CHAPTER ONE

What was so surprising, shocking even, about the Ohio judges' proposal was that they broke a taboo. At the time of writing there is little public discussion on the subject of illegal drugs. It's as if there has been a clamp-down in the media: the question of substance-abuse is rarely reported or commented on except in terms of 'ain't it awful,' or 'just say no'. Television documentaries investigate all sorts of things from sun spots to the Bermuda Triangle, but hardly any thoughtful attention gets given to the drug problem. Even less is said about the appalling cost of the Drug War. Nobody spells out what is inevitably going to happen to America if this 'war' is allowed to go on.

One of the things that troubles so many thoughtful judges and lawyers, who can see what is happening at close quarters, is that people have become almost afraid to talk about drugs. It's one of the things one tends to avoid. The problems facing America, which have been caused by the fact that some substances and their derivatives have been made unlawful, are, quite literally, among the most expensive problems in the history of the nation. But none of this gets sensibly talked about in public. Discussions about illegal substances are a bit like discussions about UFOs or the Alien Presence. In the present climate of opinion, anyone talking about drugs or UFOs runs the risk of being thought a bit odd. Even high government officials have encountered this kind of response. In June, 1989, George Schultz, Secretary of State under both Reagan and Bush, was reported by the Los Angeles Times:

'We need at least to consider and examine forms of controlled legalization of drugs,' he said. 'I find it difficult to say that. Sometimes at a reception or a cocktail party I advance these views and people head for somebody else. They don't even want to talk to you.'

It's very strange – strange that such an important issue in the life and future of America should somehow have been pushed to the sidelines and become hardly mentionable in polite conversation. This is why the raising of this topic for consideration by such a responsible body as a judicial conference was a very new thing. Granted the seriousness of the situation, this new willingness to look intelligently at the problem was as welcome as it was unexpected.

Since any investigation has to have a starting point, it may be useful to begin by taking a quick look at the drug which, in the experience of many lawyers and law enforcement people, is something of a mystery – the drug that in the United States goes under the name of Marijuana. In England, and in many other places, it is known as Cannabis, but one its many other names is Hemp. It would be out of place to tell the story of marijuana/cannabis/hemp at this point, and we will come to the extraordinary way it came to be made illegal later in the book. But since marijuana plays such an enormous part in the entire substance-use-and-abuse-scenario, it may be interesting to start here so that you can begin to see for yourself how mystifying it all is – that this, of all substances, should ever have become outlawed. We will, as I say, come back for a closer look, and what appears here is merely by way of introduction.

Cannabis – marijuana – hemp turns out to be one of the oldest medicines known to the human race. It is so old, indeed, it was brought from Asia to America over the land bridge, when it still existed, across the Bering Strait. Until 1937 it was perfectly legal. It used to be in common use by pharmacists throughout the world and it was used in the treatment of all kinds of things from loss of appetite to the eye disorder of glaucoma. Like alcohol, Cannabis – marijuana – hemp is a 'perception-modifier', but, unlike alcohol, which can unleash all kinds of aggressive behavior, marijuana/cannabis tends to make the user feel happy and peaceable and inclined to laugh more than usual. With some people it triggers new ways of looking at things, and provokes new ideas. It is relaxing and cheering, and it is universally said to bring about peaceful feelings of contentment, occasionally bordering on euphoria. Marijuana, made into a tea-like infusion, has been used to comfort crying babies for thousands of years, and in most parts of the world.

The contrast with alcohol is obvious. All the way through history, alcohol has been given to fighting men about to go into combat. Hannibal and Caesar broke out the wine while haranguing their troops before battle. The rum bottle was passed around as the fleet manoeuvred before the Battle of Trafalgar, and it was passed around in the trenches of the First World War before the infantry went over the top. On the domestic front it's the same picture. Violence, particularly violence in the home, is far more often than not associated with alcohol, and the riotous behavior of football crowds in Europe always involves drink.

Marijuana, on the other hand, almost invariably removes aggressiveness. An army under the influence of marijuana will be disinclined to fight, just as a 'stoned' husband will be far less likely to show violence to wife and children than one who is affected by drink.

