations Era, 1919–1939 (London: Palgrave, 2011). 59 Haggai Ram, “On Sleuth Literature, Border-Crossings, and Crime in ­Mandatory Palestine (in Hebrew),” Jama`a 21 (2015): 119–31. 60 Shlomo Gelper, The Blue Crosses: The Tales of Hashish Smugglers (in ­Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: HaBalash Publishers, 1932). 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Ralph S. Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses: The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988), 110–111. 64 Alan Mikhail, “The Heart’s Desire: Gender, Urban Space and the Ottoman Coffee House,” in Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee: Leisure and Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Dana Sajdi (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014), 135–6. 65 Cemal Kafadar, “A History of Coffee,” The XIIIth Congress of the International Economic History Association (IEHA), (2002); Cengiz Kirli, “Coffeehouses: Leisure and Sociability in Ottoman Istanbul,” in Leisure Cultures in Urban Europe, c. 1700–1870: A Transnational Perspective, eds. Peter Borsay and Jan Hein Furnée (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), 161–82. 66 Brian Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British ­C offeehouse (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 18. 67 Kozma, “Cannabis Prohibition,” 446. 68 See especially Salim Tamari, Mountain against the Sea: Essays on ­Palestinian Society and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). 69 Ibid, 178. 70 “Smoking Hashish and Chivalrous Murder in Honor of the Prophet R ­ euven,” Iton Meyuhad, 26 September, 1934. See also Menachem Kapeliuk, “Nightly Visit to Camp Rubin,” Davar, 26 November, 1934. 71 “A New Drug Menace: Palestine as a Market,” The Times, 20 July, 1939; Anat Helman, Young Tel Aviv: A Tale of Two Cities (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2010), 128. 72 “Hashish Smokers Revealed,” Davar, 26 March, 1930; Filastin, 20 August, 1933; Filastin, 29 August, 1933; “Two Months for Hashish,” The Palestine Post, 27 November, 1936. 73 NA (U.K.), CO 814/7-0005, The Palestine Police and Prisons Annual ­Administrative Report for 1932, 20. 74 NA (U.S.A), 867N.111-867N.114 Narcotics/75, Dangerous Drugs O ­ rdinance, Number 17, of 1936, 9. 75 David T. Courtwright, Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the ­Modern World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 40. 76 NA (U.S.A.), 867N.111–867N.114 Narcotics/12-3044, Report by the ­G overnment of Palestine for the year 1938; NA (U.K.), CO 814/4-0008, Department of Health, annual report for the year 1930.

108  Haggai Ram 77 Kozma, “Cannabis Prohibition,” 404. 78 “Drugs in Palestine,” Mir’at al-Sharq, 9 October, 1926. 79 Kathryn Meyer and Terry Parssinen, Webs of Smoke: Smugglers, ­Warlords, Spies, and the History of the International Drug Trade (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002), Introduction, Kindle; see also Philippe Bourmaud, “Turf Wars at the League of Nations: International Anti-Cannabis Policies and Oversight in Syria and Lebanon, 1919–1939,” in The League of Nations; Work on Social Issues: Visions, Endeavors and Experiments, eds. Magaly Rodríguez García, Davide Rodogno, and Liat Kozma (Geneva: United Nations Publications, 2016), 75–87. 80 Alan Block, “European Drug Traffic and Traffickers between the Wars: The Policy of Suppression and its Consequences,” Journal of Social History 23 (1989), 315. 81 Paul Knepper, “Dreams and Nightmares: Drug Trafficking and the History of International Crime,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Crime and Criminal Justice, eds. Paul Knepper and Anja Johansen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 216–7; Paul Gootenberg, “Talking about the Flow: Drugs, Borders, and the Discourse of Drug Control,” Cultural Critique 71 (2009): 13–46. 82 Russell Pasha, Egyptian Service, 282. The same figures are provided in ­Norman Phillips, Guns, Drugs and Deserters: The Special Investigation Branch in the Middle East (London: Werner Laurie, 1954), 41. 83 Joseph F. Broadhurst, From Vine Street to Jerusalem (London: Stanley Paul, 1936), 193–4. 84 Ibid.

Bibliography Archives League of Nations Archives (LNA) National Archives, London (NA, UK.) National Archives and Records Administration, College Park (NA, USA.) Israel State Archives (ISA)

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Formation of the Levant Hashish Trade  109 Cowan, Brian. The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Courtwright, David T. Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Crowdy, Terry. French Soldier in Egypt, 1798–1801: The Army of the Orient. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2003. de Monfreid, Henry. Hashish: A Smuggler’s Tale. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1946. Edwards, Martin. The Golden Age of Murder: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story. London: Harper Collins 2015. Gelper, Shlomo. The Blue Crosses: The Tales of Hashish Smugglers (in ­Hebrew). Tel Aviv: HaBalash Publishers, 1932. Gootenberg, Paul. “Talking about the Flow: Drugs, Borders, and the Discourse of Drug Control.” Cultural Critique 71 (2009): 13–46. Green, Nile. “Breaking the Begging Bowl: Morals, Drugs, and Madness in the Fate of the Muslim Faqīr.” South Asian History and Culture 5, no. 2 (2014): 226–45 Hattox, Ralph S. Coffee and Coffeehouses: The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988. Helman, Anat. Young Tel Aviv: A Tale of Two Cities. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2010. Hever, Hannan. “Yitzhak Shami: Ethnicity as an Unresolved Conflict.” Shofar 24, no. 2 (2006): 124–39. Horne, Edward. A Job Well Done: Being a History of the Palestine Police Force 1920–1948. Essex: The Anchor Press, 1982. Kafadar, Cemal. “A History of Coffee.” The XIIIth Congress of the International Economic History Association (IEHA), 2002, https://sites.duke.edu/ rethinkingglobalcities/files/2014/09/64Kafadar16-coffeehistory.pdf. Khalifa, Ahmad M. “Traditional Patterns of Hashish Use in Egypt.” In Cannabis and Culture, edited by Vera Rubin, 195–205. The Hague: Mouton, 1975. Kendell, Robert. “Cannabis Condemned: the Proscription of Indian Hemp.” Addiction 98 (2003): 143–51. Kirli, Cengiz. “Coffeehouses: Leisure and Sociability in Ottoman Istanbul.” In Leisure Cultures in Urban Europe, c. 1700–1870: A Transnational Perspective, edited by Peter Borsay and Jan Hein Furnée, 161–82. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016. Knepper, Paul. “Dreams and Nightmares: Drug Trafficking and the History of International Crime.” In The Oxford Handbook of the History of Crime and Criminal Justice, edited by Paul Knepper and Anja Johansen, 208–25. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. ———. International Crime in the Twentieth Century: The League of Nations Era, 1919–1939. London: Palgrave, 2011. Kozma, Liat. “Cannabis Prohibition in Egypt, 1880–1939: From Local Ban to League of Nations Diplomacy.” Middle Eastern Studies 47, no. 3 (2011): 443–460. ———. “White Drugs in Interwar Egypt: Decadent Pleasures, Emaciated ­Fellahin, and the Campaign against Drugs.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 33, no. 1 (2013): 89–101. “Lebanon-Israel Drug Connection.” Journal of Palestine Studies 13, no. 4 (1984): 169–70.

110  Haggai Ram Marshall, Jonathan. The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War, and the International Drug Traffic. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012. Meyer, Kathryn, and Terry Parssinen, Webs of Smoke: Smugglers, Warlords, Spies, and the History of the International Drug Trade. Lanham, MD: ­Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002. Kindle Mikhail, Alan. “The Heart’s Desire: Gender, Urban Space and the Ottoman C ­ offee House.” In Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee: Leisure and Lifestyle in the ­Eighteenth Century, edited by Dana Sajdi, 133–70. London: I. B. Tauris, 2014. Mills, James H. Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade, and Prohibition, 1800–1928. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. Cannabis Nation: Control and Consumption in Britain, 1928–2008. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Nahas, Gabriel G., “Hashish and Drug Abuse in Egypt during the 19th and 20th Centuries.” Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine 61 (1985): 428–44. Phillips, Norman. Guns, Drugs and Deserters: The Special Investigation Branch in the Middle East. London: Werner Laurie, 1954. Ram, Haggai. “Hashish Traffickers, Hashish Consumers, and Colonial Knowledge in Mandatory Palestine.” Middle Eastern Studies 52, no. 3 (2016): 546–63. ———. “On Sleuth Literature, Border-Crossings, and Crime in Mandatory ­Palestine (in Hebrew).” Jama`a 21 (2015): 119–31. ———. “Travelling Substances and Their Human Carriers: Hashish-trafficking in Mandatory Palestine.” In A Global Middle East: Mobility, Materiality and Culture in the Modern Age, 1880–1940, edited by Liat Kozma, Cyrus Schayegh, and Avner Wishnitzer, 201–28. London: I.B. Tauris, 2014. Rosenthal, Franz. The Herb: Hashish versus Medieval Muslim Society. Leiden: Brill, 1971. Russell, Thomas Pasha. Egyptian Service, 1902–1946. London: J. Murray, 1949. Sariyannis, Marinos. “Law and Morality in Ottoman Society: The Case of Narcotic Substances.” In The Ottoman Empire, the Balkans, and the Greek Lands: Toward a Social and Economic History, edited by Elias Kolovos, Phokion Kotzageorgis, Sophia Laiou, and Marinos Sariyannis, 307–21. ­Istanbul: The Isis Press, 2007. Schayegh, Cyrus. “The Many Worlds of ‘Abud Yasin; or, What Narcotics Trafficking in the Interwar Middle East Can Tell Us about Territorialization.” The American Historical Review 116, no. 2 (2011): 273–306. Shami, Yitzhak. Vengeance of the Fathers (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: Mitzpeh, 1927. Schwartz, Yigal, and Joseph Zernik. “Epilogue.” In Yitzhaq Shami, Life’s Mill (in Hebrew), 305–65. Or Yehuda: Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan, Dvir, 2015. Tamari, Salim. “Ishaq al-Shami and the Predicament of the Arab Jew in ­Palestine.” Jerusalem Quarterly File 21, no. 10 (2004): 10–26. ———. Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. ———. “Wasif Jawhariyyeh’s Jerusalem.” In The Storyteller of Jerusalem: The Life and Times of Wasif Jawhariyyeh, 1904–1948, edited by Salim Tamari and Issam Nassar. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2014. Kindle. Tidhar, David. Crime and Criminals in Palestine (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: Tzion, 1924.

6 The Dialectics of Dope Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra, the Myth of Marijuana, and Mexico’s State Drug Monopoly Benjamin T. Smith On 1 January 1938, Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra was made director of Mexico’s Campaign against Alcoholism and other Drug Addictions. Over the next two years, he attempted to overhaul popular attitudes to drugs and revolutionize the country’s anti-narcotics regulations. During his first year in office, he published a popular scientific paper entitled “The Myth of Marijuana.” In it, he confessed that he had smoked the herb and tested it on a variety of mental patients, unsuspecting bureaucrats, chronic marijuana users, and—in error—at least one young family member. His conclusion was that marijuana had no ill effects, except a dryness of the mouth, a reddening of the eyes, hunger, and tiredness. It was certainly not the cause of the kind of wild hallucinations, violent outbursts, and unhinged criminality, which doctors and journalists had ascribed to it.1 The following year, his ideas inspired new federal regulations on the management of drug addiction. Rather than imprisoning drug peddlers, the state would undercut their earnings and put them out of business. They would do this by allowing state-run drug dispensaries and private doctors to hand out small, controlled doses of morphine to opiate addicts in return for a nominal fee. 2 Over the past decade, Salazar’s reforms have generated considerable academic and popular interest, at least in Mexico. In general, commentators have concentrated on tracing the ways in which the US authorities slated his insights on marijuana and blocked the new regulations through a mix of public criticism; press campaigns; covert tactics; and, eventually and most tellingly, blackmail. 3 Such approaches have merit. They reflect contemporary US policy initiatives; they chime with a repetitive pattern of US interventions over Mexican drug policy in 1 ­ 947–1948, 1969, and 1985;4 and they resonate with current concerns over the country’s anti-narcotics efforts. Nearly eighty years after Salazar’s ­regulations were suppressed, Mexico is still engaged in a war on drugs. Since 2006, the policy has caused the deaths of at least 200,000 Mexican citizens and the disappearance of thousands more. Though some ­punishments for drug use have been reformed, the war is still based on the ­criminalization of drug possession and the imprisonment of drug dealers.5 Furthermore, such policies are still encouraged, managed, and

112  Benjamin T. Smith paid for by the United States. No doubt, the defeat of Salazar’s policies hinted at the tragedies to come. Though I shall come back to the clampdown on Salazar’s ideas in the conclusion, the bulk of this article instead examines another, at least on the surface rather more narrowly historical, question. How did Salazar come up with these novel and radical ideas? And perhaps more importantly, why were they accepted and implemented by the Mexican authorities? As we shall see, during the early twentieth century, Mexican attitudes to narcotics were similar to those in many Western countries. Drug use was linked to certain racial and ethnic groups, held to trigger criminality and violence, and deemed to cause what contemporary commentators called “the degeneration of the race.” But in the two decades following the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), cultural, legal, and medical opinions over drug use gradually started to change. In some ways, Salazar was simply harnessing prevailing trends. But, he also extended these trends in two crucial ways. First, he introduced the idea that drug addiction was not a hereditary failing but actually the product of the social relations between the different classes, and, by extension, the cultural discourses that such relations produced. Second, he introduced an economic (rather than a medical or judicial) solution to these imbalanced social relations—a state-run drug monopoly.

Mexican Attitudes to Narcotics, 1890–1930 Throughout much of the nineteenth century, drugs such as opium, cocaine, morphine, and cannabis were used widely as medicines.6 But from the 1880s onwards, Mexican attitudes to narcotics changed. Smoking marijuana especially became associated with insanity and criminality. In the capital’s newspapers, stories of marihuanos or marijuana smokers committing crimes in states of profound irrationality were commonplace. Gradually, the drug became the catchall explanation for acts of extreme violence. How did marijuana, used occasionally as an herbal remedy, become “the hardest drug of all,” one that was perceived to trigger “sudden paroxysms of delirious violence”? First, marijuana became associated with embriaguez or intoxication in general. Second, marijuana became linked to two spaces—the prison and the barracks. These spaces were symbolically important, representing the “injustice, unhygienic conditions, violence, and vice” which were perceived to hold back Mexico’s progress. Finally, the selling of marijuana became associated with herbolarias or female herbalists. Mexican elites held these folk healers to be, at best, superstitious charlatans and at worse, responsible for poisoning credulous sick people. Again marijuana became shorthand for their perceived faults.7 Few other drugs matched marijuana’s levels of popular condemnation. But, by the early twentieth century, opium and particularly opium smoking started to gain an equally unsavory reputation. As in the

The Dialectics of Dope  113 United States, it became strongly associated with Chinese immigrants. In 1908, the tabloid, El Imparcial, ran an exposé on the “Chinese ­mafia”—the “terrible octopus of crime, that extends its bloody claw over all the world”—which had now arrived in Mexico. The ­paper sent a ­reporter into Mexico City’s Chinese quarters, where he r­ ecounted stereotypical scenes of secretive, sexually predatory, sickly, and ­opium-smoking immigrants.8 During the next two decades, such s­ tories fused with strong nationalist, Sinophobic sentiment, especially in regions with large ­Chinese populations.9 In 1923, for example, El Siglo de Torreón warned ­readers of the immigrants’ “congenital vices, their distinctive dirtiness, their ­repulsive and contagious illnesses, and their habit of gathering our ­capital and then taking it back to their own country.” Among the worst of these vices was “their attraction to enjoying the artificial paradises in a haze of smoke of an opium pipe.”10 Such prejudices fed into and were buttressed by medical opinions of narcotics. Early medical appreciations of marijuana argued that ­smoking the drug could cause madness and violence. Genaro Pérez’s 1886 thesis claimed soldiers addicted to the drug tended to desert, act in an insubordinate fashion, or attack their superiors. Prolonged use, he ­argued, caused “mania.”11 Medical investigations into opiate use were similarly negative. Opium smokers and morphine addicts were variously described as “mad,” “unfortunate human beings,” and the cause of the violence and social disorder of the Revolution.12 By the turn of the century, such ideas interwove with degeneration theory and social ­Darwinism. ­Medical appreciations of both narcotics were connected to the idea that drug use (and alcoholism, prostitution, and other “vices”) not only harmed the individual but also “degenerated the race” and damaged the bloodstock of the nation.13 Finally, such ideas were reflected in punitive laws against narcotics. These started off relatively small-scale. During the late nineteenth century, Mexican army officers prohibited marijuana smoking in the barracks and locked up offenders in the stocks. At the same time, the Mexican health board started to regulate who could sell marijuana and opium for medical use.14 By the turn of the century, the capital’s police were rounding up “dissolute addicts” and herbolarias who infringed the rules.15 But after the Revolution, the Mexican authorities transformed these regulations into more punitive, wholesale bans. In 1920, the government introduced a law against “the cultivation and commerce” of all products “that degenerate the race”; in 1925, the new president, Plutarco Elias Calles, banned all narcotic imports without a license; and in 1926, the Sanitary Code penalized drug infractions with fines and prison. Finally, in 1929, the new penal code prohibited the “import, export, sowing, cultivation, harvesting, buying, selling, divestment, use, and ministering” of all drugs.16 New laws and a new, federal Sanitary Police force generated a rapid rise in narcotic arrests. In 1925, there were over

114  Benjamin T. Smith 900 in Mexico City alone,17 whilst in the northern states of Sinaloa, Sonora, and Baja California, the mass arrest of Chinese gamblers on trumped up charges of drug use was the go-to strategy of increasingly Sinophobic local authorities.18

Changing Attitudes to Drug Use and Addiction, 1920–1940 By the 1920s, most elite Mexicans had extremely negative views of drugs. The Mexican authorities had imposed relatively punitive laws on narcotic production, sale, and use. And post-revolutionary police forces arrested and imprisoned thousands based on these laws. So, what changed? Why, by 1938, could the director of the country’s Campaign against Alcoholism and other Drug Addictions not only publicly deny the dangerous effects of marijuana but also engineer the adoption of a state drug monopoly to treat addicts? Here, I argue that in the intervening years, gradual cultural changes in attitudes both to marijuana and to Mexico’s Chinese population combined with shifts in both medical and legal thinking to provide space for Salazar to make his bold claims. The way that Salazar made use of this space, however, was novel and radical. The Mexican Revolution changed attitudes to marijuana in two ways. On the most basic level, it generalized the use of the drug. During the conflict, the size of the Mexican army grew almost tenfold from around 27,000 in 1907 to around 250,000 in 1914.19 And, though exact figures are hard to get, these were joined by hundreds of thousands of other men (and women) under arms in the ranks of rebel groups like the Zapatistas and Carrancistas. Though many generals railed against use of the drug, it seems likely that the conflict pushed marijuana smoking onto a larger proportion of the Mexican population.20 Many were poor, frightened, and illiterate and left little record of their use. But, a handful of other, more elite users did. The Mexican philosopher, Alfonso Reyes, recounted the experiences of his four friends, who in the midst of the Revolution’s year of starvation— 1915—­decided to “navigate the storm in dreams” like “a drunkard who gets drunk before embarking on a boat as a precaution against sea sickness.” According to Reyes, they holed up in an old church building, smoked a load of marijuana, underwent a “collective nightmare,” and played a trippy game of hide-and-seek on the building’s ornate paneled flooring.21 By 1920, the amateur ethnologist, Eugenio Gómez Maillefert, claimed that marijuana use in Mexico City was now prevalent among “ex-prisoners, soldiers, thieves, prostitutes, as well as individuals of the middle class and well off young men.” Though selling it was still clandestine, “the ease with which one can obtain it” suggested it was effectively tolerated.22 At the same time, the Revolution also encouraged drug use among a particular subset of Mexico’s bohemians. Even before the conflict, a handful of Francophile writers who had read Baudelaire’s hash-inspired poetry, such

The Dialectics of Dope  115 as José Juan Tablada, had taken to smoking marijuana both as inspiration and as a symbol of their rejection of bourgeois conventions. But during the 1920s, such practices extended to a broader section of artists. Tablada and his friends moved from the status of outsiders to the center of a new nationalist, post-revolutionary literature.23 They were joined by Porfirio Barba Jacob, the Colombian poet, who wrote approvingly of his experiences with “the lady of burning hairs” [“la dama de caballos a­ rdientes”], various members of the Estridentista literary movement, and even the M ­ exican muralists, Diego Rivera and Davíd Siqueiros, who tried the drug before deciding that they did not need it as they were “marijuana users by ­nature.”24 Though it is difficult to quantify, more generalized use probably also softened many Mexicans’ appreciations of the drug, which previously they had only experienced through the alarmist tales of the tabloid press. From the mid-1930 onwards, public distrust of the group most connected to opium addiction shifted or at least waned. In the preceding decade, Sinophobic campaigns had been on the rise. They peaked with the onset of the Great Depression in the northern states of Sonora, Sinaloa, and Baja California Norte. But with the election of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940), such hardnosed racist campaigns (if not some of the underlying assumptions) declined. In many regions, the campaigns had achieved their stated purpose. According to census records, the ­Chinese population in Mexico fell from around eighteen thousand in 1930 to barely five thousand a decade later. 25 At the same time, Cárdenas’s policies of land distribution and union support undercut some of the economic rationales for anti-Chinese sentiment. In the regions, political organizers also shunned alliances with anti-Chinese groups, which over the past decade had become particularly associated with the out-of-favor former president Calles. Finally, Cárdenas’s presidency was, in general, marked by a more open attitude to immigrants. 26 It is noticeable that by 1940, the debate over opiate addiction had moved on from the kind of racist stereotypes which had been so prevalent just a decade earlier. 27 If broad cultural changes made Salazar’s recommendations more acceptable, changes in legal and medical thinking made them possible. In particular, legal thinkers started to distinguish between those who profited from narcotics (deemed criminals) and those who simply used them (deemed sick). During the post-revolutionary era, many Mexican lawyers pushed for the creation of a judicial system which better reflected the c­ ountry’s progressive credentials. In essence, this meant a move from a classical penal code (like that of 1871), which decided on punishments based on the nature of the crime, to more positivist legal codes (like those of 1929 or 1931), which took into account the nature of the offender. A crucial element of this shift was the replacement of some repressive punishments with “preventative measures.” These included parole, a special agricultural colony for clinically diagnosed psychopaths, and what was originally conceived of as an “asylum for the treatment of drunks and drug addicts.”28

116  Benjamin T. Smith In the matter of narcotics, such changes came in gradually. The 1929 code was the first step. It recommended that “anyone that, without medical prescription, was accustomed to being under the influence of any drug” should be “secluded in the asylum for drug addicts.” But the code left the definition of addicts wide open and still included punishments for those who “use[d]” narcotics.29 The new penal code of 1931 changed the term “use” to “possess,” but now left out the article about the seclusion of addicts. 30 It was, however, somewhat clarified by the 1931 Federal Regulations of Drug Addiction which legally defined a drug addict, fleshed out the Department of Health’s responsibility to diagnose addicts, and ordered their internment in either a public or a private hospital.31 Finally, the 1934 Federal Code of Penal Procedures brought the 1931 code and the 1931 regulations together, arguing that in the case of a person caught buying or possessing drugs, the health authorities should “specify critically if that sale or possession has as its exclusive end the personal use.” If it was deemed for personal use, the accused would be sent for treatment rather than prison.32 In practice, these legal changes took time to take effect. First, there was the problem of infrastructure. Though the 1931 regulations stipulated that the state would build a Federal Hospital for Drug Addicts, the project faced repeated delays. As a result, at first, addicts were secluded in Mexico City jail; then, in 1933, they were moved to a former Department of Health building. Finally in 1935, they were transferred to the newly inaugurated federal hospital on the grounds of the capital’s mental asylum.33 Second, there was the problem of legal interpretation. Even the lawyers that put together the 1931 code acknowledged that there was a gray area between the sick person and the criminal. 34 Third, there was the practical matter of deciding who was an addict and who possessed the drug with the aim of profit. Department of Health doctors could examine heroin users for track lines and scar tissue, but for marijuana users, evidence of addiction was much more difficult to glean. 35 Despite these snags, by the mid-1930s, Mexico’s penal system had started to distinguish between drug peddlers and addicts. Looking ahead, a crucial element of Salazar’s proposals was already in place. Partial, but indicative, figures bear this out. From September 1934 to July 1935, the Sanitary Police had arrested 132 “traffickers” and 214 “dissolute addicts” [“viciosos”]. The same estimates for 1935–1936 assert that the police arrested 124 traffickers and 125 addicts. 36 A review of the individual files of sixty-one drug cases from Mexico City between March and July 1934 shows similar results. Of those arrested, ­t wenty-seven were sent to the drug addiction hospital, seventeen were freed, and seventeen were sent through the penal system. 37 Changes to the legal system were paralleled and reinforced by changes to the Mexican medical profession. Salazar was not a voice in the ­wilderness. He was a member, perhaps at the time the leading member,

The Dialectics of Dope  117 of a powerful clique of Mexican psychiatrists. Like Salazar, they believed that it was their duty to impose their ideas outside the asylum and on other policies that affected Mexican citizens. And like Salazar, they fostered a new methodology, which attacked the old certainties of degeneration theory, tried to strip away popular prejudice from medical diagnoses, and admitted social forces into their understandings of poverty and illness. During the 1920s, a handful of Mexican medics turned to ­psychiatry in order to understand ways to improve the general health of the ­population. They included the heads of the La Castañeda asylum, like ­Samuel Ramírez Moreno, Alfonso Millán Maldonado, and ­Manuel ­Guevara Oropeza, as well as some foreign-educated doctors like ­Salazar and the Berlin-trained Mathilde Rodríguez Cabo. In the ­following ­decade, these psychiatrists became a major force within the ­medical ­profession and more generally within Mexican society. By 1934, they published their own journal and came to dominate the prestigious (and previously fairly conservative) National Academy of Mexico. A few years later, they started their own group, the Mexican Society of Neurology and Psychiatry.38 Beyond solidifying their influence over the Mexican medical profession, they also successfully pushed the idea that psychiatrists should lead a national project of “mental hygiene,” designed to make people aware of the symptoms and effects of mental illnesses and help in their alleviation and cure. The then head of the Mexico City mental asylum, Samuel Ramírez Moreno, started the project with a series of radio broadcasts on mental health in 1934. Two years later, the group started a government project designed to detect and treat “problem” children. 39 And in 1938, the same psychiatrists, together with a host of other fellow travelers from the worlds of medicine, education, law, and government administration, started the Mexican League of Mental Hygiene to push their activities into other spheres. One of the most important was criminal justice. In the same year, one of Salazar’s closest colleagues, Millán, published an article in the criminology journal, Criminalia, which argued that psychiatrists, not judges, should decide whether a person was mentally ill and hence not responsible for a crime.40 Salazar’s intervention in public drug policy, then, was no aberration. It was the logical next step in a national project of “mental hygiene.” Furthermore, it also chimed with new methodologies being developed within the wider medical establishment. At the same time, as M ­ exican psychiatrists were attempting to shape national mental health p ­ olicy, other doctors were also imagining a great social role. During the C ­ árdenas presidency, they developed the idea of “social medicine.” In part, this involved moving out of the consultancy or hospital and into the towns, villages, and poor urban barrios where the majority of Mexicans got sick and died.41 But it also involved a dramatic methodological innovation.

118  Benjamin T. Smith Rather than transferring their beliefs and prejudices from the hospital to the streets, doctors were expected to make use of this interaction with the public and use new disciplines of anthropology and sociology to understand the social and cultural aspects of disease.42 What this meant in essence was a shift from theory-led to evidence-led medical research. Mexico’s psychiatrists, like Salazar, readily adopted these new ideas. In the Federal Hospital of Drug Addicts, daily interactions with drug addicts were gradually changing some of the old certainties about narcotics. Some of these certainties centered on marijuana. At the same time as Salazar was handing out marijuana cigarettes to unsuspecting ­bureaucrats, other doctors at the hospital like Fernando Rosales, ­Francisco Elizarraras, and Jorge Segura Millán were also doing their own experiments with the drug and reaching similar conclusions about its limited effects. Rosales, for example, was an esteemed doctor with experience in surgery, obstetrics, and general education psychology. He was put in charge of the drug addiction hospital in 1933. On finding limited research on the effects of marijuana, he also started his own studies. Segura was a medical student, who came to the hospital to study the consequences of the narcotic. At first, he believed, like most other doctors, that the drug caused insanity. But by testing the mental and physical effects on nearly a hundred “normal,” “drug addicted,” and “psychopathic” users, and by placing dogs in “inhalation chambers,” he gradually changed his opinions. Like Rosales, he concluded that the effects were extremely limited.43 Furthermore, these doctors also started to put these findings into practice by casting a critical eye over those addicts who had been secluded in the hospital for reasons of “marijuana addiction,” In 1936, for example, they released Armando Hernández Heroza because, despite being a heavy marijuana user, he showed no sign of addiction or mental health issues. Two years later, ­Guillermo ­H idalgo Anaya was ­admitted for the third time for ­“marijuana ­addiction.” After careful analysis, the doctors concluded whilst that he certainly smoked marijuana, his ­aberrant behavior was actually caused by acute schizophrenia.44 Other discoveries involved opium addiction. The idea of the drug addiction hospital was to cure Mexico’s drug addicts. Standard treatment for heroin or morphine addiction took five weeks and involved a course of cylotropina and calcium as well as physical exercise, classes in certain crafts, and talks on the dangers of narcotics.45 Despite this more holistic approach, the doctors—like Salazar—found that curing patients was almost impossible. Again, observation was key. In one study, the doctors estimated that of 1,802 patients interned between 1934 and 1938, there was “not one of them that had been cured definitely.”46 In fact, most of the city’s opiate addicts returned to the hospital on two or more occasions. In my own study of one hundred patients confined between 1933 and 1943, forty-six were addicted to heroin and six to morphine.

The Dialectics of Dope  119 Only one did not return to the hospital, and she had managed to wean herself off the drug through marijuana use.47 In addition, doctors were starting to put these discoveries about opiate addiction into practice. As early as 1933, doctors at the Calle Tólsa sanatorium were separating those “with hopes… of being cured” and those “that can be considered lost.”48 There is also some evidence that as early as 1935, doctors had given up curing some particularly difficult patients and were simply giving them morphine injections for the period of their stay.49 Between 1938 and 1940, Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra tried to overhaul Mexican drug policy. Conservative observers portrayed him as a maverick, an outsider, even a madman. But in late 1930s Mexico, his ideas were not that far from the mainstream. His assertions that addicts were sick people rather than criminals, and that opiate addiction was almost incurable, were shared by lawyers, doctors, and at least some politicians and members of civil society. Initial reactions to his ideas bear this out. The Mexican health board passed the federal regulations on drug addiction with almost universal approbation. 50 When the new regulations were announced in late 1939, they were even backed by right-leaning newspapers such as El Universal and La Prensa.51 Viniegra’s ideas on marijuana were more controversial. But many ­doctors, especially his fellow psychiatrists, supported his proposals. In October 1938, he presented his ideas at the National Academy of Medicine. Here, all his professional colleagues applauded his findings. (Though one psychiatrist “in a diplomatic manner and extraordinarily timidly” questioned whether Salazar should be giving marijuana cigarettes to children even by a mistake.) In fact, they not only “tacitly and enthusiastically accepted” the discoveries but also demanded that his speech be published and drafted a statement demanding that ­marijuana no longer be classified as a dangerous drug. 52 In the wake of the “Mito de Marihuana” article, public reactions were more hostile and the ­government sought to distance itself from his ideas. But they were not entirely dismissed. After the article’s publication, there is some evidence that judicial authorities moved away from mass arrests of ­marijuana smokers in Mexico City and elsewhere. 53 Even the capital’s most c­ onservative magazine, Jueves de Excelsior, suggested that ­readers take ­Salazar’s ideas “seriously,” even if they did not agree with the ­conclusions. 54 And as late as 1940, Guadalajara’s conservative El Informador invoked his findings and condemned the harsh penalties brought to bear for minor marijuana infractions. 55

Marx, Medicine, and Marijuana In some ways, Salazar’s plans simply brought together existing cultural affirmations, legal assertions, and medical ideas. But, in other ways, they were extremely pioneering. In particular, Salazar brought together

120  Benjamin T. Smith these positions with ideas drawn from historical materialism. His intervention on marijuana, for example, not only added his own research on the effects of the narcotic to those of his fellow addiction doctors, but also suggested why, in the past, observers had linked the drug to violence and criminality. His federal regulations not only admitted to the incurability of opiate addiction but also established addiction as a product of socio-economic inequality to be solved through state intervention in an unbalanced market. Such a combination pushed his ideas out of the clinic and into public sphere. They also made them palatable for the country’s left-leaning authorities. Salazar was born in 1898 in the mining community of Pánuco de ­Coronado, Durango. Though he was born in an isolated ­community, he came from a well-to-do family. They soon returned to Mexico City where his father, a mining engineer, rose to become head of the G ­ eological ­Institute in Mexico City in 1917. At the same time, Salazar received an elite education. He went to school at the National Preparatory School and then took four years of medicine at the National University of Mexico. He completed his studies at the Faculty of Medicine of San Carlos at the University of Madrid before doing a specialization in the relatively new discipline of neuro-psychiatry at the Sorbonne in Paris. On returning to Mexico, he combined employment at the Mexico City mental a­ sylum with ­ ducation a private practice and a lectureship at the National University. E and training lent Salazar considerable prestige. Two years after arriving at the asylum, he represented the institution at the National M ­ edical Congress. By the 1930s, he was a member of the National Academy of ­Medicine, the founder and president of the Society for the Studies of Neurology and Psychiatry, and a leading member of the ­Franco-Mexican Medical Association. In fact, his fellow doctors played on his foreign ­education and his reputation for intellectual rigor and controversy and nicknamed him after the pioneering French doctor, Pasteur.56 Had Salazar kept to the routines and practices of most Mexican psychiatrists, it is doubtful that his ideas on narcotics would have escaped the academy. But three other factors also shaped his career and his thinking over narcotics. First, he was a defiant eccentric, described by fellow psychiatrists as “intelligent, unconventional and colorful,” and “always happy, a partygoer…. with a great sense of humor.”57 He refused to wear a tie, handed out marijuana cigarettes to visiting dignitaries, and spent idle hours injecting marijuana extract into the brains of live chickens. His classes were legendary. He insisted on teaching them on Sundays, graded students based on their pistol marksmanship, and injected heroin addicts in front of his class to ascertain their reactions. 58 Such rule breaking could anger the more apretados [uptight]. His friend, Raul Fournier, admitted that “necios [stupid people] avoided him as [they believed] him not serious.”59 It could also get him in trouble. In 1938, the father of one of his patients at the mental asylum claimed that Salazar

The Dialectics of Dope  121 forced the inmates “to smoke marijuana in large quantities every day.” The following year police apprehended one of his patients with a prescription for large daily doses of morphine; it seems Salazar had already introduced the regulations to his patients, though legally they were still not in place.60 Second, like other psychiatrists of his generation, Salazar believed in engaging with civil society in the public sphere. He not only defended his ideas on narcotics in a series of witty interviews in the press but also became the national newspapers’ go-to shrink. Just months before his article on marijuana, he invited pressmen to a public demonstration at the National Academy of Medicine. The demonstration focused on a “child prodigy” from Mexico City, who, the papers claimed, could move objects through telekinesis. After the child failed to move anything, Salazar explained to the gathered journalists that it was most probably a case of mythomania.61 Third, and perhaps most importantly, by the mid-1930s, Salazar was becoming heavily influenced by historical materialism. Other psychiatrists such as Millán and Edmundo Buentello were developing similar methodologies, which linked medicine to the social sciences, and using them to overturn the old arguments about degeneration.62 But Salazar’s use, particularly of the ideas of Karl Marx, put him at the vanguard of this movement.63 Two articles, published in 1937 and 1938, most clearly expressed this shift. The first was a version of a speech, which he gave to the National Academy of Medicine. In it, he tried to weave together contemporary neurology, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Marxist ideas on the contradictions of capitalism to offer a strikingly original take on both psychology and modern society. In Salazar’s opinion, “money as a symbol of power” or what he called “a disguised version of the economic question” was “at the heart” of most mental illnesses. In fact, capitalism itself was a form of insanity. The rich, in their pursuit of money, suffered a God complex and became almost psychopathic in their irrational search for more and more wealth. The middle class abetted this collective delusion by defending the rules of the game, including the central rule, which was the “principle of private property.” The poor, meanwhile, were left to suffer the very real effects of this mass psychosis, “hungry before a table of food” or “freezing outside a clothes shop.” Here, they were offered two options—self-sacrifice and dispossession. The only way out of this, he concluded, was to stop this mass psychosis at its source, eliminate the rules governing private property, and distribute wealth according to people’s needs rather than their irrational desires.64 The second piece was published in Criminalia and concerned robbery. In it, he returned to similar themes as the speech. Rather than viewing robbery as the product of inherited values and behavior (the old degeneration argument) or a criminal act (subject to the new penal code and to be punished accordingly), he argued that robbery was actually a perfectly rational, “biological” reaction to inequality. In fact, it was the rich

122  Benjamin T. Smith who were behaving “irrationally” by accumulating wealth far beyond their needs. As a result, the only solution to robbery was “THE ABOLITION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE RADICAL TRANSFORMATION OF LAW.” By proposing this, he argued, he was not trying to import foreign communism, but instead suggesting a simple solution to a universal problem.65 Salazar’s thoughts on madness, property rights, and the law flipped nineteenth century ideas linking biological inferiority and crime on their head. It was not the criminals who were mad; it was the system. As such, they reflected the radical end of Mexico’s “mental hygiene” movement and the ripping up of the old certainties of degeneration theory.66 But they also underlay both of Salazar’s interventions on narcotics. Salazar’s first public declaration on the theme was the publication of a polished version of his 1938 argument with Dr. Oneto at the ­National Academy of Medicine. Again, it was published in Criminalia and provocatively entitled “The Myth of Marijuana.” The first section comprised a careful critique of previous studies. Salazar pointed out that many of the medical conclusions were based not on observation but on second-hand stories. And he suggested that many of the patients who were allegedly experiencing hallucinations after smoking the drug were actually suffering from other mental illnesses, particularly schizophrenia. In the second section, he wrote up his own experiments with the drug on a cross section of “high functionaries, doctors, lawyers, engineers, distinguished ladies, teachers, journalists, and children,” and his interviews with a handful of long-term marijuana smokers. He concluded that, irrespective of class, education, or age, marijuana did little except dry the lips, redden the eyes, and produce a feeling of hunger.67 Such conclusions were radical enough, especially when presented outside the confines of the drug addiction hospital or the academy of medicine. But it was the third section of the article, which allied such findings to his social thinking, that pushed the article firmly into the realm of policy. Here, Salazar argued that the stories linking marijuana and ­violent crime were untrue. Many were idle rumors and concerned crimes which were probably caused by alcoholism or other mental illnesses. But others were outright inventions, made up by imaginative if unscrupulous journalists. This was bad enough; such stories underpinned the unfair prosecution of marijuana smokers in Mexico and elsewhere. But they also had crucial secondary effects. It was these myths—through the power of suggestion—that drove some marijuana smokers to behave in a violent manner. It was the media—not marijuana—that caused murder.68 “Marijuana intoxication,” like capitalism itself, was a social and cultural construction. The game was rigged: elites came up with the rules; the poor suffered the consequences. A year later, the same blend of medicine and Marxism shaped Salazar’s new federal drug regulations. Like his earlier intervention, this depended

The Dialectics of Dope  123 on existing ideas. Drug addicts were sick people, not criminals; curing opiate addicts was almost impossible.69 But, the formulation of the problem and the suggested solution were drawn from social theory. According to Salazar and his followers, drug addicts were doubly victimized by capitalism. On the one hand, they were already poor, dispossessed, and often suffering physical or psychological pain. Drugs were a release, a form perhaps of what Salazar might have termed “self-sacrifice.”70 On the other hand, by taking banned substances, they also entered into another, even more exploitative, relationship. Drug prohibition hiked up prices so that drug traffickers could charge them extortionate rates to sate their cravings. And drug prohibition shrouded the act of injecting heroin with an air of attractive mystery. The problem, then, was not so much addiction as an economic and cultural system that—like the myths surrounding marijuana—compounded existing difficulties.71 By extension, the solution was neither judicial (lock them up) nor medical (treat them) but instead economic. State dispensaries or ­state-sanctioned doctors would offer morphine to addicts at a nominal price. Here, their doses could be controlled, and the addicts could be monitored and treated for other diseases. Such a program reduced the amount addicts had to pay for narcotics, allowed them to hold down regular jobs, and lessened the attraction of crime. At the same time, this new system struck at the illegal economy. Forced to compete with the state’s low rates, traffickers, and peddlers would be put out of business. Finally, as the business of injecting heroin was forced out of the shadows and into clinic, it would lose its mystique and allure.72 Salazar’s economic solution to the problem was novel and drastic. Other countries, including the United States, had toyed with the idea of treating addicts. But most paid lip service to some future cure, and none sought to undercut peddlers through a state drug monopoly. Nevertheless, it was probably this last factor, which sold Salazar’s plan to the Mexican authorities. Under President Cárdenas, the state repeatedly established state-run firms to compete with and undercut exploitative private ­companies. It was classic revolutionary era economic policy, ­somewhere between expropriation and capitalism. Some of these c­ ompanies bought products like sugar and henequen at reasonable prices, and attempted to sideline rapacious merchants. Others sold products from paper to food at a significant reduction from their private competitors.73 By presenting the drug economy as just a subset of capitalist exploitation, Salazar pushed radical medical ideas into the mainstream.74

Epilogue and Conclusion Salazar’s tenure in charge of Mexico’s Campaign against Alcoholism and other Drug Addictions did not last long. His push to rethink marijuana collapsed under the charges of forcing mental patients to smoke the drug,

124  Benjamin T. Smith a mocking press campaign, and an awareness at the federal level that the US authorities were not prepared to accept Salazar’s intervention.75 The following year, he was removed from his post for political reasons. His final project, the new federal regulations on drug addiction, however, was already in motion. In February 1940, the new regulations were published in the Diario Oficial. The following month the Mexican health department opened a morphine dispensary in downtown Mexico City. Within a week, around 500 opiate addicts were receiving doses there, and the city’s dealers were losing thousands of pesos a day. Even the capital’s more conservative newspapers were supportive of the measure.76 Despite this initial success, by July 1940, the government canceled the regulations and reinstated the 1931 version. The Mexican authorities claimed that wartime narcotic shortages made the plan unworkable. But, in reality, a US ban on exporting narcotics to Mexico and a lack of communication between the relevant Mexican departments combined to scupper the plan.77 Over the next decade, Mexican doctors and intellectuals occasionally invoked Salazar’s ideas. As the editor of Criminalia pointed out in 1944, his findings on marijuana chimed with those of the Le Guardia Committee in New York.78 But over the next seventy years, Salazar’s ideas were lost to posterity. In fact, his most tangible influence on drug debate was the fact that Mexican dope smokers sometimes termed the herb “Viniegra.”79 Yet Salazar’s brief involvement in the drug debate merits more than an origins story of US intervention or a (potentially rather flaky) marihuano memorialization. In historical terms, his works demonstrate the “scientific excellence” of not only drug production but also drug policy “at the periphery.”80 Written in a wry and ironic style, based on years of work with drug users and first-hand observation, and sustained by intelligent and critical readings of previous studies, Salazar’s articles stand in stark contrast to the pious, often comically alarmist, and intellectually bereft works of contemporaneous drug “experts.” In fact, Salazar’s intervention suggests that it is here, at the periphery, away from the racially constructed, punitive drug policies of the United States that we should look for alternatives to continuing policies of prohibition. Even today, it is smaller, “peripheral” nations like Portugal and Uruguay that offer some of the most successful if unorthodox drug policies.81 At the same time, his arguments remind us of the importance of economic relations in understanding both the cultural and social construction of narcotic policy. Again, contemporary policies bear this out. In US states like Colorado, marijuana legalization has followed the ­market-model. Private companies provide the drug, often at a relatively high price. This, in turn, has led to the creation of an illegal, black market marijuana trade and the continued prosecution of small-scale producers. In Uruguay, by contrast, the state provides smokers with marijuana at a nominal cost. As state dispensaries undercut dealers, the black market in marijuana has all but disappeared.82

The Dialectics of Dope  125

Notes 1 Leopoldo Salvador [sic] Viniegra, “El Mito de Marihuana (Trabajo de Turno a la Academia de Mexicina),” Criminalia, 1 December 1938, 206–37. All translations are by the author. 2 Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra, “Exposición de motivos para el nuevo ­Reglamento Federal de Toxicomanías,” Criminalia, 10 May 1939, 555–60. 3 William O. Walker, Drug Control in the Americas (Albuquerque: ­University of New Mexico press, 1989), 122–3; Luis Astorga, Drogas sin Fronteras (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 2003), 202–7; Mariana Flores Guevara, “­A lternativa Mexicana al Marco Internacional de Prohibicion de Drogas Durante el Cardenismo,” Unpublished BA diss., Colegio de México, 2013; Ricardo Pérez Montfort, Tolerancia y Prohibición: Aproximaciones a la historia social y cultural de las drogas en México (Mexico City: Penguin Random House, 2016), 282–307; Froylán Enciso, “Los fracasos del c­ hantaje. ­Régimen de prohibición de drogas y narcotráfico,” in Arturo Alvarado y Mónica ­Serrano, Seguridad nacional y seguridad interior (Mexico City: Colegio de México): 61–104, 71–3; Carlos Pérez Ricart, Las agencias antinarcóticas de los Estados Unidos y la construcción transnacional de la guerra contra las drogas en México (1938–1978), unpublished Ph.D diss., Freien Universitat Berlin, 2016. For a smart critique see Isaac Campos, “A Diplomatic Failure: The Mexican Role in the Demise of the 1940 Reglamento Federal de Toxicomanías,” Third World Quarterly 39, no. 2 (2018), 232–47. 4 Carlos Pérez Ricart, “U.S. Pressure and Mexican Anti-Drugs Efforts from 1940 to 1980: Importing the War on Drugs?” in Wil G. Pansters et al., Beyond the Drug War in Mexico: Human Rights, the Public Sphere and Justice (London: Routledge, 2017), 33–49. 5 For a critique of Mexico’s limited decriminalization, Ana Paula Hernández, “Drug Legislation and the Prison System in Mexico,” in Systems ­O verload: Drug Laws and Prisons in Latin America (WOLA Working Paper, 2010), 60–70. www.wola.org/sites/default/files/downloadable/Drug%20Policy/ 2011/WOLATNI-Systems_Overload-mexico-def.pdf [This and all subsequent URLs cited accessed 13 November 2018]. 6 Ricardo Pérez Montfort, “El Veneno: Faradisíaco o el olor a tortilla tostada: Fragmento de historia de las “drogas” en Mexico, 1870–1920,” in Ricardo Pérez Montfort et al., Hábitos, normas y escándalo, Prensa, criminalidad y drogas durante el porfiriato tardío (Mexico City: Fondo Enrique Diaz, 1997), 145–205. 7 Isaac Campos, Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2012), 5. 96. 8 El Imparcial, 11 July 1908. 9 See Robert Chao Romero, The Chinese in Mexico, 1882–1940 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010), 145–90. 10 El Siglo de Torreón, 30 December 1923. 11 Genaro Pérez, “La marihuana. Breve estudio sobre este planta,” unpublished diss., Facultad de Medicina, 1886. 12 Rogaciano Tapia, “Algunas consideraciones sobre los progresos de la ­morfinomania,” unpublished diss., Universidad Nacional de México, 1920, 8. 13 Campos, Home grown, 124–32. 14 El Universal, 28 May 1895; El Municipio Libre, 7 September; 1880; 7 Sept 1897; La Patria, 7 September 1897. 15 Voz de Mexico, 1 June 1901; La Patria, 3 June 1901 16 José Domingo Schievenini Stefanoni, “La prohibición de la marihuana en ­México, 1920–1940,” unpublished MA diss., Universidad de Queretaro, 2012.

126  Benjamin T. Smith 17 Nidia Andrea Olvera Hernández, “Polícias, toxicómanos y traficantes: control de drogas en la ciudad de México, 1920–1942,” Unpublished MA diss., CIESAS, 2016, 202. 18 E.g. Casa de la Cultura Jurídica, Mazatlán, 1927, Exp. 19, Manuel Long and José Kooc 19 Mario Ramírez Rancaño, “Una discussion sobre el tamaño del ejército menxicano: 1876–1930,” Estudios de historia moderna y contemporánea de México 32 (2006). 20 Friedrich Katz, The Life and Times of Pancho Villa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 76. 21 Alfonso Reyes, Ancorajes (Mexico City: Tezontle, 1951), 40–6. 22 Eugenio Gomez Maillefert, “La Marihuana en Mexico,” The Journal of American Folklore 33, no. 127 (January–March 1920), 28–33. 23 Juan José Tablada, La resurección de los ídolos (Mexico City: UNAM, 2003), 127, 185–8. For Tablada see Manuel Gutiérrez Silva, “Aesthetic Rivalries in Avant-Garde Mexico: Art Writing and the Field of Cultural Production,” in Pierre Bourdieu in Hispanic Literature and Culture, eds. Sánchez Prado I. (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 87–129. 24 Jorge García-Robles, Antología del vicio, Aventuras y desaventuras de la mariguana en México (Mexico City: Laberinto, 2016), 123–40; ­Fernando Vallejo Rendón, Porfirio Barba Jacob, el mensajero (Mexico City: Alfaguara, 2012); Davíd Alfaro Siqueiros, Me llaman el coronelazo, ­memorias, (­Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1977), 204–5. 25 Fredy González, Paisanos Chinos: Transpacific Politics among Chinese ­Immigrants in Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017), 68. 26 Julia Maria Schiavone Camacho, “Crossing Boundaries, Claiming a Homeland: The Mexican Chinese Transpacific Journey to Becoming Mexican, 1930s–1960s,” Pacific Historical Review 78, no. 4, (2009), 545–77. 27 The only article, which invoked the stereotype, was one of Mario Gil’s pieces in La Prensa. But even this was markedly more sympathetic than most 1920s articles. La Prensa, 20 April 1940. 28 Elisa Speckman Guerra, “Reforma legal y opinion pública: Los codigos penales de 1871, 1929, y 1931,” in La reforma de la justicia en México, ed. Alvaro Arturo (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2008), 575–613; José Angel Ceniceros, El Nuevo Codigo Pena de 13 de Agosto de 1931 en Relación con los de 7 de Diciembre de 1871 y 15 de Diciembre de 1929 (Mexico City, Talleres Graficos de la Nación, 1931), 17–20. 29 Codigo Pena para el Distrito y Territorios Federales (Mexico City: Talleres Gráficos de la Nacón, 1929), article 525. 30 Codigo Penal para el Distrito y Territorios Federales en Materia de Fuero Comun (Mexico City, Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1931), articles 193–8. 31 Diario Oficial, 27 November 1931. 32 Diario Oficial, 30 August 1934. José Angel Ceniceros, El problema Social de la Insalubridad (Mexico City: Ediciones Botas, 1935), 73–75. 33 Lourdes Bautista Hernández, “De la penitenciaría al manicomio. El proceso de institutcionalización del Hospital Federal de Toxicómanos de la Ciudad de México, 1926–1948),” Unpub. MA diss., Instituto Mora, 2017, 51–98. 34 El Nacional, 24 September 1931. 35 See, for example, the 1933 case of Amado Peña recorded in Olvera ­Hernández, “Polícias,” 143–4. 36 Ibid., 202. 37 Archivo de la Secretaría de Salubridad y Asistencia (ASSA), Fondo ­Salubridad Pública, Sección Servicio Jurídico, Caja 39, Exp. 24.

