Rob Ford, the conservative mayor of Toronto, has been making news for months now as reports of a video showing him smoking crack have circulated. Now he has admitted it's true.
“You asked me a question back in May and you can repeat that question,” Mr. Ford told a crush of journalists, photographers and camera operators. “Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine. But no, do I, am I an addict? No. Have I tried it? Probably in one of my drunken stupors, probably approximately about a year ago.”What's astonishing is how casually this man -- who echoes conservative American talking points as he rails against the government gravy train, AIDS prevention and bike lanes -- admits to "drunken stupors." This is par for the course in North American society, where we have draconian laws against cocaine and heroin, but think nothing of how millions of Americans and Canadians drink enough on a daily basis to cause brain damage.
People use "I was drunk" as an excuse for everything, as a sort of badge of honor. Getting totally trashed by drinking 21 shots on your 21st birthday is a rite of passage. But that's often enough alcohol to kill you. There are 900 cases of alcohol poisoning in the US each week, mostly in the college-age population. And they're still coming up with newer, faster ways to get drunk, from stylish vaportinis to disgusting butt-chugging.
But being drunk is not a mitigating factor. You're responsible for anything you do while drunk if you voluntarily drank yourself stupid. And stupid is the right word.
Two-thirds of violent crimes against intimates are under the influence of alcohol, and 40% of all violent crimes are committed under the influence. Fifty percent of acquaintance rapes involve alcohol. Millions of families are destroyed by alcohol abuse. In 2005, 75,000 people died from alcohol, mostly from car accidents and diseases like cirrhosis and cancer. According to the CDC, alcohol use costs America $223.5 billion a year.
I don't drink, and I've never done drugs. I think alcohol and recreational drugs are a scourge on society, along with gambling, football, NASCAR and pro wrestling. In my less charitable moments I dismiss people who use booze and drugs as mopes and dopes. But I also think the war on drugs is a total waste of money: prohibition failed in the 1930s, and today's illicit drug prohibition is an abject failure. The swillers of scotch and chuggers of beer who keep fighting to keep marijuana illegal are complete hypocrites.
The knock against marijuana is that it's the "gateway drug" that leads to cocaine, heroin and certain death. But as Rob Ford's case shows, alcohol is the real gateway drug: it's easily accessible and its consumption is widely and wildly encouraged -- it's a $400 billion industry. And it's not the only gateway drug: we have dozens now.
Parents are feeding mind-altering drugs like ritalin to their kids under the guise of helping them with attention deficit disorder, but often they just don't like dealing with rambunctious kids. Ritalin is chemically similar to cocaine (it's been considered as "methadone for cocaine addiction"), and in sufficiently high doses is just as addictive. People are becoming addicted to opioid painkillers like oxycodone by the millions, and when doctors cut them off many turn to heroin. Rush Limbaugh circumvented banking regulations to get cash to pay for his oxycodone addiction, which may have cost him his hearing.
Some states have legalized marijuana, but the federal government is still wasting billions of dollars fighting a war against a drug that for all practical purposes is impossible to overdose on. One college kid died from drinking 24 shots in two hours: but Amanda Bynes reportedly smoked 10 joints an hour (surely not a world record) before getting tossed in jail after she tossed a bong out her window. But that's nowhere near the toxicity of alcohol: a deadly dose of THC requires smoking 15,000 joints in 20 minutes. Nicotine is far more toxic: Igor Stravinsky almost died of nicotine poisoning while working on Petrushka; the nicotine in two cigarettes could kill an adult if directly absorbed.
I'm not saying we should hand out drugs like candy. Cocaine should be controlled because of the risks of heart attack, stroke, and high blood pressure. Heroin is extremely addictive (and causes constipation!), but it's an opioid just like Vicodin and Oxycontin which are legal and handed out liberally by doctors for the most minor complaints. Most of the problems with heroin abuse (hepatitis and HIV from needle sharing, poisoning from street drugs cut with crap, etc.) are due to the unsanitary practices of broke and strung-out addicts and its illegality. Crystal meth is bad news all around, but because it's so easy to make and it's illegal, it means quick cash and a top TV series. If better drugs were available, no one would risk using meth and getting meth mouth.
But there's still resistance to decriminalization and legalization because politicians are afraid of looking soft on drugs. House Republicans, always fond of the drug war because it funnels so much money into the pockets of for-profit prison corporations who contribute millions to Republican candidates, are desperate to balance the budget. (They also apparently like to drink on the House floor.)
To show their budgetary desperation and determination House Republicans voted to cut $40 billion in food stamps over the next 10 years. But the federal government spends $15 billion every year on the war on drugs, much of that to stop marijuana. States spend an additional $25 billion. We spend hundreds of billions on prisons, which are mostly filled with minor drug offenders.
If we legalized marijuana and decriminalized drug use, we could save tens of billions of dollars in enforcement efforts annually, clear out our prisons, and reduce the number of burglaries and muggings committed by addicts desperate for the cash to buy their next fix. We could cut the legs off the drug cartels in Latin America, which would eliminate the thousands of murderous criminals Joe Arpaio says are bringing drugs north and taking guns south across the border every day.
People use illicit drugs for all kinds of reasons, but the underlying factor is that drugs fill some void in their brain chemistry. We have tacitly acknowledged this biological fact with our wholesale adoption of drugs like ritalin, Cymbalta, Abilify, Zoloft, Prozac, Paxil, and so on, to treat the tiniest symptoms of inattention, depression and social anxiety. And we have alcohol ever-present to give us the liquid courage to beat our wives and rape our dates.
In a country where giant pharmaceutical companies push dope during the nightly news and beer companies glorify drunken behavior during football games, it is preposterous that the DEA is still raiding legal medical marijuana dispensaries for cancer patients.
My solution? Most drugs and alcohol should be legal, though discouraged -- glamorous advertising should be banned. They should be treated like the dirty little industry they are. They should be taxed according to how much their damage costs society. That should be enough to discourage casual use but not enough to encourage criminal activity to circumvent those taxes. Distribution of drugs that cause direct mental or physical damage (incapacitatingly addictive, very high toxicity, damaging to DNA, etc.) should remain illegal, but usage should not be criminal: the users are the victims, not the perpetrators.
So, let us take the first of twelve steps. Repeat after me:
My name is America and I am an alcoholic. And a drug addict. And denying reality.
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