I had the chance of finding out something more about the effects of marijuana at a conference in Amherst during the 1980s. It was an international meeting of forensic psychiatrists and lawyers, convened to consider the problem of aggressiveness; and when the medical people were pressed, privately, for their real views on marijuana, the general consensus of these experienced doctors was that the law had made an utter fool of itself. The comment of one Yale professor: 'We've studied it,' he said, laconically. 'Regular, daily use of marijuana by a scholarship math student undoubtedly takes the edge off his perception. As for less exceptional students it doesn't seem to have any effect at all.'

It's strange. This illegal 'drug' is a naturally occurring substance, the untreated product of a plant that grows freely in many parts of the world. It has been used from time immemorial with virtually no recorded ill effects on the user, certainly nothing lasting. It makes people gentler and happier, sometimes more inspirational and invariably more peaceable. Yet it is criminalized.

Alcohol and tobacco, on the other hand, the causes of so much trouble and accident, sickness and death, are legal. On the face of it, it is puzzling to say the least, and it presents any thoughtful person who knows about it with the kind of obvious inconsistency that jurors in court spot straight way. That the aggressive-making drug should be lawful while the peacefulness-inducing drug should be outlawed so obviously raises the question, 'Why?', that anyone who knows the basic facts is bound to ask.

This curious contrast between alcohol and marijuana sets the tone of the whole of the story of the War against Drugs. If, as a citizen, you like to feel that your government know what they are doing and take sensible decisions based upon honest reasoning, and if you like to feel that laws which affect the whole fabric of your society are passed by the legislature only after sober thought and careful consideration – see what you think of the following.

To set the scene we have to go back well over a hundred years to the 1870s. The French Impressionists are exhibiting in Paris. Berlin is frumpish in comparison, despite the Kaiser and Richard Strauss, and across the English Channel London is Victorian. The religious revival in England is still going strong after a hundred years. Prayers start almost everybody's day and the churches on Sundays are thronged. These are the people whose opiate, according to Karl Marx, is religion. They take it seriously.

But on the whole they also take it moderately. Although there have been many martyrs in their history, when it comes to religion the British tend not to get too excited. Compared with the energy, movement and song of a Southern Baptist congregation, the English are straight-laced and reserved, very different from Americans. All this is relevant to the story of how drugs came to be criminalized.

Even today, more than a century later, you can still feel the difference between an English and an American congregation. An American church vibrates with a kind of enthusiasm rarely experienced in England. It is still fair to say that the United States is, on the whole, a deeply religious nation and millions of Americans are very passionate about their convictions and beliefs. If this is true today, it was certainly true, back then.

By the time they reach the 1870s, the United States has come through forty quite tumultuous years. The nation has survived a terrible civil war. Soldiers who fought at Gettysburg and Appomattox, some of them with limbs missing and more than middle-aged now, are still part of the community. The railroads and Brooklyn Bridge have been built, Edison has invented the electric light, and the country has been host to the greatest immigration in history.

In the last 25 years the population has increased by fifty per cent and many people are worried by it. They think it's all happened too quickly. They are writing to their senators and congressmen, urging them to slow down the influx of unfamiliar voices, unfamiliar faces and unfamiliar habits. And like Britain, America is still deep in a religious revival.

Just as America comes up to the turn of the century, people start looking around at the squalor and human degradation the Nineteenth Century has caused, and resolve to do something about it. More and better schools and education for the masses – more and better housing – more and better laws to protect the worker in the factory – more and better labelling on bottles – and more. Enthusiasm is so buoyant and commitment is so intense, history will later give this period a name of its own. It's now referred to as 'the Progressive Era'.

There's also a very strong temperance movement afoot: the demon drink is under attack. In Kansas, Carry Nation is stealing the headlines. This middle-aged woman, built like a rugby forward, is invading the saloons with Bible in one hand and hatchet in the other, and she smashes up everything she can reach. She's arrested again and again, but America reads all about it, and there are millions who cheer her on. The social reformers are in the driver's seat, and they are going about their task with all the dedication that so characterizes the real American spirit. America has proved, many times over, that the nation is capable of zeal, sometimes bordering on fanaticism. In the mid-1880s, when our great grandparents were making things happen, they had zeal, sometimes fanatical zeal, as the flavor of the times.