The Dialectics of Dope  127 38 Cristina Sacristán, “La contribución de la Castañeda a la profesionalización de la psiquiatria Mexicana, 1910–1968,” Salud Mental. Organo official del Instituto Nacional de Psiquiatria 33, no. 6 (2010), 473–80; Andrés Ríos Molina, Cómo prevenir la locura. Psiquiatría e higiene mental en ­México, 1934–1950 (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 2016), 26–39; Ana Cecilia Rodríguez Romo et al., Protagonistas de la Medicina Científica Mexicana, 1800–2006, (Mexico City: Plaza y Valdés, 2008): 309–11. 39 Ríos Molina, Cómo prevenir la locura, 86–130 40 Ibid., 40–85, 157–91. 41 Claudia Agostini, “Médicos Rurales y Medicina Social en México ­Posrevolucionario (1920–1940),” Historia Mexicana LXIII, no. 2 (2013), 745–801; Claudia Agostini, “Las mensajeras de la salud: Enfermeras ­visitadoras en la ciudad de Mexico durante la década de los 1920,” Estudios de ­Historia Moderna y Contemporanea de Mexico 33, (2007): 89–120; Claudia A ­ gostino and Andrés Rios Molina, Las estadisticas de salud en Mexico, Ideas, actores e instituciones 1810–2010 (Mexico City: UNAM, 2010): 165–81. 42 Ríos Molina, Cómo prevenir la locura: 139, 140, 153–6. 43 Hernández, “De la penitenciaria,” 130; Jorge Segura Millán, “Marihuana. Estudio medico y social,” Unpublished diss., UNAM, 1939. Excélsior, 2 November 1938. 4 4 ASSA, Hospital Federal de Toxicómanos, Expedientes Clínicas, Caja 15, Exp. 24 and Caja 12, Exp. 6. 45 Hernández, “De la penitenciaria,” 101–40. 46 Carlos Rosales Miranda, “Intervención penal y administrativa del estado frente a la peligrosidad de los toxicómanos y traficantes de estupefacientes,” unpubl. diss., UNAM, 1939. 47 Thanks to my research assistant, Nathaniel Morris, who collected data on a random selection of ten patients every year for the period. ASSA, Hospital Federal de Toxicómanos, Expedientes Clínicas. 48 Hernández, “De la penitenciaria,” 73. 49 ASSA, Hospital Federal de Toxicómanos, Expedientes Clínicas, Caja 14, Exp. 5; Caja 17, Exp 21. 50 Campos, “A Diplomatic Failure,” 234. 51 E.g. La Prensa, 21 March 1940; La Prensa, 22 Mar. 1940; La Prensa, 10 Apr. 1940; El Universal, 23 March 1940. 52 Gregorio Oneto Barenque, La Mariguana ante La Academia Nacional de Medicina (Mexico City, n.p., 1938); Ana Cecilia Rodríguez de Romo, “Bosquejo histórico y uso social de la mariguana,” Revista de la Facultad de Medicina de la UNAM 55, no. 5 (2012), 48–54. 53 Based on evidence from the Casas de la Cultura Júridica of Tijuana, San Luis Potosí, and Mazatlán. 54 Angusto de Alba, “El debate sobre la mariguana,” Jueves de Excélsior, 17 November 1938. 55 El Informador, 7 Nov. 1940. See also El Informador, 1 June 1942. 56 “Datos biográficos del doctor Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra,” Gaceta Médica de México 67 (1937), 474. Flores Guevara, “Alternativa Mexicana,” 71–3; National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 170, (NARA, RG170), Box 22, Folder 4, H Creighton to Secretary of State, 6 September 1938. 57 Raúl Fournier, “Salazar Viniegra, la muerte y la libertad. Homenaje a la memoria de Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra,” Gaceta de la Universidad 4, no. 3 (1957). 58 ASSA, Fondo Manicomio Federal, Seccion Administrativa, Caja 2, Exp. 3. Lectura “Toxicomanos,” 1939. Sergio Javier Villaseñor Bayardo, Voces de Psiquiatría, Los Precusores (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2006), 332.

128  Benjamin T. Smith 59 Fournier, “Salazar Viniegra”; ASSA, Fondo Manicomio Federal, Seccion Administrativa, Caja 2, Exp. 3. 60 NARA, RG170, Box 22, Folder 4, Press Summary, 1 November 1938; H. Creighton to Commissioner of Customs, 21 February 1939. 61 Flores Guevara, “Alternativa Mexicana,” 74–5. 62 Ríos Molina, Cómo prevenir la locura, 131–56. 63 For Marxism in 1930s Mexico see Barry Carr, Marxism and Communism in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 47–79. 64 Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra, “El sentido de la evolución humana,” Gaceta Médica de México 67 (1937), 396–417. 65 Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra, “La función biológico del robo,” Criminalia, 6 (1938), 332–4. 66 Ríos Molina, Cómo prevenir la locura, 157–91. 67 Salvador [sic] Viniegra, “El Mito de Marihuana.” 68 Ibid., 230–237. See also Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra, “Estado Actual de los estudios sobre la marihuana,” Gaceta Medica de México, 31 August 1940. 69 For the impossibility of curing opium addicts, see Salazar, “Exposición.” 70 See particularly Salazar Viniegra, “Exposición,” 557. 71 Salazar Viniegra, “Exposición,” 555–6; Diario Oficial, 17 February 1940; La Prensa, 21 and 22 March 1940; NARA, RG170, Box 22, Folder 4, Traffic of Opium and Other Noxious Drugs, Resume for the Mexican Delegation at the League of Nations, by Leopoldo Salazar, undated. 72 Salazar Viniegra, “Exposición”; Diario Oficial, 17 February 1940. 73 Ben Fallaw, Cárdenas Compromised: The Failure of reform in Postrevolutionary Yucatán (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 125–57; Enrique Ochoa, Feeding Mexico: The Political Uses of Food since 1910 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2000), 39–70; Benjamin T. Smith, The Mexican Press and Civil Society: Stories from the Newsroom, Stories from the Street (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2018), 17–20; Carlos Marichal, “Auge y decadencia de las empresas estatales en México, 1930–1980: algunas notas sobre la relación histórica entre empresas estatales y endeudamiento externo,” Antropología. Boletín Oficial del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia 72 (2003), 12–22. 74 Many of the initial supporters of Salazar’s proposals did not understand or refused to countenance the critique of degeneration theory in the new regulations. Instead, they stressed the regulations’ economic role. NARA, RG170, Box 22, Folder 2, “The Struggle again Toxicomanias” by Dr Jose Siurob. 75 E.g. Ultimas Noticias, 22 October 1938; El Universal, 24 October 1938. 76 La Prensa, 21 and 22 March 1940; Excélsior, 20 March 1940. 77 NARA, RG170, Box 22, Folders 3 and 4. Campos, “A Diplomatic Failure.” 78 Jose Angel Ceniceros, “La Popular Doña Juanita,” Criminalia, February 1944. 79 Carlos G. Chabat, Diccionario de caló: El lenguaje del hampa en Mexico (Mexico City: Méndez Oteo, 1964), 116. 80 Paul Gootenberg, “A Forgotten Case of Scientific Excellence on the Periphery, The Nationalist Cocaine Science of Alfredo Bignon, 1884–1887,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 1 (2007), 202–32. 81 Johann Hari, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 233–55; Ernesto Londoño, ­“Uruguay’s Marijuana Law Turns Pharmacists into Dealers,” New York Times, 19 July 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/world/americas/uruguay-­legalizes-potmarijuana.html.

The Dialectics of Dope  129 82 Uki Goñi, “How Uruguay Made Legal Highs Work,” Guardian, 10 ­December 2017, www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/10/how-uruguay-made-legalcannabis-work; Tina Griego, “Inside Colorado’s Flourishing, Segregated Black Market for Pot,” Washington Post, 30 July 2014, www.washingtonpost. com/news/storyline/wp/2014/07/30/inside-colorados-flourishing-­segregatedblack-market-for-pot/?utm_term=.98dd1d4dca01

Bibliography Primary Sources Archivo de la Secretaría de Salubridad y Asistencia. Casa de la Cultura Jurídica, Mazatlán, Mexico. Casa de la Cultura Júridica, Oaxaca, Mexico. Ceniceros, José Angel. “La Popular Doña Juanita.” Criminalia, February 1944. ———. El Nuevo Codigo Pena de 13 de Agosto de 1931 en Relación con los de 7 de Diciembre de 1871 y 15 de Diciembre de 1929. Mexico City: Talleres Graficos de la Nación, 1931. ———. El problema Social de la Insalubridad. Mexico City: Ediciones Botas, 1935. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington DC. Salazar Viniegra, Leopoldo. “El sentido de la evolución humana.” Gaceta Médica de México 67 (1937): 396–417. ———. “Estado Actual de los estudios sobre la marihuana.” Gaceta Medica de México (August 31 1940): 383–96. ———. “Exposición de motivos para el nuevo Reglamento Federal de Toxicomanías.” Criminalia (May 10 1939): 555–60. ———. “La función biológico del robo.” Criminalia 6 (1938): 332–4. Salvador [sic] Viniegra, Leopoldo. “El Mito de Marihuana (Trabajo de Turno a la Academia de Mexicina).” Criminalia (December 1 1938): 206–37.

Secondary Sources Agostini, Claudia. “Las mensajeras de la salud: Enfermeras visitadoras en la ciudad de Mexico durante la decada de los 1920.” Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporanea de Mexico 33 (2007): 89–120. ———. “Médicos Rurales y Medicina Social en México Posrevolucionario (1920–1940).” Historia Mexicana LXIII, no. 2 (2013): 745–801. Agostino, Claudia, and Andrés Rios Molina. Las estadisticas de salud en ­Mexico, Ideas, acotres e instituciones 1810–2010. Mexico City: UNAM, 2010. Astorga, Luis. Drogas sin Fronteras. Mexico City: Grijalbo, 2003. Campos, Isaac. “A Diplomatic Failure: The Mexican Role in the Demise of the 1940 Reglamento Federal de Toxicomanías.” Third World Quarterly 39, no. 2 (2018): 232–47. ———. Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. Carr, Barry. Marxism and Communism in Twentieth-Century Mexico. ­Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. 47–79.

130  Benjamin T. Smith Chabat, Carlos G. Diccionario de caló: El lenguaje del hampa en Mexico. ­Mexico City: Méndez Oteo, 1964. Chao Romero, Robert. The Chinese in Mexico, 1882–1940. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010. Codigo Pena para el Distrito y Territorios Federales. Mexico City: Talleres Gráficos de la Nacón, 1929. Codigo Penal para el Distrito y Territorios Federales en Materia de Fuero Comun. Mexico City: Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1931. Enciso, Froylán. “Los fracasos del chantaje. Régimen de prohibición de drogas y narcotráfico.” In Seguridad nacional y seguridad interior, edited by Arturo Alvarado and Mónica Serrano, 61–104. Mexico City: Colegio de México, 2010. Fallaw, Ben. Cárdenas Compromised: The Failure of Reform in Postrevolutionary Yucatán. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. Flores Guevara, Mariana. “Alternativa Mexicana al Marco Internacional de Prohibicion de Drogas Durante el Cardenismo.” Unpublished BA diss., ­Colegio de México, 2013. García-Robles, Jorge. Antología del vicio, Aventuras y desaventuras de la mariguana en México. Mexico City: Laberinto, 2016. Gonzalez, Fredy. Paisanos Chinos: Transpacific Politics among Chinese Immigrants in Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017. Gootenberg, Paul. “A Forgotten Case of Scientific Excellence on the Periphery, The Nationalist Cocaine Science of Alfredo Bignon, 1884–1887.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 1 (2007): 202–32. Gutiérrez Silva, Manuel. “Aesthetic Rivalries in Avant-Garde Mexico: Art Writing and the Field of Cultural Production.” In Pierre Bourdieu in Hispanic Literature and Culture, edited by Sánchez Prado I, 87–129. Cham: Springer, 2018. Hari, Johann. Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Hernández, Ana Paula. “Drug Legislation and the Prison System in Mexico.” In Systems Overload: Drug Laws and Prisons in Latin America, 60–70. WOLA Working Paper, 2010. www.wola.org/sites/default/files/downloadable/ Drug%20Policy/2011/WOLATNI-Systems_Overload-mexico-def.pdf Hernández, Lourdes Bautista. “De la penitenciaría al manicomio. El proceso de institutcionalización del Hospital Federal de Toxicómanos de la Ciudad de México, 1926–1948).” Unpublished MA diss., Instituto Mora, 2017. Katz, Friedrich. The Life and Times of Pancho Villa. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Ochoa, Enrique. Feeding Mexico: The Political Uses of Food since 1910. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2000. Olvera Hernández, Nidia Andrea. “Policías, toxicómanos y traficantes: control de drogas en la ciudad de México, 1920–1942.” Unpublished MA diss., CIESAS, 2016. Oneto Barenque, Gregorio. La Mariguana ante La Academia Nacional de Medicina. Mexico City: n.p., 1938. Pérez Montfort, Ricardo. “El Veneno: Faradisíaco o el olor a tortilla tostada: Fragmento de historia de las “drogas”: en Mexico, 1870–1920.” In Hábitos, normas y escándalo, Prensa criminalidad y drogas durante el porfiriato

The Dialectics of Dope  131 tardío, edited by Ricardo Pérez Montfort, Alberto Castillo, and Pablo ­Piccato, 145–205. Mexico City: Fondo Enrique Diaz, 1997. ———. Tolerancia y Prohibición: Aproximaciones a la historia social y cultural de las drogas en México. Mexico City: Penguin Random House, 2016. Pérez Ricart, Carlos. Las agencias antinarcóticas de los Estados Unidos y la construcción transnacional de la guerra contra las drogas en México (1938–1978). PhD diss., Freien Universitat Berlin, 2016. ———. “US Pressure and Mexican Anti-Drugs Efforts from 1940 to 1980: Importing the War on Drugs?” In Beyond the Drug War in Mexico: Human Rights, the Public Sphere and Justice, edited by Wil G. Pansters, Benjamin T. Smith, and Peter Watt, 33–49. London: Routledge, 2017. Pérez, Genaro. “La marihuana. Breve estudio sobre este planta.” Unpublished diss., Facultad de Medicina, 1886. Ramírez Rancaño, Mario. “Una discussion sobre el tamaño del ejército ­menxicano: 1876–1930.” Estudios de historia moderna y contemporánea de México 32 (2006): n.p. Raúl Fournier. “Salazar Viniegra, la muerte y la libertad. Homenaje a la memoria de Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra.” Gaceta de la Universidad 4, no. 3 (1957): n.p. Reyes, Alfonso. Ancorajes. Mexico City: Tezontle, 1951. Ríos Molina, Andrés. Cómo prevenir la locura. Psiquiatría e higiene mental en México, 1934–1950. Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 2016. Rodríguez de Romo, Ana Cecilia. “Bosquejo histórico y uso social de la mariguana.” Revista de la Facultad de Medicina de la UNAM 55, no. 5 (2012): 48–54. Rodríguez Romo, Ana Cecilia, Gabriela Castañeda López, and Rita Robles Valencia. Protagonistas de la Medicina Científica Mexicana, 1800–2006. Mexico City: Plaza y Valdés, 2008. Rosales Miranda, Carlos. “Intervención penal y administratva del estado frente a la peligrosidad de los toxicómanos y traficantes de estupefacientes.” Unpublished diss., UNAM, 1939. Sacristán, Cristina. “La contribución de la Castañeda a la profesionalización de la psiquiatria Mexicana, 1910–1968.” Salud Mental. Organo official del Instituto Nacional de Psiquiatria 33, no. 6 (2010): 473–80. Schiavone Camacho, Julia Maria. “Crossing Boundaries, Claiming a Homeland: The Mexican Chinese Transpacific Journey to Becoming Mexican, 1930s–1960s.” Pacific Historical Review 78, no. 4 (2009): 545–77. Schievenini Stefanoni, José Domingo. “La prohibición de la marihuana en ­México, 1920–1940.” Unpublished MA diss., Universidad de Queretaro, 2012. Segura Millán, Jorge. “Marihuana. Estudio medico y social.” Unpublished diss, UNAM, 1939. Siqueiros, Davíd Alfaro. Me llaman el coronelazo, memorias. Mexico City: ­Grijalbo, 1977. Smith, Benjamin T. The Mexican Press and Civil Society: Stories from the Newsroom, Stories from the Street. Chapel Hill: University of North C ­ arolina Press, 2018. Speckman Guerra, Elisa. “Reforma legal y opinion pública: Los codigos penales de 1871, 1929, y 1931.” In La reforma de la justicia en México, edited by Alvaro Arturo, 575–613. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2008.

132  Benjamin T. Smith Tablada, José Juan. La Feria de la Vida (Memorias). Mexico City: Botas, 1937. ———. La resurección de los ídolos. Mexico City: UNAM, 2003. Tapia, Rogaciano. “Algunas consideraciones sobre los progresos de la morfinomania.” Unpublished diss., Universidad Nacional de México, 1920. Vallejo Rendón, Fernando. Porfirio Barba Jacob, el mensajero. Mexico City: Alfaguara, 2012. Villaseñor Bayardo, Sergio Javier. Voces de Psiquiatría, Los Precusores. ­Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2006. Walker, William O. Drug Control in the Americas. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989.

7 Reassessing the “Drug-Free Country” Drug Abuse, the Soviet State, and Contemporary Russian Drug Policy Pavel Vasilyev Introduction Sociologist Petr Meylakhs has described contemporary Russian drug policy as a synthesis of “strict didacticism” and the worst traditions of repressive psychiatry.1 Overall, both masterminds and enforcers of ­Russian drug policy seem to perceive the Soviet Union as an ideal model of drug-free society. The aim of this chapter is to provide a fresh, challenging, and stimulating account of drug abuse, treatment, and policy in the Soviet Union. Shattering the common notion that “there were no drugs in the Soviet Union,”2 it improves our understanding of Russia’s socialist past and argues for the discarding of obsolete concepts such as “drug-free country” that still influence contemporary Russian drug policy. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it was around 1917 when drug abuse first emerged as a serious problem in Russia, and the first drug policies were developed. This study of controlled substances and the evolution of Soviet drug policy provides a more nuanced picture than the common notion of a successful drug prohibition regime from the 1910s to the 1980s. The chapter also discusses the post-Soviet perceptions of the drug situation in the Soviet Union and the reasons for the persistence of the ­image of the “drug-free country.” These perceptions have a strong impact on contemporary drug policy in Russia and other post-Soviet states—and possibly beyond. This is particularly the case in the contexts of more radical and intolerant regimes which seek to “eliminate” or “liquidate” drug use altogether. I, however, show that the persistence of addicts and addict subcultures under the harshest totalitarian regimes testifies to the utopian character of the “drug-free state” delusion. Finally, the chapter closes with a discussion of the (mis)communication between various ­expert audiences (historians of drugs, medicine, and the Soviet Union; academics from neighboring disciplines; physicians and medical ­scientists; and stakeholders in legislatures, public health, and law enforcement agencies) and the general public.

134  Pavel Vasilyev

Contemporary Russian Drug Policy: An Overview While the authorities list drug abuse as one of the most pressing issues in Russian society today, the proposed solutions include such controversial and cruel measures as coercive treatment of addicts, criminal prosecution for drug use, and even the death penalty for selling drugs. Ex-­President and current Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev openly called drug abuse “a menace for [Russia’s] national security” and called for mandatory drug testing in schools and universities. 3 This call was d ­ eveloped by the ex-Minister of Education and Science, Andrey A.  Fursenko, who ­supported compulsory treatment of addicts and the expulsion of drug-­ using students from universities.4 In 2013, two new laws allowed for the introduction of compulsory treatment and drug testing in schools (the latter de jure being voluntary, but widely perceived as de facto obligatory, and heavily criticized). The controversial methods of treating drug addicts (kidnapping, handcuffing addicts to beds, and work therapy) that are practiced by non-­ governmental organizations such as Gorod bez narkotikov (“The City Without Drugs”) have recently received much public attention. 5 In the fall of 2013, the founder of “The City Without Drugs,” Yevgeny V. Roizman, was elected the Mayor of Yekaterinburg, the fourth-largest Russian city. Even more radical propositions have been expressed by the Minister of Justice Alexander V. Konovalov and the former Director of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service Viktor P. Ivanov (criminalization of drug use).6 In this context, the idea of introducing the death penalty for selling drugs (as expressed by the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Gennady A. Zyuganov) does not seem surreal anymore.7 Therefore, contemporary Russian drug policy is based on the traditional “essentialist” understanding of drug addiction as a social problem to be “solved” through government intervention and regulation of the market. Such an approach hinders the understanding of the fact that regimes of drug regulation have always been historically conditioned. Some scholars explain the prevalence of the essentialist understanding by referring to the lack of attention paid to the historical roots of drug addiction and its various cultural forms.8 A tendency to overestimate the role of the state in managing the problem is also common and has additional relevance for the study of groups traditionally presented as requiring paternalist care and protection (e.g., children, youth, women, indigenous peoples). Additionally, the belief that the state should regulate the market of recreational drugs creates an assumption that there are objective criteria which determine whether a particular substance should be prohibited or not. In fact, the decisions to prohibit or legalize one or another psychoactive substance (be it alcohol, marijuana, or tobacco) are often arbitrary, historically conditioned, and

Reassessing the “Drug-Free Country”  135 not necessarily related to the perceived degree of psycho-physical harm and addictiveness. Many existing works and policy recommendations lack in-depth analysis and a critical approach towards key primary sources, ­perceiving, e.g., medical texts, as unquestionably “objective” and “scientific.” ­Challenging this “essentialist” view, I follow scholars of contemporary drug abuse who question existing regimes of prohibition and the involvement of medical professionals in their implementation and preservation.9

The Soviet Union as an Ideal Model Additionally, the ideologists and enforcers of Russian drug policy p ­ erceive the Soviet Union as a model of drug-free society. While ­ignoring ­lessons offered by the history of drugs is common in drug policy ­debates,10 this perception is particularly problematic. It proposes a radical vision of a country free of drugs in a way that is dangerously reminiscent of the many violations of human rights that are associated with the S­ oviet system. Any alternative approach, therefore, should start with deep scholarly research on drug abuse in the late Imperial and early Soviet period, since (contrary to conventional wisdom) it was around 1917 when drug abuse first emerged as a serious problem in Russia, and the first forms of drug policy were developed. The need for such an investigation is also justified from an academic point of view, since there are very few studies that discuss drug abuse and drug policy in twentieth-century Russia. This presents a regrettable omission, since Soviet drug history offers a unique perspective on both the global proliferation of drug control regimes and the history of social policy under state socialism. However, until now, perhaps for obvious reasons, Soviet historiography has largely ignored the history of drug abuse in twentieth-­century Russia. New authors interested in drug abuse have emerged since the late 1980s, but the historical picture remains largely fragmentary. Scholars have published articles and book chapters that touch upon the social ­history of drug abuse in Soviet Russia,11 but there is no major contribution in the history of medicine. Most studies essentially confine themselves to a narrow period from 1917 to the early 1920s, focusing on the emergence of the problem after the First World War, but also contributing to the perception that the Soviet authorities “eliminated” drug abuse in the early years of Stalin’s rule.12 Additionally, contemporary historiography largely focuses on the role of law enforcement in fighting drug abuse and retains an essentialist understanding of the problem. Important exceptions are the works by Mary Schaeffer Conroy and Alisher Latypov.13 They reject an essentialist understanding of drug abuse and offer a more attentive attitude toward medical texts as primary sources and a focus on a longer chronological period. However,

136  Pavel Vasilyev they largely concentrate on theoretical constructions of drug abuse in medical texts, but not on the practice of drug control and treatment and do not use archival sources documenting these efforts. In addition, ­Latypov has a strong focus on Central Asia—an important, yet too ­specific, region for our purposes. This study of controlled substances and the evolution of Soviet drug policy provides a more nuanced picture than the common notion of a successful drug prohibition regime from the 1910s to the 1980s in the entire Soviet Union. In this chapter, which is based on my doctoral dissertation research,14 I study the social and cultural context of drug abuse, examine the constructions of drug abuse in medical and criminological texts, and trace the evolution of Soviet drug policy. I challenge a pervasive myth and show that drug abuse, particularly before the early 1930s and in the 1980s, existed throughout the Soviet period.

Drug Use in the Soviet Period In many European and North American countries, the emergence of drug abuse as a serious social problem and the establishment of the first drug policies can be traced to the period from the beginning of World War I to the end of the 1920s. In the Russian context, scholars have noticed the trend towards the “democratization” of drug abuse, i.e., “contamination” of previously “clean” social groups (such as revolutionary militiamen, soldiers, sailors, and workers).15 Perhaps even more importantly, after the Great War, Russian society confronted a dramatic numerical increase in the numbers of drug addicts,16 which did not stop after the end of the Civil War and a return to “normal life” following the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921.17 The number of drug addicts in Russia started decreasing only following the criminalization of the drug market and the introduction of cheap vodka in the mid-1920s.18 For the purposes of this essay, I am paying particular attention to this period between 1914 and the start of the Second World War. As mentioned, the changes in drug use and drug policy in the post-war Soviet Union is an important yet understudied subject that has only recently been addressed by the more critical scholars.19 While existing scholarship on the history of drugs in late Imperial and early Soviet Russia generally accepts the contemporary image of a “black market” for drugs, cocaine, morphine, and opium were in fact semi-legal “grey market” substances during that period. The everyday practice in many areas of public health (especially dentistry, ophthalmology, otorhinolaryngology, and gynecology) greatly depended on the use of these substances as medicines. Not until the late 1920s did it gradually become possible to reduce the use of these drugs in the practice of public health. It should also be noted that the “grey market” situation by

Reassessing the “Drug-Free Country”  137 and large persisted well into the 1930s. The medical demand for opiates rose in 1939 in Northwestern Russia with the start of the Winter War with Finland, and then across the Soviet Union after the Nazi invasion in June 1941. 20 Marijuana was also quite widespread, and there were no special regulations regarding this drug until 1934. 21 We can also observe cases of drug use in the later period, though obscured by government rhetoric proclaiming the successful eradication of “remnants of the past.”22 The problem still persisted (though less explicitly) in Stalinist Russia. For example, a 1938 psychiatry textbook emphasized the social aspects of drug abuse and legitimized intervention and the isolation of drug addicts by referring to the alleged “reduction of their mental capacity” as a ­result of drug taking. 23 Russian historian Mikhail V. Shkarovskii notes that by the mid1930s, the authorities had largely stopped monitoring the drug situation in the country. The social and psychological features of people prone to drug abuse were ignored; the operations of specialized clinics were ­suspended. Moreover, by the end of the 1930s, the authorities declared that drug abuse, like prostitution, poverty, child homelessness, and so forth, did not exist in the USSR. During the Stalinist period, it becomes more difficult to describe and evaluate the situation regarding drug abuse in ­Soviet Russia. 24 By no means, however, should this evaluation be rendered impossible: there are frequent references to drug abuse in the medical texts of the 1930s–1950s25 as well as occasional mentions of it in the works of Soviet writers from Iurii German to Evgeniia Ginzburg to Sergei Dovlatov. 26

Soviet Scientific Constructions of Drug Abuse Since professional definitions coined by physicians and criminologists often have direct social implications, I challenge the existing scholarship by focusing specifically on these scientific texts and presenting their authors as active claim-makers who eventually exercised a visible influence on practical narcotic policy. Breaking away from the widespread perception of medical texts as scientific, objective, and a-historical, I follow such scholars as Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Karin Knorr-Cetina, and Bruno Latour. 27 In the early twentieth century for many researchers, the problem of hashish or opium abuse was essentially the same as the excessive consumption of tea or coffee. Moreover, it was possible for the physicians to base their theories on introspective experiences and observation of their own feelings and behavior after taking drugs. 28 Drug abuse was not perceived as a major social problem that required government intervention and control, and the discussion of possible anti-drug measures would be most often located on the individual (medical) level.

138  Pavel Vasilyev With the trend towards “democratization” of drug abuse after the Great War, Russian society confronted a dramatic numerical increase in the numbers of drug addicts. Early Soviet physicians and criminologists constituted a part of this society who also possessed some relevant scientific knowledge about drug abuse. It is hardly surprising, then, that they would emerge as the claim-makers who departed from their professional medical understanding to construct drug abuse as a social ­problem and create moral panics through alarming declarations. 29 As I have shown elsewhere, in early Soviet medical texts, drug abuse was often constructed as a disease especially connected to bourgeois modernity, capitalism, and alien to the socialist system. 30 Despite existing alternatives, most physicians voted in favor of active, direct, and extensive government intervention and regulation of the drug market, appealing to generalized moral categories, stressing the criminogenic potential of drug abuse and presenting it as an economic challenge to the socialist system.31 Moreover, some of the solutions they offered had nothing to do with medicine proper, but pertained rather to social, economic, and political circumstances (such as a tougher stance on known “drug dens” or better control over the import of drugs). However, I also want to underline that the early Soviet period in particular witnessed an existence of alternatives to drug prohibition, including professionals’ resistance to criminalization, continued administration of opiates to the addicts (even in the Stalinist 1930s!), and some other forms of harm reduction. 32 It is also important to discuss the implications that scientific research had for practical drug policy. Monographs, articles, and conference presentations by Russian physicians were not isolated in the narrow professional realm. In fact, physicians actively participated in the elaboration and implementation of state policy towards drug abuse, openly criticized the authorities, and actively lobbied for their own programs of health improvement and wider socialist reform through communal institutions and government agencies.33 Relevant examples include the resolution of the First Scientific Conference on Drug Abuse held in Moscow in ­December 1923, which stated that cocaine abuse was spreading over Soviet Russia like an epidemic. 34 Importantly, the physicians deemed all the previous government measures as ineffective and drafted their own plan of actions. The government and local public health authorities had implemented most of the measures proposed by medical specialists by the end of the 1920s.

The Evolution of Soviet Drug Policy The relatively short period from the beginning of World War I to the end of the 1920s witnessed a radical change in attitudes towards drugs and addiction. We may sometimes be misled by our experiences of the contemporary world, where state-funded “Wars on Drugs” are fought in

Reassessing the “Drug-Free Country”  139 most countries; the markets for recreational drugs are heavily regulated, and moral panics related to drugs are launched from time to time by physicians and the media. It is thus often overlooked that the social, ­medical, and scientific context of early twentieth-century ­Russia, ­G ermany, or the United States was different. One could easily buy cocaine or heroin at the pharmacy, and there was practically no ­government regulation and legislation concerning recreational drugs (and even when certain psychoactive substances were indeed regulated, the rationale behind it had more to do with limiting access to poisons). However, after c. 1914 drug policy emerged as a separate and ­legitimate direction of public policy in the United States—and then in Weimar Germany and early Soviet Russia in the wake of the ­so-called “­democratization” of drug abuse during the Great War. By ­ owever, the market of recreational drugs had been the early 1930s, h ­heavily regulated, drug sale had been criminalized, and physicians and ­criminologists had begun to label drug addicts as bourgeois, d ­ egenerate, or otherwise ­socially anomalous people who should be sent to special camps. An i­mportant turning point occurred in late 1924, when Soviet authorities issued two decrees that provided a legal definition of criminal drug sales, signaling the start of a more intensive struggle against drug abuse.35 The relative ineffectiveness of proper medical treatment, the non-­ existence of neuroleptics, and the ongoing politicization of cocaine, ­opiate, and hashish addiction led to the introduction of work therapy. In the 1930s, drug clinics evolved first into medical-labor centers and finally to prison camps under the auspices of the Soviet Interior M ­ inistry (NKVD). In Leningrad, work therapy was first introduced in the late 1920s with a medical-labor center with sewing and hosiery rooms for drug-using sex workers. In the early 1930s, however, the center was transferred to the former premises of the Alexander-Svirsky Monastery near Lodeinoe Pole, about 240 km away from Leningrad, under the control of the NKVD. Administrators of prison camps saw addicts as a source of cheap labor and began to use them in timber harvesting and agricultural work under the pretext of work therapy. 36 About the same time, Leningrad’s Psycho-Neurological Institute introduced its own hosiery, locksmithery, and cobbler’s workshop; bookbinder and other shops; as well as an agricultural colony called “Lomaki” in Koporye, about 100 km southwest of the city. 37 Despite the initial plans to kill two birds with one stone (to economize on the labor force and rehabilitate the addicts), physicians and camp authorities both acknowledged the “extremely low efficiency” and “beastly organization” of these institutions. In medical-labor centers ­addicts complained that they “are not allowed to go to the city.” They continually tried to “run away back to the city” from the “horrifying living conditions” of the former Alexander-Svirsky Monastery. 38

140  Pavel Vasilyev It should be noted, however, that the focus on work therapy in the treatment of drug abuse was not peculiar to Soviet institutions. S­ imilar procedures also enjoyed popularity in the West. The controversial ­Federal Medical Center, sometimes known as the Narcotic Farm, was established in Lexington, Kentucky, in May 1935. Partly inspired by the ideas of Thomas Kirkbride, it implemented mental health theories about “moral therapy,” manual labor in a pastoral setting, and deprivation of external stimuli.39 Despite growing ideological differences between Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and the New Deal United States in the 1930s, the drug ­policies of the respective countries shared many similarities. In general, the process of the construction of drug abuse as a social problem in medical texts, the criminalization of drug trade, and the compulsory treatment of drug addicts through institutionalization in Soviet Russia can be compared to the evolution of the respective medical practices in the United States and certain Western European countries.40 While the Soviet Union was by and large in the atmosphere of isolation and was not formally constrained by the international drug control treaties (The  Hague 1912, Geneva 1925 and 1931, Bangkok 1931), intensive scientific cooperation with Germany in the 1920s41 and the activities of international organizations allowed Russian drug policy to follow international developments. Clearly, politicization of drug abuse, stigmatization and marginalization of drug addicts, and the aggressive denial of the problem starting from the 1930s were all specific to Soviet Russia. However, in the context of the early Soviet period, the ethnic connotations of drug abuse are perhaps expressed less explicitly—while in interwar Germany, drugs were strongly linked to the Jews, and in the United States in the early twentieth century to African Americans and Mexicans.42 Especially in Germany, Jews were widely represented as drug addicts par excellence, and the connection between them and drug abuse was made absolutely explicitly.43 Moreover, the situation largely persisted during the Cold War and the post-Soviet period, drug abuse being viewed as a common enemy for both East and West, capitalism and communism. However, while some countries developed a more liberal approach to drug policy and introduced some forms of harm reduction, others have remained staunch in their fight for the elimination of drug abuse. This cannot be explained solely by cultural factors, the level of economic development, or advances in democracy. The analysis of early Soviet drug policy allows us to explain why the state decided in favor of the active struggle against drug abuse and the regulation of the recreational drug market. On the one hand, this was solely a pragmatic decision: while radically decreasing the number of drug users was perceived as a feasible assignment, the authorities

Reassessing the “Drug-Free Country”  141 essentially acknowledged capitulation in the struggle against alcohol abuse by lifting the ban on vodka sales in 1925. Moreover, in the second half of the 1920s, it became possible to gradually limit the use of drugs in everyday medical practice. However, we should also note the pressure on the side of physicians and criminologists and their constructions of drug abuse as a “capitalist” and “bourgeois” illness and an economic and political challenge to the socialist system. Accordingly, the foundation of early Soviet drug policy was deeply intertwined with the reaction of the professional communities and the authorities to the “democratization” of drug abuse and a dramatic numerical increase in the numbers of drug addicts following the collapse of Imperial state institutions and large-scale exposure of wounded soldiers to morphine during the First World War. At times, this reaction was inadequate to the scope of the problem and acquired the form of a moral panic, thus contributing to potentially dangerous politicization of drug abuse.44 Even though the authorities had succeeded in “driving drug addicts into the corner” by the end of the 1920s,45 they could not of course eradicate the very desire to take drugs (a mission impossible from the very start, according to contemporary sociologists).46 Moreover, medical research on drug abuse also produced some long-term effects, and expert scientific knowledge was used to justify marginalization and the repression of the drug market in the following years. Despite physicians’ efforts and the relatively generous support of their projects on the part of government authorities, drug abuse in the Soviet Union did not disappear completely in the 1930s. However, as a result of the zero-­tolerance Soviet drug policy, there is a strong tradition of negative attitudes towards drug addicts and drug dealers in Russian society, and the ­government’s authority to control the drug market is unquestioned, though narcotic policies are often costly, bureaucratic, and inefficient.

Post-Soviet Perceptions of the “Drug-Free Country” and Their Negative Impact on Contemporary Russian Drug Policy Naturally, the actual increase in the numbers of drug addicts after ­Perestroika (but also a much more open political and media climate which allowed for the discussion of the problem) led many to believe that, by comparison, the Soviet Union certainly was a “drug-free country” (even though many people could personally testify to the contrary). However, this also means that most Russians today either know nothing at all or have a distorted vision of the history of drugs in their country. Perhaps even more significantly, the Russian authorities and law enforcers set inadequate policy goals on the basis of this wrong historical vision—an important lesson to consider for the masterminds and enforcers of global drug prohibition today.

142  Pavel Vasilyev On a more general level, I argue that the existence of addicts and addict subcultures even in the harshest condition of state violence and totalitarian control testifies to the utopian character of contemporary efforts to “eradicate” or “liquidate” drug abuse. The peculiar and tragic experience of the struggle against drug abuse in Soviet Russia shows that it is necessary to shift from the abstract desire to “eliminate” drug abuse to achieving goals that are more specific and managing the problem to minimize negative outcomes. It is also necessary to avoid marginalization of drug users and the politicization of the problem. The acceptance of medical authority and the importance of preventive measures and drug rehabilitation should not lead to the situation when drug policy is used by the physicians for approbation or translation of their theories. The main problem, however, is that the two key audiences (a few ­historians of drug abuse and drug policy in Soviet Russia and the p ­ olicy stakeholders in the legislatures, law enforcement, and public health agencies) do not listen to each other and indeed seem to speak different languages. Of course, practical policy-makers do not immediately turn to historians when (and if) they require an expert opinion (they are much more likely to consult sociologists, criminologists, and especially physicians). However, in the post-Soviet context, many historians also tend to find dubious pleasure in extolling their knowledge as fundamentally inapplicable and irrelevant, and largely shy away from influencing public policy debates.

Conclusion It is my intention to change this situation by publishing an academic yet accessible book on drug abuse and drug policy in Soviet ­Russia. Indeed, much of my academic work on drugs is motivated by the ­desire to encourage scholars and policy-makers to re-think traditional paradigms and to bring theoretical knowledge from the academia to the world, where drug abuse is one of the most important and globally recognized problems—but social and medical sciences tend to ­simplify the problem by overestimating the role of the state in ­m anaging it and also by p ­ erceiving recreational drugs as an unequivocal social evil. However, I have to be very cautious when expressing my optimism. A renewed interest in work therapy and compulsory treatment of drug addicts in Russia47 may be solely caused by the assumed efficiency of these methods (which history clearly shows is not the case), but it is perhaps more correctly explained by the lack of basic respect for human freedoms and dignity and the acceptance of authoritarian forms of rule on the part of the ideologues and enforcers of Russian drug policy—as well as vigilante anti-drug groups and the general public.

Reassessing the “Drug-Free Country”  143

Notes 1 Petr Meylakhs, “Narkotiki: Ideologiia, narkopolitika i moral.’” www.rspp. su/articles/09.2010/drags_moral.html. [This and all subsequent URLs cited accessed December 21 2018.] 2 Nataliia B. Lebina, Povsednevnaia zhizn’ sovetskogo goroda: Normy i anomalii: 1920–1930 gody (St. Petersburg: Neva: Letnii Sad, 1999), 19; Lebina, “O pol’ze igry v biser: (Mikroistoriia kak metod izucheniia norm i anomalii sovetskoi povsednevnosti 20-30-kh godov),” in Normy i tsennosti povsednevnoi zhizni: Stanovlenie sotsialisticheskogo obraza zhizni v Rossii, 1920-30-e gody, ed. Timo Vihavainen (St. Petersburg: Neva, 2000), 7; Mikhail V. Khodiakov, “Predislovie,” in ‘Goriacheshnyi i triumfal’nyi gorod’: Petrograd: ot ‘voennogo kommunizma’ k NEPu: Dokumenty i ­m aterialy, ed. Khodiakov (St. Petersburg: SPbGU, 2000), 11–12. 3 “Zasedanie prezidiuma Gossoveta, posviashchennoe bor’be s rasprostraneniem narkotikov sredi molodezhi,” President of Russia, http://kremlin.ru/ events/president/news/10986. 4 “Studentov predlagaiut ‘vytalkivat’ iz universitetov za upotreblenie narkotikov,” NEWSru.com, www.newsru.com/russia/18may2011/narko.html. 5 The City without Drugs Foundation, www.nobf.ru. 6 Zasedanie prezidiuma Gossoveta; V. Bogdanov, “Narkomanov predlozhili sazhat’,” Rossiiskaia gazeta, November 23, 2011, 7, www.rg.ru/2011/11/22/ problema-site.html. 7 Gennady A. Zyuganov, Vstavaite, liudi russkie! Obrashchenie k russkomu narodu, (Moscow: Kommunisticheskaia partiia Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 2011), https://kprf.ru/rus_soc/98095.html. 8 Nataliia B. Lebina, Povsednevnaia zhizn.’ 9 Ethan A. Nadelmann, “Drug Prohibition in the United States: Costs, ­Consequences, and Alternatives,” Science 245 (1989): 939–47; Thomas S.  Szasz, Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market (New York: ­Praeger, 1992); Timothy Lynch, ed., After Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2001). 10 Carl L. Hart, Joanne Csete, and Don Habibi, Methamphetamine: Fact vs. Fiction and Lessons from the Crack Hysteria (New York: Open Society Foundations, 2014). 11 Viktor A. Popov, “Bor’ba s narkomaniei i toksikomaniei detei i podrostkov v 20-30-e gody,” Sovetskoe zdravookhranenie no. 5 (1989): 67–70; Nataliia B. Lebina, “Tenevye storony zhizni sovetskogo goroda 20-30-kh godov,” Voprosy istorii no. 4 (1994): 30–42; Lebina, “Narkoman iz narkomata i klub morfinistov revoliutsionnogo Baltflota,” Vechernii Peterburg, 12 April 1996; Lebina, “Belaia feia, ili Kak ‘navodili marafet’ v Sovetskoi Rossii,” Rodina no. 9 (1996): 64–6; Mikhail V. Shkarovskii, “Sem’ imen ‘koshki’”: Rastsvet narkomanii v 1917-1920-e gody,” in Nevskii arkhiv, issue 3 (St.  ­Petersburg, 1997), 467–77; Lebina, Povsednevnaia zhizn’; Vadim I. Musaev, Prestupnost’ v Petrograde v 1917-1921 gg. i bor’ba s nei (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2001); Nataliia B. Lebina and Aleksandr N. Chistikov, Obyvatel’ i reformy: Kartiny povsednevnoi zhizni gorozhan v gody nepa i khrushchevskogo desiatiletiia (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2003). See also Lebina and Shkarovskii, Prostitutsiia v Peterburge: (40-e gg. XIX v. - 40-e gg. XX v.) (Moscow: Progress-Akademiia, 1994). 12 Anzor A. Gabiani, Narkotizm vchera i segodnia (Tbilisi: Sabchota ­Sakartvelo, 1988), 8; Alaudi N. Musaev, Petr N. Sbirunov and Boris P. ­Tselinskii, Protivodeistvie nezakonnomu oborotu narkoticheskikh sredstv (istoriia i sovremennost’) (Moscow: VNII MVD Rossii, 2000), 27–28,

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14 15 16 17 18

19

20 21 22

39–40; Mikhail IU. Voronin, “Obshchaia kharakteristika rasprostraneniia narkoticheskikh sredstv i psikhotropnykh veshchestv v Rossii v pervoi chetverti XX stoletiia,” Narkokontrol’, no. 4 (2008), 11. Mary Schaeffer Conroy, “Abuse of Drugs other than Alcohol and Tobacco in the Soviet Union,” Soviet Studies 42 (1990), 447–80; Conroy, “Drug Use and Abuse in Tsarist Russia,” in Conroy, In Health and in Sickness: Pharmacy, Pharmacists and the Pharmaceutical Industry in Late ­Imperial, Early Soviet Russia (Boulder, CO: Columbia University Press, 1994), 200–218; Conroy, The Soviet Pharmaceutical Business During Its First Two Decades (1917–1937) (New York: Peter Lang, 2006); Alisher Latypov, “Central Asian Tabibs in Post-Soviet Archives: Healing, Spying, Struggling, and ‘exploiting’” Wellcome History 43 (2010), 8–9; Latypov, “Healers and Psychiatrists: The Transformation of Mental Health Care in T ­ ajikistan,” Transcultural Psychiatry 47 no. 3 (2010), 419–51; Latypov, “The ­Soviet ­Doctor and the Treatment of Drug Addiction: ‘A Difficult and Most ­Ungracious Task,’” Harm Reduction Journal 8, no. 32 (2011); L ­ atypov, On the Road to “H”: Narcotic Drugs in Soviet Central Asia (Washington, DC: The George Washington University. 2012); Latypov, “The Opium War at the ‘Roof of the World’: the ‘Elimination’ of Addiction in Soviet ­Badakhshan,” Central Asian Survey 32, no. 1 (2013), 19–36. Pavel A. Vasilyev, “Narkotizm v Petrograde-Leningrade v 1917–1929 gg.: Sotsial’naia problema i poiski ee resheniia,” PhD diss., St. Petersburg ­I nstitute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2013. Lebina, Povsednevnaia zhizn’, 29; Shkarovskii, “Sem’ imen ‘koshki,’” 467. Lebina, Povsednevnaia zhizn’, 32–33; Stanislav E. Panin, “Potreblenie narkotikov v Sovetskoi Rossii (1917-1920-e gody),” Voprosy istorii no. 8 (2003) 133; Shkarovskii, “Sem’ imen ‘koshki,’” 476. Nikolai A. Semashko, “O kokainizme i bor’be s nim,” Izvestiia TSIK SSSR, 4 January 1925; Shkarovskii, “Sem’ imen ‘koshki,’” 467. Mikhail P. Kutanin, “Voprosy teorii i praktiki morfinizma,” in Trudy pervogo vsesoiuznogo s’’ezda nevropatologov i psikhiatrov, ed. V. A. Beliaev (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe meditsinskoe izdatel’stvo, 1929), 40; Lebina, “Belaia feia,” 66; Lebina, Povsednevnaia zhizn’, 32–33; Valerii A. Shishkin, ed., Petrograd na perelome epoch: Gorod i ego zhiteli v gody revoliutsii i grazhdanskoi voiny (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2000), 93; Lebina and Chistikov, Obyvatel’ i reformy, 117. Latypov, On the Road to “H”; Latypov, “The Opium War at the ‘Roof of the World’”; Juliane Fürst, “If You’re Going to Moscow, be Sure to Wear some Flowers in your Hair: The Soviet Hippie Sistema and Its Life in, ­Despite and with Stagnation,” in Reconsidering Stagnation in the Brezhnev Era, eds. Dina Fainberg and Artemy M. Kalinovsky (New York: Lexington Books, 2016), 123–46; Juliane Fürst, “We All Live in a Yellow Submarine: Life in a Leningrad Commune,” in Dropping out of Socialism: Alternative Spheres in the Soviet Bloc, eds. Juliane Fürst and Josie McLellan (New York: Lexington Books, 2016), 197–207. Vsevolod P. Paribok, Materialy k probleme privykaniia k narkotikam ­(Leningrad: Detgiz, 1949). Lebina, Povsednevnaia zhizn’, 46. See also Iakov I. Gilinskii, ed., Deviantnost’ i sotsial’nyi kontrol’ v Rossii (XIX–XX vv.): Tendentsii i sotsiologischeskoe osmyslenie (St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2000), 47; Vladlen S. Izmozik and Nataliia B. Lebina, Peterburg sovetskii: ‘novyi chelovek’ v starom prostranstve, 1920-1930-e gody: (Sotsial’no-arkhitekturnoe mikroistoricheskoe issledovanie) (St. Petersburg: Kriga, 2010), 123–34.

