Books

Published: 28/02/2002, Volume II2, No. 5794 Page 30 31

The Pursuit of Oblivion: a global history of narcotics 1500-2000

By Richard Davenport-Hines

Publisher: Weidenfeld. ISBN: 0297643754. 466 pages.£20 (hardback).

How timely that this book should have appeared ready for the 'Prince on pot' stories to kick off jubilee year.

It is all about the pursuit - the continuing pursuit - of an oblivion that is a peaceful and joyous pleasure.

It is also about the puritans who have publicly denounced the pleasureseekers, while maximising profits privately.

Pursuit has been ridiculously threatened by prohibition that is neither necessary nor effective.Drugtaking was regarded as unproductive until the early 20th century, but not as a crime.With prohibition, people became criminals.

However, while the authorities 'depicted the drug user as an archdeviant who committed crimes, would not work and sought instant, pleasurable gratification', they did not have a problem with 'heavy drinkers or habitual users of tranquillisers and barbiturates, who depended on their preferred substance to cope with the strains of their job or marriage'.

Contradiction is also evident in the denials of those who condemned the debauchery associated with drugs, while secretly - or systematically - seeking them out.

US president Richard Nixon detested the hedonism and easy gratification of many young people: 'To erase the grim legacy of Woodstock, we need a total war against drugs.'

Yet he was a private binge-drinker and Dilantin-user who exempted the drugs produced by corporate America from his hatred and launched Operation Intercept across the Mexican-US border, driving small Mexican marijuana suppliers out of business and reserving the market for larger organised gangs.

The 'war on drugs'became a war on people using drugs.Ronald Reagan went on to appoint a drugs czar who loathed urban squalor and wanted users to 'pay the price'.The war on crack looked like a war on black ghetto youth: the racial bias in drug enforcement in the US keeps 13 per cent of black adult men from voting - something to remember in relation to Florida 2000.

Following the US, the UK has passed laws too quickly, casually nodding through criminalisation of cannabis in 1925.

Davenport-Hines rightly comments that this and the 1997 action against ecstasy 'vindicate the notion that politicians' legislation on drugs is the executive expression of human immaturity'.

Meanwhile, the medical profession has over-subscribed for 'respectable' patients and 'betrayed'disadvantaged women who use drugs like crack.Yet there is also an honourable medical tradition: the Lancet first recommended the use of Indian hemp in treatment of disease in 1840.

And needle exchanges have proved 'overwhelmingly more effective' than the expensive tactics of prohibition and supply eradication.

This book is rich. It distinguishes coca, opiates, morphine, laudanum, heroin, Bennies, amphetamines, barbiturates, speed, anti-depressants, tranquillisers, LSD, e and Viagra.

Its themes are historical, political and medical. It is full of the contradictions that drugs give rise to - religion versus profit-making, control versus escape, corruption versus cure - and the areas into which they are pulled - sex, race, media, warfare, politics.

Sometimes its tone is vicious.

Occasionally it seems to lose direction.

But on all counts, the author concludes that decriminalisation of drugs would save billions spent on prosecuting drug users in ridiculously inefficient and expensive prisons.

The book does not emphasise the user's viewpoint or the role of support services.But it is interesting, useful and a very good read. Its message is also clear - legalise cannabis, now!