These are the last years of the Nineteenth Century, the last spacious years of the British Empire, and the last years before the United States begins to grow into a super-power. These are the years which are a whole generation before the cinema starts to introduce the US to the rest of the world. The Europeans aren't very much aware of America as yet, and, apart from what they remember of the America's Revolutionary War, they have no experience of this occasionally fanatical side of the American character. And they know hardly anything of the realities of the way America runs its affairs at home.

The US is a huge country, mainly made up of small towns and cities, and the people really do govern themselves. Americans are a people who never had to accept the heir to some dukedom as their representative – as the British had to do for centuries – and their whole attitude towards the workings of democracy is very different from the European attitude. Americans choose their political delegates and prime them and lean on them and leave them in no doubt what they expect of them. There are no safe seats in any senate or assembly for the politician who ignores the feelings of his voters. This means, during a period when the prevailing political correctness says you must be God-fearing, church-going and against the ravages of alcohol, your politician’s hands are tied and you have to go along with the mood of the times.

(This, indeed, is why America was later forced into the 'noble' but doomed experiment of totally prohibiting alcohol. Enough well-organized voters, spearheaded by the churches, demanded Prohibition, and Congress, always remembering they could be sent packing by those voters, gave them what they wanted.)

But as well as a lot of high-powered religious and reforming energy, in the late 1800s, there's also a good deal of racism in America. What has been a largely Anglo-Saxon and Celtic population is now mixed in with all sorts of other peoples, and the original settlers are taking a predictably haughty attitude towards the newcomers. Although racial prejudice is highly disapproved of today, it was not politically incorrect a hundred years ago. Three ethnic groups in particular are quite openly treated as inferior by the rest of the population.

There are the African Americans, not long released from slavery and still being treated as an under-class. Then there are the Chinese who were 'imported' to build the railroads – over 100,000 of them are now settled in and around San Francisco or living in the western states. Thirdly, there are the Mexicans in the South West. These three ethnic groups are not rich, they have very different customs and, particularly, attitudes, and they are – not to mince matters – treated with contempt by the rest of the population. What is more, the Chinese and the Mexicans each have a particular habit which the rest of the population don't have. The Chinese smoke something called Opium and the Mexicans smoke something called Marijuana.

It was the opium-smoking that attracted attention first. Indeed, it's opium and its derivatives – morphine and heroin – that occupy center-stage all the way through the first half of the War Against Drugs. Marijuana/cannabis/hemp plays hardly any part at all until we get to the Great Depression of the 1930s, fifty years into the Drug War.

It's one of the ironies of the War against Drugs that it should have first broken out in the city now so well known for its liberal attitudes and permissiveness. For most of the second half of the Twentieth Century, San Francisco has been a kind of world-capital for toleration of the other guy's attitudes and preferences. But it was unrecognisably different then. In the California of the 1870s, anti-Chinese feeling was running so high, it added catch-phrases to the language. "He didn't have a Chinaman's chance," meant less than no chance at all. It said what a San Francisco jury was guaranteed to do if a Chinese dared to take an Anglo to court.

The smoking of opium by these immigrant Chinese in what were known as 'opium dens' is tolerated at first. But when it begins to be noticed that true-blue Americans are starting to visit the opium dens, the 'right-thinking', respectable, members of the community are quite outraged. State senators and congressmen get visits from troubled constituents. People of substance have a word with the representative they helped get elected. American politics go into action. And the very first prohibitions relating to drugs appear on statute books. As early as 1875, San Francisco enacts a law closing down the opium dens. Virginia City, Nevada, does the same thing a year later. In Idaho, they start out with a law that just prohibits white people from visiting a den. Six years later the law has been broadened to suppress the dens themselves. By 1896 no less than 22 states have statutes outlawing the keeping of an opium den.

The war has begun.

The voting population, naturally, knows virtually nothing about opium. It will be the same, almost half a century later, when they will know very little about marijuana at the time when that is made illegal. It seems important to remember this. These early demands by the community to suppress the dens are not made because people understand what opium actually is and what it does. It's much more of a gut-reaction than that. Consider a newspaper account written at the time:

'Men, women, young girls – virtuous or just commencing a downward career – hardened prostitutes, representatives of the hoodlum element, young clerks and errand boys who could ill-afford the waste of time and money, and young men who had no work to do, were to be found smoking together in the back rooms of laundries in the low, pestilential dens of Chinatown, reeking with filth and overrun by vermin, in the cellars of drinking saloons and in houses of prostitution.'