Reassessing the “Drug-Free Country”  145 23 24 25 26

27

28

29 30

31

32 33 34 35

36 37

38 39

Arkhiv SZGMU, Nauchnaia chast’, delo 23, l. 74. Shkarovskii, “Sem’ imen ‘koshki,’” 477. Latypov, “The Soviet Doctor.” Iurii P. German, Dorogoi moi chelovek (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1988), 253, 481, 488; German, Ia otvechaiu za vse (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1989), 84, 166, 380, 402, 511; Evgeniia S. Ginzburg, Krutoi marshrut: Khronika vremen kul’ta lichnosti (Riga: Kursiv, 1989), vol. 1, 69; Sergei D. Dovlatov, Golos (St. Petersburg: Azbuka-klassika, 2004), 208, 268, 275, 276. Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973); Georges Canguilhem, On the Normal and the Pathological ­(Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978); Karin Knorr-Cetina, Die Fabrikation von Erkenntniss: Zur Anthropologie der Naturwissenschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984); Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986); Foucault, History of Madness (New York: Routledge, 2006). S. N. Danillo, O vliianii nekotorykh iadov (spirt, opii, gashish) na soznanie u cheloveka (St. Petersburg: K. L. Rikker, 1894), 18–21; “Otchet o ­doktorskom dispute N. N. Lange,” in Rossiiskaia psikhologiia: Antologiia, ed. Antonina N. Zhban (Moscow: Al’ma Mater, 2009), 487–8, 494, 506, 511. Meylakhs, Narkotiki; and Meylakhs, ‘Opasnosti moral’noi paniki po povodu narkotikov,” Credo New no. 1 (2003). Pavel Vasilyev, “Evoliutsiia predstavlenii o narkotikakh v rossiiskikh meditsinskikh tekstakh (1890-1930-e gody): Ot ‘iadov tsivilizatsii’ k ‘perezhitkam kapitalizma,’” in Biulleten’ Germanskogo istoricheskogo instituta v Moskve, no. 6, ed. Katja Bruisch (Moscow: Germanskii istoricheskii institut v Moskve), 52–65. As several chapters in the present volume demonstrate that in many other national contexts, and specifically in Western Europe and North America, drugs were often seen as a threat to the bourgeois social order. It appears, therefore, that the fashioning of drugs as the characteristic of the quintessential ‘Other’ (often expressed in ethnic or racialized terms) was an important characteristic of modern prohibition regimes in both East and West. David S. Futer, “O detiakh-narkomanakh,” Moskovskii meditsinskii zhurnal no. 10 (1925): 60; Raisa M. Ziman, “O kokainizme u detei,” in Voprosy narkologii: Sb. no. 1, ed. Aleksandr S. Sholomovich (Moscow: Moszdravotdel, 1926), 30; TsGA SPb, fond 4301, opis’ 1, delo 3414, l. 4. Nikolai V. Kantorovich, “Dispansernye nabliudeniia nad morfinistami,” Sovetskaia psikhonevrologiia 12, no. 3 (1936), 69–75. Futer, “O detiakh-narkomanakh,” 62; Shkarovskii, “Sem’ imen ‘koshki,’” 474. Shkarovskii, “Sem’ imen ‘koshki,’” 474. “O merakh regulirovaniia torgovli narkoticheskimi veshchestvami,” Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii Rabochego i krest’ianskogo pravitel’stva (SU), no. 85 (1924), 1216–217; “O dopolnenii Ugolovnogo kodeksa stat’ei 140-d,” SU, no. 4 (1925), 58–59. Izmozik and Lebina, Peterburg sovetskii, 124, 131–2, 134. Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv nauchno-tekhnicheskoi dokumentatsii Sankt-Peterburga (TsGA NTD SPb), fond 313, opis’ 1–1, delo 107, l. 6; Kratkaia istoriia Instituta: (K 40-letiiu so dnia osnovaniia) (Leningrad: LNIPNI, 1948), 36. Izmozik and Lebina, Peterburg sovetskii, 132, 134. Nancy D. Campbell, J. P. Olsen, and Luke Walden, The Narcotic Farm: The Rise and Fall of America’s First Prison for Addicts (New York: Abrams, 2008); Nancy Tomes, The Art of Asylum-keeping: Thomas Story Kirkbride and the Origins of American Psychiatry (Philadelphia: University of

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41 42

43

4 4 45 46 47

Pennsylvania Press, 1984); Elizabeth Lunbeck, The Psychiatric ­Persuasion: Knowledge, Gender, and Power in Modern America (Princeton, NJ: ­Princeton University Press, 1995). Ernst Joël and Fritz Fränkel, Der Cocainismus: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Psychopathologie der Rauschgifte (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1924), 79; Joël and Fränkel, “Zur Verhütung und Behandlung der Giftsuchten,” K ­ linische ­Wochenschrift 4 (1925), 1703–18; Fränkel and Dora Benjamin, “Die ­Bedeutung der Rauschgifte für die Juden und die Bekämpfung der Suchten durch die Fürsorge,” Jüdische Wohlfahrtspflege und Sozialpolitik 3 (1932), 23. Susan Gross Solomon, ed., Doing Medicine Together: Germany and Russia Between the Wars (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006). Klaus Hödl, “The Black Body and the Jewish Body: A Comparison of Medical Images,” Patterns of Prejudice 36 (2002), 17–34; David F. Musto, “Opium, Cocaine and Marijuana in American History,” Scientific ­A merican 265, no. 1 (1991), 30–47. Rafael Becker, “Ein Beitrag zur Frage der Verbreitung des G ­ eisteskrankheiten bei den Juden in Polen,” OSE-Rundschau 5 (1930), 1–4; Becker, “Die Geisteskrankungen bei den Juden in Polen,” Allgemeine Zeitschrift für ­Psychiatrie und psychisch-gerichtliche Medizin 96 (1932), 47–66. Lebina, “Tenevye storony,” 30. Shkarovskii, “Sem’ imen ‘koshki,’” 472, 474, 476; Lebina, Povsednevnaia zhizn’, 32–33; Lebina and Chistikov, Obyvatel’ i reformy, 117. Gilinskii, Deviantnost’ i sotsial’nyi kontrol’, 54, 122. Daniil Lomakin, “Spartanskii metod: patsienty tsentra dlia ­narkozavisimykh pod Krasnoiarskom rasskazali o ‘lechenii’ poboiami i pytkami,” RT, ­February 2, 2018, https://russian.rt.com/russia/article/476400-krasnoyarsklechenie-narkomany-devushka-rassledovanie.

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Reassessing the “Drug-Free Country”  147 Joël, Ernst, and Fritz Fränkel. Der Cocainismus: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Psychopathologie der Rauschgifte. Berlin: Julius Springer, 1924. ———. “Zur Verhütung und Behandlung der Giftsuchten.” Klinische ­Wochenschrift 4 (1925): 1703–18. Kantorovich, Nikolai V. “Dispansernye nabliudeniia nad morfinistami.” ­Sovetskaia psikhonevrologiia 12, no. 3 (1936): 69–75. Kratkaia istoriia Instituta: (K 40-letiiu so dnia osnovaniia). Leningrad: LNIPNI, 1948. Kutanin, Mikhail P. “Voprosy teorii i praktiki morfinizma.” In Trudy pervogo vsesoiuznogo s’’ezda nevropatologov i psikhiatrov, edited by V. A. Beliaev, 40. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe meditsinskoe izdatel’stvo, 1929. “O dopolnenii Ugolovnogo kodeksa stat’ei 140-d.” Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii Rabochego i krest’ianskogo pravitel’stva no. 4 (1925): 58–59. “O merakh regulirovaniia torgovli narkoticheskimi veshchestvami.” Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii Rabochego i krest’ianskogo pravitel’stva no. 85 (1924): 1216–217. “Otchet o doktorskom dispute N. N. Lange.” In Rossiiskaia Psikhologiia: ­Antologiia, edited by Antonina N. Zhban, 474–515. Moscow: Al’ma Mater, 2009. Paribok, Vsevolod P. Materialy k probleme privykaniia k narkotikam. ­L eningrad: Detgiz, 1949. Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv nauchno-tekhnicheskoi dokumentatsii Sankt-Peterburga (TsGA NTD SPb). Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Sankt-Petersburga (TsGA SPb) Ziman, Raisa M. “O kokainizme u detei.” In Voprosy narkologii: Sb. no. 1, edited by Aleksandr S. Sholomovich, 28–33. Moscow: Moszdravotdel, 1926.

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148  Pavel Vasilyev by Juliane Fürst and Josie McLellan, 197–207. New York: Lexington Books, 2016. Gabiani, Anzor A. Narkotizm vchera i segodnia. Tbilisi: Sabchota Sakartvelo, 1988. Gilinskii, Iakov I., ed. Deviantnost’ i sotsial’nyi kontrol’ v Rossii (XIX–XX vv.): Tendentsii i sotsiologicheskoe osmyslenie. St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2000. Hart, Carl L., Joanne Csete, and Don Habibi, Methamphetamine: Fact vs. ­ Fiction and Lessons from the Crack Hysteria. New York: Open Society Foundations, 2014. Hödl, Klaus. “The Black Body and the Jewish Body: A Comparison of Medical Images.” Patterns of Prejudice 36 (2002): 17–34. Izmozik, Vladlen S., and Nataliia B. Lebina. Peterburg sovetskii: “Novyi chelovek” v starom prostranstve: 1920–1930-e gody: (Sotsial’no-­ arkhitekturnoe mikroistoricheskoe issledovanie). St. Petersburg: Kriga, 2010. Khodiakov, Mikhail V., ed. ‘Goriacheshnyi i triumfal’nyi gorod’: Petrograd: ot ‘voennogo kommunizma’ k NEPu: Dokumenty i materialy. St. Petersburg: SPbGU, 2000. Knorr-Cetina, Karin. Die Fabrikation von Erkenntniss: zur Anthropogie der Wissenschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984. Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. Laboratory Life: The Construction of ­Scientific Facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986. Latypov, Alisher. “Central Asian Tabibs in Post-Soviet Archives: Healing, ­Spying, Struggling, and ‘exploiting.’” Wellcome History 43 (2010): 8–9. ———. “Healers and Psychiatrists: The Transformation of Mental Health Care in Tajikistan.” Transcultural Psychiatry 47 no. 3 (2010): 419–51. ———. 2012. On the Road to “H”: Narcotic Drugs in Soviet Central Asia. Washington, DC: The George Washington University. ———. 2013. “The Opium War at the ‘Roof of the World’: the ‘Elimination’ of Addiction in Soviet Badakhshan.” Central Asian Survey 32, no. 1: 19–36. ———. “The Soviet Doctor and the Treatment of Drug Addiction: ‘A difficult and most ungracious task.’” Harm Reduction Journal 8, no. 32 (2011). Lebina, Nataliia B. “Belaia feia, ili Kak ‘navodili marafet’ v Sovetskoi Rossii.” Rodina no. 9 (1996): 64–66. ———. “Narkoman iz narkomata i klub morfinistov revoliutsionnogo ­Baltflota.” Vechernii Peterburg, April 12, 1996. ———. “O pol’ze igry v biser: (Mikroistoriia kak metod izucheniia norm i anomalii sovetskoi povsednevnosti 20–30-kh godov).” In Normy i tsennosti povsednevnoi zhizni: Stanovlenie sotsialisticheskogo obraza zhizni v Rossii, 1920–30-e gody, edited by Timo Vihavainen, 7–26. St. Petersburg: Neva, 2000. ———. Povsednevnaia zhizn’ sovetskogo goroda: Normy i anomalii: 1920–1930 gody. St. Petersburg: Neva: Letnii Sad, 1999. ———. “Tenevye storony zhizni sovetskogo goroda 20–30-kh godov.” Voprosy istorii no. 4 (1994): 30–42. Lebina, Nataliia B., and Aleksandr N. Chistikov. Obyvatel’ i reformy: Kartiny povsednevnoi zhizni gorozhan v gody nepa i khrushchevskogo desiatiletiia. St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2003. Lebina, Nataliia B., and Mikhail V. Chistikov. Prostitutsiia v Peterburge: (40-e gg. XIX v. -40-e gg. XX v.). Moscow: Progress-Akademiia, 1994.

Reassessing the “Drug-Free Country”  149 Lunbeck, Elizabeth. The Psychiatric Persuasion: Knowledge, Gender, and Power in Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. Lynch, Timothy, ed. After Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2001. Meylakhs, Petr. “Narkotiki: Ideologiia, narkopolitika i moral.’” www.rspp.su/ articles/09.2010/drags_moral.html. ———. “Opasnosti moral’noi paniki po povodu narkotikov.” Credo New no. 1, 2003. Musaev, Vadim I. Prestupnost’ v Petrograde v 1917–1921 gg. i bor’ba s nei. St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2001. Musaev, Alaudi N., Petr N. Sbirunov, and Boris P. Tselinskii. Protivodeistvie nezakonnomu oborotu narkoticheskikh sredstv (istoriia i sovremennost’). Moscow: VNII MVD Rossii, 2000. Musto, David F. “Opium, Cocaine and Marijuana in American History.” ­Scientific American 265, no. 1 (1991): 30–47. Nadelmann, Ethan A. “Drug Prohibition in the United States: Costs, Consequences, and Alternatives.” Science 245 (1989): 939–47. Panin, Stanislav E. “Potreblenie narkotikov v Sovetskoi Rossii (1917–1920-e gody).” Voprosy istorii no. 8 (2003): 129–34. Popov, Viktor A. “Bor’ba s narkomaniei i toksikomaniei detei i podrostkov v 20–30-e gody.” Sovetskoe zdravookhranenie no. 5 (1989): 67–70. Shishkin, Valerii A., ed. Petrograd na perelome epoch: Gorod i ego zhiteli v gody revoliutsii i grazhdanskoi voiny. St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2000. Shkarovskii, Mikhail V. “Sem’ imen ‘koshki’: Rastsvet narkomanii v 1917–1920-e gody.” In Nevskii arkhiv: istoriko-kraevedcheskii sb., issue 3, 467–77. St. Petersburg, 1997. Solomon, Susan Gross, ed. Doing Medicine Together: Germany and Russia between the Wars. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Szasz, Thomas S. Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market. New York: Praeger, 1992. Tomes, Nancy. The Art of Asylum-keeping: Thomas Story Kirkbride and the Origins of American Psychiatry. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. Vasilyev, Pavel A. “Narkotizm v Petrograde-Leningrade v 1917–1929 gg.: ­Sotsial’naia problema i poiski ee resheniia.” PhD diss., St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2013. Vasilyev, Pavel. “Evoliutsiia predstavlenii o narkotikakh v rossiiskikh ­meditsinskikh tekstakh (1890–1930-e gody): Ot ‘iadov tsivilizatsii’ k ‘perezhitkam kapitalizma.’” In Biulleten’ Germanskogo istoricheskogo instituta v Moskve, no. 6, edited by Katja Bruisch, 52–65. Moscow: Germanskii ­istoricheskii institut v Moskve, 2012. Voronin, Mikhail IU. “Obshchaia kharakteristika rasprostraneniia narkoticheskikh sredstv i psikhotropnykh veshchestv v Rossii v pervoi chetverti XX stoletiia,” Narkokontrol’, no. 4 (2008): 9–11.

8 Re-thinking the “War on Drugs” Reagan’s Militarization of Drug Control Emily Crick Introduction US President Nixon is often credited with launching the “War on Drugs,” but in reality, his administration’s priority was treatment rather than enforcement. When Reagan came to power his administration rebalanced Federal funding towards enforcement, at the same time as calling on all Americans to “Just Say No.” Reagan’s first act in prosecuting a “war” on drugs came in 1981, when he legislated for the military to support drug law enforcement; his second act came in 1986 when he signed National Security Decision Directive 221 (NSDD-221) stipulating how the military and intelligence agencies should participate in overseas counternarcotics operations. This essay will explore the relationship between rhetoric and policy in Nixon’s and Reagan’s “War(s) on Drugs.” This essay will question whether Nixon’s policies reflected his powerful drug “war” rhetoric. Nixon used a wide range of policy tools to clamp down on “the drug problem”: strong-arm international diplomacy and more joined up law enforcement, but also an increased treatment and education budget. By contrast, the Reagan administration promoted the “War on Drugs” rhetoric developed by Nixon but followed through with staunchly prohibitionist policies that reduced funding for treatment, vastly increased prison populations, and established a strong basis for the military and intelligence agencies to partake in the “War on Drugs.” The Reagan administration also created the conditions for the United States to become the “enforcer” of international drug control through its amendment of the Foreign Assistance Act in 1986. This legislation gave the US president the power to certify (or decertify) whether they considered a country to be acting in accordance with US drug policies and the United Nations (UN) drug conventions; if a country was decertified, they potentially faced sanctions. These acts fundamentally changed both US and international drug policy, reinvigorating global drug prohibition.

From Prohibition to “War on Drugs” By the beginning of the twentieth century, the United States was beginning to experiment with prohibition. Drugs were framed as substances

Re-thinking the “War on Drugs”  151 used by foreigners or ethnic minorities to corrupt the American youth and later in terms of the drug-crime nexus. Prohibition was driven first by “transnational moral entrepreneurs”1 (e.g., Temperance movements) and later by political ones. 2 Global temperance societies encouraged sobriety in relation to alcohol and opiates, as well as the idea that dependence on psychoactive substances was a moral rather than physical failing.3 This led to moral and social approbation for the users of such substances, and concern that over-indulgence in psychoactive substances could inhibit a person’s ability to fully function in society.4 Furthermore, as medical professionals began to understand the spread of contagious diseases and developed ideas about mental health as separate to physical health, ideas about “contagion” and “madness” were applied to the use of drugs.5 It has also been argued that as societies industrialized, psychoactive substance use became more of a problem within the workforce.6 The emphasis on sobriety focused drug discourses onto questions of control and access. Drug users became identified as the “other” and were viewed with increasing hostility. In the early years of the twentieth century, drugs were associated with “other” races, but in the 1960s and 1970s, the drug using “other” also included the working classes and “deviant” subcultures such as hippies.7 This shift in the perception of drug users coincided with changes in using populations. It has been argued that “these drugs [opiates and cocaine] had been widely used for years, but were first criminalized when the addict population began to shift from predominantly white middle-class, middle-aged women to young, working class males, African-Americans in particular.”8 It was claimed that cocaine was not only used by black men to seduce white women, but also that it made them impervious to bullets.9 This “othering” of drug users/ dealers identified them as threatening, and was often shaped by racism and xenophobia.10 Political entrepreneurs such as Captain Richmond Hobson, Harry Anslinger, and US Presidents Nixon and Reagan all reinforced this “othering” of drug users. Hobson was a US military hero, who had supported alcohol prohibition but turned his focus to heroin once the Eighteenth Amendment was overturned.11 He portrayed users as “the living dead” who converted others to their habit and laid the blame for addiction on foreign citizens.12 Harry Anslinger, US Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) Director blamed the Japanese, then the Chinese, and the Soviets for the US “drug problem.”13 Anslinger had been Assistant Commissioner of (alcohol) Prohibition but, like Hobson, shifted his attention to other drugs when alcohol prohibition ended.14 Nixon and Reagan both repeatedly linked drugs with the foreign or ethnic “‘other.” By the time Reagan’s presidency ended, the association between drugs and race had become so entwined that, although his language was “race neutral,” it made “implicit racial appeals” against people of color.15

152  Emily Crick In the early twentieth century, the United States began to consider what forms of drug use were acceptable and concluded that legitimate use applied only to medical and scientific purposes. The Harrison Act of 1914 became the first Federal law to criminalize drug use.16 Under the Harrison Act, doctors who prescribed substances to dependent users were expected to gradually reduce the dose, and therefore, it aimed to strictly regulate, and eventually prohibit, the medical practice of maintenance prescribing.17 This led to thousands of doctors being prosecuted for doing just that.18 The Harrison Act of 1914 was followed by the Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting the alcohol trade.19 Although alcohol prohibition only lasted until 1933, the failure of alcohol prohibition did not prevent the United States believing that the prohibition of other drugs would be effective. Indeed, after World War II, the United States called for a new UN “single” convention that would amalgamate the League of Nations treaties and tighten up the international drug control system. 20 Although the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs failed to satisfy US demands for a strictly prohibitionist system, it did demand that all signatory states commit to limiting drug production, trade, and use to medical and scientific purposes. 21 Whilst the United States was initially opposed to the Single Convention due to its perceived weaknesses, 22 they eventually ratified the treaty in 1967 and called for it to be further strengthened in 1972.

Nixon’s “War on Drugs” Richard Nixon won the presidential election in 1968 with a campaign that emphasized law and order. 23 In 1971, he launched his “War on Drugs”24 primarily because of concerns about use of heroin amongst soldiers returning from Vietnam, but also because of the perceived drugcrime nexus. 25 The Nixon administration discursively identified heroin users “as sources of danger that threatened not only to spread crime and societal decay within the United States but also threaten the contingent national identity.”26 In his speech, Nixon stated: America’s public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. This will be a worldwide offensive dealing with the problems of sources of supply… and it will be nationwide in terms of a new educational program… Fundamentally, it is essential for the American people to be alerted to this danger, to recognize that it is a danger that will not pass with the passing of the war in Vietnam which has brought to our attention the fact that a number of young Americans have become addicts as they serve abroad… 27 “War” rhetoric is useful because it is a powerful way to highlight an issue;28 it justifies national and individual hardship and also undermines

Re-thinking the “War on Drugs”  153 opposition by portraying it as potentially unpatriotic. 29 Nixon’s speech appealed to the American public by presenting drug abuse as an enemy to be fought on many fronts. From Nixon onwards, most presidents relied upon “war” rhetoric when referring to drugs; notable exceptions are Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama who both framed drugs in terms of public health.30 Presidential rhetoric can shape policy, public opinion, and the media, and influence Congress. Therefore, the study of such rhetoric highlights discursive patterns but also the extent of correlation and divergence between rhetoric and policy. 31 Analysis of Nixon’s “drug war” rhetoric shows that it did not match the policy. His rhetoric was staunchly antidrugs, but his policy—with its funding emphasis on treatment—did not reflect this. Indeed, his drug czar Jerome Jaffe once complained to Nixon that his prejudicial language was undermining the public health agenda and creating hostility towards dependent users. 32 Under Reagan, on the other hand, the rhetoric and policy were completely in step. Nixon’s private conversations illustrated his views of drug users. In one of the “Nixon Tapes,” he claims that “homosexuality, dope, immorality in general: these are the enemies of strong societies. That’s why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing the stuff, they’re trying to destroy us.”33 This discriminatory language reflected John Ehrlichman’s (Nixon domestic policy chief) claim: The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people… We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.34 Ehrlichman’s statement highlights the private views of some members of the administration about drug users and how drug enforcement could be used to target undesirable groups. Despite Nixon’s harsh rhetoric concerning drug users, his administration spent more on demand-reduction than supply-reduction. The high point was the 1973 budget when 70% of funding was allocated to demand-reduction. 35 This emphasis on treatment was reflected in the fact that both Nixon’s drug czars had experience treating dependent drug users. Jerome Jaffe had been director of the Illinois methadone program, and Robert DuPont was a psychiatrist who established the Washington D.C. narcotics treatment program. 36 Nixon is often associated with an expansion of the powers of law enforcement and harsh criminal penalties for drug offenses, but this is a misnomer. Whilst Nixon did establish the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1973 through the merger of the Bureau of ­Narcotic and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) and the Office of Drug Abuse Law

154  Emily Crick Enforcement, 37 it is worth noting that he was forced to resign from the presidency in 1974 so he should not be given too much credit or blame for the agency’s direction. Furthermore, some of the harshest drug laws of the Nixon era, such as the Rockefeller Laws, were instituted at the state level.38 Nelson Rockefeller was New York’s Republican governor. Initially, he had been in favor of drug rehabilitation because he saw drugs as a social problem rather than a criminal one. 39 However, after Nixon launched his “War on Drugs,” Rockefeller changed his stance in favor of increased criminal sentences. He introduced mandatory life sentences with no parole for drug users, dealers, and traffickers.40 Many of the so-called “achievements” of Nixon’s “War on Drugs” were in fact carried out after he had resigned or at the state level rather than the Federal level. Whilst the Nixon administration emphasized demand-control at home, overseas their approach was focused on supply-control. Though they insisted on a plenipotentiary conference to amend the Single Convention, the amendments—as British officials noted at the time— were insignificant.41 Instead, during this period, Nixon leaned more towards bilateral negotiations than multilateral ones. Nixon threatened to cut off aid to Turkey if they failed to stop producing opium, but offered to compensate them for their losses.42 In 1969, when the Mexicans refused to carry out aerial eradication on cannabis production, the Nixon administration instituted Operation Intercept.43 This involved the deployment of 2000 customs and border officials to carry out searches and seizures at the Mexican border. Operation Intercept caused huge delays at the border and heightened Mexican resentment towards the policy. However, from a US perspective, it was successful because after two weeks, the Mexicans reluctantly agreed to begin crop spraying.

Reagan’s “War on Drugs” During the Reagan administration, the international and domestic aspects of drugs were frequently linked, but different solutions were proposed. In the domestic sphere, the blame was put squarely on those that used and sold drugs and the solutions ranged from mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses to random drug testing in Federal workplaces and the “Just Say No” campaign. Externally, however, solutions were far more stringent. They included using the military to carry out operations against drug producers and suppliers and cutting off US aid to countries that were deemed not to be fully committed to US counter-narcotics policies and the UN drug conventions.44 Reagan’s drug war rhetoric was far more strident that Nixon’s (­public) discourse on drugs had been. In May 1986, Reagan argued that “our country was threatened by an epidemic of drug abuse that’s been growing

Re-thinking the “War on Drugs”  155 in intensity… By 1980 illegal drugs were every bit as much a threat to the United States as enemy planes and missiles.”45 This provided powerful imagery of a threat on two fronts, conjuring up fears of contagion and invasion. Such rhetoric contributed to the growing moral panic around drugs at this time.46 Later that year, in a speech made with Nancy Reagan, he framed drugs as a threat to the American way of life and the family, arguing, “Drugs are menacing our society. They’re threatening our values and undercutting our institutions. They’re killing our children.”47 In the same televised address, Nancy Reagan also articulated these threats by stating: Today there’s a drug and alcohol abuse epidemic in this country, and no one is safe from it - not you, not me, and certainly not our children … It concerns us all because … it’s aimed at destroying the brightness and life of the sons and daughters of the United States.48 By emphasizing the damage being done to children and families as well as “our country” and “our society,” the Reagans made a powerful plea to the American people to support the “War on Drugs” both domestically and internationally and called for “for Americans simply to quit using illegal drugs.”49 This rhetoric connected with Reagan’s emphasis on “family values” as will be discussed later in this chapter. As well as creating a powerful referent object by merging the US state, society, and the family together, Reagan laid the blame for these threats at the door of well-established external enemies. For example, Reagan claimed that the Sandinista regime was involved in drug trafficking and that he was sure that “every American parent concerned about the drug trade will be outraged” by this fact.50 Vice President Bush also followed a similar path when he announced NSDD-221 by accusing Nicaragua and Cuba of being involved with drug trafficking. 51 This follows in a long tradition of pointing the finger of responsibility for the drug problem at foreigners and ethnic/racial groups.

Reagan’s Militarization of the “War on Drugs” Reagan, from the very beginning of his administration, saw the military as having an important role in supply-control. Reagan’s first act in prosecuting a “war” on drugs came in 1981, when he amended the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) to allow the military to participate in drug law enforcement. The PCA of 1878 was drawn up to prevent abuses of power by the military and create a separation between domestic law enforcement and the national security apparatus. 52 It expressly forbade all branches of the military, apart from the Coast Guards and National Guard, from participating in civil law enforcement unless specifically directed by the president.53 In a 1981 speech to the International Association of Chiefs

156  Emily Crick of Police (IACP), Reagan announced that he would “support an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act which will allow the military to assist in identifying and thwarting drug traffickers.”54 Reagan’s second act came in 1986 when he signed NSDD-221 which laid out how the military and intelligence agencies should participate in counter-narcotics operations overseas. The PCA amendment merely legislated for the military to provide technical—or “passive”55 —support for the Coast Guards and Customs officials; the military were still prohibited from “actively” participating in counter-narcotics operations. This prohibition was lifted by NSDD-221 which stated: the national security threat posed by the drug trade is particularly serious outside US borders. Of primary concern are those nations with a flourishing narcotics industry, where a combination of international criminal organizations, rural insurgents, and urban terrorists can undermine the stability of the local government; corrupt efforts to curb drug production; and distort the public perception of the narcotics issue in such a way that it becomes part of the anti-US or anti-western debate.56 NSDD-221, therefore, expressed a concern with both national and societal security. It also situated the “drug threat” in its geo-political context of the Cold War by naming three Soviet-allies (Bulgaria, Cuba, and ­Nicaragua) as countries that were using drug trafficking for financial and political reasons. 57 Furthermore, as will be discussed, the US concern about the threats posed by drug use and drug trafficking shaped international discourses on the drug trade, and this was reflected in the 1988 UN Convention Against Illicit Trafficking Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (the 1988 Convention). Since the amendment of the PCA, there had been a debate about the role the military should play in the “War on Drugs”: should they simply contribute equipment, or should they carry out “active” participation? The Coast Guards and Customs, as well as Congress, were keen for the military to expand their support; however, the Pentagon and the military were opposed. 58 The “passive” participation of the military had caused financial issues for the Coast Guards and US Customs because they had to pay the costs of using the military equipment. 59 After NSDD-221 allowed for “active” participation of the military, the costs and responsibilities became shared between the agencies.60 During the PCA amendment process, and again in 1985 and 1988, members of Congress called for the military to be given powers of arrest. Each time they did so, Reagan and his aides supported the Pentagon’s objections, although they recognized that this stance might need to be reviewed at a later date.61 By 1989 when President George H.W. Bush sent the marines into Panama to arrest General Noriega for drug trafficking

Re-thinking the “War on Drugs”  157 offenses, it was concluded that PCA only applied to US territories rather than overseas.62 Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and the Pentagon were staunchly against increasing the role of the military in counter-narcotics operations for wide-ranging reasons: they were worried it would reduce military preparedness;63 they were opposed to the idea of the military having powers of arrest;64 and they were alarmed at the thought of the military being subordinate to civilian law enforcement.65 Weinberger stated that military involvement in drug law enforcement was “very dangerous and undesirable.”66 In 1985, he argued, “reliance on military forces to accomplish civilian tasks is detrimental to both military readiness and the democratic process…. We strongly oppose the extension of civilian police powers to our military forces.”67 When the issue was raised by Congress in 1988, Weinberger, no longer Secretary of Defense, argued that “Calling for the use of the government’s full military resources to put a stop to the drug trade makes for hot, exciting rhetoric. But responding to those calls would make for terrible national security policy, poor politics and guaranteed failure in the campaign against drugs.”68 Whilst these tensions between the Pentagon, the Reagan administration, and Congress about the role of the military in drug law enforcement persisted, the militarization of the “War on Drugs” had begun. Beginning in July 1986, Operation Blast Furnace in Bolivia was the first military operation to be legitimated by NSDD-221.69 It involved six US military helicopters, 160 support personnel, and 15 DEA agents working with the Bolivian police to disrupt cocaine production in the Chapare region.70 Though the operation succeeded in reducing the supply of cocaine into the United States, it was recognized that this was a short-term fix only.71 A Congressional Review Service report on Operation Blast Furnace noted that similar short-term operations were less likely to succeed than longer term ones. However, the report also raised concerns about the impact that such operations might have on both other foreign policy objectives and military preparedness.72 Regardless of the outcomes of Operation Blast Furnace, other nations that were struggling with drug trafficking organizations saw it as a template for future military interventions; shortly after it ended, Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador approached the United States for help.73 After Operation Blast Furnace, using the military for counter-narcotics operations became commonplace across much of the world.

The International Dimensions of Reagan’s “War on Drugs” Reagan administration rhetoric and policy aimed to identify and punish those groups that facilitated the drug trade outside of US borders.

158  Emily Crick During the 1980s, Peruvian President Fernando Belaúnde Terry first articulated the narco-terror threat in response to the rise of the Maoist guerrilla movement Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path).74 The political resonance of the narco-terror discourse was useful for several reasons: The conflation of narcotics production and trafficking with insurgent and revolutionary movements in central and southern America has been an attempt… to both inflate the dimensions of the danger associated with drugs, and render it more intelligible on a traditional national security register….75 NSDD-221 echoed the narco-terror discourse by emphasizing the links between drug trafficking organizations and terrorists, and both Reagan and Vice President Bush regularly repeated this narrative. Bush noted in his public announcement of NSDD-221 that “when you buy drugs you can also very well be subsidizing terrorist activities.”76 Reagan often claimed that the Sandinistas were involved in drug trafficking,77 even when the DEA disputed this.78 The concept of the narco-terror threat was used by Reagan, and later President Bush, as cover for anti-­ Sandinista policies in Central America.79 The practice of “certification” was a policy outcome of NSDD-22180 which stated that “narcotics control objectives are fully integrated into foreign assistance planning efforts.”81 “Certification” allowed the United States to put pressure on drug producer and transit countries to commit their, often limited, resources to counter-narcotics programs that the United States found acceptable.82 The policy was introduced through an amendment of the Foreign Assistance Act in 1986.83 It stipulated that each year, the president must determine whether drug producer or transit countries should be “certified” as being fully committed to US counter-narcotics policies.84 If any country was identified as not doing enough to eliminate drug production and trafficking, it could be “decertified,” meaning that any promised US aid would be cut by 50%; if a country was “decertified” for a second year in a row, they would receive no funding from the United States in that year.85 The United States could also actively oppose applications for multilateral loans made by the country86 and could end security assistance.87 However, the president could “certify” a country even it was not considered to have met the US objectives, if he considered it was important to US national interests. This “national interest waiver”88 antagonized states that were regularly “decertified.”89 This illustrates how drug control was often subordinate to other national security interests but could also be used to reward or punish other states. “Certification” strengthened the links between US national security and international drug control and allowed the United States to play the role of “global drug law enforcer.”90 After the 1988 Convention was ratified, a clause was added

Re-thinking the “War on Drugs”  159 into the Foreign Assistance Act stating that countries must meet “the goals and objectives” of this convention.91 This strengthened the international legitimacy of the US policy of “certification” by tying it closely to the UN drug conventions. Not only did the Reagan administration use domestic law to effect change at the international level, but they also influenced the shape of the newly proposed UN convention on drug trafficking. In the early 1980s, two declarations came out of Latin America that called for international action on drug trafficking arguing that it should be seen as a crime against humanity.92 Though these declarations can be seen as the precursors to the 1988 Convention, when the treaty was drafted, this argument was dropped. Instead, the convention mirrored NSDD-221 by identifying “the state” rather than “humanity” as object in need of protection from the threat of drug trafficking organizations.93 The 1988 Convention also recommended using US-style law enforcement methods.94 A US State Department briefing paper praised the convention for providing “methods for bilateral and multilateral cooperation in several specific areas including asset seizure and forfeiture, extradition, mutual legal and judicial assistance, controlled delivery and training of law enforcement officers.”95

Reagan’s Intensified Domestic “War on Drugs” As has already been discussed, the Nixon administration’s budgetary emphasis was on demand-reduction rather than supply-reduction; however, under Reagan, these priorities were reversed.96 Whilst there is no doubt that some of this re-orienting of priorities came down to the Reagan administration’s attempt to shrink the Federal state and redistribute the money to the states, the stark difference also represents the Reagan administration’s emphasis on interdiction and abstinence.97 The Reagan administration instituted wide-ranging legal reforms in relation to drugs. In 1984, the Sentencing Reform Act eliminated ­parole for many Federal prisoners.98 In the same year, the Comprehensive Crime Control Act enshrined “civil forfeiture” into law. This act allowed assets to be confiscated even before charges had been brought, and gave enforcement agencies—both Federal and local—a share of the proceeds of such raids.99 The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 ­introduced mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses100 and disproportionately longer sentences for crack cocaine which was largely ­associated with ­A frican-Americans.101 As Koram notes in this volume, ­A frican-Americans now vastly outnumber white men in US jails.102 This “racial disproportionality” has been traced directly back to the Reagan administration’s “War on Drugs.”103 In 1988, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act was amended to introduce the death penalty for “drug king pins.”104 These sentencing changes caused the prison population to almost double

160  Emily Crick under Reagan from 369,930 in 1981 to 627,402 in 1988.105 Drug arrests also rose from 569,000 in 1977 during the Carter administration to 1,155,000 in 1988 under Reagan.106 The emphasis on criminalization had hugely negative impacts on society: breaking families apart, exacerbating joblessness, and limiting educational prospects as well as amplifying racial divisions.107 In 1986, Reagan also signed Executive Order 12564 that instituted random drug testing for Federal employees.108 These policies were criticized by some sections of the media on the grounds that they undermined civil liberties.109 The Reagan administration emphasized abstinence over maintenance, as well as reducing their financial commitment to drug treatment and education. Furthermore, the Federal drug treatment funding system was wound down with whatever money was left being handed back to states to spend as they thought appropriate.110 Also under Reagan, needle exchange programs and other harm reduction methods were blocked at the Federal level which exacerbated the growing HIV/AIDS crisis.111 This shift towards abstinence rather than maintenance reflected the Reagan administration’s desire to return to “family values” of the past. These values, which he listed as “faith, honesty, responsibility, tolerance, kindness, and love,”112 were closely aligned with the abstinence/ morality-based discourses of private drug treatment programs such as the Twelve Steps.113 Nancy Reagan played an important role in articulating the ­abstinence-based demand-control narrative with her “Just Say No” campaign. She went on an all-out campaign against drug use, appearing on American television programs such as “Diff’rent Stokes” and “Dynasty” to promote her campaign.114 She also supported the Partnership for Drug-Free America which was established to promote abstinence-based policies.115 Parent and community groups that campaigned for zero-­tolerance on drugs also worked with Nancy Reagan, Federal officials, and treatment professionals to shape government policy around drug use and treatment.116 In 1986, community and church groups began to hold “anti-crack” rallies to highlight the damage done to their communities by the drug, some going as far as to call crack a “new form of genocide.”117 These movements were far reaching in their influence but did not take into account the myriad reasons why people take drugs and created a powerful and simplistic narrative against drug use that placed the blame on the drug user for not saying “no.”118 This was a very different approach to Nixon’s expanded treatment programs. Despite the discursive emphasis on demand-control and education, the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act only allocated 12% of the total funds to drug education, something that was criticized at the time.119 The President’s Commission on Organized Crime noted that from 1981 to 1986 when the report was published, funding for demand-control programs including drug education had been cut 5%.120 The reduction of Federal

Re-thinking the “War on Drugs”  161 funding for drug treatment and education, and the reliance on the “Just Say No” narrative, made it more difficult for problematic users to get help and hardened the views of non-drug using Americans against those that did take drugs.

Conclusion This essay has argued that the Reagan administration’s drug war rhetoric and policies showed greater convergence than Nixon’s and contributed to an escalation and militarization of the “War on Drugs” as well as the reinforcing of the global drug prohibition agenda. Nixon vocalized harsh drug war rhetoric, but his policies did not reflect this. Reagan combined Nixon’s harsh rhetoric with punitive domestic polices—such as workplace drug testing, mandatory minimum sentences, and a zerotolerance approach to drug use—as well as militarized drug enforcement overseas and the policy of “certification.” Reagan built upon the “War on Drugs” discourse that had been established by Nixon, but he also instituted the policies to back it up. Reagan militarized the “War on Drugs” and turned it from a rhetorical “war” into a real one. Later US presidents only increased this direction. For example, George H.W. Bush with his arrest of Noriega in Panama, Bill Clinton with Plan Colombia, and George W. Bush with the merging of the “Global War on Terror” and the “War on Drugs.” The United States also shaped the direction of international drug control through the 1988 Convention, joint counter-narcotics operations and massive funding and support for militarized training programs overseas. Furthermore, by giving themselves the power to “certify” countries in terms of their commitment to the UN drug conventions, the United States became the “enforcer” of these conventions in a way that the UN itself had never been able to be. Despite alcohol prohibition in the United States only lasting for a relatively short period of time, successive US administrations have remained committed to prohibition of other drugs at home and abroad. Through their role as a global hegemon, the United States has been able to export their vision of a punitive drug prohibition system across the world.

Notes 1 Ethan A. Nadelmann, “Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms in International Society,” International Organization 44, no. 4 (Autumn 1990), 482. 2 Nadelmann, ‘Global Prohibition Regimes,’ 503–4; David T. Courtwright, Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 174–6. 3 Virginia Berridge, Opium and the People: Opiate Use and Drug Control Policy in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England, (London: Free Association Books, 1999), 154; Courtwright, Forces of Habit, 175;

162  Emily Crick Melissa Bull, Governing the Heroin Trade: from treaties to treatment (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2008), 37. 4 Courtwright, Forces of Habit, 174–6; Berridge, Opium and the People, 154–5; Bull, Governing the Heroin Trade, 33–35. 5 Rachel Lart, “Medical Power/Knowledge: The Treatment and Control of Drugs and Drug Users,” in The Control of Drugs and Drug Users: Reason or Reaction, ed. by Ross Coomber, (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1998), 52; Edward Jay Epstein, Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America, (London: Verso, 1990), 30–31. 6 Courtwright, Forces of Habit, 178. 7 Ibid., 44–45; Dan Baum, Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure (Boston, MA: Back Bay Books, 1996), 8. 8 Craig Reinarmann, “The Social Construction of Drug Scares,” in Constructions of Deviance: Social Power, Context and Interaction, ed. Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1994), 158. 9 David Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 7; Johann Hari, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (London: Bloomsbury Circus, 2015), 26–27. 10 For a more in-depth analysis of the relationship between the drug laws and the racialized ‘other,’ see Kojo Koram’s chapter in this volume. 11 Epstein, Agency of Fear, 25–27. 12 Ibid., 27; Musto, The American Disease, 248. 13 Jonathan Marshall, “Cooking the Books: The Federal Bureau of ­Narcotics, the China Lobby and Cold War Propaganda, 1950–1962,” The Asia-­Pacific Journal 11, Issue 37, no. 1 (2013), 3; David Bewley-Taylor, The United States and International Drug Control 1909–1997 (London: ­Continuum, 1999), 45. 14 James Mills, Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade and Prohibition, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 13–14. 15 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, revised ed. (New York: New Press, 2012), 48. 16 David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Policy of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 199. 17 Musto, The American Disease, 65. 18 Hari, Chasing the Scream, 38. 19 Musto, The American Disease, 65–67. 20 Emily Crick, Security and the Drug Control Dispositif: Analysing the Construction of Drugs as a Threat to Humankind and the Nation State, PhD. University of Bristol, 2018. Available at https://research-information. bristol.ac.uk/en/theses/security-and-the-drug-control-dispositif(a7159f74a0b2-4483-8d15-885659935ace).html, 111–2. 21 United Nations, The United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, Article 4 (1 c), (New York: United Nations, 1964), 16. 22 US State Department, Report on the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs 1961 and Comparative Analysis of the Single Convention, 1961 and the Protocol of 1953, (1961), 16. US National Archives (Washington DC) box SFo-T.5 (Senate Committee of Foreign Relations, 90th Congress). 23 Musto, The American Disease, 254. 24 Richard Nixon, “Remarks about an Intensified Program for Drug Abuse Prevention and Control,” 17 June 1971, Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project [online]. www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ ws/?pid=3047.

Re-thinking the “War on Drugs”  163 25 Daniel Weimer, “Drugs-as-a-Disease: Heroin, Metaphors, and Identity in Nixon’s Drug War,” Janus Head 6, no. 2 (2003), 260–81; Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, 17–19. 26 Weimar, “Drugs-as-a-disease,”261. 27 Richard Nixon, “Remarks about an Intensified Program for Drug Abuse Prevention and Control.” 28 Emily Crick, “Drugs as an Existential Threat: An Analysis of the International Securitization of Drugs,” International Journal of Drug Policy 23 (2012), 411. 29 Oren Gross and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, “The Rhetoric of War: Words, Conflict and Categorization post-9/11,” Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy 24, no. 2, (2014), 260. 30 Ibid., 258. 31 Andrew Whitford and Jeff Yates, “Policy Signals and Executive Governance: Presidential Rhetoric in the War on Drugs,” The Journal of Politics 65, no. 4 (November 2003), 1004. 32 Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, 79. 33 Conversation 498-5, between Richard Nixon, John Ehrlichman, and Bob Haldeman recorded at the Oval Office (10:30am and 12:30pm) on 13 May 1971, Common Sense for Drug Policy (CSDP) [online]. Available from: www.csdp.org/research/nixonpot.txt. 34 Quoted in Dan Baum, “Legalize It All: How to Win the War on Drugs,” Harpers’ Magazine [online], April 2016. http://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/ legalize-it-all/. 35 Michael F. Walther, Insanity: Four Decades of U.S. Counterdrug Strategy, Carlisle Papers (Carlisle, PA: US Army Strategic Studies Institute, December 2012), 1. 36 Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, xi–xii. 37 Epstein, Agency of Fear, 239–41. 38 Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, 80–81. 39 Brian Mann, “The Drug Laws That Changed How We Punish,” NPR. org [online], 14 February 2013, www.npr.org/2013/02/14/171822608/ the-drug-laws-that-changed-how-we-punish. 40 Brian Mann, “The Drug Laws That Changed How We Punish.” 41 Home Office report on the 1972 plenipotentiary conference amending the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. British National Archives, HO319/152, 6. 42 Musto, The American Disease, 257. 43 Ted Galen Carpenter, Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington’s Futile War on Drugs in Latin America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 12–14. 44 US Committee on International Relations, Committee on Foreign Relations Legislation, Legislation on Foreign Relations through 2002, Volume I–A, Current Legislation and Related Executive Orders, (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, July 2003), 185–94. 45 Ronald Reagan, “Remarks on Signing the Just Say No to Drugs Week Proclamation,” 20 May 1986, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum [online]. www.reaganlibrary.gov/research/speeches/52086a. 46 Stanley Cohen, Folk devils and moral panics (Abingdon: Routledge, 2002), xii; Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994), 36–41. 47 Ronald Reagan, “Address to the Nation to Launch Campaign against Drug Abuse,” 6 September 1986, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and ­M useum [online]. www.reaganlibrary.gov/research/speeches/090686a.

164  Emily Crick 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Ronald Reagan, “Address to the Nation on the Situation in Nicaragua,” 16 March 1986, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum [online]. www.reaganlibrary.gov/research/speeches/31686a>. 51 Times Wire Services, “Bush discloses Directive Tying Drugs to Terror,” Los Angeles Times, 8 June 1986 [online]. http://articles.latimes. com/1986-06-08/news/mn-9648_1_drug-traffic. 52 Charles Doyle and Jennifer K. Elsea, The Posse Comitatus Act and Related Matters: The Use of the Military to Execute Civilian Law, Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report for Congress (Washington, DC: CRS, ­August 2012), 1. 53 Doyle and Elsea, The Posse Comitatus Act, 1. 54 Ronald Reagan, “Remarks at the Annual Meeting of the International Association of Chiefs of Police,” New Orleans, 28 September 1981, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum [online]. www.reaganlibrary. gov/research/speeches/92881a. 55 The term “active” denotes a situation in which US military service personnel participated in the operations in contrast to situations where they gave “passive” support through lending technology or expertise. The terms “active” and “passive” are commonly used when determining whether the PCA has been violated. See Mark P. Nevitt, “Unintended Consequences: The Posse Comitatus Act in the Modern Era,” Cardozo Law Review 36 (­October 2014), 150; Doyle and Elsea, The Posse Comitatus Act, 56. 56 The White House, National Security Decision Directive-221, Narcotics and National Security, 8 April 1986, 2 [online]. https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/ nsdd/nsdd-221.pdf. 57 Ibid., 2. 58 Emily Crick, Security and the Drug Control Dispositif, 196–7. 59 Memo from Carlton Turner to Martin Anderson (17 December 1981) notes that “The President should be made aware of the potential problems of funding limtations [sic]. If the military insists on total reimbursement from civilian law enforcement agencies for the use of their facilities, the effectiveness of the Posse Comitatus exception will be cancelled.” Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Collections, Turner, Carlton, E., Files, ‘Drug Policy Documents (1 of 8),’ Box 23. 60 William Safire, ‘Thataway Posse Comitatus,’ New York Times, 28 February 1986. 61 Memo from the Office of Policy Development to Edwin Meese, (19 ­October 1981) regarding a meeting with Florida Representative Clay Shaw about the amendment to the Posse Comitatus Act. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Collections, Turner, Carlton, E., Files, ‘Drug Policy Documents (1 of 8),’ Box 23. 62 Peter M. Sanchez, “The ‘Drug War’: The U.S. Military and National Security,” The Air Force Law Review 34 (1991), 135. 63 Quoted in “New Police Powers Weighed for Military,” Washington Post, 25 June 1985. 64 “Drugs as a Military Matter?” Christian Science Monitor, 25 June 1986. 65 Memo from the Office of Policy Development to Edwin Meese, (19 October 1981). 66 Quoted in Joanne Omang, “Military Role in Drug Fight Outlined,” Washington Post, 9 June 1986. 67 Quoted in “New Police Powers Weighed for Military,” Washington Post, 25 June 1985.

Re-thinking the “War on Drugs”  165 68 Caspar W. Weinberger, “Our Troops Should Not Be Drug Cops,” Washington Post, 22 May 1988. 69 Raphael Perl, Narcotics Control and the US Military Personnel Operations in Bolivia and Issues for Congress, Congressional Research Service Policy Alert. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Collections, Turner, Carlton, E., Files, ‘Chron. File 1983–1986 (Miscellaneous Papers),’ Box 1. 70 George C. Wilson and Marty Thornton, “Broader Military Role Is Considered for Raids on Drug Sources Abroad,” Washington Post, 17 July 1986. 71 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Bolivia: the Impact of Operation Blast Furnace, October 3 1986, CIA [online], 1. www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/ files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0000395412.pdf. 72 Perl, Narcotics Control. 73 George C. Wilson and Marty Thornton, “Broader Military Role Is Considered for Raids on Drug Sources Abroad,” Washington Post, 17 July 1986; Gerald M. Boyd, “Drugs Talks Begun with Latin Lands,” New York Times, 25 September 1986. 74 John E. Thomas, Jr., “Narco-Terrorism: Could the Legislative and Prosecutorial Responses Threaten Our Civil Liberties?” Washington and Lee Law Review 66, no. 4 (2009), 1886. 75 Campbell, Writing Security, 212. 76 Neil A. Lewis, “Bush Discloses Secret Order Citing Drugs as Security Peril,” New York Times, 7 June 1986. 77 Ronald Reagan, “Address to the Nation on the Situation in Nicaragua,” 16 March 1986. 78 Joel Brinkley, “Drug Agency Rebuts Reagan Charge,” New York Times, 18 March 1986. 79 Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (Berkeley/Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1998); Bruce Bullington and Alan A. Block, “A Trojan horse: Anti-Communism and the War on Drugs,” Contemporary Crises 14, no 1 (March 1990), 49. 80 Edward I. Koch, “An Arsenal for the Federal War on Drugs,” New York Times, 18 July 1986. 81 The White House, National Security Decision Directive 221, 3. 82 Julie Ayling, “Conscription in the War on Drugs: Recent reforms to the U.S. drug certification process, International Journal of Drug Policy 16 (2005), 377. 83 US Committee on International Relations, Committee on Foreign Relations Legislation, 189–94. 84 K. Larry Storrs, “Drug Certification/Designation Procedures for Illicit Narcotics Producing and Transit Countries,” 22 September 2003, Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report for Congress, [online]. http:// fas.org/irp/crs/RL32038.pdf. 85 Storrs, “Drug Certification.” 86 Ayling, “Conscription in the War on Drugs,” 377. 87 Ibid., 378. 88 Ibid., 377. 89 Heather A. Golding, U.S. Drug Certification and the Search for a ­M ultilateral Alternative (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Centre, 2001), 2. 90 Peter Andreas and Ethan Nadelmann, Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 38–43.

