Talk­ing Drugs: Most of What You Know About Ad­dic­tion is Wrong

The US tele­vi­sion se­ries, “The Wire,” is a thinly-veiled doc­u­men­ta­tion of Bal­ti­more City’s in­sti­tu­tional prob­lems, of which drugs avail­able at al­most every cor­ner is an in­her­ent part. It is now of­ten cited as one of the great­est shows in the his­tory of tele­vi­sion. Its fans in­clude Barack Obama and Ed­ward Snow­den. And ref­er­ences to the show pop up in any con­ver­sa­tion about drugs and po­lice.

David Si­mon, who worked for The Bal­ti­more Sun as a po­lice re­porter for more than a decade be­fore he went on to write and cre­ate this HBO tele­vi­sion se­ries, has one ma­jor piece of ad­vice, some­thing he says by stress­ing it with the use of ‘F’ word : “Stop this war on drugs.”

Si­mon has one so­lu­tion: End the drug war.

“The drug war gives every­body per­mis­sion to do any­thing. It gives cops per­mis­sion to stop any­body, to go in any­one’s pock­ets, to man­u­fac­ture any lie when they get to dis­trict court …. The drug war gives every­body per­mis­sion. And if it were dra­con­ian and we were fix­ing any­thing that would be one thing, but it’s dra­con­ian, and it’s a dis­as­ter.”

Chap­ter 4 of Dr Anirudh Kala’s smash­ing new book on drugs is ti­tled “The War on Drugs is a War Against Our Own Young Peo­ple.” It makes the same ar­gu­ment, based on his­tory, data, and a sane analy­sis.

“Most of What You Know About Ad­dic­tion Is Wrong” – Dr. Kala’s book about how to fight drugs and ad­dic­tion is a damn­ing in­dict­ment of gov­ern­ment poli­cies, politi­cians’ shenani­gans, the po­lice’s dumb ap­proach and the gen­eral wis­dom that any­one who con­sumes, ped­dles, sells or deals in drugs should be caught and put in jail un­der one or the other strin­gent law.

In this scin­til­lat­ing talk with Dr Anirudh Kala and an­other anti-drug ac­tivist and au­thor Mo­han Sharma, se­nior jour­nal­ist SP Singh ques­tions every strain of pop­u­lar re­ceived wis­dom about drugs and how to con­trol the men­ace. Hu­man con­nec­tion, the ex­perts say, is the key weapon.

At a time when Pun­jab and Pun­jabis are cry­ing hoarse about “chitta” be­ing sold every­where, news of drug over­dose (OD) ap­pear in­ces­santly in daily news­pa­pers and politi­cians blame each other for ei­ther not stop­ping drugs, or, worse, ac­tively aid­ing the drug trade, Dr Kala’s book only un­der­lines some­thing that can be stated in drug terms: “What the hell were they smok­ing when they gained this wis­dom?”

From the id­iocy of keep­ing liquor and to­bacco out­side the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of drugs, to the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of cannabis, opium and even opi­oids, to the ut­ter in­san­ity called the “Nar­cotic-Drugs and Psy­chotropic Sub­stances Act” (NDPS Act) to the atroc­ity called drug dead­dic­tion cen­tres, Dr Anirudh Kala de­mol­ishes the pop­u­lar wis­dom -do­main by do­main, chap­ter by chap­ter, data by data, and drug by drug.

Some of his chap­ter ti­tles are ques­tions we should be ask­ing of ex­perts. For ex­am­ple, chap­ter 5 is ti­tled: “Why are Cannabis and Opium ‘drugs’ while al­co­hol and to­bacco are not?” Also, “Is there a safe level of drugs?” “Is there a safe level of drink­ing?” “Which is the most dan­ger­ous drug?”

In his book, Dr Kala cites a quote at a re-hab cen­tre in Mo­hali, that said: “Apna Siyana Di­maag Jooton Ke Rack Par Rakh Kar Aao.” When you read his book, we of­fer you the same ad­vice.