It's only one sentence, but the outraged Puritan Ethic rings through every word. Which is perfectly understandable, given the way people think a hundred and more years ago.

The War against Drugs, which America is still fighting a hundred twenty years later, was not declared after thoughtful consideration and debate. There was no great conference convened, of the kind that debated and framed the Constitution a hundred years before that. The driving forces that led to the outbreak of this Hundred Years War were outrage, distaste and prejudice. And the war started like every other war – with the population understanding very little of what's really involved. Without having the slightest idea of what they were taking on, the people of America, over a hundred years ago, declared war on one of the most powerful forces known to humanity – the poppy.

Let's look, very briefly, at this remarkable plant that most of us in the West know hardly anything about.

What in America is celebrated as Veterans' Day is called Remembrance Sunday in Britain, and, as any visitor will notice, for the week before and on the day itself just about everyone in Britain wears as a buttonhole a little red fabric poppy. The poppy that grew in Flanders – the killing fields of the First World War – was taken by the British as their national symbol of sacrifice – by those who didn't come back – and, for the rest, as their national symbol of remembrance, of gratitude and of regret. 'Poppy Day', for the British, has always been a time for reflection on the courage, pain and loss that war must involve, for the singing of familiar hymns and the saying of familiar prayers. It's therefore both strange and, when one has seen the pattern, deeply appropriate, that the poppy should have been chosen as the nation's symbol – because it's been regarded as a magical plant ever since history started to be written.

The Ancient Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Minoans reverenced its powers. The Ancient Greeks carved statues of their Goddess of Agriculture, Demeter, with armfuls of poppies. England's Remembrance Sunday isn't the first religious ceremony to involve the poppy: it has been used in religious ceremonies by Empires right down the ages. For quite literally all of recorded time, the poppy has been regarded as a holy plant, and a plant of such awesome power, it has to be approached with the greatest respect and humility.

It has the power to take away pain, not only of the body but of the mind as well. It is said to bring peace so rare that no-one who has known it can ever forget it. Sometimes it brings dreams of the kind prophets describe, or visions that translate into word-magic: go and read the poem Kubla Khan by Coleridge, or take another look at Alice in Wonderland.

But the poppy also has the opposite power – the power to debase, to enslave and to destroy anyone who fails to treat it with utmost respect and with utmost caution. As a flower, it can be remarkably beautiful. Small wonder so many ancient peoples associated the poppy with the Gods.

One ancient people, however, seem to have had little acquaintance with the poppy, and those were the people who wrote the Old Testament. The entire Bible seems to contain no reference to it – either extolling its powers or warning against them. Alcohol is repeatedly referred to in the Bible, and when Jesus creates the ceremony of the Eucharist, bread and wine are the symbols he uses, but as to the poppy, or any other plant that might induce the seeing of visions, there seems no mention in the Bible. There is an occasion in Jeremiah, and another one in Ezekiel, when it sounds very much as if the reference is to opium, but it's by no means certain. Biblical Scholars comment that the People of Israel had only the most rudimentary knowledge of medicine before they acquired some from the Greeks, and it seems probable, in the circumstances, that the writers of the Bible were hardly aware of the power of the poppy – either for good or for evil.

This, of course, would explain the very different attitude which we take from the attitude taken by the Greeks and the Minoans and the Egyptians – all civilizations we have cause to respect. We weren't brought up to it. If it wasn't emphasized in the Bible, the book that our civilization turned to for wisdom, guidance and authority, it's not surprising we weren't raised in awe of the poppy. We knew nothing about it. And when, suddenly, we saw it in the hands of foreigners whom, by the political correctness of the times, we regarded as inferior and pagan, it's hardly surprising we reacted as we did. Nothing in our Western history or in our culture had prepared us for this.