166  Emily Crick 91 Michael Woodiwiss and David Bewley-Taylor, The Global Fix: The Construction of a Global Enforcement Regime, Transnational Institute (TNI) Briefing Series No. 2005/3 (Amsterdam: TNI, October 2005), 20. 92 United Nations, Commentary on the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances 1988, E/CN.7/590 (New York: United Nations, 1988), 2–11. 93 Crick, “Drugs as an Existential Threat,” 411. 94 Woodiwiss and Bewley-Taylor, The Global Fix, 20–25. 95 Department of State Briefing Paper, ‘Multilateral Initiatives in the UN.’ Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Collections, Turner, Carlton, E., Files, ‘Ambassadors Conference on Narcotics, 11/12/1986 (4 of 5),’ Box 7. 96 Walther, “Insanity,” 4–7. 97 Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, 144–5. 98 Ibid., 245. 99 Christian Parenti, Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis (London: Verso, 2000), 50. 100 Ibid., 57. 101 Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 53. 102 Koram, “Drug Prohibition and the End of Human Rights,” 181. 103 Loïc Wacquant, ‘Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh,’ Punishment & Society 3, no. 1 (2001), 95. 104 Parenti, Lockdown America, 61. 105 Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade: Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Central America and Colombia (Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hills Books, 2003), 445. 106 McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, 444. 107 Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 2. 108 Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, 234. 109 “Reagan Proposes Stiffer Drug Laws,” New York Times, 15 September 1986. 110 US Government Accountability Office (GAO), Special Report from the Comptroller General of The United States, Controlling Drug Abuse: A Status Report, GAO/GGO-88-39 (Washington, DC: GAO, 1988), 31; Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, 144–5. 111 Tony Newman, “Nancy Reagan’s Role in the Disastrous War on Drugs,” Huffington Post [online], 7 March 2016. www.huffingtonpost.com/tonynewman/nancy-reagan-war-on-drugs_b_9400628.html. 112 Ronald Reagan, “Radio Address to the Nation on the American Family,” 16 June 1984, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. www. reaganlibrary.gov/research/speeches/61684a. 113 David, Frank, “The Trouble with Morality: The Effects of 12-Step Discourse on Addicts’ Decision-Making,” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 43, no. 3 (2011), 247. 114 Jerome E. Beck, “100 Years of ‘Just Say No’ Versus ‘Just Say Know’: Reevaluating Drug Education Goals for the Coming Century,” Evaluation Review 22, no. 1, (February 1998), 24–25. 115 Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, 296–7. 116 Beck, “100 Years of ‘Just Say No,’” 24–25; Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, 99–103. 117 Peter Kerr, “Rising Concern on Drugs Stirs Public to Activism,” New York Times, 10 August 1986. 118 Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, 200. 119 Joel Brinkley, “Anti-Drug Law: Words, Deeds, Political Expediency,” New York Times, 26 October 1986. 120 Joel Brinkley, “Radical Therapy for the Drug Problem,” New York Times, 9 March 1986.

Re-thinking the “War on Drugs”  167

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Primary Sources United Nations. The United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. Article 4 (1 c). New York: United Nations, 1964. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Bolivia: The Impact of Operation Blast Furnace, October 3 1986, CIA [online], 1. www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/ document_conversions/89801/DOC_0000395412.pdf [this and all subsequent URLs cited accessed 25 September 2018]. Conversation 498-5, between Richard Nixon, John Ehrlichman and Bob Haldeman recorded at the Oval Office (10:30am and 12:30pm) on 13 May 1971, Common Sense for Drug Policy (CSDP) [online]. www.csdp.org/ research/­n ixonpot.txt. Nixon, Richard. “Remarks about an Intensified Program for Drug Abuse Prevention and Control.” June 17 1971, Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project [online]. Available from: www.presidency. ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=3047. Reagan, Ronald. “Address to the Nation on the Situation in Nicaragua.” 16 March 1986, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum [online]. Available from: www.reaganlibrary.gov/research/speeches/31686a. ———. “Address to the Nation to Launch Campaign against Drug Abuse.” 6 September 1986, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum ­[online]. Available from: www.reaganlibrary.gov/research/speeches/090686a. ———. “Remarks at the Annual Meeting of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.” New Orleans, 28 September 1981, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum [online]. Available from: www.reaganlibrary. gov/research/speeches/92881a. ———. “Remarks on Signing the Just Say No to Drugs Week Proclamation.” 20 May 1986, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum [online]. Available from: www.reaganlibrary.gov/research/speeches/52086a. The White House. National Security Decision Directive-221, Narcotics and National Security, 8 April 1986 [online]. Available from: https://fas.org/irp/ offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-221.pdf. United Nations. Commentary on the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances 1988. E/CN.7/590. New York: United Nations, 1988. US Committee on International Relations. Committee on Foreign Relations Legislation, Legislation on Foreign Relations through 2002, Volume I—A, Current Legislation and Related Executive Orders. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, July 2003. US Government Accountability Office (GAO). Special Report from the Comptroller General of The United States, Controlling Drug Abuse: A Status Report, GAO/GGO-88-39. Washington, DC: GAO, 1988.

168  Emily Crick Secondary Sources Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New Press, 2012. Andreas, Peter, and Ethan Nadelmann. Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Ayling, Julie. “Conscription in the War on Drugs: Recent Reforms to the U.S. Drug Certification Process.” International Journal of Drug Policy 16 (2005): 376–83. Baum, Dan. Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure. Boston, MA: Back Bay Books: 1996. Beck, Jerome E. “100 Years of ‘Just Say No’ Versus ‘Just Say Know’: Reevaluating Drug Education Goals for the Coming Century.” Evaluation Review 22, no. 1 (1998): 15–45. Berridge, Virginia. Opium and the People: Opiate Use and Drug Control ­Policy in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England. London: Free Association Books, 1999. Bewley-Taylor, David. The United States and International Drug Control, 1909–1997. London: Continuum, 1999. Bull, Melissa. Governing the Heroin Trade: From Treaties to Treatment. Hampshire: Ashgate, 2008. Bullington, Bruce, and Alan A. Block. “A Trojan Horse: Anti-Communism and the War on Drugs.” Contemporary Crises 14, no. 1 (1990): 39–55. Campbell, David. Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Policy of Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992. Cohen, Stanley. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. Abingdon: Routledge, 2002. Courtwright, David T. Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Crick, Emily. “Drugs as an existential threat: an analysis of the international securitization of drugs.” International Journal of Drug Policy 23 (2012): 407–14. ———. “Security and the Drug Control Dispositif: Analysing the Construction of Drugs as a Threat to Humankind and the Nation State.” PhD. University of Bristol, 2018. Available at https://research-information.bristol.ac.uk/en/ theses/security-and-the-drug-control-dispositif(a7159f74-a0b2-4483-8d15885659935ace).html Doyle, Charles, and Jennifer K. Elsea. The Posse Comitatus Act and Related Matters: The Use of the Military to Execute Civilian Law. Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report for Congress. Washington, DC: CRS, August 2012. Epstein, Edward Jay. Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America. London: Verso, 1990. Frank, David. “The Trouble with Morality: The Effects of 12-Step Discourse on Addicts’ Decision-Making.” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 43, no. 3 (2011): 245–56. Galen Carpenter, Ted. Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington’s Futile War on Drugs in Latin America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Golding, Heather A. U.S. Drug Certification and the Search for a Multilateral Alternative. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Centre, 2001. Goode, Erich, and Nachman Ben-Yehuda. Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994. Gross, Oren, and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin. “The Rhetoric of War: Words, Conflict and Categorization post-9/11.” Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy 24, no. 2 (2014): 1–62.

Re-thinking the “War on Drugs”  169 Hari, Johann. Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. London: Bloomsbury Circus, 2015. Koram, Kojo, “Drug Prohibition and the End of Human Rights: Race, “Evil,” and the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961”, in, ­Prohibitions and Psychoactive Substances in History, Culture and Theory, ed. by Susannah Wilson (New York, London: Routledge, 2019), 170–189. Lart, Rachel. “Medical Power/Knowledge: The Treatment and Control of Drugs and Drug Users.” In The Control of Drugs and Drug Users: Reason or Reaction? edited by Ross Coomber, 49–68. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1998. McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade: Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Central America and Colombia. Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hills Books, 2003. Mills, James. Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade and Prohibition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Musto, David. The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Nadelmann, Ethan A. “Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms in International Society.” International Organization 44, no. 4 (1990): 479–526. Nevitt, Mark P. “Unintended Consequences: The Posse Comitatus Act in the Modern Era.” Cardozo Law Review 36 (2014): 119–76. Parenti, Christian. Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis. London: Verso, 2000. Reinarmann, Craig. “The Social Construction of Drug Scares.” In Constructions of Deviance: Social Power, Context and Interaction, edited by Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler, 92–104. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1994. Sanchez, Peter M. “The ‘Drug War’: The US Military and National Security.” The Air Force Law Review 34 (1991): 109–52. Scott, Peter Dale, and Jonathan Marshall. Cocaine politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998. Storrs, K. Larry. “Drug Certification/Designation Procedures for Illicit Narcotics Producing and Transit Countries.” September 22 2003, Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report for Congress, [online]. Available from: http:// fas.org/irp/crs/RL32038.pdf. Thomas Jr., John E. “Narco-Terrorism: Could the Legislative and Prosecutorial Responses Threaten Our Civil Liberties?” Washington and Lee Law Review 66, no. 4 (2009): 1881–920. Wacquant, Loïc. “Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh.” Punishment & Society 3, no. 1 (2001): 95–133. Walther, Michael F. Insanity: Four Decades of US Counterdrug Strategy. Carlisle Papers. Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, December 2012. Weimer, Daniel. “Drugs-as-a-Disease: Heroin, Metaphors, and Identity in Nixon’s Drug War.” Janus Head 6, no. 2, (2003): 260–281. Whitford, Andrew, and Jeff Yates, Jeff. “Policy Signals and Executive Governance: Presidential Rhetoric in the War on Drugs.” The Journal of Politics 65, no. 4 (2003): 995–1012. Woodiwiss, Michael, and David Bewley-Taylor. The Global Fix: The Construction of a Global Enforcement Regime. Transnational Institute (TNI) Briefing Series No. 2005/3. Amsterdam: TNI, October 2005.

9 Drug Prohibition and the End of Human Rights Race, “Evil,” and the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961 Kojo Koram Introduction There has been a recent wave of interest in the concurrent but ostensibly contradictory histories of drug prohibition and human rights in international law.1 The post-World War II international legal order was marked by an institutionalization of global legal relations in the form of the United Nations (UN), and two of the most prominent projects advanced through this organization have been the spread of human rights and the prohibition of the illegitimate trade in drugs. However, despite sharing a concurrent timeline, recent legal scholarship has illustrated the chasm that exists, both practically and theoretically, between these twin projects of the UN era. While the UN presents both drug prohibition and human rights as global norms, coherently realizable within one holistic legal order, scholars like Rick Lines have highlighted how “in practice there has been little cross fertilization between the two. The UN drug control system has rarely considered the human rights impact of the regime and the human rights system has rarely considered drug control efforts within its mandate.”2 Moreover, drug prohibition has been identified as actually being a persistent source of human rights infringements and a cover for discriminatory treatment of vulnerable groups as governments across the world legitimize increasingly strict mechanisms to enforce the drug laws. The connection between drug prohibition and draconian state power makes the contrast between the stated goals of international drug prohibition and international human rights even starker. As Lines argues, “Human Rights violations linked to drug control activities are driven by domestic and/or international efforts to meet the obligations enshrined within the three UN drug control conventions,” meaning the international drug treaties can themselves be read as implicated in the violation of international human rights law.3 Upon highlighting this contradiction in international law, scholars have tended to argue for drug prohibition to be limited by a requirement to comply with human rights demands,

Drug Prohibition & the End of Human Rights  171 with the aim being for the moral injunctions of human rights to temper drug prohibition’s tendency towards the draconian. For example, Paul Hunt argues that it is imperative that international drug prohibition and international human rights: cease to behave as though they exist in parallel universes. The UN human rights system must give closer attention to the international drug conventions, the issue of drug control, and the plight of those who use drugs. Equally, the international drug control system must be respectful of human rights. This is not an option. It is a legal requirement.4 Hunt maps out how making drug prohibition comply with the right to health initiatives, for instance, could lead to harm reduction on a global scale.5 Yet whilst the contradictions between the aims of international human rights and the consequences of international drug prohibition are as stark as the aforementioned scholars crucially identify, a complication can be added to the presumption of these two great projects of post-war international law as operating in parallel universes. A question that is asyet overlooked in the literature on drug prohibition and human rights is whether these projects share anything more substantial than concurrent timelines. Is there any shared theoretical ground between them, perhaps anchored in the presuppositions of the post-war birth of the UN and the remaking of the global legal order? The answer to this question has the potential to add complexity to the problem of drug prohibition and human rights operating in “parallel universes.” Would ensuring drug prohibition complies with human rights be enough to tame the harms caused by enforcement? What if some of the most potent critiques of the drug war, for example, that it is Eurocentric, disproportionately imposed upon the Global South and infused with a latent Christian moralism, had also been leveled at human rights?6 The following sections of this chapter will look at the critical scholarship written on drug policy and human rights and argue for an understanding of the political theology that underwrites both projects as they have developed under the UN.

Drug Prohibition in the “Age of Human Rights” Upendra Baxi famously described the latter half of the twentieth c­ entury as the “Age of Human Rights.”7 With this phrase, Baxi sought to c­ apture how under the auspices of the UN, “Human Rights languages steadily supplant all other ethical notions as every global project and movement is determined in accordance with an ability to engender ­human rights.”8 However, as scholars of human rights and drug policy have noted, drug prohibition has often been at odds with the vision of human rights, ­although the two co-exist within the same international legislative framework. Neil Boister argues that, with their insistence on prohibition

172  Kojo Koram over health and well-being, “the drug conventions fail to adequately protect the human rights of those individuals subject to the system.”9 As David Bewley-Taylor details, whereas human rights law aims at the protection of marginalized and vulnerable groups, drug laws have facilitated the criminalization and isolation of these same groups. Drug laws have served as justification for over-policing and brutal law enforcement strategies that disproportionately impact racial minorities; for restricting access to controlled medicine and medical-care for those in need; for restricting the rights of refugees and migrants; for using excessive modes of punishment, including arbitrary detention and the death penalty; and for causing environmental damage through crop eradication policies.10 The drug conventions differ from the general trend of UN treaties in that they largely ignore the question of human rights. The only brief reference to human rights made across the three major UN drug treaties is in ­article 14 (2) of the UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, 1988.11 Recently, there have been some steps made by the UN human rights apparatus towards measuring drug prohibition using the standards of human rights. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay, recognized that “Individuals who use drugs do not forfeit their human rights,” whilst calling for a focus on human rights and harm reduction in international drug policy.12 However, the most common approach remains seeing international law’s project of drug prohibition as distinct from international law’s project of spreading and promoting human rights. Each year, on 26 June, the distinction between the two projects is rendered most acute as this date serves as both the UN International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking and the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. Remarkably, the UN is able to have drug prohibition, and victims of torture share the same commemorative date despite the extensive accounts of law enforcement officials using torture and indefinite detention as tactics against drug traffickers, whilst so-called “rehabilitation” centers use physical abuse, shackles, solitary confinement, and forced labor as tactics to treat drug addicts.13 How do we begin to explain this contradiction between drug prohibition and human rights in the UN era? Has the international legal apparatus merely overlooked the ways in which drug prohibition facilitates breaches of human rights? Or could it be the case that drug prohibition has been implicitly assumed to be a complement to the project of human rights, in that it claims to produce the autonomous human, who can then subsequently insist on their rights? The idea that drug prohibition actually aids human rights is reliant upon a perception of drugs themselves being a greater threat to human rights than the effects of prohibition; this perception of drugs as leading to individual, human degradation and the breakdown of social cohesion is also one that is championed by prohibitionists. In 2009, Professor Hamid Ghodse, President of the

Drug Prohibition & the End of Human Rights  173 International Narcotics Control Board, argued “drug abuse is often in conflict with the due recognition of rights and freedoms of others and in meeting the requirements of health, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.”14 Ghodse’s reading of a complementary modus operandi between drug prohibition and human rights is grounded in the mythology of drugs as an inherent, existential threat to social order that has informed international drug prohibition since the turn of the twentieth century; however, it may provide a clue to the narrow conception of the human that has underwritten much of the UN-era human rights law, which may, in turn, offer some explanation for why the UN has been largely silent on the abuses produced through drug prohibition. To explore this line of critique further, it is important to engage with the scholarship that has sought to unpack the presuppositions that underwrite modern human rights.

Who is the “human” of human rights? As aforementioned, in conventional terms, the triumph of human rights in the latter half of the twentieth century was complete. In legislative terms, human rights are to be all encompassing, extending over every area of life. All UN bodies operate under the umbrella of a stated commitment to promote “universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms.”15 However, in recent years, legal scholars have begun to question the omnipotence of human rights. Costas Douzinas details how orthodox human rights reach their limit at extending to those groups whose humanity has historically been rendered contingent. Douzinas elaborates by stating: [F]ormal right, the legal subject’s capacity to will, is theoretically limitless. But real people are embedded in the world [where] inequalities […] prevent formal rights from becoming effective. We are all legally free and nominally equal, unless of course we are improper men.16 For Douzinas, it is this question of who qualifies as the human of human rights that has been overlooked in much of the literature on this topic, how do human rights address those who have been constructed as “improper men”? Highlighting how “humanity” has never been a concept that has been applied equally to all people from all places, scholars have drawn on a wide array of theoretical but also practical sources to show how human rights can be used to exclude as much as include. Take for instance one of the traditional discourses for categorizing “improper men”: the discourse of race. Could the post-war triumph of human rights in international law be indebted to a desire to bury the potency that the language of race and sub-humanity had gained in the previous epoch of international relations and helped drive the world

174  Kojo Koram into World War II? As one cannot leap from one condition into another, but must instead carry traces and lineages from each epoch into the next, scholars have argued for a continuum between the language of racialized, idealized humanity and the egalitarian discourse of human rights. For instance, Walter Mignolo observes that human rights as conventionally conceived take little notice of the geographical and economic inequalities that persist across the globe.17 Indeed, the language of racial classification that informed the widespread acceptance of racism in the nineteenth and early twentieth century functioned through a hierarchical conception of the human condition, with not all peoples being awarded full humanity but some instead characterized as sub- or non-human. Scholars have connected this to the history of human rights, bringing together the eighteenth-century celebration of human rights through the French and American revolutions with the concurrent systems of slavery and colonialism being enacted by those same states.18 This tradition of scholarship begins to narrow the gap between human rights and drug prohibition as it echoes some of the critiques that have been offered of drug prohibition.

Conjoined Twins: Drug Prohibition and Human Rights Scholarship on the history of drug prohibition in international law has regularly emphasized a debt owed to imperial and racist assumptions regarding the global order.19 Drug prohibition emerged as a legitimate international legal project in the first half of the twentieth century, a time in which imperial relations within states and hierarchies amongst races were still taken as a given. International law had been shifting towards greater legislative support for drug prohibition since the 1909 meeting of the Shanghai Opium commission, with several drug treaties having been brought into effect through the League of Nations in the interwar period. However, these treaties had been limited in their effectiveness due to the discordance and disorganization that plagued the League, and, with the creation of the UN, the legislative ground for prohibition would require reinforcement. The UN sought to clear the confusion produced through multiple, overlapping League-era drug treaties through the creation of a single, comprehensive drug convention. This aim of synthesizing and consolidating the preceding treaties into one unified instrument sits alongside the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948 or the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948 as an equally ambitious, but comparatively under-researched, project of totalizing post-war legal ordering. Drafting on the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961 (hereafter referred to as the Single Convention) commenced in parallel with these other treaties in 1948, but it was not until 1961 that an acceptable third draft was ready. 20 The eventual

Drug Prohibition & the End of Human Rights  175 signing of the Single Convention brought a conclusion to the piecemeal form drug prohibition had taken since 1909. The UN has been critiqued for continuing to be informed by imperial relations that favored the West against the former colonial world, despite the egalitarian claims of this new international legal institution. The Single Convention is not immune from these critiques. The categorization of drugs produced in the schedules of the treaty underwrote a system of international control that has disproportionately impacted on the peoples of what is now termed the Global South. William McAllister details that: The ‘schedules of control’ outlined by the Single Convention discriminated against the interests of producers. Raw materials and simple concoctions such as heroin and cocaine suffered under the more severe restrictions of schedules I and IV. Certain manufactured (primarily codeine-based) narcotics received somewhat more lenient treatment in schedules II and III. 21 The distinction drawn between plant-based or raw drugs and “manufactured” narcotics parallels the distinction between raw ­materials and added-value commodities that economists and dependency t­ heorists have read into the uneven nature of the post-world economic order, even arguing for these economic structures to be understood as an ­alternative means of imperialism. 22 Moreover, the requirement the Single Convention placed upon producing countries to centralize and then eradicate drug cultivation, production, and consumption ensured that they would be carrying the heaviest burden when it came to realizing the treaty’s aims. 23 As David Bewley-Taylor argues, “US dominance in the UN control system ensured that the Single Convention created a ­Western-orientated prohibitive framework for international drug control.”24 Yet a key insight to theoretical biases of the Single Convention may be offered not in the main body of the treaty but in the p ­ reamble, which will occupy my focus for the remainder of this c­ hapter. The emphasis I place on the language of the preamble follows the ­Vienna Convention On The Law Of Treaties, which determines that when interpreting international treaties, the preamble must hold significant weight on top of the provisions of the treaty. 25

The Specter of Evil in the Single Convention A close reading of the preamble to the Single Convention follows in the wake of the linguistic turn in critical legal studies in recent decades. 26 With key engagements with technologies of language such as semiotics, hermeneutics, and deconstruction, legal scholarship has advanced the idea that if the law indeed does contain, in both senses of the word, the

176  Kojo Koram violence of the society within it, then that violence will be notably present upon the body of the law, that is, the text of the treaties, statues, and judicial decisions. Particular attention is drawn to the section stating: Addiction to narcotic drugs constitutes a serious evil for the individual and is fraught with social and economic danger to mankind. Conscious of their duty to prevent and combat this evil, [the parties agree upon]… coordinated and universal action. 27 The reference to the concept of “evil” within this international legal treaty appears to illustrate the extent to which drug policy runs counter to the historical trend of international law. Law functions through the presumed relegation of the theological onto a mystic past, now overcome through a secular turn to modernity. Law is taken to constitute its authority through determinate sovereign power, as positivists would claim, or perhaps through an anchoring of a greater sociality, according to utilitarianism, but explicitly drawing on a religious framework to justify legal authority has ostensibly disappeared from modern jurisprudence as it is read as contravening modernity’s commitment to rationality. Therefore, critics of human rights and drug policy have queried why drugs have called up the lost specter of theology in law, when other legal treaties escape reliance on such eschatological language. Rick Lines highlights that treaties that seek to address historical moral crimes such as the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid manage to legislate against apartheid without describing it as “evil.” The same applies to the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, or even the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, none of which refer to their respective issues as “evil.”28 Christopher Hobson echoes Lines’s critique in asking why drugs but not genocide or slavery summons the specter of “evil,” stating that, “among all the possible wrongdoing and bad things that exist in the world, it is slightly counterintuitive that drugs are the only one to be labeled as “evil” in international law.”29 The description of drugs as “evil” has a longer historical legacy than the UN drug control apparatus. The same rhetoric has been used to drive drug prohibition since the turn of the twentieth century, particularly within the United States, where the idea of drugs as “evil” helped turn what had been a fringe concern of Christian moralists into global legal norm. From the reports of early international drug prohibition crusader and US Opium Commissioner Dr. Hamilton Wright to the writings of influential jurist, diplomat, and scholar Quincy Wright, the first half of the twentieth century saw prohibitionists regularly forward their campaign by characterizing drugs and drug use as “evil.”30 The “evil” of drugs is not simply a reference to the potential physical harm of addiction; indeed, as Jacques Derrida argues,

Drug Prohibition & the End of Human Rights  177 other addictive  substances such as alcohol and tobacco are not discursively branded with the stigma of existential evil.31 The ­conceptualization of drugs as “evil” not only speaks to the religious and missionary roots from which international drug prohibition emerged through actors such as Bishop Charles Henry Brent and the Reverend Wilbur Crafts, but, I would argue, also betrays the extent to which law continues to draw on a conception of the universal indebted to the religious, despite the secularized presumptions of UN-era international law. Of the various political and juridical projects of the twentieth century, the laws prohibiting drugs draw perhaps the clearest line of continuum to the Christian project to capture all the lost souls of the earth.32 To face the task of discerning what form “evil” takes within a godless discourse such as modern international law requires us to engage with the tradition of scholarship known as political theology: the study of the way that “secularized” political concepts remain indebted to theology. How should we understand evil in the “secular” world or, as Mark Fisher challenges, what is the content of evil “for an age that no longer believes in evil”?33 A key to decoding this question of evil within the Single Convention is to note the placement of evil in the preamble in opposition relationally to a universal “mankind.” The invocation of “mankind” as being in existential danger from drugs provides a telling instance of international law’s arrogation of the universal, its claim to speak on behalf of all humanity. Following half a century of warfare, post-World War II international law was committed to advocating a universal notion of “humanity” shared by all peoples equally, turning away from the divisions and hierarchies produced by modern imperialism. Yet whilst this shift appears unifying, a counter narrative can be offered: taking up the task of translating the transcendent office of God for a secularized world, German jurist Carl Schmitt adapted Proudhon’s classic claim that “he who invokes God is trying to cheat” into the idea that in the modern age, whoever “invokes humanity is trying to cheat.”34 Schmitt understands the call to humanity operating as a deific surrogate. To simply claim application to all humanity, as the UN treaties are inclined to do, allows complete circumvention of the more crucial question of how the human is produced. Moreover, it ignores the history of exclusion that has underwritten the idea of “humanity” and “mankind.” As Peter Fitzpatrick argues, Europeanized notions of humanity have often facilitated the disqualification of people with “certain physical characteristics, usually skin colour produced from the order of the law.”35 International law has been adept at employing this exclusionary capacity of the concept of humanity to facilitate the visiting of violence upon particular subjects.36 This dual character of the category of humanity—the capacity both to compel within an all-inclusive humanity and to expel utterly from that very same “all”—points towards reading “humanity” as a totalizing standard against those who are included in a position of exclusion within this global order of modernity, those

178  Kojo Koram that Martiniquais psychiatrist and canonical postcolonial theorist Frantz Fanon would describe as Les Damnés de la terre—the damned of the earth.37 Fanon scholar Lewis Gordon provides guidance towards unpacking the meaning of evil in a godless world by seeing Fanon’s “damned” as “the theodicy of European modernity.”38 Through Gordon’s insightful description, there lies a return to the classical concept of theodicy: the theological tradition of accounting for the evidential problem of evil within God’s omnipotence. While the use of the word “evil” in the preamble of the Single Convention has provoked academic questioning, a reading of this seemingly retrogressive and contradictory reference to drugs as “evil” within longer traditions of conceptualizing “evil” remains underdeveloped so far. Therefore, the relationship between modern, secularized understandings of “evil,” and “pre-modern” religious understandings of the concept must be illuminated.

Augustine and the Evidential Problem of Evil To take seriously the task of unpacking the significance of the idea of “evil” within the Single Convention, a further understanding of the traditional religious analysis of “evil” is required. The full history of Christian thought on the concept of evil is, of course, extensive and beyond the scope of this chapter to review in its entirety; however, a brief engagement can be offered with arguably the most famous theological account of evil that offered by Saint Augustine of Hippo. Drawing on the wealth of other Christian theological writings on evil, particularly the Manichaean construction of a strict dichotomy in being, Augustine took up the problem of theodicy, seeking to explain through his writings how God’s transcendent goodness and the self-evident presence of corporeal, worldly evil could be reconciled. The problematic that Augustine adopted was one faced by generations of theologians: was it beyond the power of God to simply erase evil contained in the world? If so, then how could Christians maintain a claim of God’s omnipotence? Or was evil a phenomenon that was included within and existed under God’s totalizing will? If this was true, then did it not disrupt God’s essential claim towards the good?39 Augustine’s theodicy argued that all that exists comes from God, but once existent, it is no longer able to persist in the same state of immutable goodness as its creator. A deterioration from the form in which it was created always lies in potential for all that exists, and when something does deteriorate or depart from the form of the good as designed by the creator, it is at that point, for Augustine, that we can diagnose the emergence of what is then termed “evil.”40 For Augustine, evil and good are not equal relations, instead he perceives evil as dependent upon the contradistinctive notion of the good, stating that “the evil cannot exist at all without the good, or in a thing that is not a good. On the other hand, the good can exist without evil.”41 Evil is always already included within the

Drug Prohibition & the End of Human Rights  179 good in a manner that echoes the Platonic understanding of non-being as always already present within being. It is through this synthesis of Platonic philosophy and monotheistic Christianity that Augustine develops his notion of evil as “not a nature but a kind of non-being.”42 The resulting structure maintains evil as being within the omnipotent good of God, whilst still its antagonist. Crucially, for Augustine, evil is not good’s opposite, but its negation.43 Evil is merely privation, an explicit lack, in the manner analogous to darkness as the absence of light. Augustine’s famous response to the problem of theodicy provides a starting point from which to begin to unpack the presence of “evil” in the preamble of the Single Convention. Having brought the transcendent reference point of God into the world itself through modernity’s construction of universal humanity, international law mirrors the movement of the Augustinian schema, by placing the contradictions of this universal legal order as exterior to the community. However, for the law to remain universal, those contradictions, as with evil in theodicy, must also be included within the totality. A resultant paralysis befalls those who are deemed outside this universal humanity, for they must be utterly excluded by law whilst simultaneously being included.

Fanon and the “Theodicy of Modernity” Frantz Fanon’s writings offer further understanding of what serves as evil in a secularized world, as he describes a paradoxical space that the “damned” find themselves inside as “the zone of non-being.”44 This “zone of non-being,” for Fanon, encapsulates the lived experience of the racial/colonized other that has long been interpolated as the deformed version of the ideal human. With the idea of “non-being” immediately recalling Augustine’s classic description of evil, Fanon illustrates how the racial other remains trapped in a condition of privation. Through invoking such metaphysical and theological language to describe the experience of racialization, Fanon gives indication to philosophical and religious training that is an often overlooked element of his revolutionary biography.45 Even prior to Augustine, Christian theology, particularly in the Gospel of John, offered an understanding of darkness as a symbolic invitation towards non-being and the necessary negation of God as the Way, the Truth, and the Light.46 The echo of Plato’s understanding of the conflict between being and non-being, an understanding already influential in Hellenistic Judaism, informed John’s easy translation of darkness into the symbolic manifestation of evil. Darkness functioned as non-being as it was not created but the failed realization of the light, the empty vacuum against which creation existed. Fanon’s understanding of racial otherness performs a similar philosophical maneuver. For Fanon, as a subject, the racial other functions not as a thing itself but as the failed realization of what should be: the rational, autonomous, modern

180  Kojo Koram (white/European) human. It therefore follows that within “the totalitarian character of colonial exploitation the settler paints the native as a sort of quintessence of evil.”47 The racial/colonial other exists only in “negation,” and it is through this state of negation that it can be seen to function as a surrogate for “evil” within an ostensibly secularized world. Fanon provides further theoretical guidance for understanding race as negation by describing how, within modernity’s structure of being, the racial/colonial other “is the corrosive element, destroying all that comes near him; he is the deforming element, disfiguring all that has to do with beauty or morality; he is the depository of maleficent powers, the unconscious and irretrievable instrument of blind forces.”48 Echoing the “pre-modern” structure of theodicy, the racial subaltern subject cannot be wholly other to the universal humanity of international law, lest humanity not be truly universal. Yet they cannot be fully human either, as it is a category contrasted against their savage characteristics. Therefore, they exist as existential lack within this legal order, damned by an invitation to civilize, progress or, in the UN era, “develop” towards a “perfect” state of humanity that is indefinitely deferred and ultimately unreachable as it is constructed in opposition to them. Much as Schmitt reminds us of the theological operation of God, the modern standard of “secularized mankind” functions with a theological undercurrent through claiming its own antithesis within its totality. The discourse of modernity is exposed as theologically informed when we appreciate how, within its Eurocentric logic, the racially subaltern subject takes on what Fanon calls “the principle of evil.”49 Fanon guides us in appreciating how the ontological structure Augustine called upon to account for evil is transformed under modernity into the explanation for the racial subaltern subject. For within modernity’s universal mankind, the racial other “is not a man.”50 Instead, Fanon describes how under modernity the subject understood as racially inferior “represents not only the absence of values, but also the negation of values. He is, let us dare to admit, the enemy of values, and in this sense he is the absolute evil.”51 Race is used to describe the human in privation. The unpacking of the “theodicy of modernity” provides a telling lens through which to re-read the curiosity of “evil” being used in the preamble of the Single Convention, particularly thinking of its placement in oppositional rationality to a “mankind” in need of protection. The call for the force of law to be deployed against drugs in defense of a universal humanity functions not simply as a call against the drugs as an entity, but moreover as a call for the force of law to purify from a global order of “mankind” the very subjectivity that these drugs are feared to engender: the irrational, savage, insatiable non-human. The discourse that supported prohibition has long relied on an image of drugs as these “evil” intoxicants, that once ingested can turn even the most reasonable of modern human beings into a wild, primitive non-subject,

Drug Prohibition & the End of Human Rights  181 no longer capable of rational thought. This narrative has underwritten ­ uro-modernity. both the promise and the panic about drugs within E For proponents of drug use such as Baudelaire, drugs such as opium and absinthe provoked allusion to the “flowers of evil,” substances that could aid a desired escape from the imposition of bourgeois morality towards the pleasures of decadence and eroticism. 52 As such corporeal ­characteristics—licentiousness, idleness, or wildness, for instance— were also assumed by the same discourse of Euro-modernity to be ­over-developed within the racial other, it allowed for an easy conflation between the two conceptual models of “drugs” and “race,” or a sense that the two concepts correspond with each other in a way that negates production of the ideal human subject. This helps illustrate why the popular description of the specter of the drug addict, the “junkie,” maps seamlessly onto a subject position that has been embodied by the racial other: the “nigger,” the “oriental,” etc. As Fanon’s work helps us to see, racism has been justified precisely on the basis that particular (non) humans are formed as deviant in their subjectivity. Primitive and incapable of rational deliberation, these humans are walking examples of a negation of the ideal human subject. This conceptual fallacy is what underlies the translation of certain physical characteristics (skin color, hair type, facial features) into signifiers for this negation.

Drugs, Race, and The Long Shadow of Evil An appreciation of “the theodicy of modernity” offers potential answers to the questions about the use of “evil” in the Single Convention by showing how “evil” was understood as a negated form of God’s goodness in pre-modern theological thought and how, in the “secularized” modern age, with its new god of “mankind,” the structure of “evil” marries with the discourse of racism. Furthermore, this reading also points towards an explanation of the War on Drugs that would explode during the later twentieth century following the signing of the Single Convention and that has been critiqued as amongst the most racially discriminatory of modern international legal projects. It has now been well established, both within the academic literature and in general public discourse, that drug prohibition has been racially discriminatory in its application. As Michelle Alexander has highlighted, in the United States, “Black men have been admitted to prison on drugs charges at rates of 20 to 50 times that of White men,” despite the fact that there is no discernible discrepancy regarding the use, supply, or production of prohibited substances amongst different racialized groups.53 It is difficult to contest the claim of Craig Reinarman and Harry G. Levine that the ultimate consequence of the drug war has been not the reduction in drug use or the elimination of the drug supply but the production of a “bulging prison population […] disproportionately

182  Kojo Koram comprised of poor people of color, most of whom had not committed violent crimes.”54 Scholars have taken care to unpack how the US drug laws are deeply indebted to that country’s particular history of legal, racialized violence; they target in particular structural violence on that nation’s Black population through the law. Even before Michelle Alexander’s seminal work, Ira Glasser had already named America’s drug laws as that nation’s “New Jim Crow.”55 The history of race has been shown to play a prominent role within anti-drug campaigns in the United States, from the temperance movements of the early twentieth century to the moral panic surrounding the crack epidemic in the 1980s. 56 However, this dynamic is not isolated to the United States. Research conducted by notable policy and campaign group Release in the United Kingdom has evidenced the extent to which race serves as a key determinant with regard to the punishments that are received for breaking drug laws. In the United Kingdom, people racialized as Black are disproportionately imprisoned when they are convicted as guilty of drug offenses, whereas their white counterparts are far more likely to receive a simple informal caution for the same drug offense. 57 A similar trend continues in Brazil, where drug prohibition has a disproportionate impact upon Afro-Brazilian and indigenous communities.58 Further examples can be seen in countries such as Colombia, where the violence of the contemporary cocaine trade can be connected to the racialized history of slavery and gold production. 59 Colombia has often been on the frontlines of the international war on drugs, and the forced crop eradication and aerial fumigation programs funded by the US commitment to international drug prohibition have particularly affected Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, reinforcing the “historic marginalization” of these communities.60 The trend extends across many other nations, where drug prohibition has been shown to renew racial divisions within the ostensibly postcolonial era.

The Evil of the (non) Human An understanding of why drugs take on the character of “evil” in this secular age, and the way in which “evil” maps onto the negated subjectivity placed on the racial other, helps us understand why the weight of drug prohibition consistently falls disproportionately on racially oppressed minorities across the world, despite the neutral, humanitarian language in which the UN drug conventions are couched. The idea of drugs as evil relies on fear of not simply the substances themselves as “evil” but a fear of the (non)subjectivity that they can give rise to. The condemnation of drugs therefore functions as a stand-in for the fear of the threat of the loss of that capacity for civilized humanity, delayed gratification, the defeat of reason, and the will at the hand of the appetite.61 On a theoretical level, post-war international law has been able to

Drug Prohibition & the End of Human Rights  183 facilitate a crusade against such an “evil” in the War on Drugs because it has been tasked with the production (and defense) of this universal idealized humanity. Human rights scholar Robert Meister captured it best when stating that UN-era international law “misunderstands itself to be the last monotheism because it claims to be the religion of humanity as such.”62 The equating of drugs as a conduit for a denigrated form of humanity, thereby a correlative “evil” against the God of “mankind,” had become so deep-seated as to have entered into the very language of a UN legal treaty, without challenge. Christopher Hobson tells us how “at the very outset of the conference [that produced the Single Convention] drugs were defined in reference to evil, and throughout delegates would regularly frame the issue in these terms.”63 The jurists, diplomats, and national delegates who attended the United Nations Conference on Narcotic Drugs in New York in January 1961 to finalize the draft of the Single Convention would not have been utilizing this theological language in isolation from the general proselytizing trend of post-war international law. This includes the discourse of human rights, which was always already informed by a belief in its powers to save the community of mankind from the horrors of recent global wars. While ostensibly secularized, the emergence of the UN human rights framework was also indebted to a recalibration by Christianity following the failure of the Church to restrain the outbreaks of global violence, in which both Catholic and Protestant modes of religious conservatism had slid into European Fascism.64 Following a crisis of faith in the power of religion to sustain global order, scholarship has shown how post-war human rights can be understood as secularizing this Christian imperative to save the world from “evil.”65 As Robert Meister explains, human rights informed by an imperative to usher in the world that would exist “after evil,” bringing about a new community of universal mankind where all peoples are treated and subjectively constructed, as the same. 66 However, the particular imagination of what constituted a universal “mankind” for post war international law, an imagined idealized human that conformed to European norms of the modern human subject, would impact upon the international drug treaties. The “drug,” and the fear of addiction, becomes read as evil through contradistinction with the free, autonomous human. 67

Conclusion An understanding of the political theology that has underwritten the secular concept of humanity helps to explain how drug prohibition has co-existed with human rights under the UN despite the liberalism of human rights and the authoritarianism of drug policy seeming to be in contradiction. An international legal project that impacts disproportionately on racial others in order to make them civilized can be read as the

184  Kojo Koram underside of an international project that sought to promote and protect an idealized version of humanity. Taken together with the concurrent turn to humanism in international law, what scholars have described as the “undoubted racism” of the drug laws can be seen as having been underwritten by a fear of an uncivilized state of humanity that drug use came to symbolize.68 This is not to suggest that human rights is an inevitable theoretical complement to drug prohibition. The critique of the modern international human rights system is that it was the product of a Eurocentric, Christian worldview, which allowed it to preach universal humanity whilst sustaining imperial inequality, but this is far from the only possible conception of human rights. Whilst human rights may have functioned with a narrow occidental bias as they have emerged under the UN, theorists like Fanon drew on the same humanism to map out the path towards a “new humanity” following the end of colonial relations, a humanity which “mobilizes all classes of the people and which expresses their aims and their impatience” but also recognizes “the value … of conflict” that allows those who were the victims of historical injustices to free themselves rather than being remade in the image of the ideal European. Walter Mignolo echoes Fanon’s call when he argues that the twenty-first century calls for a new, decolonized form of human rights, stating: Human rights invented the anthropos (the less human) to be civilized and defended when the anthropos behave according to expectation. That cycle is closed. Now the anthropos is taking and becoming the savior of his/her self and by so doing delinks and expands and decolonizes the narrow Western paradigm of Human Rights.69 The chasm that separates the “new humanity” that Fanon called for and the humanitarianism remaking the international legal order in the mid to late twentieth century is significant. Whilst human rights as they have functioned under the UN have been critiqued for their structure of calling for the colonized to join a pre-determined western vision of humanity, Fanon challenges the very notion of “humanity” in its Euro-modern instantiation. He calls instead for the West to give up on the rational, autonomous, “civilized” vision of the idealized human subject to offer solidarity, not charity, to the former colonized peoples. For scholars and activists invested in drug law reform, engagement with this cycle of human rights—one that explicitly confronts the echoes of historical injustices of racism and colonization that can be perceived not just in drug prohibition but in international law more widely—may present even greater potential than the promise offered by making drug prohibition comply with conventional human rights standards. For instance, over and above seeing law enforcement engaging in abuses such as indefinite detention or forced crop eradication through drug prohibition, a Fanonian humanism integrates

Drug Prohibition & the End of Human Rights  185 these abuses within a larger framework of racist police practices and neo-colonial economic and security relations. This Fanonian humanism allows for the decoupling of human rights from the production of a rational, autonomous, and sacred human subject (one that is implicitly European) and, by extension, the contradistinction with that savage, uncivilized, and racialized non-human, the “evil” within the political theology of modernity.

Notes 1 See Richard Lines, Drug Control and Human Rights in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Saul Takahashi, Human Rights and Drug Control: The False Dichotomy (London: Bloomsbury 2016) and ­B eatriz Caiuby Labate and Clancy Cavnar, eds., Prohibition, Religious Freedom, and Human Rights: Regulating Traditional Drug Use (Berlin: Springer, 2014). 2 Lines, Drug Control and Human Rights, 6. 3 Ibid., 11. 4 Paul Hunt, Human Rights, Health and Harm Reduction: States’ Amnesia and Parallel Universes (London: International Harm Reduction Association, 2008), 9. 5 Ibid., 11. 6 Costas Douzinas, The End of Human Rights (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2000). 7 Uprendra Baxi, The Future of Human Rights, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 1–2. 8 Ibid., xi. 9 Neil Boister, Penal Aspects of the UN Drug Conventions (The Hague/London/Boston, MA: Kluwer International, 2001), 524. 10 David Bewley-Taylor, International Drug Control: Consensus Fractured (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 138. 11 Ibid., 144; Article 14 (2) of the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, 1988. www.unodc. org/pdf/convention_1988_en.pdf. 12 Navanethem Pillay, Human Rights and Harm Reduction. www.ohchr.org/ documents/Press/HC_human_rights_and_harm_reduction_drug_policy.pdf 13 Open Society Foundations, Treatment or Torture? Applying International Human Rights Standards to Drug Detention Centers (Open Society 2011). 14 Statement by Professor Hamid Ghodse, at the High-Level Segment of the ­Fifty-Second Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs on 11 March 2009, Vienna, Austria. www.incb.org/pdf/e/narcotics/2009_CND_52_ HIGH_LEVEL _final.pdf 15 Article 55, UN Charter. www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/un-charter-fulltext/ 16 Costas Douzinas, ‘Philosophy and the Right to Resistance,’ in The ­Meaning(s) of Human Rights, eds. Costas Douzinas and Connor Gearty (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013), 33. 17 Walter Mignolo, “From Human Rights to Life Rights (Life, Water, Dignity and Rights),” in Ibid., 3. 18 See Philip Kaisary, “Human Rights and Radical Universalism: Aimé Césaire’s and C.L.R. James’s Recuperations of the Haitian Revolution,” Law and ­Humanities 6, no. 2 (February 2016), 197–216 and Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell 1997).

186  Kojo Koram 19 See Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Reprint ed. (New York: The New Press, 2012) and Dorine Marie Provine, Unequal under Law: Race and Law in the War on Drugs (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007). 20 William McAllister, Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge 2000), 204–9. 21 Ibid., 209. 22 See Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: ­Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, 1972); and Fernando Henrique ­Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America ­(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979). 23 Julia Buxton, The Political Economy of Narcotics: Production, Consumption and Global Markets (London: Zed, 2006), 56. 24 David R. Bewley-Taylor, The United States And International Drug Control, 1909–1997 (New York: Continuum 2001), 160. 25 The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969, Article 31, 2. 26 For examples, see Bernard Jackson, Law, Fact and Narrative Coherence (Roby: Deborah Charles, 1988); Peter Goodrich, Languages of Law: From Logics of Memory to Nomadic Masks (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990); Costas Douzinas et al., Postmodern Jurisprudence: The Law of Text in the Texts of Law (London: Routledge, 1991); or Drucilla Cornell et al., Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (London: Routledge, 1992). 27 The United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, Preamble. 28 Rick Lines, “‘Deliver Us from Evil’?” – The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 50 Years on,” International Journal on Human Rights and Drug Policy, 1 (July 2010), 8. 29 Christopher Hobson, “Challenging ‘evil’: Continuity and Change in the Drug Prohibition Regime” International Politics 51, no. 4 (July 2014), 526. 30 See Hamilton Wright, “The International Opium Commission,” The American Journal of International Law 3 (1909), 670 and Quincy Wright, “The Opium Question,” The American Journal of International Law 18, no. 2 (1924), 293. 31 Jacques Derrida, “The Rhetoric of Drugs: An Interview,” 5 differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 5, no. 1 (1993), 1–25. 32 On the role of Christian missionary groups in emerging drug prohibition, see Ian Tyrrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire, Reprint ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). 33 Mark Fisher, “The New Problem of Evil,” in Aesthetic Justice: Intersecting Artistic and Moral Perspectives ed. Pascal Gielen and Niels Van Tomme (Amsterdam: Valiz 2015), 50. 34 Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 54. 35 Peter Fitzpatrick, The Mythology of Modern Law (London/New York: Routledge, 1992), 65. 36 See Danilo Zolo, Invoking Humanity: War, Law and Global Order (New York: Continuum, 2002). 37 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (London: Penguin Books, 2001). 38 Lewis R. Gordon, “Race, Theodicy and the Normative Emancipatory Challenges of Blackness,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 112, no. 4 (July 2013), 729. 39 William E. Mann, ed., Augustine Confessions (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006), 116. 40 St Augustine, The Enchiridion; Faith, Hope and Charity (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1961), 12.