When one has uncovered the facts and searched up what has been written on the subject, one sees the virtual inevitability of this Hundred Years War. One is able to see clearly how a devout nation, a nation with great missionary zeal, embarked on a crusade, and how, clad in the honest armour of self-righteousness, this nation started out on a war it had no possible hope of winning. The casualties the American people have taken, and are taking, in this war are, in reality, heavier and more far-reaching than they have taken in any previous war – and America's allies have suffered as well. But to return to the story.

We are still in that last, momentous, decade of the Nineteenth Century. Enter, now, the first man ever to be awarded an honorary degree by both Oxford and Cambridge in the same week. Alfred Mahan was an American naval captain who was also a philosopher and historian. Apart from earning universal respect for his scholarship, he came out with a theory which so captured the imagination of the American people they were swept away on a tide of jingoism. What Mahan preached was that national greatness was inescapably tied to the gunship. Without real naval power, he taught, no nation could become truly great, nor remain independent of the other powers in the world.

So elegantly and persuasively did Mahon spell out his message that America, already roused by the excitement of Manifest Destiny, began to feel the time had come to flex its national muscle. Amid all the enthusiasm and excitement, Congress voted the funds and America embarked on the building of battleships.

By now, of course, sail has given way to steam, and a nation that has a fleet of battleships must also have re-fuelling facilities at strategic points across the globe. Naval power necessarily involves at least a little imperialism, and America starts looking at the map of the world.

The protest this arouses from thoughtful Americans is articulate and bitter. The editor of The Nation and the New York Evening Post thinks the public are 'absolutely crazy'; a Harvard professor complains about this sudden 'spirit of arrogance and unreasonable self-assertion', and writes to a friend, 'I fear that America is beginning a long course of error and wrong and is likely to become more and more a power for disturbance and barbarism.' President Grover Cleveland himself is very much against this new spirit of expansionism, but his voice has lost its authority and his own party rejects him. In 1897 a new President comes to office, the good-looking, smooth-talking William McKinley, a man once described (by a colleague) as having 'no more backbone than a chocolate eclair.' By 1898 the United States is at war with Spain. In that same year, by act of Congress, Hawaii is annexed. Within five years America acquires not only Cuba and Puerto Rico as, to all intents and purposes, American protectorates/colonies, but also that large group of islands in the Far East known as the Philippines – to which, sixty years into the War against Drugs, Macarthur said he would return.

And it is in the Philippines that America suddenly comes face to face with the power of the poppy.

By now, McKinley has been assassinated and President Theodore Roosevelt, elevated from Vice-President, is in the White House. He has sent one of his most trusted colleagues, Big Bill Taft, to be governor of the Philippines. Taft is a wise and kindly man, destined for one of the most distinguished careers the world can offer: not only will he become President of the United States himself, but after that he will serve as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. Big in most senses of the word – he tipped the scales at over 300lbs – he certainly wasn't expecting what he found in the Philippines. History doesn't record the exact words of the conversation between Governor Taft and the aide that comes into his office in Manila, but the gist of what passed between them must have been something along the following lines.

'Sorry to disturb you, Governor, but have you considered what to do about the Chinese opium supply?'

'About the what ?'

'The opium supply for the Chinese, Sir. As you know, there are thousands of Chinese in the Philippines, and they've been getting their opium from the government.'

'What, from us?'

'No, Governor, not yet, anyway. But the Spanish government – our predecessors – had a monopoly on the supply of opium in these islands, and the Chinese want to know if the arrangement is going to continue.'

'Let me see if I'm understanding you. The Chinese are asking if the United States Government is going to supply them with opium?'

'Exactly, Sir. Just as the Spanish did, before us.'

Taft, being a realist, doesn't immediately reject the idea out of hand. He wonders if the profits from a government opium monopoly might provide the funding for a proper system of schools for the Filipinos. He is so convinced that this is good idea, he sets the wheels in motion to get it approved by the legislature.

But he hasn't reckoned with the missionaries who have come out from America to the Philippines. In particular, Taft hasn't reckoned with the man who is destined to become one of the most dedicated and influential warriors in the whole of the War against Drugs – the politically well-connected Bishop of the Philippines – the Right Reverend Charles Henry Brent.

Like most missionaries, Bishop Brent is a man of unshakeable convictions. Coming out to the Philippines in 1902 and supported in the United States by powerful names, he sees himself as having the task of bringing all that is best in American Christianity to the new colony. Indeed, he is already planning to build a new cathedral.

When Bishop Brent hears about Governor Taft's proposed scheme to capitalise on the Chinese demand for opium, he is quite horrified, and he immediately gets in touch with his contacts back home in the United States. When one of Bishop Brent's correspondents, the Rev. Wilbur Crafts, comes to hear of what he describes as this 'moral outrage – a government pandering to opium craving by degenerate races', he moves fast and whips up a storm of complaint. Well-organized pressure groups and lobbies are very powerful things in America, and the churches have always been expert organizers. The White House is inundated by letters and telegrams, all of them calling for President Roosevelt to step in and prevent this 'moral wrong.' There can be 'no compromise with evil.' Taft's scheme is stopped in its tracks.

It is in this totally unforeseen way, and as a completely un-anticipated side effect of America's brief sortie into imperialism, that a well-intentioned nation, led by the churches, stumbles into the marshes of trying to control the relationship between human beings and narcotics.

Let's pause in the story to look a little more closely at what Bishop Brent and his supporters castigated as 'this moral wrong' – the use of the poppy with its pain-killing, dream-inducing powers. Six thousand years ago the Babylonians called it Hul-Gil – the 'joy plant' – but the ancient Greeks, aware that it's the juice of the immature poppy that contains the magic, referred to the product simply as 'juice' – opos (πoς) or opion (πιov) – from which we get the name 'opium'.

When the seed case of the immature poppy is slit, a thick, milky fluid escapes and dries into a brown gum-like substance. This is raw opium: no further preparation is required. It can be chewed as it is, or simply swallowed, or it can be crushed into a powder. The Greeks and Romans usually took it in the powdered form, mixed in with wine or honey, and so did the Babylonians and the Ancient Egyptians. Those peoples never smoked opium, almost certainly because they didn’t know it could be done: it wasn't until Columbus discovered the practice of smoking that it became generally known as a means of delivering a substance to the bloodstream.

Raw, naturally occurring opium contains more than twenty 'alkaloids' – substances similar to an alkali, which are bitter to the taste and which act powerfully on the animal system. Opium's most important alkaloid is Morphine. This was isolated for the first time in 1806 and got its name from Morpheus, the god of dreams in Greek mythology. Morphine quickly became taken up by physicians as the most effective painkiller they had ever known. Pharmacists dispensed all manner of tonics containing morphine, and morphine-based medicines were sold over the counter in large quantities, especially during and after the American Civil War.

In 1873 a derivative of morphine was produced. Between four and eight times more powerful and very addictive, Heroin was always treated with caution by the medical profession, who feared its dangers might outweigh its usefulness. Today it is totally outlawed in the United States and it was deleted from the British Pharmacopoeia in 1953. Another of opium's alkaloids is Codeine, far weaker than morphine, but very effective in suppressing the cough reflex. Codeine-based painkillers, incidentally, are available in pharmacies in Europe but not in the US.

The poppy itself comes in dozens of varieties, and although many of them produce a gum with pain-killing, dream-inducing properties – as, indeed, does the familiar Flanders Poppy that grew in the combat-zones of the First World War – one strain in particular produces what we think of as opium. This is the Papaver Somniferum or Opium Poppy, native to Asia Minor but growing in many parts of the world.

Opium and its derivatives are collectively known as the 'Narcotics' – from the Greek verb narkao – vαρκαω – meaning 'grow numb'. These are the only substances which are properly called 'narcotic'. Cocaine and the amphetamines are not narcotics; neither is cannabis/marijuana. (Indeed, it's one of the dropped clangers of the War against Drugs that American law should actually have classified cannabis as a narcotic – which is what it did.)

What the narcotics have in common is the power to addict, and since so much misunderstanding arises over what is meant by addiction, let's deal with it now.