Drug Prohibition & the End of Human Rights  187 41 42 43 4 4 45

46

47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

Ibid., 12. Mann, Augustine Confessions. St Augustine, The Enchiridion, 11. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1991), 2. Fanon was raised in a Roman Catholic church-going family. Furthermore, whilst his lycée was formally secular, it was culturally French Catholic and emphasized a strong philosophical training. Finally, in his medical training Fanon would strive to combine science and philosophy, bringing Satrean phenomenology to the doctrines of psychiatry. See David Macey, Frantz Fanon: A Biography (London: Verso 2012). For an extensive engagement with the gospel of John’s reading of darkness as non-being/evil, see Jonathan A. Draper, “Darkness as Non-Being and the Origin of Evil in John’s Gospel,” in Evil in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity, eds. Chris Keith and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, (Göttingen: MohrSiebeck 2016), 122–41. Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, 8. Ibid., 41. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 147. Ibid., 8. Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, 8. Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008). Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 7. Craig Reinarman and Harry G. Levine, “Crack in the Rearview Mirror: Deconstructing Drug War Mythology,” Social Justice 31, no. 1–2 (March 2004) 182–99. Ira Glasser, “America’s Drug Laws: The New Jim Crow,” Albany Law ­Review 703, no. 3 (Spring 2000), 63. Provine, Unequal Under Law. See Niamh Eastwood et al., The Numbers in Black and White: Ethnic Disparities in the Policing and Prosecution of Drug Offences in England and Wales (London: Release Publications, 2013). Jamie Amparo Alvez and Dina Alvez, “Drugs and Drug Control in Brazil,” in Pan-African Issues in Drugs and Drug Control: An International Perspective, ed. Anita Kalunta-Crumpton (London: Ashgate 2015), 248–92. Michael Taussig, My Cocaine Museum (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004). See ‘Peace, Drug Policy, and an Inclusive Society: Eleven Ways Colombian and FARC Negotiators can Reform Drug Policy and Build a Lasting Peace,’ Washington Office on Latin America (2013), p. 4. Jean Baudrillard, ‘A perverse logic,’ UNESCO Courier, July 1987, 7–9. Robert Meister, After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights (New York: Colombia University Press 2011), 296. Hobson, “Challenging ‘evil,’” 532. For an extended unpacking of this argument, see Samuel Moyn, Christian Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). Ibid. Meister, After Evil, 25. Peter Cohen, “The Drug Prohibition Church and the Adventure of Reformation,” International Journal of Drug Policy 14, no. 2, (April 2003), 213. Desmond Manderson, “Possessed: Drug Policy, Witchcraft and Belief,” Cultural Studies, 19, no. 4 (August 2014), 36–45. dMignolo, “From Human Rights to Life Rights,” 31

188  Kojo Koram

Bibliography Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Reprint ed. New York: The New Press, 2012. Augustine, St. The Enchiridion; Faith, Hope and Charity. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1961. Baxi, Uprendra. The Future of Human Rights. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Bewley-Taylor, David R. The United States and International Drug Control, 1909–1997. New York: Continuum 2001. Boister, Neil. Penal Aspects of the UN Drug Conventions. The Hague/London/ Boston, MA: Kluwer International, 2001. Buxton, Julia. The Political Economy of Narcotics: Production, Consumption and Global Markets. London: Zed, 2006. Cohen, Peter. “The Drug Prohibition Church and the Adventure of R ­ eformation.” International Journal of Drug Policy 14, no. 2, (April 2003): 213–5. Derrida, Jacques. “The Rhetoric of Drugs: An Interview.” 5 differences: A ­Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 5, 1 (1993): 1–25. Douzinas, Costas. The End of Human Rights. Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2000. Douzinas, Costas, and Gearty, Connor, eds. The Meaning(s) of Human Rights. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013. Eastwood, Niamh, Michael Shiner, and Daniel Bear. The Numbers in Black and White: Ethnic Disparities in the Policing and Prosecution of Drug ­Offences in England and Wales. London: Release Publications, 2013. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Charles Lam ­Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1991. ———. The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin Books, 2001. Fisher, Mark. “The New Problem of Evil.” In Aesthetic Justice: Intersecting ­Artistic and Moral Perspectives, edited by Pascal Gielen and Niels Van Tomme, 45–55. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2015. Fitzpatrick, Peter. The Mythology of Modern Law. London/New York: ­Routledge, 1992. Glasser, Ira. “America’s Drug Laws: The New Jim Crow.” Albany Law Review 703, no. 3 (Spring 2000): 703–24. Gordon, Lewis R. “Race, Theodicy and the Normative Emancipatory ­Challenges of Blackness.” The South Atlantic Quarterly 112, no. 4 (October 2013): 725–36. ———. What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction to His Life. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015. Hobson, Christopher. “Challenging ‘evil’: Continuity and Change in the Drug Prohibition Regime.” International Politics 51, no. 4 (July 2014): 525–42. Hunt, Paul. Human Rights, Health and Harm Reduction: States’ Amnesia and Parallel Universes. London: International Harm Reduction Association, 2008. Lines, Richard. “‘Deliver Us from Evil’? – The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 50 Years on.” International Journal on Human Rights and Drug ­Policy 1 (July 2010): 1–12. ———. Drug Control and Human Rights in International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Drug Prohibition & the End of Human Rights  189 McAllister, William. Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century. London: Routledge, 2000. Manderson, Desmond. “Possessed: Drug Policy, Witchcraft and Belief.” ­C ultural Studies 19, no. 4 (August 2014): 35–62. Mann, William E., ed. Augustine’s Confessions: Critical Essays. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006. Meister, Robert. After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights. New York: Colombia University Press, 2011. Mignolo, Walter. “From Human Rights to Life Rights (Life, Water, Dignity and Rights).” In The Meaning(s) of Human Rights, edited by Costas Douzinas and Connor Gearty, 161–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Moyn, Samuel. Christian Human Rights. Philadelphia: University of P ­ ennsylvania Press, 2016. Reinarman, Craig, and Harry G. Levine. “Crack in the Rearview Mirror: ­Deconstructing Drug War Mythology.” Social Justice 31, no. 1–2 (March 2004): 182–99. Taussig, Michael. My Cocaine Museum. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Schmitt, Carl. The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

10 Drugs Decriminalization The Art of Governing Drug Using Populations Ian Walmsley

Introduction In the last fifteen years or so drugs decriminalization has (re)emerged as a pragmatic, human-rights, and evidence-based response to the “drug problem” and widely praised alternative to drugs prohibition.1 Niamh Eastwood, Edward Fox and Ari Rosmarin describe the momentum and force of this movement as the “quiet revolution” of drugs decriminalization. 2 This idea of a quiet revolution, however, suggests that the blind spots of drugs decriminalization strategies require critical attention. This is important given the research literature’s preoccupation with the merits of decriminalization, and how it has emerged as a beacon of light for drug policy reform. The history of similar initiatives that involve the removal or loosening of criminal sanctions, however, teaches us that veils of optimism and hope may conceal the permeation of alternative forms of state power into the more intimate areas of the social life of citizens.3 This chapter offers a critical perspective on this development. In doing so, it draws on the poststructuralist approach to critical policy analysis, developed by Carol Bacchi,4 to explore how illegal drug use is governed through Portugal’s decriminalization strategy. It will argue that through this strategy, the control of illegal drug use has been reconfigured by discourses of health, citizenship, and prevention, which produce meanings of illegal drug use as a harmful and deviant activity. The first section of this chapter will summarize debates surrounding the Portuguese drugs decriminalization strategy, and discuss the theoretical and methodological approach used in the analysis of key strategy documents.5 The second will examine the representation of illegal drug use as a threat to the health and social outcomes of the Portuguese population, and the consequences of this for the management of the “drug problem.” Section 3 will examine how citizens have been the focus of the strategy and how meanings of youth drug use have been created through the model of citizenship adopted. In the final section, drug prevention is identified as a mechanism through which the perceived skill deficits of “adolescent citizens” are constituted as a problem to be fixed, and the meanings of recreational and non-problematic drug use are silenced.

Drugs Decriminalization  191 The analysis challenges the idea of a standard concept of drugs decriminalization by illustrating how in practice it can function as an empty category populated by a series of goals, strategies, and interventions that tend to reproduce many of the assumptions and control tactics associated with traditional drugs prohibition.

Portugal and the Quiet Revolution of Drugs Decriminalization In 2001, the Portuguese government responded to the public health crisis of illegal drug use by publishing its first drug strategy, the National Strategy for the Fight Against Drugs. The strategy departed from traditional prohibition by removing criminal sanctions for personal use and possession of illegal drugs and implementing a public health-orientated response. Possession continues to be illegal, but the decriminalization law changed the offense from a criminal to an administrative one. In practice, if a person is caught with any quantity of illegal drugs below the threshold amount of ten days’ supply, they will receive an administrative sanction such as a civil fine, not a criminal penalty. The sanctions are coordinated by one of Portugal’s district-level Drug Dissuasion Commissions. Tactically, the loosening of criminal law was accompanied by increased monitoring of the “drug problem” and a comprehensive system of demand-side interventions such as dissuasion, drug prevention, harm reduction, treatment of addiction, and social reintegration. Portugal updated its first national drug strategy in 2005 with the ­National Plan Against Drugs and Drug Addiction 2005–2012, and then again in 2013 with the National Plan for the Reduction of Addictive Behaviors and Dependences 2013–2020. The 2013 National Plan extended the focus of the strategy to online gambling, alcohol, steroids, and medicines, which were grouped, alongside illegal drugs, under the category of addictive behaviors and dependencies. The extension of this diagnostic category is an example of what Moore et al. refer to as “epidemics of addicting” which they associate with neoliberal societies.6 A further important change in the 2013 National Plan is a greater emphasis on the “centrality of the citizen” in the management of the drug problem. The implication of this shift is that those who decide to use illegal drugs are discursively positioned by the strategy as irrational, unhealthy, and antisocial outsiders. What we know about the Portuguese decriminalization strategy comes from evaluation studies and discussion papers concerned with establishing quantitative measures of success or failure.7 Apart from a minority view that it negatively impacted upon drug-related deaths, blood borne viruses, and levels of drug use,8 a general consensus has emerged that it has been a success in each of these domains.9 My concern is that if the debate continues to fixate on objective measures of success

192  Ian Walmsley or failure, then this potentially diverts our attention away from other issues in the field of illegal drug use and control since criminal sanctions were removed. My interest stems, in part, from Werb’s observation that governments of drug-decriminalized countries have tended to defend their decisions by emphasizing drug prevention activities, which have historically promoted abstinence.10 Drugs prevention is an important, albeit overlooked space where prohibitionist tactics might continue to shape young people’s relationship with drugs around notions of harm and abstinence rather than pleasure and moderation.11 My curiosity is also sparked by the work of critical criminologists who demonstrated, using the concept of net-widening, how the loosening of state power often coincided with a greater diffusion of expert and state power into the lives of young people.12 Austin and Krisberg outline three types of “nets”: wider nets through which the power of the state was extended to a greater number of groups; stronger nets, which intensified state power; and new nets, which transfer power from one system of social control to another.13 The role of Portuguese health services in the management of drug users has been acknowledged for their potential net-widening effects, but the power relations intrinsic to them have been downplayed because of taken-for-granted assumptions about health in contemporary societies.14 The net-widening concept, in other words, loses its critical edge when the power relations in question are rooted in the promise of healthier behaviors. The promise of health, according to Foucault, was characteristic of a contemporary form of power that he referred to as “biopower.” Viewed from this perspective, the promise of health promotion can be interpreted as part of the “subjugation of bodies and the control of populations.”15 Rabinow and Rose describe technologies of biopower as the control of processes of population, “through which individuals are brought to work on themselves, under forms of authority, in relation to truth discourses, by means of practices of the self, in the name of their own life or health.”16 Cruickshank refers to the mechanisms that transform individuals into citizens as technologies of citizenship, or “modes of governance that work upon and through the capacities of citizens to act on their own … [they] are voluntary and coercive at the same time; the actions of citizens are regulated, but only after the capacity to act as a certain kind of citizen with certain aims is instilled.”17 The turn towards discourses of health and citizenship in Portugal’s drugs decriminalization strategy, therefore, might not symbolize the absence of power, but the manifestation of a type of power that depends upon discourses of health and the self-governing capacities of individuals for the realization of political objectives. This chapter draws on Carol Bacchi’s “What is the problem represented to be?” (WPR) approach to critical policy analysis. The WPR approach examines meaning-making and the taken-for-granted assumptions at work in policy. It takes the view that policies are not straightforward

Drugs Decriminalization  193 responses to objective problems but are active in the creation and shaping of those problems as particular types. This approach does not suggest that the conditions people are commonly concerned about do not exist. Rather, the point is that when these conditions are responded to, they are imagined in particular ways. These “imaginations” are interrogated through six questions: 1 What’s the problem represented to be in a specific policy? 2 What presuppositions or assumptions underlie this representation of this “problem”? 3 How has this representation of the “problem” come about? 4 What is left unproblematic in this problem representation? Where are the silences? Can the problem be thought about differently? 5 What effects are produced by this representation of the problem? 6 How/where has this representation of the “problem” been produced, disseminated, and defended? How could it be questioned, disrupted, and replaced? This analysis will address questions one, two, four, and five. Bacchi describes a problem representation and the general premise of her approach as “what we propose to do about something indicates what we think needs to change and hence what we think is problematic.”18 The objective of question two is to examine the problem representation for deep-seated assumptions, which are important for it to make sense and cohere, and then questions four and five critically reflect upon the silences and their discursive and subjectification effects. The WPR approach can be contrasted with the problem-solving approach, which assumes that problems exist independently of the proposals designed to fix them. Evaluations of the decriminalization of drugs in Portugal, from this perspective, aim to identify an objective measure of success or failure.19 The strength of the WPR approach is that it directs attention towards the effects and silences produced by the way policy represents the problem. The importance of analyzing dominant representations is recognized elsewhere. Duff, for example, observed a tendency in drugs policies to privilege harms, which, in turn, silences the widely reported pleasurable experiences of drugs. 20 Similarly, Pickard argued that policy ignores how drugs are sometimes used to adapt to challenging psychological and social circumstances. 21 Using the WPR approach to analyze recovery discourses in two Australian and British reports, Lancaster et al. draw attention to the discursive effects created by the binary system of problematic and non-problematic drug use, identifying how this binary simplified the meaning of what is a “complex sociocultural practice.”22 The meaning it produced failed to recognize the influence of context on illegal drug use, and how some individuals can move between problematic and non-problematic drug use. The

194  Ian Walmsley subjectification effect is produced by the language of personal responsibility which assumes a type of person who is responsible for their own drug use and health, which is an idea of citizenship rooted in neoliberalism. This chapter builds on this work by critically examining problem representations in the Portuguese drugs decriminalization strategy. The “prescriptive texts” selected for critical analysis were the National Strategy for the Fight Against Drugs 23 and the National Plan for the Reduction of Addictive Behaviors and Dependences. 24 The analysis identified key policy statements on health and social outcomes, the centrality of citizenship and drug prevention intervention as important to the meaning and management of the drug problem in Portugal.

The Value of Health and the Danger of Illegal Drugs: Reconfiguring the Meaning of Drugs in Portugal The National Plan for the Reduction of Addictive Behaviors and Dependencies states that it is an important “development in the field of health policies,” with the primary objective of the drug strategy as the positive impact upon the “health and social welfare outcomes” of the Portuguese population. 25 These statements reinforce the recent shift in the management of the drug problem from the repressive techniques of criminal law to the life-affirming techniques of health policies. The link between illegal drug use and health and social welfare outcomes is consistent throughout the National Plan. Later in the document, where the goals and interventions are outlined, the stated outcome is “sustainable gains in health and social welfare.”26 Drawing on the WPR logic, we can see that the National Plan represents the problem of illegal drug use as a threat to the health and social outcomes of the Portuguese population. The WPR approach encourages researchers to reflect upon problem representations by examining the presumptions, concepts, and binary systems on which they depend for meaning and coherence. 27 The purpose is to understand how they create (and restrict) meaning, as well as how the problem is managed, and with what consequences. The concept of health, for instance, is central to the strategy’s objectives and performs an important governmental function. It allows the threat of all types of illegal drug use to the individual and population to be comprehended and acted upon via demand-side interventions that promote behavioral change. The expected direction of this change is healthier lifestyles, as stated in the previous objective. The promotion of norms of healthy behavior to the population can be interpreted as an example of biopower where health and life-affirming strategies and techniques are considered necessary for the “subjugation of bodies and the control of populations.”28 In the contemporary political context, biopolitical technologies of power tend to shift the responsibility for the management of health onto citizens. 29

Drugs Decriminalization  195 Nevertheless, what is the meaning of “health” and “healthier” lifestyles in the National Plan and how does it create and impose limits on the possible meanings of illegal drug use? Health, for Bacchi, is a “slippery concept, rather than a fixed idea.”30 By this, she means that health is an empty category, and its meaning emerges during the policy making process rather than preceding it. In other words, health is whatever the National Plan says it is. It does not explicitly define it, but there is an implied meaning in the approach used to judge the success or failure of the strategy, which enables evaluators to see and know and ultimately judge “gains in health.”31 The statistical knowledge used to inform this judgment is produced by a series of key performance indicators that measure levels of illegal drug use, perceptions of harm to health, and reductions in the age of onset of use in the population. Based on the knowledge used to determine success or failure, we can assume that health means reductions in illegal drug use, an increase in individuals who perceive illegal drugs as harmful to health and reductions in the age at which people first use drugs. This implies that healthy behavior is the norm and illegal drug use is both unhealthy and deviant. The 2017 World Drug Report adopted something similar. The phrase of “healthy years of life lost” helped quantify and represent the impact of illegal drug use on the world population. 32 The health-danger and health-illegal drug use binary system that is implicit in the health problem representation can be interrogated further. Binary systems function by simplifying what can be complex cultural and social relationships. They organize behavior through a hierarchical structure in which one side is privileged with a positive value (health) and the other a negative one (illegal drugs). In addition to the general objectives, the influence of this binary system on meanings of illegal drug use can be found elsewhere in the National Plan. On page 22, for example, it underpins a statement which distributes all of the possible types of illegal drug use on a continuum of risk of harm. The positive side of the continuum is where harm and risk is absent and no consumption is plotted. Harmful and dependent use is plotted on the negative side where risk of harm is present. The implied meaning of illegal drugs produced by this diagram is that the only safe, rational, and responsible relation to illegal drugs a person can have is not to use them. Moreover, to be an illegal drug user is to be in a state of ill health and in a position of social deviance. This type of authoritative proposal made by the National Plan has the effect of constituting the reality of illegal drugs in Portugal. The type of relationship between illegal drug use and health produced by the National Plan has been challenged by researchers. Moore et al., for example, identified a more complex and nuanced relationship between different types of illegal drug use and health. In particular, they found that illegal drugs offered a way for some drug users to take care of their “physical and mental health and well-being.”33 Furthermore, Cruz

196  Ian Walmsley challenges conventional understandings of illegal drug use in Portugal as inherently dangerous to health by showing how some users employed self-regulation strategies to prevent it from becoming harmful to health and dependent.34 In constructing this way of thinking about the drug user as irrational, unhealthy, and antisocial, the National Plan silences and marginalizes alternative realities of illegal drug use and health. Importantly, when taken to its logical conclusion, the meaning of health adopted by the National Plan would imply that for a society to achieve the best state of health possible, it must become drug free. The Portuguese drugs decriminalization strategy, in this respect, shares the same goal as traditional drugs prohibition.

Adolescence, Addiction Vulnerability, and Citizenship The threat of illegal drugs to health and social welfare outcomes of the population is acted upon, in part, through the concept of citizenship, which is an important technology of biopower.35 The National Plan explicitly identifies the citizen as being at the center of its strategic vision, which implies that the passivity and lack of citizen participation is part of the problem in need of fixing. It describes the citizen as someone who takes responsibility for their “health, quality of life and well-being” in their day-to-day activities and, in particular, in the “choices” they make about illegal drugs.36 The responsible and rational choice is, of course, to avoid harm and be healthy by not using them. The National Plan links the obligation to prioritize healthy behavior to the “exercise of citizenship.”37 In Portugal’s first drug strategy, the National Strategy for the Fight Against Drugs and Drug Addiction, citizenship guaranteed the human right to healthcare for drug addicts. 38 The citizen at the center of the National Plan, in contrast, is a subject with co-responsibilities and obligations to monitor and care for their own health. The architects of the National Plan chose to adopt a life-cycle model of citizenship rather than, for example, a rights-based model. This model of citizenship is associated with the social investment strategy, which Giddens describes as the entrepreneurial state which invests in the skills and abilities of its citizenry with the purpose of preparing them for future challenges.39 The logic of social investment has been important in the reorganization of European welfare states from the traditional social protection model to something similar to neoliberalism.40 Illegal drug use, when viewed from this perspective, threatens not only the health and social outcomes of citizens but also their economic and social productivity and ability to respond and adapt to the challenges associated with the “different stages of the life cycle.”41 Of course, the threat of illegal drug use to health and social outcomes is one of these challenges. In order to see and know the different stages of the life ­cycle, the National Plan divides, organizes, and allocates each member of the population to

Drugs Decriminalization  197 predefined age-related categories: pregnancy and neonatal, children from twenty-eight days to nine years, children from ten to twenty-four years, adults from twenty-five to sixty-four years, and adults over s­ ixty-five years. These are presented as naturalized and ­homogenous human categories. Making up human kinds in this way, as Ian Hacking would refer to it, has implications for how individuals learn to think about the impact of illegal drugs on their bodies and lives, and the type of expert knowledge used to further control them.42 Unlike each of the other human categories, neuroscientific understandings of the “adolescent brain” are relied upon to see and know what is at stake for individuals in the ten- to twenty-four-year age category if they use illegal drugs rather than prioritize healthy behavior. Neuroscientific explanations of behavior, it is important to highlight, have largely displaced psychology’s preoccupation with locating “problems” in the “deep psychological space” within the person.43 Nikolas Rose links neuroscientific understandings of the person to a type of biopolitics that operates at the molecular level and which facilitates new ways for individuals to relate to themselves and experts as well as new biological vulnerabilities to be identified, explained, and managed. The influence of this expert discourse can be seen in the highly specific use of language to describe what it means for young people when illegal drugs are used during this particular stage of life; “changes in the organism,” “formation of new synapses in the brain,” “rapid hormonal changes,” and developmental issues that essentially “inhibit the perception of risk.”44 Through this discourse, the 10- to 24-year age category is constituted as a “unique period in human development” during which illegal drugs might “compromise” the transition to adulthood and cause “unforeseen consequences.”45 The unforeseen consequences are not made explicit, but it is implied that they can be prevented by not using illegal drugs. The addiction vulnerability of this stage of the life cycle, it is implied, is the reason why illegal drugs should be avoided by those in the 10–24year age category. This reductionist discourse, however, has the effect of detaching young people from the cultural and social contexts in which they are socialized and, moreover, it silences the widely reported pleasurable experiences and the non-addictive and recreational patterns of drug use which are a normal part of mainstream youth culture.46 The truth of the adolescent brain is taken for granted in the National Plan, whereas outside of this document, anthropologists, historians, and sociologists have been less enthusiastic about it.47 The sociologist Judith Bessant, for example, has drawn attention to how the “adolescent brain” is built upon historical assumptions of young people as irrational, antisocial, not quiet responsible adults and therefore in need of supervision and guidance.48 Bessant asks how it is possible for all young people to consistently act in irresponsible and irrational ways when what are considered good and bad judgments are culturally, socially, and historically

198  Ian Walmsley specific. Similar criticisms are made by Farrugia and Fraser, who identify these assumptions about young people at work in materials used in drugs education programs in schools. They observe commonalities between the concepts of the addicted brain and underdeveloped youth brains which exist in a co-constituted relationship. Importantly, they argue that both of these neuroscientific concepts produce a singular view of the normal, rational adult citizen.49 Similar to Ludwig Fleck’s concept of pre-idea, 50 these neuroscientific facts contain traces of ideas from previous culturally and socially influenced thought styles, notably psychological facts about the “storm and stress” of adolescence popularized by Stanley Hall at the end of the nineteenth century. 51 Nevertheless, the solution to the addiction vulnerabilities of young people (imagined as adolescents) is to train them to refuse illegal drugs with the objective of securing their development into adult citizens.

Drug Prevention, Power, and Subjectivity The National Strategy for the Fight Against Drugs and Drug A ­ ddiction identified drug prevention as one of its “Five Strong Beliefs.” The “belief is that in this field, as in many others, it is better to prevent than to cure.”52 Indeed, this governing logic is widely used in medical disciplines, but how does it shape power relations and meaning in this particular context? This dichotomy opens up possibilities for further state intervention, notably by shifting the gaze of the regulation of illegal drug use from the small group of drug addicts who were the focus of the initial public health crisis onto securing the “health” of the P ­ ortuguese population. It also implies that all types of illegal drug use might result in a ­condition that requires expert intervention, thus promoting a pre-­ emptive, precautionary logic of control. A further effect of this dichotomy is that it silences the experiences of people who use illegal drugs recreationally and non-problematically as well as their function as everyday coping mechanisms.53 It is not specified what drug prevention means, though it goes on to state that there is “no better prevention than the promotion of true development,” along with an acknowledgment that civil society and “above all” young people have a role in drug prevention.54 What is true development, and how is it promoted? The meaning of true development or the “healthy development of young people,” as described earlier, refers to a healthier and prosocial lifestyle in which illegal drug use is absent and devalued in the decisions made by those in the 10–24-year age category.55 Importantly, this can be achieved by teaching adolescents how to make the right choice in a situation where illegal drugs are offered. The National Plan proposes a school-based universal program called social and emotional competencies, also referred to as social and emotional learning (SEL), to prevent illegal drug use by the 10–24-year age

Drugs Decriminalization  199 category, thus removing any unforeseen consequences. Little information is given in the National Plan about social and emotional competencies, only that young people need them if they are to develop a “life project” in which healthy and prosocial activities are chosen instead of unhealthy and antisocial ones such as illegal drug use.56 We can, however, find a bit more information about SEL in the international research literature on it. SEL programs form part of an international movement in which social and emotional competencies are increasingly linked to young people’s ability to “adapt themselves to the complex demands of growth and development […] and to achieve successful adult lives.”57 SEL programs target five key competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making, which are needed to “make good decisions, behave ethically and responsibly, develop positive relationships, and avoid negative behavior.”58 The avoidance of negative behavior, such as antisocial and criminal behaviors, which the SEL discourse links to deficits in social and emotional competencies, is why competency training is recommended for drug prevention in schools. SEL programs have been delivered in Portugal since 2002, examples include “Positive Attitudes Project,”59 “Slowly, We go Steady,”60 and “Grow Up Playing.”61 In their review of SEL provision, Bowles et al. identified a steady growth in the use of SEL in Portugal which has been largely facilitated by the recent turn towards measurable outcomes and monitoring within the education system and by the Ministry of Health’s publication of the Manual for the Promotion of Social and Emotional Competencies in Schools in 2016.62 The uptake of SEL in Portugal, it could be suggested, has been encouraged by the political and economic reorganization of the Portuguese welfare state by social investment ideas. This school-based universal program, in this respect, might be viewed as a mechanism through which the citizenry and dominant social order are reproduced.63 The proposal that young people need social and emotional competencies training to help them say not to illegal drugs produces a particular subjectification effect or subject position. These are important to identify because, as Bacchi explains, when a person occupies a subject position, they tend to “make sense of the social world from this standpoint.”64 The National Plan does not offer descriptions of SEL teaching in practice, but there are some examples in the research literature on SEL and self-esteem based drug education that can be used here to briefly illustrate how, through this type of training, young people learn how to prioritize healthy and prosocial activities, and abstain from illegal drugs.65 Both SEL and drugs education based on self-esteem building activities operate according to a deficit model which require young people to problematize and correct certain aspects of themselves (self-esteem or competencies), aspects assumed to be linked to their ability to make rational choices. As Farrugia and Fraser explain, these preventive strategies reflect the

200  Ian Walmsley influence of developmental conceptualizations that view young people as incompletely developed and lacking adult capacities, such as rational thinking.66 Like most contemporary drug education programs, abstinence is their primary goal. Similar to self-esteem building, SEL offers young people opportunities to participate in classroom based activities where they can learn and rehearse rational decisions in fictitious drug offer situations. In these activities, young people are taught, step-bystep, the different stages to go through when deciding whether or not to use illegal drugs, which essentially involves the repeated drilling of drug refusal statements.67 Here, it is worth highlighting, drug refusal statements imply that the decision to use drugs is not natural, but the result of pressure from the antisocial “Other.” By learning the skill to operate the prescribed decision-making model by saying no to illegal drugs, young people learn techniques of self-government and, moreover, become healthier by avoiding the unforeseen consequences of using illegal drugs during adolescence. This form of drug prevention, in other words, is not only an important strategy for controlling illegal drug use but also important for the social reproduction of citizenship. An effect of this subjectification process is to encourage socially desired behavior and self-responsibility in the majority of young ­people, therefore serving a broader regulatory purpose. An implication of it, however, is that it sets young people who decide not to use drugs in opposition to those who decide to use them. Setting groups of people in opposition to each other, as Bacchi explains, can result in the social marginalization of those individuals whose conduct does not conform to the prescribed norms of behavior. For example, Lindholm found that young people whose conduct did not conform to the prosocial, healthy, and productive ways of acting privileged by SEL programs were excluded from their peer group and constituted as the antisocial “Other.”68 Similarly, Bennett observed an othering process in self-esteem based drug education programs in which young people came to understand themselves in relation to the antisocial, drug using “Other.”69 This prosocial and antisocial binary system that can result in the othering of young people, according to ­Taylor, is a key feature of the reductionist drugs discourse of prohibition in which illegal drug users are represented as fundamentally different to the normal population.70 This reductionist discourse collapses all forms of drug use into this category of the abnormal, thus failing to recognize the multiple realities of recreational use by young people.

Conclusion: Drugs Decriminalization: A Quiet Revolution or the Ghost of Prohibition? The objective of this chapter has been to put the veil of optimism and hope to one side in order to explore how the meanings and control of illegal drug use in Portugal have been transformed following the drugs

Drugs Decriminalization  201 decriminalization strategy. Critical analyses of the Portuguese strategy have been surprisingly absent, with researchers and commentators tending to debate measurable changes in the size of the “drug problem.” Drawing on the WPR approach and the Foucauldian tool box, this chapter has critically examined Portugal’s drug strategy documents, identifying how the meanings of illegal drug use and the mechanisms of drug control have been reconfigured around discourses of health, the life-­ cycle model of citizenship and a deficit-based drug prevention program. The chapter has argued that the Portuguese decriminalization strategy should not be seen as the loosening of state power, but as the manifestation of a life-affirming power that operates through notions of health and expert knowledge and which mobilizes the self-governing capacities of citizens to achieve its objectives. The aspirations of the strategy are to increase the health and social outcomes of the population through the production of citizens who recognize their obligation to choose health and prosocial activities rather than illegal drugs. This chapter will close with two concluding points. First, how might we view the drugs decriminalization strategy? The WPR approach takes the view that policies or national drug strategies are not straightforward responses to objective problems. Instead, they are active in producing those problems as particular types. From this perspective, the strategy of drugs decriminalization might be viewed as an empty policy framework that policy architects populate with political visions, measurable targets, general and specific objectives, statements, beliefs, interventions, and expert knowledge, rooted in conceptual logics, and political and expert discourses. It might be wrong to assume that the philosophies of liberalism and harm reduction often associated with decriminalized drug strategies provide the organizing principles for them. Decriminalization strategies differ not only in terms of the legal particularities that determine, for example, where to draw the line between possession and supply in terms of threshold amounts but also in terms of the discursive and subjectification effects and silences created by the proposals for change made by them. Importantly, these are culturally, socially, and politically embedded and therefore dependent upon the contexts in which they operate. Although the legal framework of drugs prohibition has loosened, the assumptions of drugs prohibition continue to operate through the cultural, social, and scientific domains it has long appropriated. The type of health problematization adopted by the decriminalization strategy reinforces meanings of illegal drug use as unhealthy, antisocial, and deviant promoted by regimes of prohibition. Similar criticisms are made by Taylor et al., who refer to the alternative models of drugs policy such as decriminalization as the “metamorphous of prohibition.”71 This means that although the structure has changed, the assumptions underpinning them have not. Portuguese decriminalization, in this respect, continues to be haunted by the ghost of drugs prohibition.

202  Ian Walmsley The second point relates to the preventative turn in Portugal’s drugs decriminalization strategy, which has been the characteristic of drug-­ decriminalized countries.72 This preventative turn opened up new possibilities for intervening into the minds and behaviors of the Portuguese population with the purpose of directing them away from illegal drug use and towards health and prosocial activities. Neuroscientific discourses of adolescence, in particular, were identified as important in articulating the developmental consequences for young people if they use illegal drugs. Silencing alternative and widely accepted understandings of youth drug use, this discourse constitutes young people as particularly vulnerable to addiction, whereby prohibitionist notions of abstinence are recommended as essential to securing their future as healthy, productive adult citizens. Reflecting on an observation made by Duff, it might be said that the approach to drug prevention adopted by the National Plan has not yet moved from the “prohibition of use to the management of use.”73 By recommending ­abstinence-based deficit models, the drug prevention approach proposed by the Portuguese decriminalization strategy fundamentally misunderstands the culture and context of illegal drug use. If decriminalization strategies are to be effective at reducing drug-related harms, progressive forms of drug prevention should be adopted that do not privilege harm over pleasure and which recognize the cultural and social realties of youth drug use.

Notes 1 Julian Buchannan, “Ending Prohibition with a Hangover,” British Journal of Community Justice 13, no. 1 (2015), 55–74; Glenn Greenwald. Drug ­Decriminalisation in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2009). Niamh Eastwood et al. A Quiet Revolution: Drug Decriminalisation Policies in Practice (London: Release, 2016). www.release.org.uk/publications/drug-decriminalisation-2016 2 Eastwood et al., A Quiet Revolution. 3 Stanley Cohen, Visions of Social Control. Crime, Punishment and Classification (Glasgow: Polity Press, 1982). 4 Carol Bacchi, Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to Be? (Sydney: Pearson Education, 2009); Carol Bacchi, “Problematisations in Healthy Policy: Questioning How ‘Problems’ Are Constituted in Policies,” Sage Open. (2016), 1–16. 5 Instituto da Droga e da Toxicodependência, National Strategy for the Fight against Drugs and Drug Addiction. (Lisbon: Ministry of Health, 2001); General Directorate for Intervention of Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies, National Plan for Reducing Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies (Lisbon: Ministry of Health, 2014). 6 David Moore et al., “Challenging the Addiction/Health Binary with Assemblage Thinking: An Analysis of Consumer Accounts,” International Journal of Drug Policy 44 (2017), 155–63. 7 Greenwald, Drugs Decriminalisation in Portugal; Caitlin Elizabeth Hughes and Alex Stevens, “A Resounding Success or a Disastrous Failure? Re-­ examining the Interpretation of Evidence on the Portuguese Decriminalisation of Illicit Drugs,” Drug and Alcohol Review 31 (2012), 101–13; Pinto Coelho,

Drugs Decriminalization  203 The ‘resounding success’ of Portuguese Drug Policy: The Power of an Attractive Fallacy (Lisboa: Associacao parma uma Portugal livre de drogas, 2010). 8 Coelho, The ‘resounding success’ of Portuguese Drug Policy. 9 Greenwald, Drugs Decriminalisation in Portugal; Hughes and Stevens, “A Resounding Success or a Disastrous Failure.” 10 Dan Werb, “Post-War Prevention: Emerging Frameworks to Prevent Drug Use After the War on Drugs,” International Journal of Drug Policy 51 (2018), 160–164. 11 Cameron Duff, “Drug Use as a Practice of the Self: Is There Any Place for an ‘ethics of moderation’ in Contemporary Drug Policy?” International Journal of Drug Policy 15 (2004), 385–93. 12 James Austin and Barry Krisberg, “Wider, Stronger and Different Nets: The Dialectics of Criminal Justice Reform,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 18 (1981), 166–196; Cohen, Visions of Social Control. Lynne Roberts and David Indermaur, “Timely Intervention or Trapping Minnows? The Potential for a Range of Net-Widening Effects in Australian Drug Diversion Initiatives,” Psychiatry, Psychology and Law 13, no. 2 (2006), 220–31. 13 Austin and Krisberg, “Wider, Stronger and Different Nets.” 14 Arianna Silvestri, Gateways from Crime to Health: The Portuguese Drug Commissions (Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and Prison Reform Trust, 2014). www.sicad.pt/BK/Dissuasao/Documents/AS%20report%20GATE WAYS%20FROM%20CRIME%20TO%20HEALTH.pdf 15 Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College De France 1977–1978 (Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007). 140. 16 Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose, “Biopower Today,” BioSocieties 1 (2006), 195–217. 17 Barbara Cruikshank, The Will to Empower: Democratic citizens and Other Subjects (London: Cornell University Press, 1999), 4. 18 Bacchi, “Problematisations in Healthy Policy,” 8. 19 Greenwald, Drugs Decriminalisation in Portugal; Caitlin Elizabeth Hughes and Alex Stevens, “What Can We Learn from the Portuguese Decriminalisation of Illicit Drugs?” British Journal of Criminology 50 (2010), 999–1022. 20 Duff, “Drug Use as a Practice of the Self.” 21 Hannah Pickard, “The Purpose of Chronic Addiction,” AJOB Neuroscience 3, no. 2 (2012), 40–49. 22 Kari Lancaster et al., “Producing the ‘Problem of Drugs’: A Cross N ­ ationalComparison of ‘Recovery’ Discourse in two Australian and British ­Reports,” International Journal of Drug Policy 26 (2015), 617–25. 23 Instituto da Droga, National Strategy. 24 General Directorate, National Plan. 25 Ibid. 7. 26 Ibid. 13. 27 Bacchi, Analysing Policy. 28 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 140. 29 Kane Race, “The Use of Pleasure in Harm Reduction: Perspectives from the History of Sexuality,” International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008), 417–23. 30 Bacchi, Analysing Policy, 128. 31 General Directorate, National Plan, 13. 32 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2017: Conclusions and Policy Implications (Geneva: United Nations Publications, 2017), 9. www.unodc.org/wdr2017/en/exsum.html. 33 Moore et al., “Challenging the addiction/health binary,” 7.

204  Ian Walmsley 34 Olga S. Cruz, “Nonproblematic Illegal Drug Use: Drug Use Management Strategies in a Portuguese Sample,” Journal of Drug Issues 45, no. 2 (2015), 133–50. 35 Cruikshank, The Will to Empower. 36 General Directorate, National Plan, 13. 37 Ibid. 13. 38 Instituto da Droga, National Strategy. 39 Anthony Giddens, The Third Way. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998). 40 Kati Kuitto, “From Social Security to Social Investment? Compensating and Social Investment Welfare Policies in a Life-Course Perspective,” Journal of European Social Policy 26, no. 5 (2016), 442–59. 41 General Directorate, National Plan, 30. 42 Ian Hacking, “Making Up People,” in Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought, eds. T. Heller, M. Sosna, and D. W. Wellbery (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986), 222–36. 43 Nikolas Rose, The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. (Oxfordshire: Princeton University Press, 2007), 192. 4 4 General Directorate, National Plan, 33. 45 Ibid. 33. 46 Judith Aldridge, Fiona Measham, and Lisa Williams, Illegal Leisure Revisited: Changing Patterns of Alcohol and Drug Use in Adolescents and Young Adults. (London: Routledge, 2011). 47 Adrian Farrugia and Suzanne Fraser, “Young Brains at Risk: Co-­Constituting Youth and Addiction in Neuroscience-Informed Australian Drug Education,” BioSocieties, (2017). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41292-0170047-2; Judith Bessant, “Hard Wired for Risk: Neurological Science, ‘the Adolescent Brain’ and Developmental Theory,” Journal of Youth Studies 11, no. 3, (2008), 347–60. 48 Bessant, “Hard Wired for Risk.” 49 Farrugia and Fraser. “Young Brains at Risk.” 50 Ludwig Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1979). 51 Stanley Hall, Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education (New York: Appleton, 1907). 52 Instituto da Droga, National Strategy, 4. 53 Pickard, “The Purpose of Chronic Addiction.” 54 Instituto da Droga, National Strategy, 4. 55 General Directorate, National Plan, 22. 56 Ibid., 35. 57 Vitor Coelho et al., “The Impact of a Portuguese Middle School S­ ocialEmotional Learning Program,” Health Promotion International 32, no. 2 (2017), 292–300, (1); Mafalda Ferreira et al., “The Role of Social and Emotional Competence on Risk Behaviours in Adolescence,” The International Journal of Emotional Education 4, no. 1 (2012), 43–55. 58 Ana Cristovao et al., “Social and Emotional Learning and Academic Achievements in Portuguese Schools: A Bibliographic Study,” Frontiers in Psychology 8, no. 1913 (2017), 1–12. 59 Coelho et al., “The Impact of a Portuguese Middle School Social-Emotional Learning Program”; Ferreira et al., “The Role of Social and Emotional Competence on Risk Behaviours in Adolescence.” 60 Raquel Raimundo et al., “The Effects of a Social and Emotional Learning Program on Elementary School Children: The Role of Pupils Characteristics,” Psychology in Schools 50 (2013), 165–80.

Drugs Decriminalization  205 61 Paulo Moreria et al., “Evaluation of a Manual-Based Programme for the Promotion of Social and Emotional Skills in Elementary School Children: Results from a 4-Year Study in Portugal,” Health Promotion International 25, no. 3 (2010), 309–17. 62 Terence Bowles et al., “A Review of the Provision of Social and Emotional Learning in Australia, the United States, Poland and Portugal,” Journal of Relationships Research 8 (2017), 16. 63 Cruickshank, The Will to Empower. 64 Bacchi, Analysing Policy, 16. 65 Sofia Kvist Lindholm, “Social Reproduction and Transformation of Norms Incorporated into a Programme for Social and Emotional Competencies,” Ethnography and Education 12, no. 3 (2017), 294–310; Cristovao et al., “Social and Emotional Learning”; Coelho et al., “The Impact of a Portuguese Middle School Social-Emotional Learning Program”; Ferreira et al., “The Role of Social and Emotional Competence”; Cary Bennett, “SchoolBased Drug Education: The Shaping of Subjectivities,” History of Education Review 43, no. 1 (2014), 95–115. 66 Farrugia and Fraser, “Young Brains at Risk.” 67 Moreria et al, “Evaluation of a Manual-Based programme.” 68 Lindholm, “Social Reproduction and Transformation of Norms.” 69 Bennett, “School-Based Drug Education.” 70 Howard Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (New York: Free Press, 1963); Stuart Taylor, “Moving Beyond the Other,” Cultuur and Criminaliteit 6 (2016), 100–118. 71 Stuart Taylor et al., “Prohibition, Privilege and the Drug Apartheid: The Failure of Drug Policy to Reform to Address the Underlying Fallacies of Drug Prohibition,” Criminology and Criminal Justice 16, no. 4 (2016), 452–69. 72 Werb, “Post-War Prevention.” 73 Duff, “Drug Use as a Practice of the Self,” 390.

Bibliography Aldridge, Judith, Fiona Measham, and Lisa Williams. Illegal Leisure Revisited: Changing Patterns of Alcohol and Drug Use in Adolescents and Young Adults. London: Routledge, 2011. Austin, James, and Barry Krisberg. “Wider, Stronger and Different Nets: The Dialectics of Criminal Justice Reform.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 18 (1981): 166–96. doi:10.1177/002242788101800110. Bacchi, Carol. Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to Be? Sydney: Pearson Education, 2009. ———. “Problematisations in Healthy Policy: Questioning How ‘Problems’ Are Constituted in Policies.” Sage Open (2016): 1–16. doi:10.1177/215824401 6653986. Becker, Howard. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press, 1963. Bennett, Cary. “School-Based Drug Education: The Shaping of Subjectivities.” History of Education Review 43, no. 1 (2014): 95–115. doi:10.1108/ HER-11-2012-0039. Bessant, Judith. “Hard Wired for Risk: Neurological Science, ‘the adolescent brain’ and Developmental Theory.” Journal of Youth Studies 11, no. 3 (2008): 347–60. doi:10.1080/13676260801948387.

206  Ian Walmsley Bowles, Terence, Shane Jimerson, Aaron Haddock, and Julene Nolan. “A Review of the Provision of Social and Emotional Learning in Australia, the United States, Poland and Portugal.” Journal of Relationships Research 8, no. e16 (2017): 1–13. doi:10.1017/jrr.2017.16. Buchannan, Julian. “Ending Prohibition with a Hangover.” British Journal of Community Justice 13, no. 1 (2015): 55–74. Coelho, Manuel Pinto. The Resounding Success of Portuguese Drug Policy: The Power of an Attractive Fallacy. Lisboa: Association para uma Portugal livre de drogas, 2010. Coelho, Vitor, Vanda Sousa, Raquel Raimundo, and Ana Figueira. “The Impact of a Portuguese Middle School Social-Emotional Learning Program.” Health Promotion International 32, no. 2 (2017): 292–300. doi:10.1093/heapro/dav064. Cohen, Stanley. Visions of Social Control: Crime, Punishment and Classification. Glasgow: Polity Press, 1982. Cristovao, Ana, Adelina Candeias, and Jose Verdasca. “Social and Emotional Learning and Academic Achievements in Portuguese Schools: A Bibliographic Study.” Frontiers in Psychology 8, no. 1913 (2017): 1–12. doi:10.3389/ fpsyg.2017.01913. Cruikshank, Barbara. The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects. London: Cornell University Press, 1999. Cruz, Olga S. “Nonproblematic Illegal Drug Use: Drug Use Management Strategies in a Portuguese Sample.” Journal of Drug Issues 45, no. 2 (2015): 1 ­ 33–50. doi:10.1177/0022042614559842. Duff, Cameron. “Drug Use as a Practice of the Self: Is There Any Place for an ‘ethics of moderation’ in Contemporary Drug Policy?” International Journal of Drug Policy 15 (December 2004): 385–93. doi:10.1016/j.drugpo. 2004.06.010. Eastwood, Niamh, Edward Fox, and Ari Rosmarin. A Quiet Revolution: Drug Decriminalisation Policies in Practice. London: Release, 2016. www.release. org.uk/publications/drug-decriminalisation-2016. Farrugia, Adrian, and Suzanne Fraser. “Young Brains at Risk: Co-­Constituting Youth and Addiction in Neuroscience-Informed Australian Drug Education.” BioSocieties (2017). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41292017-0047-2. Ferreira, Mafalda, Celeste Simoes, Margarida Gaspar Matos, Lucia Ramiro, Jose Alves Diniz, and Social Adventure Team. “The Role of Social and Emotional Competence on Risk Behavior in Adolescence,” The International Journal of Emotional Education 4, no. 1 (2012): 43–55. www.um.edu.mt/__ data/assets/pdf_file/0008/183374/ENSECV4I1P3.pdf. Fleck, Ludwig. Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. London: University of Chicago Press, 1979. Foucault, Michel. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007. General Directorate for Intervention of Addictive Behaviors and Dependencies. National Plan for Reducing Addictive Behaviors and Dependencies. Portugal: Ministry of Health, 2013. www.sicad.pt/BK/Publicacoes/Lists/SICAD_ PUBLICACOES/Attachments/61/Executive%20Summary.en.pdf. Giddens, Anthony. The Third Way. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998.

Drugs Decriminalization  207 Greenwald, Glenn. Drug Decriminalisation in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies. Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2009. https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/greenwald_whitepaper. pdf. Hughes, Caitlin Elizabeth, and Alex Stevens. “A Resounding Success or a Disastrous Failure? Re-Examining the Interpretation of Evidence on the Portuguese Decriminalization of Illicit Drugs.” Drug and Alcohol Review 31 (2012): 101–13. doi:10.1111/j.1465–3362.2011.00383.x. ———. “What Can We Learn from the Portuguese Decriminalisation of Illicit Drugs?” British Journal of Criminology 50 (November 2010): 999–1022. doi:10.1093/bjc/azq038. Instituto da Droga e da Toxicodependência. National Strategy for the Fight against Drugs and Drug Addiction. Lisbon: Ministry of Health, 2000. www. emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/att_119431_EN_Portugal%20Drug%20 strategy%201999.pdf. Lancaster, Kari, Karen Duke, and Alison Ritter. “Producing the ‘problem of drugs’: A Cross National-Comparison of ‘recovery’ Discourses in Two Australian and British Reports.” International Journal of Drugs Policy 26 (July 2015): 617–25. doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2015.04.006. Lindholm, Sofia Kvist. “Students’ Reproduction and Transformation of Norms Incorporated into a Programme for Social and Emotional Learning.” Ethnography and Education 12, no. 3 (2017): 294–310. doi:10.1080/17457823. 2016.1232622. Kuitto, Kati. “From Social Security to Social Investment? Compensating and Social Investment Welfare Policies in a Life-Course Perspective.” Journal of European Social Policy 26, no. 5 (2016): 442–59. doi:10.1177/0958928716664297. Moore, David, Kiran Pienaar, Ella Dilkes-Frayne, and Suzanne Fraser. “Challenging the Addiction/Health Binary with Assemblage Thinking: An Analysis of Consumer Accounts.” International Journal of Drug Policy 44 (June 2017): 155–63. doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2017.01.013. Moreria, Paulo, Lorena Crusellas, Isabel Sa, Paulo Gomes, and Carla Matias. “Evaluation of a Manual-Based Programme for the Promotion of Social and Emotional Skills in Elementary School Children: Results from a 4-Year Study in Portugal.” Health Promotion International 25, no. 3 (2010): 309–17. doi:10.1093/heapro/daq029. Rabinow, Paul, and Nikolas Rose. “Biopower Today.” BioSocieties 1, no. 2 (2006): 195–217. doi.org/10.1017/S1745855206040014. Race, Kane. “The Use of Pleasure in Harm Reduction: Perspectives from the History of Sexuality.” International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008): ­417–23. doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2007.08.008. Raimundo, Raquel, Alexandra Marques-Pinto, and Maria Luisa Lima. “The Effects of a Social and Emotional Learning Program on Elementary School Children: The Role of Pupils’ Characteristics.” Psychology in the Schools 50 (2013): 165–80. doi.org/10.1002/pits.21667. Roberts, Lynne, and David Indermaur. “Timely Intervention or Trapping Minnows? The Potential for a Range of Net-Widening Effects in Australian Drug Diversion Initiatives.” Psychiatry, Psychology and Law 1, no. 2 (2006): ­220–231. doi/pdf/10.1375/pplt.13.2.220.

208  Ian Walmsley Rose, Nikolas. The Politics of Life: Biomedicine, Power, Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Oxfordshire: Princeton University Press, 2007. Silvestri, Arianna. Gateways from Crime to Health: The Portuguese Drug Commissions. Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and Prison Reform Trust, 2014. www.sicad.pt/BK/Dissuasao/Documents/AS%20report%20GATEWAYS% 20FROM%20CRIME%20TO%20HEALTH.pdf Taylor, Stuart. “Moving Beyond the Other.” Cultuur and Criminaliteit 6, no. 1 (2016): 100–118. doi:10.5553/TCC/22119507201600600100. Taylor, Stuart, Julian Buchanan, and Tammy Ayres. “Prohibition, Privilege and the Drug Apartheid: The Failure of Drug Policy to Reform to Address the Underlying Fallacies of Drug Prohibition.” Criminology and Criminal Justice 16, no. 4 (2016): 452–69. doi:10.1177/1748895816633274. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. “World Drug Report 2017: Conclusions and Policy Implications.” Geneva: United Nations Publications, 2017. www.unodc.org/wdr2017/en/exsum.html. Werb, Dan. “Post-War Prevention: Emerging Frameworks to Prevent Drug Use after the War on Drugs.” International Journal of Drug Policy 51 (2018): 160–164. doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2017.06.012.

11 Prison Everywhere? The Imbrication of Coercive and Pastoral Governance in the Regulation of “Chemsex” and New Psychoactive Substances Oliver Davis Introduction Following his own arrest and that of several other members of the ­Prisons Information Group on 1 May 1971, Michel Foucault published an incendiary press article entitled “Prison Everywhere.”1 The activists had been handing out what he coyly called “a text”—probably their clandestine questionnaire on conditions inside—and, as is customary in France on May Day, sprigs of lily of the valley, to prisoners’ loved ones waiting in the visiting queues outside two prisons in the Paris area. Back at the police station, a French Jewish member of the group who objected to racist remarks by an overtly Nazi-sympathizing officer was asked whether she was not perhaps under the influence of “[le] haschisch,” a drug associated through the Arabic overtones of its name with North African immigrant communities, just as the name “marijuana” once linked that drug with anxieties about Mexican immigration into the United States. 2 Foucault asserted that the police’s arrest of the activists, who had been doing nothing illegal, showed that “prison begins well before its walls— as soon as you leave home.” Although prohibition—which had been tightened in France by the law of 31 December 1970 criminalizing both suppliers and end users—was low on the group’s list of priorities, Foucault’s polemical article succinctly introduces the nexus of themes that will be salient in my discussion of the two case studies with which this chapter is concerned: the use which can be made of illegal drugs by the police order to mark out individuals and communities as legitimate targets of suspicion, investigation, and intervention, thereby segregating them from the rest of the population; the material and symbolic security of the prison as institution and the prison-like character of drug control. My two case studies hail from a different place and time: the UK in the second decade of the twenty-first century. I first consider the regulation of “chemsex,” a term defined by leading experts as the use by “men who have sex with men,” gay men foremost among them, of the drugs GHB/ GBL (hereafter G), crystal methamphetamine and mephedrone, singly or in combination, to fuel protracted “sex parties” involving multiple partners, organized using mobile sexual networking apps. The work to

210  Oliver Davis address chemsex has been led by health professionals, and their governance of the phenomenon has, I argue, been primarily pastoral (a term I develop later). My second case study is the roughly contemporaneous campaign against “new” or “novel” psychoactive substances (hereafter NPS), a somewhat diffuse category including primarily what were once familiarly termed “legal highs,” a campaign which culminated in the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016. Since that Act was especially concerned with the material and symbolic security of UK prisons and those they house, but also with securing the authority of UK drug-control law once and for all against increasingly inventive attempts by drug developers to circumvent it by criminalizing the manufacture of all psychoactive substances with named exceptions, this attempt to govern NPS would appear to have been primarily coercive, prescribing punitive remedies and seeking to solve a problem affecting prisons—coercive institutions par excellence. In my sequential discussion of each case study, I argue that the primarily pastoral governance of chemsex has also been imbricated with coercion and conversely that the primarily coercive governance of NPS has also been imbricated with pastoral power. The scale of the problem is different in each case: chemsex has been constructed as a problem primarily for the gay community in certain parts of London and secondarily in other urban centers with significant gay populations, whereas NPS were constructed as a nationwide phenomenon but particularly a problem affecting younger people and prisoners. As has often been the case historically where drugs are concerned, both campaigns were driven by individuals and organizations Howard Becker terms “moral entrepreneurs,” who created “moral panics” about the phenomenon in question: “People must be made to feel that something ought to be done about it.”3 To make this observation is neither to diminish these individuals and organizations nor per se to minimize the harms involved but rather to remark descriptively on the way in which these issues were problematized as objects of concern for the community or wider public.4 In the final section, I consider the two case studies together and draw wider conclusions about the significance of drugs for “governance” and the relationship between the pastoral and the coercive.

Chemsex In 2015, a BMJ editorial declared that chemsex “needs to become a public health priority.”5 The following month, a documentary film entitled Chemsex (co-directed by William Fairman and Max Gogarty and produced for VICE Media) was released in UK cinemas and screened widely at venues including the British Film Institute (BFI) and numerous LGBTQ spaces across London and beyond. Often these screenings were followed by community discussions facilitated, in many cases, by the healthcare professional most prominently featured in the film, David Stuart of 56

Prison Everywhere?  211

Figure 11.1  Still from Chemsex (Fairman & Gogarty, color, 2015) with David Stuart center-frame.

Dean Street, a large sexual health clinic in Soho. The film validated his own expert vision of how chemsex should be defined, explained, and addressed, not just on an individual basis in a clinical setting but also by the wider community, placing him center stage amid a host of largely helpless gay men who are individualized when they speak alone to camera their stories of suffering against the backdrop of—or in a few cases behind, anonymously—a red curtain in a mise-en-scène redolent both of the photobooth and the confessional, as well as their latter-day synthesis in the “diary room” beloved of reality television (Figure 11.1). The film and ensuing community discussions confirmed Stuart as the UK’s leading “entrepreneur,” in Becker’s sense, of this moral panic and an overwhelming community consensus agreed with Stuart that this was indeed a very serious problem about which something had to be done. Unfortunately, the lurid way in which the film portrayed chemsex through its visual language, camerawork, soundtrack, and highly selective directorial choice of testimony and interpretation, skewed discussion from the start: the “conversations” which Stuart said he wanted the community to have about chemsex were inflected from the outset by the melodramatic and pathologizing filmic treatment of the phenomenon in this documentary. The second image in the film is a short three-second shot of a full moon and with the opening credits a voiceover says of chemsexers that “They just look possessed. Wild and hungry and… desperate. I am scared of this… kind of perversion of the gay scene. It’s pathological. There’s something scary happening.” This diagnosis is echoed at key junctures throughout the film, notably by interviewee Miguel at the conclusion of a climactic sequence I shall analyze closely later, which shows ­ rug-induced him experiencing what the film frames as an episode of d psychosis: asked “What’s your message?” Miguel answers, “This is a disease.” The soundtrack by Daniel Harle marshals dissonant chords,

212  Oliver Davis an ominous bassy drum as well as intermittent screechy machinic whitenoise very reminiscent of Sammy Harari’s 1986 “AIDS iceberg” public awareness campaign, as is the use of center-screen printed messages in block capitals such as “THERE IS A HIDDEN HEALTH EMERGENCY.”6 The film’s melodramatic and pathologizing approach is also typical of the way a range of contemporary cultural phenomena have been treated by VICE Media, the global conglomerate founded in 1994 and valued in 2017 at $5.7bn: the company and its subsidiaries specialize in producing apparently permissive content for millennials, while major shareholders include the Walt Disney Company, WPP, and 21st Century Fox.7 Thus, Fairman, one of the co-directors of Chemsex, is also series producer of a three-part documentary for VICE Studios UK entitled Cocaine: Britain’s Epidemic, broadcast on Channel 5 in 2018.8 None of the film’s many faults are attributable to David Stuart. However, the explanatory narrative which the film advances is very much his particular vision of chemsex, and in so far as the film has been key to his own promotion of this healthcare agenda within the NHS and the gay community, his identity as a moral entrepreneur and the branding of his clinic’s reputedly pioneering approach to a dangerous public health problem are nevertheless intimately bound up with this film’s problematic portrayal. Stuart’s view of chemsex is articulated by him in the documentary: It’s all about a gay community emerging from a really traumatic past, a complicated past. Vulnerable gay men with issues around sex; new drugs that tapped into that problem rather well. And changing technology. What they call the perfect storm. And we need a different way of thinking to address it. As in much of the mainstream community discourse around bareback sex, in this explanation of chemsex, all gay men are, by virtue of having grown up gay in a homophobic wider world, positioned as vulnerable or wounded subjects, with a predisposition to low self-esteem and “issues” around sex.9 Drugs, according to Stuart, are used by gay men as disinhibitors to allow them to enjoy sex by covering over what would otherwise be disabling emotional hurt; it would be better if gay men somehow faced their hurt and vulnerability, which would, in turn, allow them to enjoy sober sex. According to Stuart, some gay men are especially vulnerable, notably HIV-positive men, who encounter or fear encountering stigma in the gay and wider community, and young gay men: These days, fifteen, sixteen, you leave your home in Hertfordshire, you come into London to find your gay life and you find Grindr [a smartphone gay hook-up app] and within perhaps four conversations you find chems and within eight conversations you get introduced to

Prison Everywhere?  213 injecting, or “slamming” as it’s called. There is no textbook for how to be a safe gay man in modern times […] Where do these kids get the tools to manage this? Deploying Stuart’s expert commentary at such key junctures, the film offers an apocalyptic picture of a gay community that is not one, that is unwilling to care for its younger members but all too ready to prey on them and too busy gratifying itself to discern, still less work through reflectively, its hidden hurt and the way in which chemsex, rather than addressing this effectively, perpetuates a vicious cycle of self-harm of which skyrocketing rates of new HIV infection are just a surface manifestation, the tip of an iceberg of self-loathing. Into the midst of this moral crisis steps, David Stuart, whom the film presents visually as sturdy in his frame-filling physical presence and morally robust in his unflinching readiness to grasp a painful reality, as well as empathic—with an empathy partly rooted in prior personal experience. In a short biographical sequence mid-way through the film, Stuart recounts his experience of having had AIDS before the l­ife-changing advent of protease inhibitors and his use of cocaine in his twenties and crystal meth in his thirties (“another decade missing”). Stuart is thus very fleetingly presented in the film as a former user, but also as a ­H IV-positive gay man with several decades of experience encompassing significant advances in the medical management of the virus. In the samples of his clinical practice shown in the film, as in the short educational videos he presents on his own YouTube channel, Stuart is extremely careful to frame his interventions in non-coercive and non-judgmental terms. At an initial consultation with a patient called Simon, one of the film’s cast of characters, Stuart proposes one week’s abstinence from drugs in the following terms: as “an experiment” initially lasting “one week of your life,” emphasizing that “it’s an invitation and a suggestion. I’m not telling you what to do.” The follow-up consultation one week later sees a smiling Simon reporting happily that while he had been tempted he had abstained not only from drugs, as Stuart had invited him to do, but also from sex. Stuart says that they can “talk about whether” Simon wants to extend the “experiment” for another week and holds out the prospect of a future sense of achievement: “imagine if you were sitting in that chair next week and you’d had two weeks off […] ok we have another plan.” Stuart’s pastoral approach encourages Simon to make a proper use of his own freedom, holding out the prospect of his being able to feel pleased with himself and his achievement: there is no explicit mention in the encounter of any punitive sanction or other negative consequence if he fails to stick to this jointly authored “plan,” although by implication, Simon’s own feelings of disappointment lie in wait to punish him a week later if he relapses. In place of a prescriptive moralism which disciplines subjects by issuing instructions and threats—as in the Nonconformist tradition

214  Oliver Davis of thundering sermons against the “demon drink”—Stuart’s more sophisticated pastoral mode of clinical practice is scrupulous to avoid being seen to endorse punitive sanction yet nevertheless draws his patient firmly in the same direction, towards abstinence. In inviting subjects to make proper use of their own freedom to self-regulate, such pastoral governance also draws tacitly on their capacity to punish themselves for failure, self-punishment which conveniently aligns with prevailing social suspicion of drugs and sex. Such a pastoral approach may very well be the most effective way to regulate chemsex: its art of persuasion ventures deep into “the zone, I was going to say of ruse, let’s say of insidious actions and effects.”10 If pastoral governance appeals to the freedom of subjects to choose abstinence over self-destruction and self-punishment, what happens when some make use of their freedom not to pursue sobriety but instead to carry on having chemsex while adopting technical safeguards against harmful physical and psychological outcomes? Despite placing this clinic center stage, the film offers a very incomplete picture of 56 Dean Street’s work in failing to represent other aspects of its pastoral governance of chemsex, notably its educational programs in harm reduction.11 Instead, the film is fixated on the gradual conversion from chemsex to abstinence, or “sober sex,” and on Stuart’s framing of chemsex in terms of gay hurt and vulnerability. However, this view of chemsex appears to be mainly a personal conviction. The empirical research reveals a more complex picture: in particular, as many as a third of the men interviewed by Adam Bourne and colleagues, men who reported engaging in chemsex in the London boroughs of Lewisham, Lambeth, and Southwark, the center of London’s chemsex scene, reported “that they were happy with their sex lives” and “in control of their drug use and confident in their sexual abilities and body image.”12 To the very limited extent that any successfully self-managing chemsexers are represented in the film, it sets about to liquidate them in the most melodramatic of ways. I shall examine how this occurs in a segment of around 7 minutes about an hour into the film (59.20–1.06.00), which begins with the only example in the film of successfully s­ elf-managed chemsex on a significant scale: a sex party for twenty held in a large suburban villa on a quiet residential street in Bournemouth, which we first encounter while careful preparations are being made, some 10 ­minutes into the film. This is a very organized orgy of mainly middle-class professionals, with no faces shown to camera. “This is my party tonight, I’m hosting it […] So I have a spreadsheet […] and then I’ve got my G-o’clock timetable.” We see the spreadsheet, with names obscured, and notices being affixed to doors. This looks like a group of responsible gay men trying to establish a context of relative safety for illicit drug use, although even before the sex has started, the closing shots of a sunny Bournemouth beach are undercut by the raspingly dissonant

Prison Everywhere?  215 soundtrack. When the film returns to the south coast about fifty minutes later, the party has started. This is one of very few sequences in the film to suggest almost sexy sex—though here too, the soundtrack is used in a concerted attempt to spoil the fun—and to evoke the breathy euphoria of a well-managed high, with cocks that are at least semi-hard. Other forms of gay sociability are discernible here, alongside chemsex: the way the men hold their shot-glasses of G recalls a more sedate type of gay gathering and connects this particular sex party to a community which extends beyond illegal drugs and risky sex (Figure 11.2). Anthropologists and historians have shown how cultures which make use of strong drugs develop rituals to support, channel, and interpret altered states of experience. There is ample evidence of the existence of such artisanal structures of care and feeling within gay communities, as Kane Race has shown in two compelling monographs, and as I argued recently in the case of Michel Foucault’s entourage of queer narconauts in the late 1970s, who developed an autonomous structure of care that I call the “queer pharmatopia.”13 Back in Bournemouth, when some participants begin injecting, a voiceover confesses that “Slamming tina [injecting crystal methamphetamine] is a nice experience… bizarrely, there is something slightly sexual about the act of doing it… it’s quite intimate, it’s quite horny. Now I get a hard on while it’s, while it’s being prepared.” From a psychoanalytic perspective, there is nothing surprising about this associative eroticization of an adjacent object: this could be a textbook example of fetishism. Nor is it surprising from a radical queer perspective—consider the motif of Saint Sebastian as reinterpreted by Derek Jarman—that some gay men may desire their body to be permeable not only at its orifices to penetration but also through its skin, as it were by a multitude of pricks.14 Nevertheless, that “slamming tina” could be “a nice experience” and even a sexually arousing one is not testimony that this documentary can let stand, in part

Figure 11.2  Still from Chemsex (Fairman & Gogarty, color, 2015), “G o’clock” in Bournemouth.

216  Oliver Davis because the artisanal appropriation of medical technology in the form of the syringe is so socially stigmatized.15 This rare depiction of relatively safe self-managed chemsex, coupled with the voiceover’s direct articulation of one of the perverse pleasures involved, will be violently liquidated by the most frightening seriousness the film can muster: the exhibition of a bandaged arm from botched injecting which immediately follows, horror stories of self-mutilation and, to close the segment, Miguel’s episode of what Stuart frames as drug-induced psychosis, describing it as “a frightening thing.” We see a wild-eyed Miguel at home drawing curtains and checking doors to create the enclosed paranoid-persecutory interiority of a tweaker’s den, breaking off aghast mid-sentence after inadvertently uttering the word “recrystallized” (Figure 11.3). Naming the drug (“crystal”) aloud appears to intensify his state of anxiety, as though somebody could be listening, even though there is already a film crew in his flat. We see Miguel open his front door, as though to check for intruders. Although the film strongly encourages viewers to apply the folk diagnoses of “paranoia” and “psychosis” to Miguel in this scene and to see this as one of the pernicious pharmacological side effects of the drug, it may be worth asking what precisely Miguel could be afraid of here. Himself? Social opprobrium? The police? There is only one reference in Chemsex to the legal status of the substances involved, when the loveable Dick from Watford reminds viewers in passing that “the drugs are illegal.” Consistent with their pastoral mode of governance, the branding of the term “chemsex” by healthcare professionals replicates the gay community’s own permissively euphemistic parlance in substituting the word “chems” for the more stigmatized “drugs.” Yet in inviting viewers to interpret this harrowing episode as drug-induced psychosis produced by an interaction between the pharmacological properties of this substance and one individual’s

Figure 11.3  Still from Chemsex (Fairman & Gogarty, color, 2015), Miguel’s drug-induced psychosis.

Prison Everywhere?  217 brain, the film conveniently ignores the possibility that the prohibitionist legal context may be contributing to the suffering we witness. The idea that prohibition helps create psychosis was first advanced in some of the earliest critical scholarship on drug control. Writing in the late 1960s, Becker noted that the contemporary prevalence of reports of “psychotic episodes” attributed to LSD was comparable to the prevalence of similar reports when marijuana was first taken up in the United States in the 1920s but that when the number of marijuana smokers increased significantly such reports tended to disappear. Becker accordingly suggested that episodes of “drug-induced psychosis” were “either severe anxiety reactions to an event interpreted and experienced as insanity, or failures by the user to correct, in carrying out some ordinary action, the perceptual distortions caused by the drug” and noted that “Should the physician confirm this by diagnosing a ‘drug psychosis’, a vicious circle of increasingly validation of the diagnosis may occur.”16 In other words, the psy sciences can contribute to the content and form of such severe (“psychotic”) anxiety reactions by reducing the individual’s capacity to adjust to and assimilate the pharmacological effects of the drug. Jock Young made more explicit the connection between such reactions and prohibition in his rigorously argued plea for a “socio-pharmacological” understanding of drug-taking.17 Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the late 1960s on the effects of police action on marijuana use in Notting Hill, Young argued that the effects of drugs have to be understood beyond their pharmacological properties: The effects of drugs are undoubtedly related to the cultural milieu in which drugs are taken. A Welsh Rugby Club drinks to the point of libidinousness, an academic sherry party unveils the pointed gossip of competitiveness lurking under the mask of a community of scholars. Similarly […] marihuana smoked in the context of police persecution invites feelings which are paranoid and semi-psychotic. The drug subculture, by institutionalizing drug use, initially minimizes and controls psychotic episodes. But when the subculture itself has to become clandestine and cautious, paranoid episodes become written into the taken-for-granted nature of marihuana.18 To simplify Young’s proposition: prohibition + policing + pharmacology = psychosis. Moreover, the work of Becker and Young suggests that whichever drugs are positioned by a given society in the vanguard of danger are particularly susceptible to producing psychotic effects on an apparently individual basis. This is unquestionably a position currently held by the substance Miguel is shown using, crystal methamphetamine, although at earlier moments in Britain and the United States, a succession of other substances have stood at this summit: marijuana, LSD, heroin, crack cocaine.19

218  Oliver Davis It is difficult to envisage how scientifically reliable experiments could be devised to confirm the “socio-pharmacological” hypothesis about drug-taking which Young and Becker advanced, though psychiatrist Norman Zinberg made great strides in that direction. 20 The difficulty of understanding and experimentally verifying the relatively complex ­socio-pharmacological hypothesis may well account for the appeal of the much simpler models favored in prohibitionist discourse, which focus instead on the interaction between “the brain” and the pharmacological properties of the substance. Yet some anecdotal comparative evidence, of the sort which Becker relies on in describing the history of marijuana use in the United States, does exist in the case of methamphetamine: the state’s endorsement of the substance in Nazi Germany, for example, in the form of the Volksdroge Pertivin, seems to have occasioned individual side effects such as “burn-out” but nothing which resembles the form of paranoid-psychotic episode witnessed in Chemsex. 21 This suggests that Miguel’s breakdown must be contextualized within a society which has chosen to criminalize the use of certain drugs and to emphasize, as part of its pastoral governance of drug-taking, the acute individual dangers they pose. Pastoral governance, preferable though it is to coercion, may also feed “drug-induced” psychosis and rely tacitly on the prohibitionist framework which legitimates police action and occasions “paranoid” feelings of persecution: pastoral governance prefers to exploit ­drug-users’ fear of their own capacity for self-punishment rather than seeking to punish them directly. It has been suggested that pastoral approaches are especially well suited to governing subjects under neoliberalism. 22 A connection between chemsex and neoliberalism has been advanced by Jamie Hakim in an incisive study combining structured interviews with men involved in chemsex in London and analysis of media reporting. 23 Deepening the complex picture painted by Bourne and colleagues, Hakim also questions the dominant discourse which “pathologizes chemsex as primarily self-destructive” by showing that while empirical research confirms the presence of “sad affects” in some chemsex encounters, it also reveals a range of far more positive affective experiences: to focus only on the harm and sadness would be akin to reducing “British pub culture to alcoholism and pub fights.”24 Hakim argues that chemsex is intelligible as a response to conditions of life in contemporary “neoliberal London.”25 London is understood to be “neoliberal” in at least three fairly precise senses: (i) urban planning and the gentrification of the Vauxhall area have forced the closure of many gay sex-on-the-premises venues, driving orgiastic sex into private domestic space; (ii) the influx of global capital has also drawn flows of migrants to the city, and he notes there is a statistically significant increased prevalence of involvement in chemsex among recent gay immigrants, for whom the activity may be a quick way to form bonds; and (iii) neoliberalism encourages competitiveness

Prison Everywhere?  219 between individuals across all areas of life and lifestyle—entrenching and securitizing the individualization and isolation that characterized subject-formation under liberalism—from which pressures chemsex may offer momentary relief. I would add that some of the most harmful dimensions of chemsex also reflect pathologies of neoliberalism, in this third sense: an indifference to the fate of other people and especially the vulnerable, as well as the frenetic pursuit of what Nikolas Rose calls “lifestyle maximization,” here expressed through the pharmacological optimization of sexual performance and arousal and the quantitative accumulation of encounters, with hook-up apps being used to lure new participants not only during gatherings but even during sex, as well as the duration of some chemsex parties over several days, aping the conquest of sleep by “24/7” capitalism and preparing fertile ground for “psychotic” anxiety reactions. 26 Hakim understands chemsex as an intelligible way of negotiating the challenges of living a relatively human life in the increasingly hostile environment of neoliberalism. I have suggested that the pastoral governance of chemsex is also recognizably neoliberal: it appeals to the subject’s entrepreneurial capacity for self-improvement and tacitly utilizes, while also promising to disarm, a talent for self-punishment closely aligned with the wider culture’s prohibition of drugs and hatred of sex, punishment which may take the form of psychological or relationship breakdown, physical neglect or (self-)exclusion from more socially valued forms of salaried employment. 27 In Chemsex, it is Enrique the reformed addict and former commercial banker turned drug support worker whose story most clearly expresses this nexus of values. His experience of chemsex is summarized by an astonished voice off-camera: “So you’re a highly educated professional in your past with a BA and an MA and then you’re at a point where you’re selling your body.” Skeptical though viewers may be about the presumption that banking is more worthwhile than sex work, Enrique’s story most clearly expresses the neoliberal dimension to the pastoral governance of chemsex: his inability to hold down a lucrative professional position is figured as justified self-punishment for immoderate enjoyment of sex and drugs. The uses which pastoral governance also makes of coercive and ­punitive approaches are subtle. Far less subtle is the way in which (in)security professionals working in coercive branches of the governing ­apparatus have taken up the concept of chemsex. Stephen Morris of the London Prison and Probation Service has been described as their “lead for ­chemsex-related crime,” demonstrating that although chemsex may have been authored in a pastoral-therapeutic setting it has already been operationalized as a criminological category. 28 Commenting in the gay press on year-on-year rises of reported incidents in London of sexual assault in chemsex contexts between 2013 and 2016 in an article entitled “Sexual assaults linked to chemsex double in London,” Morris and the

220  Oliver Davis journalist entirely fail to contextualize this increase in relation to the twofold increase nationally in reported incidents of rape over the period 2012–2016. 29 The increase Morris mentions is thus in step with that national trend, to observe which is not to minimize the incidents registered by either set of data but to establish that Morris’s suggestion that the doubling is a phenomenon somehow particularly associated with chemsex is nonsense. In the same article, Morris is quoted as saying, “he knows of cases where images of child abuse have been shown,” although on this occasion, the journalist rightly qualifies the claim (“it’s unclear how widespread this is”).30 Of course, there may have been some such cases, yet the showing of images of child abuse can similarly be associated with a wide variety of other social contexts and practices, so in the absence of reliable numbers, Morris’s is not a significant observation, yet it nevertheless functions as a powerful slur. The example of Morris demonstrates how readily the concept of chemsex lends itself to redeployment for more overtly punitive governing purposes, as the inclusion of chemsex in the Home Office’s 2017 Drug Strategy confirmed.31

New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) One of the three principal chemsex drugs, mephedrone, was arguably also the first NPS and was banned in the UK in 2010. The campaign against NPS culminated in the passing of the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, at first sight a major victory for the prohibitionist cause. 32 Critics of the Act, Gary Potter and Caroline Chatwin, have complained that NPS names “an inherently vague category” of drugs and argued that this very vagueness inflates the size of the problem; Simon Elliott and colleagues, who can be presumed to support the legislation, similarly admit that NPS “make up a broad range of drugs—such as synthetic cannabinoids, opioids, benzodiazepines, and hallucinogens—that are not controlled under the international drug control system.”33 The category proved popular with the police, prison authorities, parliamentarians, and the media, who in the moral panic which led to the Act stoked public anxiety about the profusion of “legal highs,” “designer drugs,” or “research chemicals” freely available for purchase from high street and online retailers. These were relatively cheap drugs often expressly designed to mimic the effects of substances controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. No sooner had one such substance been banned than drug developers would release a modified version with a slightly different chemical composition but similar effects. Over some five years, the press looked on with varying degrees of moral outrage at this cat-and-mouse game between the authorities and shadowy drug developers, often locating the labs of the latter in India and China—as though this were an Oriental conspiracy. The Act which resulted introduced a “blanket ban” on the consumption, importation, exportation,

Prison Everywhere?  221 production, and supply of all psychoactive substances other than those normally consumed as food, with named exceptions including alcohol and tobacco; it also criminalized the possession of NPS in prisons. The Act was developed in the aftermath of the sacking in 2009 of Professor David Nutt (as Chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs), following a series of disputes with the Home Secretary and press outrage after he had pleaded for an evidence-based evaluation of drug harms to be the basis of drug-control policy and suggested that Ecstasy was not more dangerous than “Equasy,” horse riding.34 Alex Stevens and Fiona Measham characterize that political climate by the following tendency: “When evidence conflicts with the preference for toughness, toughness is likely to win, despite rhetorical commitments to evidence-based policy.”35 Indeed, as the Psychoactive Substances Bill was debated in Parliament, it gradually emerged that the Advisory Council—the relevant statutory body of scientific experts—had only been approached after the legislation had been drafted and only then to supply a workable definition of psychoactivity rather than for its expert view of the Bill and the policy approach it embodied. Instead of listening to the scientific experts, parliamentarians were enjoined by Home Office ministers to heed “experts” of a different kind. Lord Condon, former Met Chief and subsequently deputy chairman of the private security company G4S, volunteered in the House of Lords: “I spoke yesterday to the chief constable of Hertfordshire, Andy Bliss, who leads for the police service on these issues, and the police are adamant that there is a real need for this legislation as soon as possible.”36 He did not say why the police were “adamant,” nor why they deemed this particular policy approach better than others and nobody asked him, but the voice of Andy Bliss rang out, unchallenged, advancing the police’s unargued case that a ban would be for the best. In the Commons, Home Office minister Mike Penning asserted that “We need to listen to the experts”—not the scientists but “the people who deal with secure estates [prisons and detention centers] on a day-to-day basis. If they say that the substances are a major issue not only in that they are a currency in the estates but because of the safety of staff, visitors, and prisoners, we need to act.” The Commons committee convened to scrutinize the Bill was chaired by Sir David Amess, who had been captured in 1997 on Chris Morris’s Brass Eye championing an immediate ban on a new drug called “Cake.” Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons released a major report in December 2015, as the Bill was still working its way through Parliament, on the problems caused by NPS in the prisons of England and Wales, key conclusions of which were cited in the House of Lords debate. Foremost among these was the headline finding that “NPS have created significant additional harm and are now the most serious threat to the safety and security of the prison system that our inspections identify.”37 To

222  Oliver Davis be clear: the most serious threat to the UK prison system was neither overcrowding nor underresourcing, nor the steady and ongoing decline in the provision of “purposeful activity” within prisons, but that some prisoners were getting high. The Chief Inspector of Prisons asserted in his introductory remarks that “There is no prospect of any relaxation of the rules governing the substances that are permitted in prisons and so there is an urgent requirement to address the harm that substance misuse causes in prisons in that realistic context.” (p. 7) This circumscribed remit of the report precluded its entertaining the possibility that it may be such prohibitionist rules themselves, in prison as in the wider society, which significantly contribute to the social and individual harm produced by drugs. Yet if the report was scrupulous in remaining within these prohibitionist terms of reference, it was quite happy to grossly overstep its remit by formally recommending that NPS should be banned “in the community,” in other words in the world outside prison: Urgent action should be taken to reduce the harm caused by new psychoactive substances (NPS), particularly synthetic cannabis. This should include: (a) Measures to reduce the attractiveness and profits of supply by: Quickly introducing legislation that […] bans harmful psychoactive substances and so reduces the attractiveness of supply […].38 To preserve order in prisons and the symbolic efficacy of prison as punishment, society as a whole must be realigned with prison norms: the price of saving prison is to make everywhere more like it. Sceptics about prohibitionist drug policy will not be surprised to learn that, two years after it came into force, the Psychoactive Substances Act has singularly failed to solve the problem of NPS in prisons, according to a Prisons Service spokesman: responding to reports of the hospitalization of five staff from Kirklevington Prison in North East England and news of 140 incidents of staff “exposure” at nearby Holme House, he acknowledged that “the use of spice and other psychoactive drugs is on the rise.”39 In July 2018, Justice Secretary David Gauke delivered a speech to the right-wing policy pressure group, the Centre for Social Justice, a leading entrepreneur of the moral panic around NPS in prison which had prepared the ground for the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016.40 In his lengthy remarks on tackling drugs in prison, Gauke did not mention the Act but instead revived the pre-Act moral panic discourse by singling out NPS as a major cause of violent disorder in prisons and reframing the problem as one of organized criminality within prisons that can be addressed by technical solutions including a “Drugs Taskforce” of investigators and security consultants deployed to problem prisons, a new system of data-driven individualized prisoner

Prison Everywhere?  223 risk assessment, which categorizes prisoners according to the risk of their likely involvement in organized crime, improved search techniques and jamming mobile phone signals to disrupt the “criminal networks” now said to be mainly responsible.41 This proliferation of new measures is tantamount to an admission that the Act failed to solve the problem of NPS in prisons. Beyond prison, anticipation of the Act’s coming into force closed down the high street shops and UK-based clearnet retailers who had been selling NPS; most prosecutions under the Act for supply appear to have involved nitrous oxide, a substance caught up in the Act’s definition of psychoactivity without being one of its main policy targets.42 The 2017 statistics for drug-related deaths in Scotland show that since the Act came into force, the number of deaths in which NPS were implicated has risen rather than fallen, from 286 in 2016 to 337 in 2017; however, in just five of these, no other substances were recorded as involved.43 In their report on the 2017 figures for drug-related deaths in England and Wales, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) claimed that “Deaths involving cocaine and fentanyl continued to rise while deaths related to new psychoactive substances halved in 2017,” from 123 in 2016 to 61 in 2017.44 This disparity can be explained in part by the greater consistency of approach to investigating and recording the cause of these deaths in Scotland—the Scottish figures may be more accurate—as well as by historically much higher rates of drug-related mortality in Scotland.45 However, it may also be the case that the ONS significantly overstated the extent of the decline in NPS use in England and Wales in its 2017 report. I shall briefly probe the way the ONS reached its stark but dubious conclusion that NPS use fell by half in England and Wales in 2017 and make three observations about the reliability of its current approach to classifying NPS. The data tables behind the ONS report for 2017 reveal first that GHB is being counted as a NPS despite the fact that it is already controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act (as a Class C substance) and that there was a sharp decline in deaths involving GHB in England and Wales from 30 in 2016 to 17 in 2017. Since available evidence suggests that GHB is probably mainly used by gay men involved in chemsex,46 if anyone can the take credit for this portion of the total decline in NPS use (20%), it is those healthcare professionals who have developed the pastoral governance of chemsex. Second, figures for deaths involving synthetic cannabinoids, the subcategory of NPS most relevant in prison contexts, fell by only a small amount (from 27 in 2016 to 24 in 2017). Third, the ONS has taken a very peculiar and in my view inconsistent and indefensible approach to the classification of fentanyl analogue-­ related deaths, of which there were 31 in 2017, up from one in 2016.

224  Oliver Davis The ONS has chosen to count most of these deaths under the category of opiate deaths rather than as NPS deaths, stating in their report (p. 13) that 27 of the 31 fentanyl analogue deaths in 2017 were caused by the fentanyl analogue carfentanyl and that 2017 was the first year in which this substance was mentioned on death certificates. However, within the ONS’s own definition of the category NPS is a subcategory for “Novel opiates,” under which two deaths were counted in 2017. While the ONS has chosen to classify the two fentanyl analogues, acetylfentanyl and furanylfentanyl, as NPS, in 2017, it decided to take a different approach to a third fentanyl analogue, carfentanyl, counting these deaths under its “opiates” category rather than as NPS deaths in the subcategory “Novel opiates.” Had the carfentanyl deaths been classified consistently with its own previous practice, as NPS deaths, then the overall reduction from 2017 to 2016 would have been not by half but by a quarter and, as I have already shown, almost all of that (20% of the total reduction) is attributable to rapid reduction in mortality related to the use of G. Any reduction in drug-related deaths is welcome, but in evaluating the effectiveness of the prohibitionist approach embodied in the blanket ban introduced by the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, the most significant figures are those for the total number of drug-related deaths across all categories of drug: in England and Wales, this figure continued to rise, from 3744 in 2016 to 3756 in 2017, and in Scotland, it rose from 867 in 2016 to 934 in 2017, the highest number ever recorded. While a small proportion of these deaths were deliberate, most were accidental overdoses and many were likely caused by the adulteration of traditional controlled substances such as heroin with more potent and cheaper synthetic analogues, as in the case of the highly toxic substance carfentanyl, considered to be around 10,000 times as potent an analgesic as morphine.47 Because the prohibitionist approach to drug control prevents widespread testing of substances to ensure their purity from such adulterants and inhibits educating known and potential users in harm reduction strategies (notably the use of naloxone, which could significantly reduce accidental overdoses of opiates and synthetic opioids), it is responsible for a rising UK annual drug death toll fast approaching five thousand. The moral panic around NPS failed to acknowledge that NPS largely owe their existence as a threat to public health and prison order to earlier generations of prohibitionist policy-making. Prohibition has led to a proliferation of often far more pharmacologically toxic analogue drugs: synthetic cannabinoids, of which the Act has spectacularly failed to rid British prisons, are considerably more potent than the marijuana which they try to imitate. Yet instead of recognizing the vicious circularity in their prohibitionist approach, ill-informed and grandstanding lawmakers from all major parties chose to respond by further tightening prohibition.

Prison Everywhere?  225 The blanket ban introduced by the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 may have allowed lawmakers to look as though they were being tough on drugs and resolute in their protection of the vulnerable, but I am afraid close examination of the mortality figures and the ways in which they are derived tell a very different story: the death toll under prohibition continues to rise. The Psychoactive Substances Act sought to restore order in prisons and to imprison suppliers of NPS in the wider community: it was overtly coercive and punitive in its approach, as in some of the contexts with which it was primarily concerned. Less apparent were its pastoral and pedagogical overtones. Nicholas Burgess argues that the Act was an example of “negative symbolic” lawmaking, whereby a legislature attempts “to transmit to the public an uncompromising message about what constitutes legitimate behaviour, based on what politicians themselves subjectively see as right and wrong.”48 Analysis of the political rhetoric deployed by representatives of both main parties supports this claim: Labour Home Office Shadow Minister Lyn Brown spoke of the need for the Act to “get across the vital message that psychoactive substances can be, and often are, very dangerous” and Mike Penning for the Home Office said that when he met with authorities from the Republic of Ireland, which had instituted a similar blanket ban in 2010, “One of the biggest things they said was that we need to get the message out there.”49 These are just two indicative examples of very many moments at which parliamentarians construed lawmaking in terms of “sending a message” to the governed and exerted themselves in trying to disambiguate its content, to ensure the message was not “mixed,” just as advertisers or “comms” technicians seek the most effective way to “message” and “hook” their target audience, or as a superior seeks to give effective instructions to a subordinate. Stevens and Measham argue that governments often use drug policy to “send a tough message,” to be seen to be “tough” in their “quest” to protect parliamentarians behaved as a superior governing elite whose task was to lead and “message,” rather than represent, the electorate. Expressed in the terms of Jacques Rancière’s critique, in their frenzy to “message” the people, Britain’s governing classes actualized the anti-democratic tendency inherent in representative liberal democracy: to decay into a “police order” of managerialist governance.50

Conclusion: Drugs and Governance It has taken a round hundred years to tighten the noose of prohibitionist law in Britain. In the midst of the First World War, Paragraph 40B of the Defence of the Realm Act 1916 marked a signal change to British drug policy by introducing the strict offense of possession, thereby criminalizing not only unauthorized suppliers but also end users of controlled

226  Oliver Davis drugs.51 The Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 asserted that the governed may only use those intoxicants expressly permitted by the authorities. Although the 2016 Act significantly advanced the prohibitionist cause, in its excessively wide reach, in the disregard of expert scientific evidence on which it was based, in its spectacular failure to solve the problem of NPS in prisons and in the subsequent continuing rise in the total number of drug-related deaths in the UK, this Act is beginning to look more like the hubristic expression of lawmakers’ vanity. Some two years after the Act came into force, in this concluding section, I consider my two case studies together to ask in what circumstances drugs can be useful for governance and what general conclusions may be drawn from the studies about what I call governance. In the case of chemsex and NPS alike, moral panic about drug-taking can serve as a convenient distraction from the deeper-rooted social and individual difficulties of which it may be merely a surface manifestation: in the case of chemsex, the closure with gentrification of gay community venues that once supported semi-public sex and the generalized obligation on subjects to optimize every aspect of their lives and lifestyles; in the case of NPS, the fixation on drugs as the root of all evil in prisons deflects attention away from cuts to prison funding and closes off discussion of principled egalitarian and abolitionist arguments to the effect that mass imprisonment is now central to the contemporary management of social inequality.52 The pastoral governance of chemsex at least purports to look for root causes, even if its determination to see these as just so many modulations of a universal gay vulnerability limits the epistemological nuance and ethical value of this search. By contrast, the coercive governance of NPS involves the never-ending quest for more effective technical means of control: in the aftermath of the failure of the 2016 Act to solve the problem of NPS in prisons, we need “Drugs Taskforces” and the panoply of other costly security measures enumerated by Gauke. The moral entrepreneurship of chemsex and NPS both involve claims for resources: 56 Dean Street’s “branding” of chemsex and theirs as a paradigm-shifting approach to it is bound up with claims for funding in a cash-starved NHS. The coercive governance of NPS creates numerous new opportunities for (in)security experts: consultants are hired to advise on new security solutions for individual prisons; X-ray body scanners costing tens of thousands each are purchased, along with associated service and training contracts; similarly with mobile phone blocking devices; and new drug tests and testing regimes are developed and implemented. In February 2018, 15% of Britain’s 86,000 prisoners were housed in private prisons run variously by G4S, SERCO, and Sodexo.53 The 2014 G4S annual report contains the following veiled admission: “We will be implementing a process for political risk management to ensure that we are monitoring regulatory and other emerging political risks

Prison Everywhere?  227 within our key markets. This process will be supported by a program to enhance our engagement with regulators, politicians, and political influencers across the group. G4S continues to liaise with relevant governments and authorities to positively influence the regulatory environments in which we work.”54 This indicates prohibitionist lobbying operations on an unspecified scale: the nexus of corporate and government interests comprising the security establishment had much to gain from the tightening of prohibition effected by 2016 Act, especially since it failed to solve the problem of NPS in prisons and paved the way for investment in the panoply of new coercive measures enumerated by Gauke. Drugs can also be useful to governance in so far as they can be used to mark out individuals and communities, increasing their likely susceptibility to police investigation—as the French police officer’s question to Foucault’s fellow activist suggested. There is ample evidence that Richard Nixon devised his “War on Drugs” partly for these reasons. 55 However, my two case studies suggest that the use of drugs to mark individuals is only useful to governance in circumstances in which it is both technically possible and politically viable to investigate: relatively affluent, mainly white, gay male residents of central London boroughs are protected both by these various facets of their social identity and by the lack of a political mandate for more muscular policing approaches, which would risk triggering defensive community mobilization against police homophobia. (One could envisage a more coercive governance of chemsex involving infiltration of networks, raids on orgies-in-progress, and updated versions of the techniques of police entrapment routinely deployed against the gay community in the UK as recently as the 1980s.) Under such conditions, the pastoral approach is far more effective. In the case of NPS, the absence of a reliable drug test for key synthetic cannabinoids had made them the preferred choice of prisoners seeking to circumvent the regime of mandatory drug testing instituted in UK prisons in 1996.56 Although urine tests for a limited range of common synthetic cannabinoids do now exist, the chemical composition of these substances can be adjusted in response. Prison is a coercive institution par excellence, the anchor to which are tethered all of the lighter forms of governance, including the administrative, psychotechnical, and pastoral. It is by no means, however, a purely coercive institution. It is acknowledged to have a psychotechnical efficacy (as “deterrent”) that relies on it being represented in the wider culture as an ordeal: prisoners cannot be seen to experience enjoyment, except perhaps in their own rehabilitation. Prison anchors governance by making the threat of coercion resonate through its lighter forms. Foucault’s “carceral continuum,” which I am rearticulating here, is often assumed to apply only to nineteenth-century disciplinary societies and to have been long since surpassed: for example, Rose suggests that today “individuals are to be governed through their freedom” and I have shown

228  Oliver Davis how this operates in the pastoral governance of chemsex.57 Similarly, Foucault suggested that while pastoral power had been effective in ecclesiastical contexts over many centuries, it was subsumed into modern state governance, or “governmentality,” as its individualizing function.58 Yet my analysis of chemsex suggests that there is still scope today for recognizably pastoral techniques of governance, which also draw tacitly on punitive and coercive approaches, subtly in the form of individuals’ capacity for self-punishment or more directly in the use of chemsex as a criminological category. The contrast between the two predominant types of governance in my case studies is telling: socially privileged chemsexers currently enjoy therapeutic interventions which proceed more or less as Rose describes, by seeking to govern them through their own freedom. Less socially privileged prisoners already confined in punitive environments are subjected to far more coercive forms of control. However, the predominant form of governance in each case is overlaid with other forms: the coercive is audible within the mainly pastoral governance of chemsex, indirectly in Stuart’s clinical practice and very directly in interventions by the likes of Morris; conversely, the mainly coercive Psychoactive Substances Act also carried overtones of the pastoral, as though the political class wanted to send a clear message of threat and warning to its entire flock. Chemsex and NPS challenge governance by establishing bad secessionary spaces which instantiate zones of insurrectionary indifference to its rule. The secession enacted by participants in a drug-fueled gay orgy is different, of course, from the escapism of a prisoner getting high, yet both are affronts to an order of governance which aspires to complete saturation of the social: governance everywhere, prison everywhere.

Notes 1 Michel Foucault, “La prison partout,” in Le Groupe d’information sur les prisons: archives d’une lutte 1970–1972, ed. Philippe Artières et al. (Paris: IMEC, 2003), 79. All translations my own. 2 Stuart Walton, Intoxicology. A Cultural History of Drink and Drugs, unpaginated Kindle ed. (London: Dean Street Press, 2016), Chap. 1. Michael Gossop, Living with Drugs, 6th ed. (Aldershot: Ashgate2007), 179. 3 Howard Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (New York: The Free Press, 1963), 142, 162. 4 ‘Moral panic’ theory was initiated in Becker, Outsiders, Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2002 [1972]) and Jock Young, The Drugtakers. The Social Meaning of Drug Use (London: Paladin, 1971) and developed by Stuart Hall and Simon Watney, among others. For summaries of those developments and further elaboration of their own, see Anglela McRobbie and Sarah Thornton, “Rethinking ‘Moral Panic’ for Multi-Mediated Social Worlds,” The British Journal of Sociology 46, no. 4 (1995), 559–74 and Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). Although

Prison Everywhere?  229 McRobbie and Thornton argue that one of the distinguishing features of moral panics in the 1990s, as opposed to the 1970s, was the production by those targeted of “their own media as a counter to what they perceive as the biased media of the mainstream” (568), it is noteworthy that—­setting aside a purely technical use of social media to facilitate encounters or p ­ urchases— neither chemsex nor NPS has yet occasioned production of significant “counter-discourses” (564). 5 Hannah McCall et al., “What is Chemsex and Why Does It Matter?” The BMJ (3 November 2015), 351. doi:10.1136/bmj.h5790 (this and all subsequent internet sources accessed 15 July 2018). 6 Sammy Harari, “AIDS Iceberg,” https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watchaids-iceberg-1987-online. I am grateful to Maurice Nagington for drawing my attention to the anxiogenic effects of the bass drum specifically at a workshop on chemsex he and Alex Dymock organized at RHUL (12 July 2018), under the auspices of Dymock’s Pharmacosexuality research project, and to the other participants for their comments on my presentation of part of this chapter. I am grateful to Susannah Wilson and Alex Dymock for their comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 7 Natalie Robehmed, “Vice Media’s Shane Smith Is Now a Billionaire,” Forbes, 20 June 2017, www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2017/06/20/ vice-medias-shane-smith-is-now-a-billionaire/#10be52b8611b. 8 Daniele Alcinii, “Channel 5, Vice Studios UK Link on Three-Part Cocaine Docuseries,” Realscreen (12 March 2018), http://realscreen.com/2018/03/12/ channel-5-vice-studios-uk-link-on-three-part-cocaine-docuseries/. 9 David Halperin, What Do Gay Men Want? An Essay on Sex, Risk, and Subjectivity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009). The classic statement of the assumption that gay men are wounded and vulnerable subjects is Didier Eribon, Insult and the Making of the Gay Self, trans. Michael Lucey (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004). 10 Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–78, trans. Graham Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 173–4. 11 56 Dean St, “About ChemSex support,” http://dean.st/chemsex-support/. 12 Adam Bourne et al., The Chemsex Study: Drug Use in Sexual Settings among Gay and Bisexual Men in Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham (London: Sigma Research, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 2014), 47, http://sigmaresearch.org.uk/files/report2014a.pdf. 13 Kane Race, Pleasure Consuming Medicine: The Queer Politics of Drugs (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009) and Gay Science: Intimate Experiments with the Problem of HIV. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018. Oliver Davis, “Foucault and the Queer Pharmatopia,” in After Foucault: Culture, Theory, and Criticism in the 21st Century, ed. Lisa Downing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 170–84. 14 Derek Jarman and Paul Humfress, Sebastiane (1hr15m, 1976). 15 See Susannah Wilson’s chapter in this volume. 16 Howard Becker, “Social Bases of Drug-Induced Experiences,” Journal of Health and Social Behaviour 8 (1967), 163–76, 168, 176. 17 Young, The Drugtakers, 95. Although empirical research into controlled drug use is swamped by the volume of research into drug harms, psychiatrist Norman Zinberg’s experiments, which began in the late 1960s, broadly confirmed the conclusions reached by Becker and Young. Norman Zinberg, Drug, Set, and Setting. The Basis for Controlled Intoxicant Use (New ­Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984). 18 Young, The Drugtakers, 193.

230  Oliver Davis 19 A Newsweek article (7 August 2005) declared the substance “America’s Most Dangerous Drug.” www.newsweek.com/americas-most-dangerousdrug-117493. The position of crystal methamphetamine at the forefront of danger and pathology in the following decade is indicated by Paul Manning’s study of around 320,000 drug videos available on YouTube between December 2011 and March 2012: of those featuring crystal methamphetamine not one could be classed as ‘celebratory,’ compared, for example, with 22% of the videos about Ecstasy. Paul Manning, Drugs and Popular Culture in the Age of New Media (London: Routledge, 2014), 164. ­Nicholas Parsons suggests that US “meth mania” in the late 1990s and early 2000s was fueled by the way in which the drug could be instrumentalized in media reporting to interweave three hotly contested issues of concern—gay marriage, illegal immigration (‘Mexican traffickers’) and environmental pollution (produced by clandestine meth labs)—and argues that where this substance was concerned by 2006, the US audience had reached its “media saturation point.” Nicholas L. Parsons, Meth Mania: A History of Methamphetamine (Boulder. CO: Lynne Rienner, 2014), 181, 166. 20 Zinberg, Drug, Set, and Setting. 21 Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany, trans. Shaun Whiteside (London: Allen Lane, 2016), 1, 72. Until it was banned in 1941, following adverse British media coverage, the drug was enthusiastically endorsed by a regime which simultaneously interned users of other drugs in concentration camps and executed them as mental defectives: Pertivin “was marketed as a kind of counter-drug to replace all drugs, particularly illegal ones,” (ibid., 39). 2 2 George Sanders, “HELP FOR THE SOUL: Pastoral Power and a ­Purpose-Driven Discourse,” Journal of Cultural Economy 5, no. 3 (2012), 321–35, 322. 23 Jamie Hakim, “The Rise of Chemsex: Queering Collective Intimacy in Neoliberal London,” Cultural Studies 32 (2018). doi:10.1080/09502386.2018. 1435702. 24 Ibid., 3, 14. 25 Ibid., 19. 26 Nikolas Rose, “Governing ‘advanced’ Liberal Democracies,” in Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government, eds. Barry Osborne and Nikolas Rose (London: UCL Press, 1996), 37–64, 59. Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep (London: Verso, 2013). 27 On the neoliberal subject as “entrepreneur of the self,” see Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–1979, trans by Graham Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 226. 28 Jamie Wareham, “Sexual Assaults Linked to Chemsex Double in London,” Gay Star News (15 September 2017), www.gaystarnews.com/article/­chemsexsexual-assaults-double-london/#gs.kIWsZHk. 29 Vikram Dodd and Helena Bengtsoon, “Reported rapes in England and Wales Double in Four Years,” The Guardian (13 October 2016), www. theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/13/reported-rapes-in-england-andwales-double-in-five-years. 30 Wareham, “Sexual Assaults Linked to Chemsex.” 31 Home Office, Drug Strategy 2017, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/628148/Drug_ strategy_2017.PDF, 15. 32 The Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/2/ contents/enacted. The Act was granted Royal Assent on 28 January 2016 and came into force on 26 May 2016.

Prison Everywhere?  231 33 Gary Potter and Caroline Chatwin, “Not Particularly Special: Critiquing ‘NPS’ as a Category of Drugs,” Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy 25, no. 4 (2018), 329–36, 329, 332. Simon Elliott et al., “Assessing the Toxicological Significance of New Psychoactive Substances in Fatalities,” Drug Testing and Analysis 10, no. 1 (2018), 120–26, 120. 34 David Nutt, “Equasy—An Overlooked Addiction with Implications for the Current Debate on Drug Harms,” Journal of Psychopharmacology 23, no. 1 (2009), 3–5. See also Will Haydock’s chapter in this volume. 35 Alex Stevens and Fiona Measham, “The ‘drug policy ratchet’: Why Do Sanctions for New Psychoactive Drugs Typically Only Go Up?” Addiction 109 (2014), 1226–32, 1230. 36 Hansard, vol. 762 (23 June 2015), column 1481. https://­hansard. p a r l i a m e n t . u k / L o r d s / 2 0 1 5 - 0 6 - 2 3 / d e b a t e s / 1 5 0 6 2 3 55 0 0 0 8 2 7/ PsychoactiveSubstancesBill(HL) 37 Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons, Changing Patterns of Substance Misuse in Adult Prisons and Service Responses, December 2015, www.­ justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/inspections/changing-patterns-ofsubstance-misuse-in-adult-prisons-and-service-responses/, 7, emphasis added. 38 HMIP, Changing Patterns, Recommendation 1.23, 15–16. 39 Naomi Corrigan, “Prison Officer Speaks Out on Spice,” Evening Gazette, 25 June 2018. 40 Centre for Social Justice, Drugs in Prison (2015), www.centreforsocial justice.org.uk/core/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/CSJJ3090_Drugs_in_ Prison.pdf. 41 David Gauke MP, “Justice Secretary launches fresh crackdown on crime in prison—speech,” (10 July 2018) www.gov.uk/government/speeches/justicesecretary-launches-fresh-crackdown-on-crime-in-prison-speech. 42 Freedom of Information requests suggest that in the 6 months following its coming into force, 71% of arrests under the Act in London have related to nitrous oxide (“laughing gas”), which was swept up in its blanket ban without being among its main targets. Jack Harry, “The Psychoactive S­ ubstances Act is mostly helping London police arrest NOS sellers,” www.vice.com/ en_uk/article/nzzn3k/the-psychoactive-substances-act-is-mostly-helping-­ london-police-arrest-nos-sellers. 43 National Records of Scotland, “Drug Related Deaths in Scotland in 2016,” www.nrscotland.gov.uk/files//statistics/drug-related-deaths/drd2016/drugrelated-deaths-16-pub.pdf, 73 and “Drug-Related Deaths in Scotland in 2017,” www.nrscotland.gov.uk/files//statistics/drug-related-deaths/17/drugrelated-deaths-17-pub.pdf, 74. 44 Office for National Statistics, “Deaths Related to Drug Poisoning in England and Wales: 2017 Registrations,” www.ons.gov.uk/­peoplepopulationandcommunity/ birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/­deathsrelatedtodrugpoisoningineng landandwales/2017registrations, “Main points,” p.3. 45 John Corkery, “UK Drug-Related Mortality – Issues in Definition and ­Classification,” Drugs and Alcohol Today 8, no. 2 (2008), 17–25, 22. 46 Joanna Hockenhull et al., “An Observed Rise in γ-Hydroxybutyrate-­Associated Deaths in London: Evidence to Suggest a Possible Link with Concomitant Rise in Chemsex,” Forensic Science International 270 (2017), 93–97. 47 WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence, “Carfentanil: Critical Review Report,” (2017) www.who.int/medicines/access/controlled-substances/ Critical_Review_Carfentanil.pdf, p. 6. 48 Nicholas Burgess, “The Lost Symbol: A Semiotic Analysis of the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016,” Aberdeen Student Law Review 7 (2017), 109– 20, 116.