We must, apparently, distinguish between an addiction of the body and an 'addiction' of the mind – or, in more scientific language, we must distinguish between physical addiction and psychological 'dependence.' Dr James W. Long, a former adviser to the FDA and author of the best-selling Essential Guide to Prescription Drugs (Harper & Row), explains it this way:

'Addiction is a physical dependence ... and it includes two elements – habituation and tolerance. Addicting drugs provide relief from anguish and pain, swiftly and effectively; they also induce a physiological tolerance that requires increasing dosage or repeated use if they are to remain effective. These two features foster the continuing need for the drug and lead to its becoming a functioning component of the biochemistry of the brain. As this occurs, the drug assumes an 'essential' role in the on-going chemical processes. Thus some authorities prefer the term 'chemical dependence'. Sudden removal of the drug provokes a major upheaval in body chemistry and provokes a withdrawal syndrome ... that is the hallmark of true addiction.' [Emphases added]

As to psychological 'addiction', Dr Long points out that this is not true addiction at all, but rather a 'habituation' or psychological 'dependence'. He goes on:

'Psychological dependence is a form of neurotic behavior. Its principal characteristic is an obsession to satisfy a particular desire, be it one of self-gratification or one of escape from some real or imagined distress. Psychological dependence is a very human trait that is seen often in many socially acceptable patterns and practices such as entertainment, gambling, sports and collecting. A common form of this dependence in today's culture is the increasing reliance upon drugs to help in coping with the everyday problems of living: pills for frustration, disappointment, nervous stomach, tension headache and insomnia. The 20 million smokers of marijuana have found it to be a drug that eases their stress, one whose effectiveness fosters habit – psychological dependence – but not addiction.'

One distinction between physical addiction and psychological dependence was clearly brought home to me when representing a defendant in an English court in the late 1970s. A highly educated young American, one of the most intelligent and lucid of clients, he had been addicted to heroin but had voluntarily gone through 'cold turkey' some years before and had shaken off his physical, bodily, need for the drug. But, as he explained, he had never been able to forget the pleasure and the escape which heroin had provided, and when he hit a really rough patch in life he had been unable to resist turning back to the comfort heroin offered. He had not become re-addicted, physically, but he had run foul of the police and was now facing a stretch in prison.

'Addiction', therefore, is a term that we ought not to bandy around carelessly. Correctly used, it only refers to those cases where tolerance has developed, and where the body-chemistry of the user has changed so as to accommodate the presence of the drug.

There's no doubt this is a very real thing. The Encyclopedia Britannica points out that in the case of heroin, an addict's tolerance may become so great that he can take two hundred times the dose that would be likely to kill a non-addict. Regular and incautious use of a narcotic can quite easily take a user over the threshold and into an actual, physical, chemical need for ever-increasing doses.

'Psychological dependence,' on the other hand, is far more a state of mind, and this is where we come face to face not with a scenario that science can understand and chart, but with that far more uncertain world of how people feel. To repeat Doctor Long's words, when we are dealing with Psychological Dependence, we are dealing with

'an obsession to gratify a particular desire – be it one of self-gratification, or one of escape from some real or imagined distress.'

And, as Doctor Long emphasizes, this kind of 'addiction' isn't confined to drugs, but runs right through human behavior. Some of us get our self gratification or escape from distress by listening to great music. A lot of people do it by working out in a health club or by running. At least as many do it by turning to drink, and even more, it seems, rely on their Valium, Prozac or other tranquilizers. In most instances, how you escape and how you get your kicks is a matter for you to decide. But most of us are 'addicted' to something, in the 'psychologically dependent' sense, even if it's only to watching television or to tidying up.

It's important, perhaps, to add this. During the Nineteenth Century, scientific discovery and scientific technique advanced by leaps and bounds. In particular, science learned how to take a naturally occurring substance – opium – and isolate the specific component which had the pain-killing, dream-inducing powers. Through the intervention of the scientists, an unnaturally concentrated 'drug' was produced: it can be loosely compared with the process by which wine is distilled into brandy. Then, seventy or so years later, the scientists 'distilled' their already concentrated drug, morphine, into a still more concentrated form – heroin.

The scientists also invented a thing called the hypodermic needle and syringe, and this new arrival, coming not long after morphine had been isolated, allowed humans to deliver a comparatively massive dose of narcotic straight into their bloodstream – something that hadn't been remotely possible during the thousands of years when opium had been used in its natural form.