232  Oliver Davis 49 Hansard, vol. 604 (20 January 2016), columns 1455 and 1478. https:// hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2016-01-20/debates/16012033000003/ PsychoactiveSubstancesBill(Lords). 50 Jacques Rancière, Hatred of Democracy, trans. Steve Corcoran (London: Verso, 2009). 51 Walton, Intoxicology, Chap. 1. 52 Didier Fassin, Prison Worlds: An Ethnography of the Carceral Condition, trans. Rachel Gomme (Cambridge: Polity, 2017), 23. 53 Jonathan Ford and Gill Plimmer, “Momentum Stalls on UK’s Private Prisons,” Financial Times, 12 February 2018, www.ft.com/content/3c356914-0d9c11e8-839d-41ca06376bf2 54 G4S, Annual Report and Accounts (2014), 48. http://annualreport2014. g4s.com/pdfs/g4s-2014-ara.pdf 55 Richard Davenport-Hines, The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics (New York: Norton, 2002), 421. 56 Rob Ralphs et al., “Adding Spice to the Porridge: The Development of a Synthetic Cannabinoid Market in an English Prison,” International Journal of Drug Policy 40 (2017), 57–69, 59. 57 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Penguin, 1991), 303. Rose, “Governing ‘advanced’ Liberal Democracies,” 41. 58 Michel Foucault, “Omnes et singulatim: Towards a Criticism of ‘political reason,’” The Tanner Lectures on Human Values (Stanford, CA, October 1979), 239. https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/f/foucault81. pdf. Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” Critical Inquiry 8 (1982), 777–95, 783.

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Prison Everywhere?  233 Eribon, Didier. Insult and the Making of the Gay Self. Translated by Michael Lucey. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. Fairman, William, and Max Gogarty. Chemsex. 2015. 1hr19m. Fassin, Didier. Prison Worlds: An Ethnography of the Carceral Condition. Translated by Rachel Gomme. Cambridge: Polity, 2017. Foucault, Michel. “La prison partout.” In Le Groupe d’information sur les prisons: archives d’une lutte 1970–1972, edited by Philippe Artières, Laurent Quéro, and Michelle Zancarini-Fournel, 79. Paris: IMEC, 2003. ———. “Omnes et singulatim: Towards a Criticism of ‘political reason.’” The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Stanford, CA, October 1979. https://­ tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/f/foucault81.pdf ———. Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the Collège de France, ­1977–78. Translated by Graham Burchell. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. ———. “The Subject and Power.” Critical Inquiry 8 (1982): 777–95. Goode, Erich, and Ben-Yehuda, Nachman. Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance, 2nd ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Gossop, Michael. Living with Drugs, 6th ed. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Hakim, Jamie. “The Rise of Chemsex: Queering Collective Intimacy in Neoliberal London.” Cultural Studies 32 (2018). doi: 10.1080/09502386.2018.1435702. Halperin, David. What Do Gay Men Want? An Essay on Sex, Risk, and Subjectivity. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009. Hansard, vol. 604 (20 January 2016), columns 1455 and 1478. https://hansard.parliament.uk /Commons/2016- 01-20/debates/16012033000003/ PsychoactiveSubstancesBill(Lords) Hansard, vol. 762 (23 June 2015), column 1481. https://hansard.parliament.uk/ Lords/2015-06-23/debates/15062355000827/PsychoactiveSubstancesBill(HL) Harari, Sammy. “AIDS Iceberg.” https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-aidsiceberg-1987-online. Hockenhull, Joanna, Kevin Murphy, and Sue Paterson. “An Observed Rise in γ-Hydroxybutyrate-Associated Deaths in London: Evidence to Suggest a Possible Link with Concomitant Rise in Chemsex,” Forensic Science International 270 (2017): 93–97. Home Office. Drug Strategy 2017. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/­ government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/628148/Drug_ strategy_2017.PDF Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons. Changing Patterns of Substance Misuse in Adult Prisons and Service Responses. December 2015. www.justicein spectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/inspections/changing-patterns-of-substance-­ misuse-in-adult-prisons-and-service-responses/. Manning, Paul. Drugs and Popular Culture in the Age of New Media. London: Routledge, 2014. McCall, Hannah, Naomi Adams, David Maon, and Jamie Wills. “What is Chemsex and Why Does It Matter?” The BMJ (3 November 2015): 351. doi:10.1136/bmj.h5790. National Records of Scotland. “Drug Related Deaths in Scotland in 2016.” www.nrscotland.gov.uk/files//statistics/drug-related-deaths/drd2016/drugrelated-deaths-16-pub.pdf ———. “Drug-Related Deaths in Scotland in 2017.” www.nrscotland.gov.uk/ files//statistics/drug-related-deaths/17/drug-related-deaths-17-pub.pdf.

234  Oliver Davis Nutt, David. “Equasy – An Overlooked Addiction with Implications for the Current Debate on Drug Harms.” Journal of Psychopharmacology 23, no. 1 (2009): 3–5. Ohler, Norman. Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany. Translated by Shaun Whiteside. London: Allen Lane, 2016. Parsons, Nicholas. Meth Mania: A History of Methamphetamine. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2014. Potter, Gary, and Caroline Chatwin. “Not Particularly Special: Critiquing “NPS” as a Category of Drugs.” Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy 25, no. 4 (2018): 329–36. Psychoactive Substances Act 2016. www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/2/ contents/enacted. Race, Kane. Gay Science: Intimate Experiments with the Problem of HIV. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018. ———. Pleasure Consuming Medicine: The Queer Politics of Drugs. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. Rancière, Jacques. Hatred of Democracy. Translated by Steve Corcoran. ­London: Verso, 2009. Rose, Nikolas. “Governing ‘advanced’ Liberal Democracies.” In Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government, edited by Barry Osborne and Nikolas Rose, 37–64. London: UCL Press, 1996. Sanders, George. “Help for the Soul: Pastoral Power and a Purpose-Driven ­Discourse.” Journal of Cultural Economy 5, no. 3 (2012): 321–35. Stevens, Alex, and Fiona Measham. “The ‘drug policy ratchet’: Why Do ­Sanctions for New Psychoactive Drugs Typically Only Go Up?” Addiction 109 (2014): 1226–32. Walton, Stuart. Intoxicology. A Cultural History of Drink and Drugs, unpaginated Kindle ed. London: Dean Street Press, 2016. WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence. “Carfentanil: Critical R ­ eview Report.” 2017. www.who.int/medicines/access/controlled-substances/­Critical_ Review_Carfentanil.pdf. Young, Jock. The Drugtakers. The Social Meaning of Drug Use. London: ­Paladin, 1971. Zinberg, Norman. Drug, Set, and Setting. The Basis for Controlled Intoxicant Use. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984.

12 From Harm to Psychoactivity The Clarity of Morality in the 2016 Psychoactive Substances Act1 Will Haydock Introduction In 1971, the Misuse of Drugs Act (MDA) became law in the UK. 2 In 2016, Parliament approved a new law designed to complement the 1971 Act in response to changes in patterns of use and supply of substances— but the Act’s title failed to mention “drugs.” It was called instead the Psychoactive Substances Act (PSA). This Act sought to ban substances that, “by stimulating or depressing the person’s central nervous system,” affect “the person’s mental functioning or emotional state.”3 There were a handful of exceptions to this apparent blanket ban: substances already controlled by the 1971 Act; “medicinal products”; food; and three named substances—alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine.4 In this new legislation, references to “drugs” were confined to mentions of the 1971 Act and the associated framework—for example, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). A “drug-related consideration” was even defined in this 2016 Act as something linked to supplying or obtaining “a psychoactive substance.”5 This chapter will argue that this shift in language, despite continuity in the underlying philosophy behind the legislation, reflects a fundamental reframing of the debate around drug policy in the UK. Prior to 2016, the concept of harm ostensibly underpinned UK drug policy. However, this is neither an accurate description of the previous regulatory ­system nor a realistic aspiration as the idea of a single objective concept of “harm” is a chimera. Drug-related harm depends on personal, social, and legal context; it could be to users themselves or those around them, and could occur immediately upon use or years later. Harms must also be balanced against pleasures and benefits, whether to individuals or society as a whole. Moreover, questions of harm can often veil underlying beliefs regarding the morality of intoxication itself: whether psychoactivity is undesirable and deserving of being illegal. Many campaigners have criticized the PSA for its move away from the language of harm, which is seen as a retrograde step reflecting a desire to prohibit any form of intoxication. However, I will argue that this shift in language opens up a new way of framing policy regarding

236  Will Haydock intoxicants that moves beyond the “drug apartheid” associated with the MDA and its focus on harm, allowing for a more honest and open debate about the rights and wrongs of intoxication.6 Rather than being arcane or semantic, these questions of language help to shape and direct the on-going debate about how the state controls certain intoxicants. The PSA, therefore, (despite appearances) may represent a positive step away from prohibition.

Dangerous or Otherwise Harmful Drugs The UK has had an approach to drugs policy for decades that has been based on the principle of harm. The 1971 MDA was explicitly framed not to control all intoxicants, or even all “drugs,” but specifically “dangerous or otherwise harmful drugs.” Politicians were to take the advice of a special expert group—the ACMD—to advise of instances where “misuse is having or appears to them [the ACMD] capable of having harmful effects sufficient to constitute a social problem.”7 The parallels with the harm principle as outlined by John Stuart Mill are immediately apparent.8 Substances are to be formally controlled by government only when the harm becomes a “social problem”—that is, not just to the individual concerned. This model of ministers being subject to an expert group is often described as being scientific, objective, and health-based by virtue of its focus on harm. However, the practical implementation of the MDA has proved far from straightforward. Stevens and Measham have described how successive governments, in an attempt to appear “tough on drugs,” have increased regulations around substances, even where the evidence and advice of the ACMD did not support this.9 Despite losing his post as chair of the ACMD for what he felt was simply speaking rational, objective truths about the harms of certain substances,10 David Nutt maintained a commitment to an objective, harm-based drugs policy, founding the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, now known as “DrugScience.”11 The stated aims of this “completely independent, science-led drugs charity” are to ensure that there is “objective information on drug effects, harms and potential medical uses” to inform policymaking.

The Challenges of Identifying and Classifying Harm Unfortunately, this “objective” information on “harm” is never straightforward. There are many possible forms that “harm” could take. First, there might be various harms to the user directly: it could be that there is a risk of death, or perhaps a risk of disability or sickness. Moreover, these risks could result from a range of practices: chronic exposure to the substance, severe or problematic acute exposure, particular patterns of use, or combination with other risky substances or behaviors.

From Harm to Psychoactivity  237 Second, other people around the individual using a substance might suffer harm. It could be that the substance itself can cause direct harm to those not using it for its psychoactive effects—similar to passive ­smoking—which has been reported in relation to synthetic cannabinoids, often referred to as “Spice.”12 Alternatively, the harm could be more indirect. Liam Donaldson, when Chief Medical Officer, coined the phrase “passive drinking” to describe how people around someone who drinks alcohol at harmful levels can be placed at risk through associated issues such as drink driving, sexual assault, and domestic abuse.13 The harm to others could be more distant, yet potentially more severe. In the current regulatory environment, the supply, production, and consumption of “drugs” are strongly linked to crime and disorder.14 This difficulty in setting a consistent definition of harm can be seen in the way deaths from alcohol are analyzed quite differently from those related to other drugs. “Drug” deaths are generally defined as acute poisonings (or overdoses), whereas alcohol deaths tend to be defined as due to chronic diseases—the result of sustained heavy use.15 That is, current policy debates do not think of “harm” in a single, comparable way across different substances. A further complication is that these harms are not guaranteed. Substance use entails risk, not certainty, even when the precise contents of any dose are understood. While it is possible to represent a risk with a single number, we know that different people approach risks differently. Would all people weigh up in the same way a very high probability of a minor ailment versus a very low probability of something catastrophic? Are the harms to all people, across different communities and countries, weighted equally? A level or pattern of consumption that for one person might be prohibitively risky or harmful might, for someone else, be sufficiently pleasurable or otherwise beneficial that using the substance in this way could be a rational, justifiable action. The difficulty of placing a single number on the harmfulness of a substance should come as no surprise to any historian or sociologist of drugs. There is a rich tradition of writing about substance use that emphasizes the importance of patterns of consumption and the culture or learned behavior around substance use in determining both practices and harms.16 This is not to deny that there are “objective” effects or harms of substances. However, these effects will inevitably vary from person to person, and how effects translate into harms is far from straightforward. When considering the likely harm of a substance in a given society, the history of its use and the norms around its consumption should be considered. This point is fundamental: policy cannot—or perhaps more accurately should not—be made solely on the basis of an apparently scientific assessment of the properties of a substance. Yet this is precisely the approach taken by organizations such as the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, which developed a ranking

238  Will Haydock to bring order to this confusion. They used sixteen categories of harm that are themselves extremely broad—for example, “family adversities” or “loss of tangibles.”17 The criteria were then weighted to reflect their perceived relative importance, to produce the graph shown here as ­Figure 12.1. That is, various potential forms of harm were combined to produce an overall score that could rank different substances. The sheer number of categories in the chart illustrates the complexity of the exercise and the difficulty of reducing this to a single figure. This approach of ranking drugs echoes the schedules and classes of the MDA. Moreover, the approach is explicitly supported by relevant agencies. It is not only that the language of “harm” chimes with the ­approach of the ACMD; the Council specifically designed the categories of harm used in these studies. Despite the links to actual current policymaking structures and approaches, this approach does not offer a neat or inarguable solution to the various policy issues associated with intoxicating (or psychoactive) substances. A policymaker looking at this diagram for a guide about how to regulate substances would, I suggest, not be much the wiser. And this is before we even start thinking about balancing these harms against any pleasures, or the other potential advantages that might come to government through regulation, such as tax income.18

Figure 12.1  “  Overall weighted scores for each of the drugs” as presented by Nutt et al. in 2010.

From Harm to Psychoactivity  239 Moreover, this is just one attempt to map the relative harms of substances and, while it would be inappropriate to question the objectivity or intentions of those involved, the methods and the result do raise questions about the stability and utility of the answers. This group preferred to avoid the terminology of risk, arguing that the concept is “susceptible to varying interpretations.” Setting aside the question of how several of the other categories and criteria included within the framework did not also fall foul of this principle, not all researchers agree with this interpretation. A similar exercise has been run specifically using ideas of risk,19 rather than harm, and it is this concept of risk that currently frames alcohol policy discussions in the UK and more widely. 20 The variation in understanding risks and harms related to substances is not only between different groups of researchers; the same individuals can come to different conclusions or present the ideas in different ways. The 2010 study notes differences with a similar exercise (specifically described as constructing “a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse”) conducted just a few years earlier, even though there was considerable overlap in the participants. 21 Therefore, despite the difficulties associated with pinning down harm in a single figure, there is a clear appetite for this approach, which is seen as being a way to influence policy within the current conceptual and policymaking framework. To use a social policy term, drug policy is “framed” as something that can and should be rationally based to reduce “harm,” and this is presented as the original intention of the 1971 MDA, which can thus be understood to have failed on its own terms. 22 However, if drug policy were solely and entirely based on harm, it is not clear why it would exist. That is, if we simply classify substances on the basis of whether they are “harmful,” then there would be no need for any dedicated legislation for the specific category of substances called “drugs.” If a substance can be considered a poison, then it would already be covered by the relevant legislation, and if it were understood to be simply a commodity, then it would be controlled by consumer protection legislation. Indeed, it was precisely this kind of legislation that was being invoked to control the sale of the substances prior to the PSA. 23 The question therefore arises: what is special about drugs—or more specifically the substances controlled under the MDA? Toby Seddon, following Jacques Derrida, argues that the category is only brought into being through the legislation invoking it. 24 That is, the group of substances we call drugs, without a regulatory framework specifically naming and controlling them, would be a ragbag collection of plants and chemicals with various effects on humans—poison, stimulant, sedative, nourishment, analgesic, hallucinogen—ingested in various ways. This interpretation fits the MDA particularly well, given that the Act does not define “drugs,” preferring to simply list by name the hundreds of substances that come within its scope. This approach also helps to

240  Will Haydock explain why, today, we do not generally think of alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine as being drugs: they are not controlled by that Act but in their own specific ways. This is to some extent the position taken by campaigners such as Transform and David Nutt, who argue that the regulatory regime is inequitable, as it classifies and controls cannabis and ecstasy, for example, quite differently from tobacco and alcohol.

Convergence Such campaigners have had encouragement in recent years. There has been a tendency in academic writing to see a pattern of convergence of policies related to a range of different substances—that whereas the twentieth century saw clear regulatory lines drawn between the categories of medicines, drugs, and commodities, more recently substances have moved between these categories, and the categories themselves are increasingly blurred, partly by this movement. This is the argument made by Virginia Berridge in Demons and more recently by Mark Monaghan and Henry Yeomans. 25 If we compare and contrast the year of the MDA and the year of the PSA, we can see how such an idea of convergence—or at least a “blurring of the boundaries”—is persuasive. It is possible to argue that as of 1971, when the MDA was introduced, there were several intoxicating substances that could be consumed openly without fear of arrest or censure (alcohol, nicotine, caffeine), and others that were prohibited, and clearly listed as such in the Act, such as heroin, cocaine, and cannabis. This could be seen as an era of clear lines between legal and illegal. Alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine were easily available and openly advertised, and smoking in offices and public places was permitted, for example. This situation has been described by Taylor et al. (amongst others) as “drug apartheid.”26 This interpretation notes how, at the same time as sales and advertising of tobacco, for example, have been much curtailed, countries across the world have decriminalized or even legalized certain substances that would previously have been considered “drugs”—notably cannabis. These substances are regulated in a similar way to tobacco in the UK, for example—through a highly regulated market, rather than simply being uncontrolled. Separately, in an increasing number of states in the USA, regardless of whether it is legal to consume the substance recreationally, cannabis is licensed for medical use. In this way, cannabis defies classification using the established categories of medicine, drug or commodity; it can be seen as all three even within the single country of the USA. Debates have even occurred regarding substances generally viewed as uncontroversial, such as caffeine. Echoing the rhetoric of the “gin craze,” when Hogarth warned of “a new kind of drunkenness,”27 it is

From Harm to Psychoactivity  241 claimed that energy drinks are qualitatively different from more traditional beverages like coffee and tea. 28 This has led the UK Government to propose a ban on sales of energy drinks to under-eighteens, 29 with a representative of the teaching union NASUWT referring to the drinks as “readily available legal highs” and “stimulants”—­terminology designed to reference the substances controlled by the 2016 PSA. 30 The convergence argument therefore runs that a range of substances are increasingly permitted for consumption, but all under strict ­controls—rather than having a two-tier system of legal products as opposed to illegal “drugs.” The controls are justified on the basis that all these substances are potentially dangerous. This apparent convergence is welcomed by a range of campaigners, notably Transform and the Global Commission on Drug Policy. 31 In their interpretation, the lines between the categories of medicine, drug, and commodity have become blurred because they were never an accurate description in scientific or rational terms; they were arbitrary distinctions that have outgrown their usefulness. If the categories no longer apply, what is in their place is a spectrum of regulation based on the risks associated with the different substances. Transform’s ideal model of regulation, illustrated in Figure 12.2, is comparable to how tobacco is currently regulated in the UK: highly controlled and taxed, but legal. Transform present their approach as the “middle-ground” position, between “hardline” advocates of “the failed war on drugs” on the one hand and “libertarians” on the other hand. 32

Figure 12.2  Transform’s ideal model of regulation. (Original concept by Dr John Marks, adapted by Transform Drug Policy Foundation.)

242  Will Haydock An alternative perspective might be taken by those who, like Seddon (quoting Dunleavy), expect that “drug prohibition will probably turn out to be a ‘transitory period in human affairs,’” 33 and current developments in drug policy should be placed in wider context, such as “the risk society” and neoliberalism. Drug policy cannot be understood in isolation from wider social trends and influences, and so it is perhaps no wonder that convergence in policy has occurred around concepts of “risk” and “harm” when these are such powerful forces across various spheres of social policy.34

Psychoactive Substances But as Seddon et al. note, “The contours of British drug policy over the last 20 years cannot be simply or directly read off or deduced from a totalizing idea like ‘risk’ or the ‘risk society.’”35 Berridge argues that, within the blurring of the boundaries between different categories of substances and the increasingly controlled or risk-averse approach to established substances like alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine, it is possible to trace two potentially competing themes in recent policy: hedonism and control.36 To take the case of alcohol, for example, at the same time as licensing laws have been understood by some as being liberalized, there has been increasing concern expressed regarding what is seen as “flawed” or “risky” consumption of alcohol. As was the case in relation to gin (and more recently e-cigarettes and energy drinks), the impetus for a change in the regulation of other drugs has come from changes in technology and patterns of supply. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, commentators noticed that a growing number of substances not named in the MDA were being used as intoxicants. These substances were generally newly synthesized or being used as intoxicants for the first time, were often bought via a hidden area of the Internet (the “Dark Web”) and could be shipped across the world quickly and easily in small packages—a significant change from drugs being imported in large quantities and then distributed by dealers within a consumer country.37 These substances were described by the media and others as “legal highs”; somehow, they were both drugs and yet not drugs—or perhaps more accurately not-yet-drugs.38 In common parlance—at least in the UK—it is “drugs” that get someone “high,” not alcohol, caffeine, or tobacco. The attraction of the phrase “legal highs” was therefore that it seemed to be an oxymoron: how could anyone get “high” legally? The PSA was an attempt by government to address this oxymoron. It sought to explicitly ensure that all highs (or as the Act puts it, Psychoactive Substances) are illegal, regardless of whether they are currently used in this way, are available, or even exist, given the potential to synthesize new substances. The Act therefore explicitly excludes from this ban alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine, and various forms of food and drink that might technically be seen as intoxicating.

From Harm to Psychoactivity  243 In that sense, given that it controls all potentially psychoactive substances bar a few listed exceptions, the Act can be seen as a challenge to the idea that policy is converging around a theme of “legalize and regulate.” The PSA is nothing if not an attempt to re-draw that clear line between the legal (the exceptions listed in Schedule 1 of the Act) and the illegal (everything else). The government’s rhetoric regarding the Act has emphasized continuity—that this is a pragmatic attempt to control new substances in the same way as the MDA addresses more established “drugs.” Theresa May, then Home Secretary, described the PSA not as a break from the 1971 Act, but as an attempt to “complement” existing legislation given that the existing framework was not seen to be controlling “new psychoactive substances” in the same way as more established “drugs.”39 In the same way, critics of the PSA have tended to set out their stall using the familiar framework of rationality, objectivity, and harm, generally focusing on two perceived issues. First, that the Act is based on poor “science” and second, that it is badly drafted. That is, it is seen to be both irrational and incompetent—or as one commentator put it, “startlingly inane.”40 The core criticism leveled at the PSA in legal terms is that the definition of psychoactivity within the Act is too woolly to lead to effective prosecution. This has been borne out to some extent in practice, with one prosecution collapsing when the defense argued successfully that nitrous oxide (regardless of its use in the specific instance under consideration) was a medicine (because of its use elsewhere) and therefore exempt from the Act.41 The core criticism of the PSA in terms of the “science” is that the aim of the legislation—to pre-empt the dangers of substances rather than react and control them after they are already in the marketplace—is futile. It is not currently possible to predict the psychoactive effects of a substance simply based on its chemical composition—meaning that until a substance is actually used as a “drug” there is no absolutely reliable way of determining whether it falls under the remit of the PSA, and so, the Act will end up being just as reactive as the MDA. These critiques have typically presented an approach based on “harm,” along the lines of the existing MDA framework, as a more sensible alternative, noting that the ACMD has been somewhat critical of the PSA and its implementation.42 This overall approach of a two-pronged critique with a harm-based approach set up as the ideal alternative can be seen plainly in the title of a prominent editorial in The International Journal of Drug Policy: “Legally flawed, scientifically problematic, potentially harmful.”43 However, despite the continuity in the rhetoric of both government and campaigners, the way in which this line between legal and illegal is drawn has a fundamentally different basis under the new legislation. If the 1971 Act was based around the principle that “drugs” caused

244  Will Haydock “harm” and therefore they would be controlled accordingly, the 2016 Act is framed in quite different terms. As noted earlier, it only mentions “drugs” when it is referring to the 1971 structures, and there is no use of the word “harm” whatsoever. It seeks to control substances simply because they are “psychoactive.” The fact that the government did not see this as a fundamental change in approach reflects the fact that, in practice, previous policy has not been based on objective assessments of harm and corresponding classifications. As noted earlier, the current classification of substances owes as much to politics as it does to “science,” with cannabis being graded against the advice of the ACMD, for example.44 In this way, campaigners and the government have talked past each other, despite both using the same “objective” and “scientific” language of harm. In the final section of this chapter, I want to suggest that the shift in language such that regulations refer to “psychoactive substances” rather than “dangerous or otherwise harmful drugs” has significant—and potentially constructive—implications for the future of policy debates regarding “drugs” in the UK.

Breaking the Link between Psychoactivity and Harm For some commentators, then, the PSA represents a betrayal of the principles of the MDA, criminalizing substances not because they are harmful, but simply because they alter a person’s state of mind. However, this is to idealize the MDA. The work of academics such as David Nutt, or campaigning organizations such as Transform, has been based on criticizing the Act on its own terms precisely because decisions were not solely about harm. The practical operation of the Act, as we have seen, was less about controlling “misuse” or “harm” than it was about controlling specific substances—and, as a result, specific people. As one chair of the ACMD explained, “We don’t take into account ‘the message’, we don’t take into account policing priorities; we are obliged by law only to take into account the harmfulness. The government may want to take into account other matters.”45 Moreover, the apparent hypocrisy of controlling some intoxicating substances as “drugs” and not others is inherent in the MDA as well as the PSA. This is precisely the critique made by Seddon and others that without the specific regulations in place, the category of “drugs” is not self-evident. However, this critique does not mean that the concept of “drugs” has no existence, meaning or resonance outside of the legislation (though it may be incoherent or inconsistent). The list of named substances that stands in for a definition of “drugs” in the MDA is not in itself the definition of drugs; rather, it requires a definition. Not all harmful substances (such as bleach) are on the list, which can only be

From Harm to Psychoactivity  245 explained if there was some way—prior to or during the creation of the list—of identifying that they are not “drugs.” This makes intuitive sense: bleach can be harmful, but it is not a drug. In addition, substances can be added to the list. This would not be possible if the list was the sole reference point in determining whether a substance is a “drug.” Even if the concept would not have its current meaning without the regulatory framework we have in place, this does not mean that legislators invented the category of drugs or have control over its meaning and cultural resonance. The creation and maintenance of this list, therefore, relies on an implicit definition of drugs that could be described using the phrase “I know it when I see it.” This was a workable regulatory approach when the number and variety of relevant substances were relatively stable, but the emergence of “legal highs” convinced the government that the existing arrangements were no longer “sustainable.”46 What was required was a definition of a problematic substance prior to its emergence on the market. The PSA is an attempt to provide this definition: to stop legislators and bureaucrats from having to wait to “see” the substance before controlling it. As we have seen, the concept chosen to plug this gap was not “harm” but “psychoactivity.” For all that there can be scientific, legal or philosophical concerns about the concept of “psychoactivity,” some idea of an alteration of one’s mind and body is a familiar way to understand what a “drug” is and therefore what “drug policy” is about. The substance might be variously called a “drug” or “psychoactive substance” that has “intoxicating” or “mind-altering” properties, but these are interchangeable words and phrases. The very category of substances that prompted the PSA—new psychoactive substances—illustrates this point well. These substances were known as “legal highs”—a phrase that would not make sense if “drugs” as a concept or the MDA as a piece of legislation were understood only to apply to those substances specifically listed. If the list were the only source of information about what a “drug” is, then by definition, any other intoxicants would not be drugs and would be, unremarkably, legal. Instead, the concept is eye-catching and seen as an oxymoron because people expect that getting “high” is illegal. This is part of why the government sees deliberately drinking to get drunk as so challenging:47 if drinking alcohol is about intoxication, then it raises the question of why other (potentially less harmful) intoxicants are not also legal. It is true that prior to the PSA, there were potentially psychoactive substances—such as nitrous oxide—that were not controlled in the same way as those listed under the MDA, but to argue that this implies that “drugs” did not fundamentally mean psychoactive substances is to confuse necessary and sufficient conditions. It is reasonable to suggest that it has been necessary that a substance be psychoactive to be controlled

246  Will Haydock under the MDA, though it may not have been sufficient. If the operation of the MDA has not been perfectly scientific and consistent, this does not mean it has been entirely without logic. The idea of psychoactivity was therefore not introduced into drug policy debates by the 2016 Act; it simply brought the concept out into the open rather than leaving it as an unspoken element of “drugs,” hiding behind the idea of “harm.” This has important implications for how drug policy is debated. If we take Toby Seddon’s argument that the group of substances called “drugs” are linked only by the approach to regulation, and policymakers are saying they regulate drugs on the basis of “harm,” we have a flawed but neat circle of logic to persuade people that “drugs” are, to use the wording of the 1971 Act, “dangerous or otherwise harmful.” “Drugs” are simply the things controlled by this Act—separate from medicines or c­ ommodities— and the substances controlled by the Act, according to independent experts, are those that cause harm. Therefore, by definition, drugs are harmful. They cause harm; otherwise, they wouldn’t be regulated. In practice, the public and policymakers have known that what is being controlled is psychoactive substances, even if the stated rationale for controlling them is harm. The failure of policy to live up to the rational, scientific, objective ideal is why groups such as DrugScience and Transform exist. While the MDA was the primary framework for controlling these substances, the fiction could be maintained that it was only “dangerous or otherwise harmful” substances that were being controlled, even though it was perfectly clear that it was in fact a much broader definition of “drugs.” This overlap between “harm” and “drugs” has been central to public debate on the issue; otherwise, the idea of “legal highs” would not be seen as troubling in itself. The MDA is seen not as controlling only “dangerous or otherwise harmful” drugs but all drugs—and thus all drugs are (by definition) harmful. The cognitive dissonance comes when what looks like a drug (because it is psychoactive) turns out either not to be controlled (a legal high) or not to be terribly harmful (nitrous oxide). The PSA, by virtue of condemning psychoactive experiences, actually serves to break that link between harm and psychoactivity. Under the MDA, the logical steps were (1) “drugs” are what is regulated; (2) the things that are regulated are dangerous according to experts; and therefore, (3) “drugs” are “dangerous.” There is, of course, an underlying assumption that “drugs” are also things that get you “high.” Under the PSA, this assumed definition of “drugs” (or “psychoactive substances”) comes to the fore, with the logical steps being transformed into (1) “drugs” are things that change your mental state, and (2) we regulate things that change your mental state (regardless of any separate assessment of harm). This change opens up questions that would not have been so prominent under the harm framework. If government policy is clear that it bans things that are psychoactive regardless of whether or not they are

From Harm to Psychoactivity  247 proven to be harmful, the debate is clearly and openly about whether seeking to ban psychoactive experiences is an appropriate or desirable action for a government to take. Under the MDA framework, it was far easier for the government to hide behind ideas of risk and harm. Seddon’s suggestion is that open discussion and real change in policy can only come if we challenge the concept of “drugs” that is based on the current regime.48 The PSA has itself challenged this concept and this use of language, replacing it entirely. It has brought out into the light some of the ideological and moral positions that underpin current forms of drug regulation. As such, I believe it represents a landmark in UK drug ­policy—not so much as a restatement of the clear lines of the MDA regime, but as a fundamental break with this approach.

Conclusion The idea that drug policy is about intoxication or psychoactivity is not original. Some of the most vocal critics of the PSA have long argued that current drug policy has a blind spot when it comes to pleasure and intoxication, which are effectively criminalized.49 However, it is my contention that the framework of the PSA, with its explicit focus on psychoactivity, allows for a more open discussion of the potential aims of drug policy. Taylor et al. have passionately argued that “drug reform must engage in the difficult and complex process of exploring how best to legalize and regulate all psychoactive substances that are currently legal and illegal.”50 This plea uses exactly the language of the PSA, which encourages this focus by moving away from a narrow (and illusory) focus on “harm.” This idea of an open discussion does not imply that drug policy is, should be, or indeed ever could be objective and rational. A critique of the PSA as unscientific or irrational fails to hit home. Such criticisms are based on an idealistic interpretation of the regulatory framework instituted by the 1971 Act, envisaging that substances can simply be controlled according to their potential harm. There can be no single, objective assessment of the harm of a substance, even within a single society at a single moment in time. To rail against the PSA as being incoherent, inconsistent or hypocritical is not only to subscribe to a naively rationalist view of policymaking, but also to neglect the hugely valuable contribution of history and social science to the study of intoxicating substances. We cannot—and arguably should not—rank substances according to an apparently objective, ahistorical notion of harm. That may perhaps be an oversimplification of what some of the researchers cited in this chapter have been trying to do, but it remains the frame by which they justify their approach. I would suggest that if the aim of such commentary is to influence and inform public debate,

248  Will Haydock it misses the target. Policy and commentary cannot simply focus on “harm” without reference to intoxication. Psychoactivity is inarguably political, and of interest to wider society. The substances under discussion are controlled not simply because they are harmful but because they are—whether described as intoxicating, psychoactive or mind-altering—not “ordinary commodities”51 and not quite medicines. The distinctions between these categories may well be more blurred than in the past, but it would not be accurate to argue that these substances are simply ordinary commodities and can be regulated accordingly. Alcohol was not originally controlled because of its links with liver ­cirrhosis or increased cancer risk so much as its effect on public ­morality.52 The idea that policy and politics today can somehow be b ­ eyond morality is naive. To be blind to this is to repeat the error of the MDA and existing policy on alcohol and other drugs, with their blindness in relation to intoxication and pleasure. It is no coincidence that in the Bacchae—a play about the need to balance social and moral control with some kind of release—the revelers drink alcohol to what many would call excess.53 It is also no coincidence that ideas of gender and ethnicity are central to what (and who) is seen as transgressive. The case of alcohol is still instructive today in illustrating how, even if not directly criminalized, government policy can result in stigma and discrimination54, and these themes are explored powerfully in relation to other substances by many contributions to this book. I do not mean to suggest that the PSA is beyond this kind of criticism. Notably, as Ian Walmsley has pointed out, one of the more striking inconsistencies in the Act relates not to how certain substances but rather to how certain people are treated differently. It is not a criminal act to be in possession of a substance controlled under the PSA unless you are in prison, suggesting that there may be some groups in society deemed more deserving of getting high. 55 Debates about psychoactive substances are inevitably about morality and transgression; the key is how we conduct them. If policy discussions embrace these ideas of morality and uncertainty, and debate is conducted on these terms, though we may not have a more scientific, independent, or objective drug policy, perhaps we would achieve a more realistic and human goal: policymaking that is more open, understandable, and honest, and is based on real people.

Notes 1 This chapter would not have been possible without Susannah Wilson giving me the chance to engage with the strikingly intelligent and generous people who attended the original conference. I am in debt to all those who have been involved in this project for their comments and support. I am particularly grateful to Susannah, Ian Walmsley and Mark Monaghan for their detailed, insightful and sensitive comments on earlier drafts of this piece.

From Harm to Psychoactivity  249 2 HM Government, Misuse of Drugs Act, 1971. www.legislation.gov.uk/ ukpga/1971/38 This and all subsequent URLs cited accessed November 14 2018. 3 Psychoactive Substances Act, 2016, 2. www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/2/ enacted. 4 Ibid., 40–41. 5 Ibid., 4. 6 Stuart Taylor et al., “Prohibition, Privilege and the Drug Apartheid: The Failure of Drug Policy Reform to Address the Underlying Fallacies of Drug Prohibition,” Criminology & Criminal Justice 16, no. 4 (2016). 7 HM Government, Misuse of Drugs Act. Section 1 (1). 8 John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty,” in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ­Volume XVIII: Essays on Politics and Society, ed. John M. Robson ­(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977). 9 Alex Stevens and Fiona Measham, “The ‘drug policy ratchet’: Why Do Sanctions for New Psychoactive Drugs Typically Only Go Up?” Addiction 109, no. 8 (2014). 10 Alan Travis, “Chief Drug Adviser David Nutt Sacked Over Cannabis Stance,” The Guardian, October 30 2009, www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/ oct/30/david-nutt-drugs-adviser-sacked. 11 DrugScience, “DrugScience: Providing Evidence Based Information on Drugs,” www.drugscience.org.uk/. 12 Royal College of Nursing, “Prison Spice Epidemic Putting Nursing Staff at Risk,” www.rcn.org.uk/news-and-events/news/prison-spice-epidemic-puttingnursing-staff-at-risk. 13 Rebecca Smith, “‘Passive drinking’ is Blighting the Nation, Sir Liam ­Donaldson Warns,” The Telegraph, March 16 2009. www.telegraph.co.uk/ news/health/news/5000433/Passive-drinking-is-blighting-the-nation-Sir-­ Liam-Donaldson-warns.html. 14 Jonathan Caulkins and Peter Reuter, “Towards a Harm-Reduction Approach to Enforcement,” Safer Communities 8, no. 1 (2009). 15 See, for example, Public Health England, “Public Health Outcomes Framework,” https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/public-health-outcomes-framework. 16 Howard S. Becker, Sociological Work: Method and Substance (New ­Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1977); Mary Douglas, “A Distinctive Anthropological Perspective,” in Constructive Drinking: Perspectives on drink from anthropology, ed. Mary Douglas (New York/Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Norman Zinberg, Drug, Set, and Setting: The Basis for Controlled Intoxicant Use (London: Yale University Press, 1984); Craig MacAndrew and Robert B. Edgerton, Drunken Comportment: A Social Explanation (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1970); Dwight B. Heath, “A Decade of Development in the Anthropological Study of Alcohol Use: 1970–1980,” in Constructive Drinking. 17 David J. Nutt et al., “Drug Harms in the UK: A Multicriteria Decision Analysis,” The Lancet 376, no. 9752 (2010). 18 For a more detailed critique of this approach, see Stephen Rolles and Fiona Measham, “Questioning the Method and Utility of Ranking Drug Harms in Drug Policy,” International Journal of Drug Policy 22, no. 4 (2011). 19 Dirk W. Lachenmeier and Jürgen Rehm, “Comparative Risk Assessment of Alcohol, Tobacco, Cannabis and Other Illicit Drugs Using the Margin of Exposure Approach,” Scientific Reports 5 (2015). 20 Alan Brennan et al., “Developing Policy Analytics for Public Health Strategy and Decisions—The Sheffield Alcohol Policy Model Framework,” Annals of Operations Research 236, no. 1 (2016); Agnieszka Kalinowski and

250  Will Haydock

21 22 23

24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40

Keith Humphreys, “Governmental Standard Drink Definitions and lowRisk Alcohol Consumption Guidelines in 37 Countries,” Addiction 111, no. 7 (2016); Melanie Lovatt et al., “Lay Epidemiology and the Interpretation of Low-Risk Drinking Guidelines by Adults in the United Kingdom,” Addiction 110, no. 12 (2015). David Nutt et al., “Development of a Rational Scale to Assess the Harm of Drugs of Potential Misuse,” The Lancet 369, no. 9566 (2007). Shona Hilton et al., “Implications for Alcohol Minimum Unit Pricing Advocacy: What Can We Learn for Public Health from UK Newsprint Coverage of Key Claim-Makers in the Policy Debate?,” Social Science & Medicine 102 (2014). Home Office, Guidance for Local Authorities on Taking Action Against ‘head shops’ Selling New Psychoactive Substances (NPS), (2013). www. gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/264887/­ Taking_action_against_head_shops.pdf. Toby Seddon, “Inventing Drugs: A Genealogy of a Regulatory Concept,” Journal of Law and Society 43, no. 3 (2016). Virginia Berridge, Demons: Our Changing Attitudes to Alcohol, Tobacco, and Drugs (Oxford: OUP, 2013); Mark Monaghan and Henry Yeomans, “Mixing Drink and Drugs: ‘Underclass’ Politics, the Recovery Agenda and the Partial Convergence of English Alcohol and Drugs Policy,” International Journal of Drug Policy 37 (2016). Taylor, Buchanan, and Ayres, “Prohibition, Privilege and the Drug Apartheid: The Failure of Drug Policy Reform to Address the Underlying Fallacies of Drug Prohibition.” James Nicholls, The Politics of Alcohol: A History of the Drink Question in England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 36. João Joaquim Breda et al., Energy Drink Consumption in Europe: A Review of the Risks, Adverse Health Effects, and Policy Options to Respond,” Frontiers in Public Health 2, no. 134 (2014). Alex Therrien, “Government Proposes Energy Drinks Ban for Children,” BBC News, August 30 2018, www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-45342682. BBC, “Waitrose Bans Sale of High-Caffeine Energy Drinks to under-16s,” BBC News, January 4 2018, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42567638. Global Commission on Drug Policy. www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/. Transform, “The Case for Reform,” www.tdpf.org.uk/case-for-reform. Seddon, “Inventing Drugs: A Genealogy of a Regulatory Concept,” 415. Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, trans. Mark Ritter (London: Sage, 1992); Toby Seddon, Robert Ralphs, and Lisa Williams, “Risk, Security and The ‘Criminalization’ of British Drug Policy,” The British Journal of Criminology 48, no. 6 (2008). Seddon et al. “Risk, Security and The ‘Criminalization’ of British Drug Policy,” 826. Berridge, Demons, Chap. 11. H. R. Sumnall, M. Evans-Brown, and J. McVeigh, “Social, Policy, and Public Health Perspectives on New Psychoactive Substances,” Drug Test Anal 3, no. 7–8 (2011). BBC, “What Exactly are Legal Highs?” BBC News, 26 May, www.bbc. co.uk/news/uk-32857256. Theresa May, Letter to Professor Les Iversen: New Psychoactive Substances, (2015), www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/431364/HS_letter_to_ACMD_26_5_15.pdf. Ian Dunt, “The Government Just Banned Everything,” politics.co.uk, May 27 2015, www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2015/05/27/the-government-just-bannedeverything.

From Harm to Psychoactivity  251 41 Mark Easton, “‘Legal high’ Review After Laughing Gas Cases Collapse,” BBC News, 31 August 2017, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41098996. 42 Steve Rolles, “5 Reasons Why the New ‘Psychoactive Substances Bill’ Should Be Scrapped, and 1 Reason to Commend It,” www.tdpf.org.uk/blog/5-reasonswhy-new-%E2%80%98psychoactive-substances-bill%E2%80%99-should-bescrapped-and-1-reason-commend-it. 43 Alex Stevens et al., “Legally Flawed, Scientifically Problematic, Potentially Harmful: The UK Psychoactive Substance Bill,” International Journal of Drug Policy 26, no. 12 (2015). 4 4 Naoimi Grimley, “Khat Ban: Why Is It Being Made Illegal?” BBC News, June 21 2014, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27921832 45 Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, quoted in Anil Dawar, “Smith Upgrades Cannabis to Class B,” The Guardian, 07 May 2008, www.theguardian. com/politics/2008/may/07/drugspolicy.drugsandalcohol. 46 May, Letter to Professor Les Iversen: New Psychoactive Substances. 47 William Haydock, “The Consumption, Production and Regulation of ­A lcohol in the UK: The Relevance of the Ambivalence of the Carnivalesque,” Sociology 50, no. 6 (2016). 48 Seddon, “Inventing Drugs: A Genealogy of a Regulatory Concept,” 414–15. 49 Fiona Measham and Karenza Moore, “The Criminalisation of Intoxication,” in ASBO Nation: The Criminalisation of Nuisance, ed. Peter Squires (Bristol: The Policy Press, 2008); Alison Ritter, “Where Is the Pleasure?,” Addiction 109, no. 10 (2014). 50 Taylor, Buchanan, and Ayres, “Prohibition, Privilege and the Drug ­Apartheid: The Failure of Drug Policy Reform to Address the Underlying Fallacies of Drug Prohibition,” 463. 51 Thomas F. Babor et al., Alcohol: No Ordinary Commodity, 2nd ed. ­(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 52 Nicholls, The Politics of Alcohol: A History of the Drink Question in ­England, 5. 53 Euripides, The Bacchae and Other Plays, trans. Philip Vellacott (London: Penguin, 1973). 54 William Haydock, “‘20 Tins of Stella for a Fiver’: The Making of Class through Labour and Coalition Government Alcohol Policy,” Capital and Class 38, no. 3 (2014); “The ‘civilising’ Effect of a ‘balanced’ Night-Time Economy for ‘better people’: Class and the Cosmopolitan Limit in the Consumption and Regulation of Alcohol in Bournemouth,” Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events 6, no. 2 (2014). 55 Ian Walmsley, Email to the author, September 14 2018.

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254  Will Haydock Seddon, Toby, Robert Ralphs, and Lisa Williams. “Risk, Security and The ‘Criminalization’ of British Drug Policy.” The British Journal of Criminology 48, no. 6 (2008): 818–34. Stevens, Alex, Rudi Fortson, Fiona Measham, and Harry Sumnall. “Legally Flawed, Scientifically Problematic, Potentially Harmful: The UK Psychoactive Substance Bill.” International Journal of Drug Policy 26, no. 12 (­ December 2015): 1167–70. Stevens, Alex, and Fiona Measham. “The ‘drug policy ratchet’: Why Do ­Sanctions for New Psychoactive Drugs Typically Only Go Up?” Addiction 109, no. 8 (2014): 1226–32. Sumnall, H. R., M. Evans-Brown, and J. McVeigh. “Social, Policy, and ­Public Health Perspectives on New Psychoactive Substances.” Drug Testing and Analysis 3, no. 7–8 (July–August 2011): 515–23. Taylor, Stuart, Julian Buchanan, and Tammy Ayres. “Prohibition, Privilege and the Drug Apartheid: The Failure of Drug Policy Reform to Address the ­Underlying Fallacies of Drug Prohibition.” Criminology & Criminal Justice 16, no. 4 (2016): 452–69. Therrien, Alex. “Government Proposes Energy Drinks Ban for Children,” BBC News, 30 August 2018, www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-45342682. Zinberg, Norman. Drug, Set, and Setting: The Basis for Controlled Intoxicant Use. London: Yale University Press, 1984.