We see the same kind of process at work with cocaine. The coca leaf, in its natural state, is regarded by the people in countries where it grows not as a drug, but as a foodstuff – 'Coca no es droga: es comida'. Chewed steadily throughout the working day, the coca leaf provides energy, suppresses feelings of hunger and increases the chewer's sense of contentment. Cocaine, like morphine and heroin, is a science-engineered concentration of the natural substance. What is now known as 'crack cocaine' is a further modification and adulteration of the naturally occurring base.

It is these man-made concentrations of naturally occurring substances that cause most trouble. Addiction to opium is surprisingly rare, and it hasn't been possible to find any references that speak of addiction to chewing the coca leaf – though it's no doubt fair to assume that the agricultural worker who habitually chews his coca leaf must be as 'psychologically dependent' on it as millions of Americans are 'psychologically dependent' on their Valium. Morphine and heroin addiction, along with a compulsive dependence on cocaine or amphetamines – these are the problem areas, and they all involve substances 'manufactured' by science. Perhaps there is some deep philosophical principle to be deduced from this: as observed fact it certainly seems worth noting.

But, returning to America, and in particular to one of the concepts upon which America was founded:

'We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.'

The Declaration of Independence was revolutionary in more senses than one. By putting the Pursuit of Happiness on an equal footing with Life and Liberty, Jefferson, Franklin and their colleagues introduced a new priority into the philosophy of politics and government. America, from its very first beginnings as an independent nation, went on record that the Pursuit of Happiness was an individual's fundamental right.

It's helpful to remember this when thinking about the War against Drugs, because the impetus behind almost all illegal drug-taking appears to be the quest for relief from stress, anxiety and boredom and for an escape into a temporary state of happiness. If the italicised words are a quote from somewhere or if they are simply my own words I cannot now discover. But they are so obviously true I shall adopt them

The same, of course, is true of much lawful drug-taking. Indeed, it has often been said that the typical drug-addict is not the heroin junkie or the crack-smoking drop-out, but a middle-aged woman who cannot face life without her Valium. We have no proper statistics to help us here, but America alone manufactures over eight billion tranquilizer pills each year. That's 8,000,000,000.

And isn’t 'escape into happiness' an age-old human inclination, especially for those who lead hard, stressful lives? The 'joy plant' of the Babylonians was the same stuff the Chinese smoked in their San Francisco dens, and when one considers the conditions under which those immigrant Chinese were obliged to live and work, it is perhaps not surprising they turned to their own familiar avenue for relief – in much the same way as Americans flock to their bars and the Brits to their pubs.

But we've already seen that it was the outraged Puritan Ethic, much inflamed by racism, that put the first anti-drug laws on the statute books. Whatever the Constitution may declare, what does that politically powerful force, the Puritan Ethic, have to say about the Pursuit of Happiness?

It's not an easy question, and there are probably as many answers as answerers. My own experience of the Puritan Ethic, having been brought up in a God-fearing family, was that happiness was to be found in hard work, honesty, clean living and a sense of accomplishment. Happiness had to be earned: it wasn't proper to go looking for it in a bottle or in idleness or in loose behavior. Happiness came to those who were 'good' and who avoided 'sin'. The message was 'Be virtuous and happiness will follow.' Drunks who came rolling out of bars were very much disapproved of. If there had been any opium smokers in town, our congregation would have probably have treated them the same way as the San Franciscans treated the Chinese.

Happiness that hadn't been worked for in accordance with the current rules of morality was un-Christian – and very possibly the work of Satan. The idea that someone might escape into happiness, not through our God and our idea of righteous living, but through drink or something worse, was absolute anathema to us. And this probably describes, with a fair degree of accuracy, how the American public generally felt and thought at the end of the Nineteenth and at the outset of the Twentieth Century. It seems to be the way quite a few Americans feel even today.

When, therefore, the suggestion was waved in our ancestors' faces that happiness might be had by smoking something, their response was what you would expect. Free rides to happiness were immoral: they threatened to undermine their belief system. It's therefore not at all surprising that the American People, when confronted by the completely unknown power of the poppy, came to the 'problem' afflicted with a kind of tunnel vision, a raging predisposition to intolerance and an almost complete unawareness of what they were dealing with. It could hardly have been otherwise.

Which brings us back to the Philippines and the next part of the story.