13 Honor’d in the Breach Contravention and Consensus in the History of Substance Prohibition Stuart Walton

Introduction In its annual World Drug Report for 2017,1 the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna estimates the number of users of controlled substances worldwide to be in the region of 250 million people, or around one in twenty of the global population between the ages of 15 and 64. Confirming a trend seen throughout the most recent generation, the authors report that illicit drug use has broadly stabilized, which is to say it is only increasing commensurately with overall population growth. In other words, there is a small but irreducible sector within most societies that is prepared to disregard the criminal justice legislation that still pertains in the vast majority of world jurisdictions in the matter of psychoactive substances. These people, their numbers replaced within each generation as their elders leave illegal drugs behind, are the social residue bequeathed by the advance of proscriptive legislation over the past century. As a social cohort, they were created with the rise of global prohibition protocols at international drug control conferences and the earliest efforts of the League of Nations, and are sustained by the principle of prohibition even where it directs its fiercest and most invasive attentions at them. The question I would like to address is: what is the precise legal status of a global minority of lawbreakers that remains ­effectively unpoliceable? The libertarian case on prohibited substances is often moved to declare that the drug laws don’t work because they are so systematically defied throughout the world, but of course they do work inasmuch as, on official UN estimates, around 95% of adult humanity, including a substantial number who are of the opinion that the present legal structure is unworkable, does observe them. Despite the fact that, on the surface, the laws command a sufficiently functional consensus in that most people obey them, when it comes to the objective ethical rectitude of those laws and the ways in which they are applied, the consensus begins to fragment. Even where savage and grotesque penalties are in force, as in China, most of Southeast Asia and the Islamic jurisdictions, contravention persists. Offenders may be executed, publicly or otherwise,

256  Stuart Walton judicially thrashed, imprisoned for life and so forth, for even the most minuscule and clearly accidental infractions. When the victims are foreign nationals, the cases are often taken up by the news media. The British citizen sentenced to four years in jail in Dubai in 2008 for having 0.003 g of cannabis on the sole of his shoe, in the form of a trodden-on cigarette butt, was invited to count himself lucky for having been pardoned after a mere five months in custody. 2 If a case such as this excites a certain amount of mild indignation in public opinion, the indignation turns to acquiescence when confronted with cases of apparently intentional smuggling, the penalty for which inspires no sympathy whatsoever. The British father of three executed by lethal injection in China in 2009, for being caught in possession of 4 kilos of heroin in Urumqi, had paid the price for his naïveté at best. 3 Where judicial authorities are ­killing and beating their own citizens for drugs offenses, there may be much less noticeable organized protest, and yet no widespread international consensus underpins such acts of repression. According to statistics obtained by the International Harm Reduction Association for its 2015 report, The Death Penalty for Drug Offences,4 Iran executes an average three to four hundred people every year for drug offenses, constituting the majority of capital sentences, and while the numbers killed in China are officially a state secret, they are widely believed to be the highest in the world, strongly sustained by the fact that there is an almost 100% conviction rate in trials for capital offenses. Meanwhile, the greater part of the western world is caught between official prohibition and an increasing disinclination to pursue most ­private users, unless there is some other judicial pretext against them in play. While the picture is by no means uniformly benign, the de facto state of tolerance that existed for a few years in Brighton on the south coast of England in the late 1990s seemed a model for social harmony. The club-goer subjected to a pocket search by a doorman and found to have two pills might be asked whether that was all he had, and be ushered in on receipt of a nod. At a now defunct small venue on the beachfront, the more or less openly avowed system was that if you ­arrived empty-handed and bought from the in-house dealer, you were welcomed with open arms. The dealer himself made occasional tours of the chillout room like a conscientious host, courteously checking whether anybody needed a top-up. By public request, a separate dealer for the women clubbers was eventually appointed. There were occasional police visits, when uniformed officers would stroll around the premises, eliciting smiles and warm greetings all around, but seemingly nobody was personally searched, even though everybody was visibly off their heads on ecstasy. While judicial and institutional authority in the western world will tolerate defiance of the law to a surprising degree, preferring to let it continue where zero tolerance would create the kinds of pressures authority

Honor’d in the Breach  257 would prefer not to deal with, such as in prisons, the armed services, and to a great extent in the night-time economy, the stubborn incidence of contravention has attained the status of civil disobedience rather than mere criminality. A state of de facto decriminalization thus exists in many civil polities where actual decriminalization has not yet been tried, even where, as in the United Kingdom, official policy is still firmly ­prohibitionist. Although government concern axiomatically links all substance use to medicalized models of addiction and invariably stresses the risk of self-harm that every individual instance of use incurs, the propaganda is framed principally to appeal to those who don’t take drugs anyway. Much as moderate drinking advice achieves its most resonant successes in persuading those who are not problem drinkers in the first place to reduce their intake a little, while leaving dysfunctional drinkers unscathed, the anti-drug rhetoric confirms the abstinent in their fastidious refusal of such practices, while accepting that it has no effect on those whose personal experience of drug-taking defies its credibility. The prohibition of substances occupies a functional category of its own. Bans on publications, forms of political assembly, demonstrations, trade union organization, contentious speech, and libel are not especially hard to police, precisely because the aim of such activities is public. The preparation of them may be hidden from official view for as long as possible, but sooner or later they are intended to come to light. Drugs are not. With the possible exception of illicit alcohol, even bulk quantities of controlled substances are relatively easy to conceal, and the entire object of the exercise is the trafficking of a product intended at the end of the chain to be consumed, thus destroying the evidence. Even in the centers of origin— the coca fields of South America, the poppy-­plantations of ­Afghanistan, the freelance laboratories of European ecstasy ­production—neither the concerted efforts of the global enforcement industry nor chaotic social circumstances have succeeded in stopping the flow, whether through toxic crop eradication, foreign invasion, civil war, or periodic militarized police raids. There is an unbreakable compact between the global demand for intoxicants and the profit opportunities waiting to be seized in territory willingly ceded to criminal networks by capital markets that have not otherwise scrupled to monopolize every other form of supply. In psychoanalytic terms, the drug trade is the traumatic gap at the heart of capitalism, its greatest surrender to neurotic repression, the symptoms of which it attempts to disavow by the obsessive-­compulsive behavior of continual legislating, like the repetitive hand-washing of those who have achieved a measure of illusory control over their repressed instincts by the enactment of purely symbolic control. If bans don’t work, in the sense that they can never be entirely effective, this is precisely how they don’t work. To try to prize open the philosophical undercurrents in the question of prohibition, we need to assess first what juridical principles the

258  Stuart Walton legislation rests on, and then second, examine the rhetorical arguments that are deployed in its defense by supporters of the status quo.

Legal Principles of Prohibition The official primary motive for controlling the supply of certain substances is to prevent self-harm and the medical costs that it generates. This was the pretext stated in all early legislative efforts, beginning with the first failed attempt by the British Parliament to control the availability of opiates in 1857. Eleven years later, Parliament passed the Poisons and Pharmacy Act 1868, the difference that the decade made being accounted for in large part, with stupendous historical irony, by sensational reports of the physical and social damage the British state’s own opium trade was doing in China.5 The 1868 Act only penalized the unlicensed sale of certain pharmacological substances, which was now to be the preserve of registered pharmacists only, with the fine for contravention set at five pounds, a very modest sum even in the economics of the day. That was the primary legislation until the era of the First World War. By the time the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), section 40B, was voted into legislative effect as a body of emergency wartime regulation in 1916, the focus of control had shifted from inhibiting the freelance suppliers to attempting to choke off demand. If people could be persuaded that intoxicants were always and inevitably bad for them, the dealers could effectively be put out of business by the power of the market. It remains a self-defeating enterprise, however, to try to reduce demand for a product while acknowledging that many people are confirmed users of it. There must be something attractive about consuming substances if people do it willingly for their own amusement. If you could not stop them from wanting to take drugs, then the next best thing, it seemed, was to give them the status of contraband, traffic in which, on both sides of the contract, would be the legal equivalent of handling stolen goods. Possession itself therefore came to be written into the legal protocols as an offense, so that unsuccessful would-be dealers could be prosecuted for having unsold drugs on their person, alongside those with a flourishing client base, who would continue to be prosecuted for unlicensed supply. The motivation for the regulations was not merely a question of the perceived physical harm being caused by opiates, barbiturates, and cocaine but was most urgently driven by two related concerns: first, that drug use might be undermining the fighting morale of soldiers on furlough from the Western Front, and second, the involvement of migrant communities—specifically the Chinese and West Indian—in the supply of illicit intoxicants and the sexual control they were presumed to be exercising over young white women by means of stupefying materials like opium and cannabis. There was also the consideration, itself an extension of the juridical logic of the 1868 Act, of whether it ought to be

Honor’d in the Breach  259 acceptable, as it effectively was until 1916, for somebody to obtain a substance such as cocaine legitimately from a pharmacy, and then sell it on as a recreational product. To whom did substances belong outside the medical context? The repurposing of medical agents, together with the intervention of private commercial initiative in their provision, were also held to be offensive to social decorum. In other words, the case that was built on the grounds of medical harm was never sufficient to stand alone, but a host of other factors—the exigencies of war, racist stereotyping, a desire to preserve the integrity of medical materials, and one of those self-conflicted moments that periodically arise within capitalism when it finds itself piously appalled by individuals acting in accordance with its own principles—stood alongside the avowed desire of the law to protect its clients from doing themselves mischief. In the effort to control the opportunistic street dealer as well as unscrupulous shopkeepers, legislators could think of no more precise instrument than the criminalization of mere possession, thereby stigmatizing not just the unauthorized dealers of drugs, but everybody who took them as well. Instead of acting to curtail the activities of a criminal class, as it claimed it was doing, what DORA 40B effectively did was invent a criminal class ex nihilo. The second principle on which prohibition rests is that illicit drug use sustains criminal networks throughout the world, with all the squalid consequences of murderous gang rivalry, indentured labor, enforced participation in smuggling, protection rackets, bribery, the retailing of often noxiously adulterated substances, which themselves carry woeful medical costs, and so forth. This is an entirely circular argument. The worldwide racket in illegal drugs is the creation of the drug laws. It has stepped into the breach created by prohibition to supply a significant global demand illegally. Legislators who argue that the laws would work if only everybody obeyed them lead themselves into an ethical blind alley. A law that prohibited people from having sex before they were married, on pain of compulsory therapeutic treatment perhaps, would also work if everybody obeyed it. The point being missed is the failure of consensus. Thirdly, the specter of social breakdown is raised. If there were no penalties, it is claimed, more people would avail themselves of the chance of taking drugs, leading to civil disarray, absenteeism from work, antisocial behavior, and so on. These, however, are the consequences of excessive consumption. Such arguments are predicated on the postulate that if drugs were consumable without legal sanction, everybody who used them would immediately start using them without limit, because there would be nothing to stop them, as though what prevents excess presently, where it isn’t a factor in individual use, is the idea that they only dare take a little of something that has been made illegal, because it must therefore be dangerous. Superficially, there may appear to be some sustainable logic to this, until one looks at those examples

260  Stuart Walton there have been of decriminalization being put into practice, which have resulted in a reduction in overall consumption levels of most substances, as well as the more obviously expected reduction in harms caused by adulterated materials, contaminated needles, gang violence, and so on. Official worry is that the levels of social instability caused by dysfunctional drinking would be multiplied by whatever factor substances such as crack cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin bring to the equation, but the ­objective risks of becoming too deeply involved with substances such as these would not have altered. The official discourse could still point out the medical and other risks these materials carried, while saying that it had nonetheless decided that criminal sanction was no longer an appropriate strategy for dealing with their users, dysfunctional or otherwise. Many of those who have put the libertarian case on drug policy over the years have tended to err on the side of realism in their predictions of what would happen to consumption levels in a less repressive atmosphere. Surely, they would go up, once people were free of the threat of arrest. And yet, consistently, throughout the small but growing sector where decriminalization has been tried, even if there is an initial increase, the rates of usage eventually fall to below the level they were under prohibition. In Portugal, for example, there was an initial increase in overall usage levels following decriminalization in 2001, which by 2012 had turned into a significant, and apparently long-term, downturn.6 The reasons for this are quite complex. A lot of it can be accounted for by the new experimental users, who were initially attracted to try substances once they could do so with effective impunity, now losing interest in them. But what of the proportion of historic long-term users who have also stopped? The comprehensive healthcare system put in place, which advises and, where necessary, treats drug-using citizens, is undoubtedly responsible for some of the decline. People will apparently listen to rational advice where it is not axiomatically predicated on the assumption that they are doing wrong and they have to desist. But what of the rest? The traditional argument, what is generally known as the “forbidden fruit” paradigm, holds that precisely because substances have been ­declared off-limits, a certain coterie of reckless adventurists will be irresistibly drawn to them. Interdiction in itself can’t be the motivating factor, however; otherwise, many more people than are currently tempted might try to get hold of processed food products containing banned additives. People use illegal drugs despite their illegality, not because of it. It seems far more likely that, once the threat of legal sanction is removed from a product, it becomes at least partly normalized, just another consumer item in the marketplace like chocolate or tobacco. The removal of its special status under the law makes it more homogeneous with other items of consumption and therefore less of an occasion when it is consumed. It may still have to be tracked down and bought under cover, but

Honor’d in the Breach  261 the fact that it then carries less of a proscriptive legal and ethical charge, once obtained and taken, goes a long way to neutralizing it as a commodity, making it more ordinary. The principle seems to be that making something legally extraordinary by prohibiting it does not in itself make it more attractive than it already was, but making it more ordinary by removing the prohibition does make it less attractive than it was. In other words, it isn’t necessarily the legal X-factor in itself that makes it more or less attractive, but the comparative acts of its application and removal. Finally, there is the ethical-universalist argument that, whatever anybody in their own conscience thinks of the law, all must obey it, or else anarchy will result. The Achilles’ heel of this stance is that it is never clear what would prompt executive authorities to undo poor legislation other than inevitable contravention. Under this logic, every piece of gross injustice from the Garden of Eden to the Eighteenth Amendment would have reigned undisturbed and continued contributing to human misery. The argument assumes either one of two contentious postulates: either that all law is good law, by definition; or that everybody has a duty to observe even bad law, such as the regulative systems that sustained the various forms of apartheid, slavery, the Holocaust, and many another human enormity that was once perfectly legal. By contrast, where constitutional campaigns to overturn bad law have failed, only mass disobedience has undone it and created a sounder consensus in the long run.

Standard Arguments in Defense of Prohibition Among the arguments that the prohibitionist case has deployed over the years in support of the present legal dispensation, we can examine a select few. The first of these is that the state has the right to know what you are consuming. The juridical notion supporting prohibition is that the criminal law has the right to police not just the activities of its clients, but the contents of their bloodstreams and the composition of their innermost cells, even where the principle of consent has not been offended and where no harm has taken place. Sexual offenses legislation, which is properly concerned with violation and coercion, once also used to arrogate to itself the right to prescribe what could and could not be done within the privacy of the home between consenting adults, a repressive effect referred to during the debates on liberal reform in the 1960s as “the policeman in the bedroom.” The attempt to police what any individual consumes is even more invasive than this. It may properly be illegal to sell regulated poisons, but the global history of intoxicants, which reaches back to humanity’s Paleolithic infancy, has been a heuristic process of discovery of what is dangerous, what isn’t, and what lies in the expansive space between. Nobody would seriously argue against the provision of dispassionate factual advice on the likely physiological effects, in the short and the long term, of putting various

262  Stuart Walton substances through one’s system, whether they be trans-fats, cigarette smoke or ketamine, but the act of consumption cannot practically be anything other than a private right. Its long-term effects may become a very public affair and a legitimate focus of social policy, but the strategy of penalizing the act itself, in a wishful form of legalistic denial, has demonstrably fallen short of its aims. Prohibitionism refuses the argument that drug-taking is a victimless crime, both because it claims that the crime networks it supports generate countless victims, as indeed they do, and that drug-taking itself harms those around the user, traumatizing and impoverishing their families as they slither into addiction, at the very least disappointing them as they discover that they have brought up somebody who is prepared to break the law. The collateral damage in families and neighborhoods created through prohibition is indeed gruesome, and not to be minimized, and could be substantially alleviated through legal reform, but the principle still fails to stand that what prohibition has the right to do is force individuals to account for autonomous behavior, as distinct from that which directly impacts on others in obvious ways, such as physical violence, theft, and fraud. Drug-taking is only tenuously a crime in the traditional juridical understanding of the concept, because it does not in itself involve an individual or group victimizing another individual or group. One may do lasting damage to one’s own physical or mental health by taking drugs in an uncontrolled fashion, but even that worst-case scenario, which is not the greater part of the picture, is not in other respects illegal. Self-harming for the thrill of it is not illegal. Nor is starving oneself to anorexia in the interest of looking like a supermodel. Nor, of course, is becoming incurably addicted to cigarettes or subsiding into alcoholism. The counter-move that prohibitionism then makes is to say that, given that a serious quantity of medical harm is caused by the officially permitted substances, why would society wish to countenance multiplying it through withdrawing control of the banned ones? The corner into which that argument paints itself, though, is having to ­justify flagrant inconsistency in the application of legal standards, which only reflects the asymmetrical attitudes to the respective substances that solidified into history as a matter of contingency a century ago. Moreover, society doesn’t just live complacently with such harm but is everywhere concerned with preventing or at least mitigating it, an outcome that would be hugely assisted if the material involved in it were not being supplied by organized crime. Decriminalization—relegalization even more so—is premised on a false logic and would be a step backwards, argue prohibitionists. Why should cocaine and opium be legally available once again just because they were up until a century ago? On that logic, they insist, you could make a case for bringing back slavery. But nobody on the libertarian side is arguing that criminal sanctions should be lifted just because there didn’t use to be any; they make this argument because their application

Honor’d in the Breach  263 in the first place has been a disaster. If the law is not subject to periodic revision, on at least practical if not ethical grounds, its calamities will go on being propagated. Application of the law on joint criminal enterprise has recently been, very belatedly, re-examined and found wanting. ­Suicide used to be illegal, with the result that a botched attempt with too few aspirins could earn you a jail term. Same-sex male couples used to be routinely pursued by the law; now, they are allowed to get married. The law has the right to command assent, argue defenders of the status quo, even where it is founded on an aporia, what one might call the Carl Schmitt view, after the right-wing jurist and political philosopher whose view was that the law, as embodied in the figure of a leader who both instantiates it and reserves the power to decide when it should be suspended in the so-called “state of exception,” is always bigger than individual conscience. Such a view issues from the formal autonomization of the law, which is only ratified, not mollified, by the transition of legal codes from the arbitrary dispositions of absolute rulers to the codification of objective statute. In the medieval era, the principle of equality before the law intended only that all should be answerable to an external body of statute regardless of caste, instead of the mass being subjected to the executive whim of the privileged, but succeeded instead in making the law a monolithic authority, before which, ever since, all must exhibit due obeisance or be ground down, for all that it nonetheless accommodates the ruses of the privileged to evade it. Legality is primarily a matter of power, of who makes the law and how they enforce it, before it is a matter of justice. The traditional democratic homily that all are equal before the law, as before an adamantine golden idol, as opposed, say, to within its protective embrace, gives the game away about its true relation to liberty. Only such an alienated conception of the law could have generated the international drug legislation. During the period of the first Thatcher government in the UK, which had introduced a raft of restrictive trade union legislation that had split the labor movement between those campaigning constitutionally to have the law repealed and those who advocated systematically defying it during industrial disputes in order to render it unworkable, there was much surprise when the former Labor Prime Minister James Callaghan declared in an interview that “When the law is a bad law, there is always the contingent right to take action you would not otherwise take.” The point was subjected at the time to much public debate, and much public scorn from the conservative side, where it was portrayed not merely as a license to anarchy, but as constitutionally illiterate in an elder statesman. It may well be that what contravention of prohibition law constitutes, at least among private users, is not the actions of a selfish minority prepared to contribute to civil breakdown in pursuit of their own unregulated appetites, but a demonstration on behalf of the whole of society that an unjust law is functionally inapplicable. It was not the actions of the observant majority that rendered American Prohibition obsolete by the

264  Stuart Walton early 1930s, nor indeed arguably the activities of gangsters, s­ mugglers, moonshine distillers, and corrupted enforcement officials, all of whom could have been subjected to the due process of a judicial system with the time and resources to spare, but the stubborn persistence of contravention among otherwise law-abiding members of society. Where there is no objective need for a law, it will be regularly violated, until such time as it is at least placed in suspension, as has happened in Portugal and other similar cases, if not constructively dismantled altogether. In the meantime, the insistence on casting prohibitionism’s net ever wider, the preferred method in the United Kingdom and at federal level in the United States, only extends the proof that the law is impotent in its avowed purpose of abolishing demand by criminalizing consumption.

Strategic Approaches to Substance Control There are, broadly speaking, four possible strategic approaches to the issue of controlled substances. i Maintenance of the status quo. Those who say that the law may not be perfect, but there remains no solution on offer more obviously likely to work, face the perennial problem of deciding what more can be done to bring into line the recalcitrant minority, which remains consistent from one generation to the next. Since a century of penal controls has failed to eliminate it, what are they proposing to do next? ii Harm reduction. Under this approach, banned substances remain banned, but the focus is less on penalizing their users, and more on offering them advice and treatment within medical structures of surveillance, within which they might eventually reform themselves. iii Decriminalization. This policy has been put into practice in a number of jurisdictions around the world, from the liberalization of cannabis in the Dutch coffee-shops in the 1970s to the blanket ­decriminalization instituted in Portugal in 2001, now followed by Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Uruguay, and the city of ­Vancouver. End-users are permitted the possession of quantities of substances for personal use (roughly ten days’ worth in Portugal) without police action being taken against them. iv Legalization (i.e., relegalization). This stance recognizes that there remains a certain level of legal inequity in absolving personal users of sanction while maintaining the policy of legal harassment of their suppliers. The proposal would be that the use of substances, while not being subject to anything like official encouragement through public consumption or advertising, would nonetheless be licensed, regulated, controlled, and taxed as alcohol and tobacco are. This is now in force with regard to cannabis in certain states in America. To the objection that there would still be a black market undercutting

Honor’d in the Breach  265 the prices of the official supply, much as there currently is with the illegal sale of smuggled cigarettes, the answer could be put that what currently exists is nothing other than a black market, and that even though cigarettes are much cheaper to buy illegally than they are through the corner newsagent, the great majority of smokers still buy their supplies through the official channels. The economic entity that currently exists in the illicit drug trade is a market entirely controlled by producers and traders operating at every level of ethical scruple, all the way down to zero. What is required is something like the same level of consumer influence that obtains in legitimate markets, where not just quality but potency and intensity are led by buying patterns. It is an abiding truth that what the illegitimate market trades in is always the most powerful version of what it can produce, partly because with greater concentration comes smaller bulk, and therefore greater ease of invisible transportation across borders, and also because a stronger product yields a greater return. Even allowing for the fact that many products, particularly anything sold in powdered form, are likely to be diluted and adulterated many times as they pass along the supply chain, there is still more incentive for producers and dealers to sell crack than ordinary cocaine, methamphetamine than ordinary speed, heroin rather than opium, and so on. It is as though the ­alcohol trade were suddenly to focus all its efforts on selling absinthe and ­super-strength vodka, rather than wine and beer. It is sometimes pointed out by American prohibitionists that after the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed in 1933, consumption of alcohol once again sharply increased, and so it did. What is less commonly highlighted is that people returned to drinking average-strength beer and wine, rather than the stupefying spirits produced on illicit stills. A liberated market in other substances would quickly discover that it did not particularly need to be zombified into narcosis or hyper-stimulated to cardiac seizure by what it purchased, but could get more safely high in a more controlled fashion than the illicit market allows. As things stand, and as the free-market economist Milton Friedman pointed out in 1991, what prohibition is doing is zealously protecting the illegal drug cartel as an economic entity, supporting and augmenting its price controls by periodically doing damage to its supply-lines.7 There has been some modest global restriction in recent years on the overall supply of cocaine. That has been reflected at the bottom end of the chain by steadily lower levels of purity in the street material, which now contains a higher proportion of crushed-up caffeine tablets, over-the-counter anesthetic agents, veterinary worming tablets, and baby laxative, and therefore steadily greater profit for those involved in selling it. Reducing the availability does not abolish the market; it only further degrades what continues to be sold under the existing terms of trade.

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Conclusion The debate over prohibition characteristically runs into the sands sooner or later on the question of how much imperfection a legal system can tolerate. While prohibitionists insist that the law may not be perfect, but it is much better than the alternative, libertarians retort that legal reform would not produce perfection either, but it would be better than the present morass. Calls for reform by those who have worked in the police force, the prison system, the judiciary, even those who have served in government, tend only to be issued once the converted have safely retired from office and are no longer in a position to influence anything. From the point of view of the libertarian case, therefore, late is not b ­ etter than never. It’s the same as never. If the present dispensation is to be dismantled, what would be needed is active campaigning from within the enforcement industry, from within parliament, and from within the legal and medical professions. Veterans of the campaigns against nuclear weapons in the 1980s grew used to being told that their arguments were futile because, even in the unimaginable event of international nuclear disarmament, you could not disinvent the technology. Neither can you disinvent drugs.

Notes 1 UN Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2017, booklet 2, Global Overview of Drug Demand and Supply: Latest Trends, Cross-Cutting ­Issues (Vienna: United Nations, 2017). http://www.unodc.org/wdr2017/ field/Booklet_2_HEALTH.pdf (this and all subsequent URLs accessed 30 November 2018). 2 bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7234786.stm 3 bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8433285.stm 4 Patrick Gallahue and Rick Lines, The Death Penalty for Drug Offences. Global Overview 2015: The Extreme Fringe of Global Drug Policy ­(London: International Harm Reduction Association, 2015), 14. hri.global/ files/2015/10/07/DeathPenaltyDrugs_Report_2015.pdf 5 In fact, it was not so much opium, the use of which already had a long history among all strata of society, that was the agent of social corrosion in China as morphine and semi-synthetic opiates, as is eloquently shown in Frank Dikötter, Zhou Lun and Lars Laamann, Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China, revised ed. (London: Hurst, 2004; 2016). 6 mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-­decriminalized-all-drugshere-s-what-s-happening#.zwfIvZrFo 7 aei.org/publication/milton-friedman-interview-from-1991-on-americaswar-on-drugs/

Index

Note: Italic page numbers refer to figures and page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. Aaron, Paul 12 abstinence-based deficit model 202 abstinence-based policies 160 “act of patriotism” 80 addiction 1–5; changing attitudes to drug use and 114–19; hashish 139; management of drug 111; morphine 53–5, 64, 66n21; to narcotic drugs 176 “adolescent citizens” 190 Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) 235, 236, 238, 243, 244 “Age of Human Rights” 171–3 age of prohibition 38–40 “agrarian myth” 18 alcohol: American Temperance Movements against 72–4; and Case of Mexico 75–8; prohibition 10, 23, 71, 85; U.S. Prohibition of 82 alcoholism 37, 73, 74, 77, 78, 84–6, 122, 218, 262 Alcoholismo (Osuna) 81 Alessandri, Arturo 76 Alexander, Michelle 5, 181, 182 Alvarado, Ernestina 83 American civil organizations 76 The American Disease (1987) (Musto) 3 American imperialism 15, 73 American missionaries 71, 73, 74, 76, 86 American moral reform 75 American moral reformers 73 American progressivism 12, 16 American Protestants 6, 76; activities 85; groups 73, 75, 76, 83; and reformers 86

American social reformers 84 American television programs 160 American temperance movements 72–4, 83 American temperance organizations 15, 83–5 Amess, David 221 Anaya, Guillermo Hidalgo 118 Annales médico-psychologiques 55 Anslinger, Harry 151 anti-alcohol activists 20 anti-alcohol campaigns 78, 79, 81, 81, 83 anti-alcohol education 82 anti-alcohol leagues 81 anti-Chinese groups 115 anti-control position 33 “anti-crack” rallies 160 Anti-Drug Abuse Act 159, 160 anti-drug rhetoric 257 Anti-Leisure Drinking League 22 anti-liquor movement 15, 21 anti-narcotic imperialism 34, 41–4 anti-opium discourse 40 anti-opium laws 38 anti-opium measures in Indochina 43 Anti-Saloon League (ASL) 11, 20, 22, 25, 72, 74, 75 Anti-Saloon League of America (ASLA) 11 anti-Sandinista policies 158 Artaud, Antonin 63, 64 Article 14 of the ordinance 102 Article 117 of the Constitution 78 Article 295 of the Treaty of Versailles 87n18 “artificial paradises” 7, 52, 113

268 Index ASL see Anti-Saloon League (ASL) ASLA see Anti-Saloon League of America (ASLA) Asociación Anti-Alcohólica Nacional 78–9 Atatürk, Kemal 15 Augustinian schema 179 Austin, James 192 Autrique, Cecilia 6 Bacchi, Carol 190, 192, 193, 195, 199 Ball, Benjamin 53 Baudelaire, Charles 51, 181 Baxi, Upendra 171 Becker, Howard 6, 7, 210, 217, 218 Bennett, Cary 200 Berridge, Virginia 1, 4, 52, 67n41, 240, 242 Bert, Paul 37 Bessant, Judith 197 Bewley-Taylor, David 172, 175 “black market” 6, 86, 124, 136, 265 Bliss, Andy 221 The Blue Crosses: The Tales of Hashish Smugglers 100 Boister, Neil 171 Bowles, Terence 199 Brent, Charles 38, 74, 75 Broadhurst, Joseph 104 Brown, Lyn 225 Bryan, William Jennings 16, 24, 74, 75 Burgess, Nicholas 225 Bush, George H.W. 155, 156, 158, 161 Bush, George W. 161 cadastral registers 35 “Cake” 221 Callaghan, James 263 Calles, Plutarco Elías 76, 82, 89n41, 113 Calmette, Albert 36 Canguilhem, Georges 137 cannabis 75, 86, 94–6, 100, 102, 103, 154, 240, 244, 256, 258, 264 “cannabis-oriented culture” 102 Cannon, James 75 capitulations system 95 “carceral continuum” 227 Cárdenas, Lázaro 115, 123 Carranza, Venustiano 75–7, 87n23, 89n41 Carter, Jimmy 153

Case of Mexico 86; alcohol and 75–8; drugs and 74–5 Chailley, Joseph 37 Chambard, Ernest 54, 55, 64 Charcot, Jean-Martin 53 chemsex 209–20, 228 Cherrington, Ernest 74, 75 Chinese immigration 33 Churchill, Winston 17, 18 científicos 84 Cincinnati Convention 78 Círculos Católicos Obreros 88n34 “The City Without Drugs” (Roizman) 134 civilian law enforcement 157 civilizing activities 43 civil law enforcement 155 civil organizations 84 civil society groups 72, 83 Claretie, Jules 57 Clayton Anti-Trust Act (1914) 24 Clinton, Bill 161 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste 35 Colombia 182 Comité Nacional de la Lucha Contra el Alcoholismo 83 Commission on Organized Crime 160 Comprehensive Crime Control Act 159 comprehensive drug convention 174 comprehensive healthcare system 260 Confucian Han scholars 39 Congressional Review Service 157 Conroy, Mary Schaeffer 135 conservative/reactionary religious movement 25 Constitutionalistas 85 Constitutional Revolutionaries 77, 88n35; and Protestants 78 “container based paradigms” 14 contemporary drug education programs 200 contemporary policies 124 contemporary Russian drug policy 133–5; negative impact on 141–2 Coolidge, Calvin 71 de Coronado, Pánuco 120 countercultural movements 52 counter-narcotics operations 156, 157, 161 counter-narcotics programs 158 Courtwright, David T. 1, 4, 5, 16 Crafts, Wilbur 73

Index  269 Crick, Emily 6 Crime and Criminals in Palestine 98 Criminalia 117, 121, 122, 124 Cromer, Lord 95 crop eradication policies 172 Cruickshank, Barbara 192 Cruz, Olga S. 195–6 “cultural imperialism” 14, 15 culturalist explanations 13, 14, 17–25 cylotropina 118 Dangerous Drugs Ordinance 102 Daudet, Alphonse 61 Daudet, Léon 55–6 Davis, Oliver 7 The Death Penalty for Drug Offences 256 decision-making model 200 decriminalization 260, 262, 264; law 191; Portuguese 191, 201; strategies 201; see also drugs decriminalization de facto decriminalization 257 Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) 52, 225, 258 “the degeneration of the race” 112 degeneration theory 113, 117, 122, 128n74 “democratization” of drug abuse 136, 138, 139, 141 De Quincey, Thomas 51 Derrida, Jacques 176–7, 239 Di Belgiojoso, Cristina Trivulzio 94 Dijkstra, Bram 58 domestic political institutions 16 Donaldson, Liam 237 DORA see Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) Doumer, Paul 35, 45n18 Douzinas, Costas 173 Dovlatov, Sergei 137 Dreyfus, Alfred 40 “drink traffic” 22, 23 drug abuse 137, 138; “democratization” of 136, 138, 139, 141; in Soviet Russia 142; Soviet scientific constructions of 137–8 drug addicts 53, 102, 116, 118, 123, 134, 136–42, 172, 181, 196, 198 “drug-cultures” paradigm 4 Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) 153, 157, 158

“drug-free country” 133; contemporary Russian drug policy 133–5; drug use in Soviet Period 136–7; post-Soviet perceptions of 141–2; Soviet drug policy, evolution of 138–41; Soviet scientific constructions of drug abuse 137–8; Soviet Union as ideal model 135–6 “drug-free state” 133 drug-induced psychosis 211, 216, 216, 217, 218 “drug king pins” 159 drug laws 154, 172; enforcement 150, 155, 157; reform 184; “undoubted racism” of 184 drug policy 139, 176, 239, 242; contemporary Russian 133–5; international 172; Mexican 111; prohibitionist 222; reform 190; Russian 133–5, 140, 142; Soviet 133, 136, 138–41 “drug-politics” paradigm 3 drug prevention 190–2, 194, 198–202 drug prohibition 123, 170, 182, 183, 192; in “Age of Human Rights” 171–3; global 33, 86, 141, 150, 161; and human rights 174–5; international 75, 170–1, 173, 174, 176–7, 182; regime 136 ‘drug psychosis’ 217 drug refusal statements 200 drug regulation 1, 2; in France 52; regimes of 134 drug regulatory systems 93 drugs 181–2; American Temperance Movements against 72–4; and Case of Mexico 74–5; consumption of 1, 3, 4, 38, 77, 100, 101, 103; deaths 237; recreational 134; see also narcotics “DrugScience” 236 drugs decriminalization 201, 202–2; adolescence, addiction vulnerability, and citizenship 196–8; drug prevention, power, and subjectivity 198–200; Portugal and quiet revolution of 191–4; strategy 192; value of health and danger of illegal drugs 194–6 drugs prohibition 190; legal framework of 201; traditional 191, 196 “Drugs Taskforces” 222, 226

270 Index The Drugtakers (Young) 5 drug trafficking organization 157–9 drug use 100, 112, 133, 152, 156, 160, 184, 197, 258; and addiction, changing attitudes to 114–19; in armed forces 52; criminal prosecution for 134; illegal 190–6, 198–202; illicit 214, 255, 259; inoffensive reality of 63; institutionalizing 217; proponents of 181; punishments for 111; in Soviet Period 136–7 “drug war” 153 Duff, Cameron 193, 202 DuPont, Robert 153 Eastwood, Niamh 190 effendiya 95, 103 Egyptian cafés 101 Egyptian law 96 Ehrlichman, John 153 Eighteenth Amendment 13, 14, 20, 21, 24, 25, 151, 152, 264; to the Constitution 10 El Imparcial 113 El Informador 119 Elliott, Simon 220 El Mundo Cristiano 79, 80 El Siglo de Torreón 113 embriaguez 112 Enríquez, Ignacio C. 81, 82 Estridentista literary movement 115 ethical-universalist argument 261 Euro-modern instantiation 184 Euro-modernity 181 European Fascism 183 Europeanized notions of humanity 177 evidential problem of evil 178–9 “evil” of drugs 176 evil of (non) human 182–3 Executive Order 12564 160 Fanon, Frantz 178, 179–81, 184, 187n45 Fanonian humanism 184–5 Farrugia, Adrian 198, 199 Federal Code of Penal Procedures 116 Federal Council of Churches 71 Federal drug treatment funding system 160 Federal funding towards enforcement 150

Federal Hospital for Drug Addicts 116, 118 Federal Meat Inspection Act 24 Federal Regulations of Drug Addiction 116 Federal Reserve (1913) 24 Federal Trade Commission Act (1914) 24 “féminin” 57 femininity 56–62 Fin-de-Siècle 56–62 First Scientific Conference on Drug Abuse 138 Fisher, Mark 177 Fitzpatrick, Peter 177 Fleck, Ludwig 198 “forbidden fruit” paradigm 260 Forces of Habit (2001) (Courtwright) 3, 16 Foreign Assistance Act 150, 158, 159 Foucauldian tool box 201 Foucault, Michel 137, 192, 209, 215, 227, 228 Fournier, Raul 120 Fox, Edward 190 Fraser, Suzanne 198, 199 French colonialism 44 French empire 33 French fiscal problem 35 French opium discourse 34 Friedman, Milton 265 “frivolous sexuality” 101 Fursenko, Andrey A. 134 García, Jonás 81 Gauke, David 222 gay communities 210, 212, 213, 215, 216, 226, 227 German, Iurii 137 Ghodse, Hamid 172–3 Giddens, Anthony 196 Gilbert-Lecomte, Roger 63, 64 Ginzburg, Evgeniia 137 Glasser, Ira 182 Global Commission on Drug Policy 241 “global drug law enforcer” 158 global drug prohibition 33, 86, 141, 150, 161 global prohibition protocols 255 global temperance movement 14 global temperance societies 151 “Global War on Terror” 161 “Golden Age” of crime fiction 100

Index  271 Gordon, Lewis 178 Gordon, Nancy 75 “Gothenburg” systems 24 Grasset, Eugène 59, 60, 68n56 “the Great Commoner” 16 Great Depression 11, 18, 115 “grey market” 136–7 Guerra de Reforma 75 Gusfield, Joseph 12, 18–21 Hacking, Ian 197 The Hague Convention 33, 34, 43, 51, 72, 74, 75, 87n18 The Hague Opium Convention 74 Hakim, Jamie 218, 219 Hall, Stanley 198 Harari, Sammy 212 Harding, Warren G. (1921–1923) 71 Harle, Daniel 211–12 harm: identifying and classifying 236–40; psychoactivity and 244–7 harmful drugs 236, 244, 246 harm reduction approach 264 Harrison Act 52, 74, 152 Harrison Narcotics Act (1914) 24 hashish smokers in mandatory Palestine 96–102 “hashish-smoking clubs” 100 Haydock, Will 7 Hayekian neoliberalism 18 health problematization 201 Hellenistic Judaism 179 Hellfire Nation (2003) (Morone) 12, 21 herbolarias 112, 113 Heroza, Armando Hernández 118 Hobson, Christopher 176, 183 Hobson, Richmond 151 Hofstadter, Richard 12, 18–19, 21 Hoover, Herbert 11, 71 Howard-Jones, Norman 53 human rights 176, 184; decoupling of 185; drug prohibition and 174–5; “human” of 173–4; international 170, 171, 184; liberalism of 183; post-war triumph of 173; violations 170 Hunt, Paul 171 IACP see International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) illegal drugs: use 196; value of health and danger of 194–6

illicit drug trade 265 illicit drug use 214, 255, 259 Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs 237–8 indigenous communities 182 International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) 155–6 International Conventions 43 international drug control system 152, 171, 220 international drug control treaties 140, 170, 183 international drug policy 172 international drug prohibition 75, 170, 171, 173, 174, 176–7, 182 International Harm Reduction Association 256 international human rights 170, 171, 184 international human rights law 170, 173 The International Journal of Drug Policy 243 international law 174, 177; humanism in 184; universal humanity of 180 international legal apparatus 172 international legal order 170, 184 international legal project 174, 181, 183 international legal treaty 176 International Opium Convention 96 international opium regulation 34 International Reform Bureau 38, 73 Interstate Commerce Commission 24 “intoxicating liquors” 11, 23 intoxication 2–7, 42, 63, 71, 99, 112, 235, 236, 245, 247, 248 Israeli invasion 93 Ivanov, Viktor P. 134 Jacob, Porfirio Barba 115 Jaffe, Jerome 153 Jarman, Derek 215 Johnson, William E. 17, 23 Juárez, Benito 75 Juárez, Ciudad 89n54 Jueves de Excélsior 119 “Just Say No” campaign 154, 160, 161 Kirkbride, Thomas 140 Kitchener, Lord 95 Klansmen 12 Knorr-Cetina, Karin 137

272 Index Konovalov, Alexander V. 134 Koram, Kojo 6, 159 Krisberg, Barry 192 de Labruyère, Georges 57, 62 La Castañeda asylum 117 de la Huerta, Adolfo 76 La Morphinée 56–62, 61 La Morphinomane 60, 60 Lancaster, Kari 193 de Lanessan, Jean-Marie 35, 36 La Nueva Democracia 80 La Révolution surréaliste 64 Latour, Bruno 137 Latypov, Alisher 135 law functions 176 league-era drug treaties 174 League of Nations 103; treaties 152 League of Nations Opium Advisory Committee 102 “legal highs” 245 legalization 11, 124, 264–5 Les Damnés de la terre 178 L’Évangéliste 61 Levant hashish trade 6, 93, 94–6, 99, 102, 104 Levine, Harry G. 181 Liedekerke, Arnould de 57 “lifestyle maximization” 219 Lindholm, Sofia Kvist 200 Lines, Rick 170, 176 “liquor traffic” 23 Luminoso, Sendero 158 Madero, Francisco I. 75 Maillefert, Eugenio Gómez 114 mandatory Palestine, hashish smokers in 96–102 Manual for the Promotion of Social and Emotional Competencies in Schools 199 Maoist guerrilla movement 158 marihuano memorialization 124 marijuana 119–23, 137; legalization 124; recreational 86; smoking 112 “marijuana intoxication” 122 Marx, Karl 119–23 Masaryk, Tomáš 15 masculinity 53–6 Matignon, Albert 58 May, Theresa 243 McAllister, William 175 McCarthyites 12 McGirr, Lisa 21

MDA see Misuse of Drugs Act (MDA) Measham, Fiona 221, 225, 236 medical profession 53–6 medicine 54, 55, 119–23 Medvedev, Dmitry 134 Meister, Robert 183 Mendès, Catulle 62 “mental hygiene” 117 mephedrone 220 Méphistophéla 62 “metamorphous of prohibition” 201 methamphetamine 218, 265 Methodist Church 78 Mexican attitudes to narcotics 112–14 Mexican civil society 85 Mexican Constitutionalists 76, 78–9 Mexican drug policy 111 Mexican Revolution 75, 76, 112, 114 Mexico City mental asylum 117 Mexico penal system 116 Mexico, protestants in 78–83 Meylakhs, Petr 133 Mignolo, Walter 174, 184 Mill, John Stuart 18, 236 Mises, Ludwig von 18 mission civilisatrice 34 Misuse of Drugs Act (MDA) 220, 223, 235, 239, 240, 246 “Mito de Marihuana” article 119 modern international law 177 Monaghan, Mark 240 Monsieur Morphée 63 Montreux Convention 96 Moore, David 195 moral reformers 21, 33, 38, 39, 71, 74 moral reformism 33 Moreau de Tours, Georges 58 Morel, Bénédict-Augustin 53 Moreno, Samuel Ramírez 117 Morone, James 21 morphine 51–62, 64 Morphine: Vices et passions des morphinomanes (1906) 60 morphinomanes 51, 63 morphinomania 53, 54, 57, 58 morphinomaniacs 54, 57, 58 Morris, Chris 221 Morris, Stephen 219–20 Musto, David 3, 12 “The Myth of Marijuana” 111, 122 NAA see National Anti-Alcohol Association (NAA) Napoleonic Civil Code of 1804 56

Index  273 narco-terror discourse 158 narco-terror threat 158 Narcotic Farm 140 narcotics: Mexican attitudes to 112–14; prohibition 86; see also drugs Narcotics Intelligence Bureau (CNIB) 95 National Anti-Alcohol Association (NAA) 81, 82 national anti-alcohol plan 83 “national interest waiver” 158 National Medical Congress 120 national mental health policy 117 National Plan 195–9, 202 National Plan Against Drugs and Drug Addiction 2005–2012 191 National Plan for the Reduction of Addictive Behaviors and Dependences 2013–2020 191, 194 National Security Decision Directive 221 (NSDD-221) 150 national security policy 157 National Strategy for the Fight Against Drugs and Drug Addiction 191, 196, 198 neoliberalism 196, 218, 219, 242 NEP see New Economic Policy (NEP) neuroscientific explanations of behavior 197 New Economic Policy (NEP) 136 “New Jim Crow” 182 New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) 2, 210, 220–8; coercive governance of 226 Nguyễn dynasty 34, 35 Nineteenth Amendment 24 Nixon, Richard 150–1, 153, 154, 161, 227; “War on Drugs” 152–3 Nixon campaign 153 “Nixon Tapes” 153 “noble experiment” 24 NPS see New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) Nutt, David 221, 236, 240, 244 Obama, Barack 153 Obregón, Álvaro 76, 82, 89n41, 89n55 Office for National Statistics (ONS) 223–4 Open Door Policy 73–4, 87n13 Operation Blast Furnace 157 Operation Intercept 154

“opiomanía” 40 opium 51; dens 35; prohibition 74; smoking 34, 36, 37; unprocessed 35 Orazi, Manuel 60 Order of Good Templars 10 oriental conspiracy 220 oriental constitution and culture 44 “Oriental vice” 41, 99 Osuna, Andrés 81 Ottoman penal law 94 Pan-American Conferences 76 Paris Peace Conference 74 Partnership for Drug-Free America 160 Pasha, Russell 95, 104 pastoral governance 210, 214, 218–19, 223, 226, 228 PCA see Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) Penning, Mike 221, 225 Pérez, Genaro 113 Pichon, Georges 55, 64 Pickard, Hannah 193 Pillay, Navanethem 172 Platonic philosophy 179 Poisons and Pharmacy Act 1868 258 political entrepreneurs 151 Porfiriato 84 Portes Gil, Emilio 83 Portugal: drugs decriminalization strategy 202; drug strategy documents 201; illegal drug use in 200; and quiet revolution of drugs decriminalization 191–4 Portuguese drugs decriminalization strategy 190, 191, 194, 201 Portuguese health services 192 Portuguese welfare state 199 Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) 155–7 post-war international law 171, 182–3 post-world economic order 175 pragmatic maintenance-substitution system 52 Pre-Convention Indochina 34–8 “principle of private property” 121 “Prison Everywhere” 209 private drug treatment programs 160 problem-solving approach 193 progressive arguments 19 Prohibition and the Progressive Movement (1963) 12 prohibitionist drug policy 222 Prohibition Party 10

274 Index prohibitions 2–5; legal principles of 258–61; standard arguments in defense of 261–4 prohibition scholarship 12; secondgeneration 13, 25 protestant activism 71 protestant churches 78–9, 81 protestant reformers 73, 82, 83 Pruneda, Alfonso 79, 88n38 PSA see Psychoactive Substances Act (PSA) “psychoactive counterrevolution” 4–5 “psychoactive revolution” 3–5 psychoactive substances 1–3, 242–4 Psychoactive Substances Act (PSA) 210, 220, 222–6, 228, 235, 236, 242–3, 245–7 Psychoactive Substances Bill 221 psychoactivity 2; and harm 244–7 public awareness campaign 212 pulque 76, 77, 82, 84, 85 pulquerías 84 punitive domestic polices 161 Pure Food and Drug Act 24 Puritans 12, 84 Pyke, Frederick B. 84 quasi-totalitarian “benevolent repression” 21 “queer pharmatopia” 215 Rabinow, Paul 192 “racial disproportionality” 159 Ram, Haggai 6 Rancière, Jacques 225 “reactionary” social movement 17 Reagan, Nancy 155, 160 Reagan, Ronald, “War on Drugs” 150–1, 153–4; intensified domestic 159–61; international dimensions of 157–9; militarization of 154–7 recreational drugs 134 recreational hashish smoking 102 recreational marijuana 86 Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (2010) 14 Reinarma, Craig 181 religious conservatism 183 Renaud, Jean 36 Revolucionarios Constitucionalistas 76, 84 Reyes, Alfonso 114 Rivera, Diego 115 Rockefeller Laws 154

Rockefeller, Nelson 154 Rodet, Paul 54 Rodríguez, José María 77 Roizman, Yevgeny V. 134 Roosevelt, Franklin 11 Roosevelt, Theodore 38, 74 Rose, Nikolas 192, 197, 227 Rosmarin, Ari 190 Rosseau, Paul Armand 37 Russell, Thomas Pasha 95, 96, 104 Russian drug policy 133–5, 140, 142 Sáenz, Moisés 81 Saint Augustine 178–80 Salazar Viniegra, Leopoldo 111, 112, 116–23 Sandinista regime 155 Sanitary Code 113 Saussay, Victorien du 60, 61 Schmitt, Carl 177, 180, 263 school-based universal program 198, 199 Schrad, Mark Lawrence 6 “secularized mankind” functions 180 Seddon, Toby 3, 239, 242, 246, 247 SEL see social and emotional learning (SEL) self-esteem based drug education 199 self-help organizations 10 Sem, Minna 56 Sentencing Reform Act 159 Seventeenth Amendment 24 sexual offenses legislation 261 Shami, Yitzhak 97, 98 Shanghai conference 39 Shanghai conventions 33, 34 Shanghai Opium Commission 74, 174 al-Shawarib, Nimr Abu 97 Sheppard, Morris 21, 23 Shkarovskii, Mikhail V. 137 Single Convention 154, 175, 177, 179–81, 183; specter of evil in 175–8 Sinophobic campaigns 115 Siqueiros, Davíd 115 Sixteenth Amendment (1913) 24 Smith, Adam 18 Smith, Benjamin T. 6 smoking marijuana 112 social and emotional learning (SEL) 198–200 Social Creed of the Churches 71 Social Gospel 71, 73; movement 75–6 “social medicine” 117

Index  275 social reformers 73 social reform movement 72, 85 social welfare outcomes 196 Société Fermière 38 socio-economic inequality 120 “socio-pharmacological” hypothesis 218 Soviet drug policy 133, 136, 138–41 Soviet historiography 135 Soviet Period, drug use in 136–7 Soviet Russia, drug abuse in 142 Soviet scientific constructions of drug abuse 137–8 Soviet Union 135–6 “Spice” 237 “state of exception” 263 Stevens, Alex 221, 225, 236 “strict didacticism” 133 Stuart, David 211–14, 228 subjectification process 200 Symbolic Crusade (1963) (Gusfield) 19 synthetic cannabinoids 2, 223, 224, 227, 237 Tablada, José Juan 115 taxation, economic benefits of 86 Taylor, Stuart 200, 201, 240, 247 temperance 22; activism 10, 15; movement 19–20 Terry, Fernando Belaúnde 158 “theodicy of modernity” 179–81 Tidhar, David 98–100 Timberlake, James H. 12 toxicomane 52, 62–4 transform’s ideal model of regulation 241, 241 “transnational moral entrepreneurs” 151 transnational movement 72; of American Protestant groups 75 transnational progressive movements 16 Treaty of Versailles 74; Article 295 of the 87n18 Tyrrell, Ian 14, 73, 85 UK drug-control law 210 UK drug policy 235 UK Psychoactive Substances Act 3 UN Convention Against Illicit Trafficking Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances 156

UN convention on drug trafficking 159 UN drug control conventions 150, 161, 170, 182 UN drug control system 170 UN drug treaties 172 UN-era international law 177, 183 UN human rights 172; framework 183; system 171 Unión Femenil Metodista Mexicana 83 United Nations Conference on Narcotic Drugs 183 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs 174 universal humanity functions 180 UN legal treaty 183 unprocessed opium 35 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs 152 US counter-narcotics policies 154, 158 US criminal justice system 5 US drug policies 150 US-Mexican Border 83–5 US policy of “certification” 159 US Prohibition 83; of alcohol 82 US-style law enforcement methods 159 utilitarianism 176 Vasilyev, Pavel 6 Velasco, Epigmenio 79, 81, 89n41 Velmet, Aro 6 Vengeance of the Fathers (Shami) 97 Vienna Convention On The Law Of Treaties 175 Volstead Act 11, 152 Volstead, Andrew 11 Wacquant, Loic 5 Walmsley, Ian 6–7, 248 Walton, Stuart 7 The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State (McGirr) 21 “War on Drugs” 138–9, 154, 161, 181, 183, 227; Nixon 152–3; from prohibition to 150–2; Reagan 153–61 WCTU see Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) Weinberger, Caspar 157 “wet” organizations 11 Wheeler, Wayne 75 “white drugs” 95

276 Index Willard, Frances 75 Wilson, Susannah 6, 71, 248n1 Wilson, Woodrow 11 Withington, Phil 7 WLAA see World League Against Alcoholism (WLAA) Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) 10–11, 72 Workers Convention of Chihuahua 82 World League Against Alcoholism (WLAA) 11, 74, 76, 79 World Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WWCTU) 74, 76 WPR approach 192–4, 201 Wright, Hamilton 176

Wright, Quincy 176 WWCTU see World Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WWCTU) Yeomans, Henry 240 Young, Jock 5, 217, 218 zero-tolerance on drugs 160 zero-tolerance Soviet drug policy 141 Zinberg, Norman 218 Zionist historiography 100 “zone of non-being” 179 Zyuganov, Gennady A. 134