Dear Editor,
The term war conjures up an image of unfettered violence, bombs bursting in the air and human bodies being rent asunder by steel and lead.
The young and the poor, the under-privileged, young men and women, most of whom have yet to lose “their mother’s features”, becoming tools of death and mayhem. And the older, the rich and privileged, the forty and fifty plus generation generally with Oak Leaves and Golden Bars on their shoulders, ensconced in secure underground bunkers poring over maps and charts as they plot and arrange where and under what circumstances the next carnage will take place. And if this is what “war” entails, how appropriate is its application to human issues like poverty, health, crime, and yes, getting high? You know the slogans.
“War on this and war on that”. My peers chuckle uncomfortably and become somewhat disconcerted when I say this, but I swear that if the power ever came to me to arrange the order of things in this world there is one thing I would surely reverse. And that is the traditional system that ordains who goes the front to become cannon fodder, and who stays in the rear making decisions that determine who might die and who might not. I daresay that with that kind of reversal there would be far fewer wars fought or conjured up in this world of ours.
Today in the United States of America, in Europe, in virtually every part of the world including our very own Guyana, a war is taking place. The pundits, the experts, those who are assigned with the task of dressing up administrative policy, “sexing it up” so to speak, will stretch the limits of euphemisms to explain and justify their strategy, their pursuit of this war.
They will invoke religious, ethical and moral doctrines to support the policies, the actions, the invasiveness that characterizes every facet of their undertaking. They will look askance at those who challenge the basic fundamentals of their thinking and pursuits, even to the point of labeling such challenges everything that is considered anti-social or damaging to humankind.
And so in a nutshell before I sum up what this war is all about, let me digress just long enough to issue this brief disclaimer. “Nothing that I have said before or will say hereinafter should be misconstrued to be an endorsement of the use of drugs, particularly chemical psychotropic substances like crack, cocaine, heroine et al. My focus, as you will see, is concentrated on a particular aspect of this war that should lend to cognitive dissonance among all but the non compos mentis. Because, and basically, it is a war that determines how and with what people should get high, no more, no less.
There are historical precedents of drug wars being fought, but there is something of a reversal in the make-up of the protagonist and antagonist of then and now. During the 1800s Western Forces fought two wars against China to sustain and maintain the trade in opium from India and Turkey to the vast market in China. Huge profits were being made catering to the cravings of a burgeoning addictive population in China, and national efforts to arrest this malady were not acceptable to the drug barons of that time. So we had two wars about drugs, but those wars then were being fought in favour of continued proliferation of the popular drug opium, as opposed to the ostensibly put forth aim of eradicating something like the use of marijuana today. Just like terrorists of yesterday sometimes becoming renowned as freedom fighters of today and vice versa, drug dealers of yesteryear have become the enforcers of anti drug laws of today and vice versa. Go figure.
In the war today to determine how and with what people should get high the main fodder for the cannons of the self righteous forces have been the poor, the coloured, the blacks and browns, the Rachels crying in a wilderness of poverty, discomfort and disillusionment. They are the visible, and their visibility is put before the cameras and in the newspapers to convey the illusion that these are the drug barons, these are the people who are reaping billions from selling happiness in a piece of grubby wrapped up white paper, or plastic phial. It is always good television, good programming when images of those the utterly hypocritically and self righteous who socialize and rub shoulders with the brains and financers of the trade in drugs regard as social outcastes, are seen being paraded in handcuffs and dragged away for being found in possession of a rolled up cigarette of seeds, leaves and stems of the plant cannabis sativa, or a couple of grammes here and there. After all this is a war, and in wars as we all know, the traditional order of things is very clear in respect of who should be in the “front lines”, who should become the fodder for the cannons.
On the local front, our transition to the madness of today whereby a youth found with a spiff could be sent away for three years or more and saddled with a huge fine to boot, did not occur under the current administration. We have to be very careful when assigning blame and pointing fingers for a policy that begs for review and indicts the abstract reasoning prowess of the men and women who make laws and enact legislation in our names. In the past the evidence to support a charge of being in unlawful possession of a dangerous drug was an analyst certificate that attested that the substance found on the defendant was comprised of, say, “leaves, stems and seeds of the plant Cannabis Sativa”. As I understand it, and note that I am documenting from memory here and might not have all the facts straight as they had occurred, an appellant challenged the notion that the analyst could determine whether the product he was found in possession of were gametes or genes, or whatever difference that exists between the pollen staminate or the ovule pistillate of the parent plant. His appeal was successful, and Guyana was, as a consequence many alleged, legislatively introduced to a new psychotropic substance act that draconically imposed maximum minimums for the merest of infractions against the drug laws. In essence, we went from a nation in which our understanding of and dealing with the use of a substance perplexingly enshrined in the ditty “ganja mannyo ganga mannyo, gimme wan shilling ganja manny oh massa gimme wan shilling ganjamanny”, evolved from a state of benevolent intolerance to one that frighteningly resembles the prohibition era in the United States of America. As history authenticates, those who got rich from the illegal industry of alcohol sales then became the who’s who of the post prohibition society. Those who did not, who went to jail, who just sought solace in the temporary euphoria experienced from ingestion, littered the graveyards, the urban pavements and parks, and the nursing homes for the mentally impaired.
By what stretch of reasoning, of commonsense, of moral and ethical rectitude or principle, can any Government and nation say to their citizens that it is okay for them to get high as long as the substance they use for this purpose is approved by the State. What kind of a myopic world do we live in that we can wax self-righteously about the evils of someone smoking weed while tacitly endorsing them killing themselves with nicotine and alcohol. Okay, I get it. We just do not want to add another pillar of substance abuse on top of what we labour under now with cigarettes and alcohol. Truth. But how come that argument is not acceptable when the other pillar is casino gambling and those already overwhelming us are unfettered violent crimes and runaway domestic violence and child and family neglect?
Like I said in my disclaimer, mine is not a cause to create a society where the use of chemical substances to produce a high, mirrors the nation of Holland, although the fact that the children of that country appear more contented than their peers in the US and elsewhere demands pondering. But I believe that history will look back on this era when young men and young women are being incarcerated among mug
gers and violent felons for a victim-less crime like being in possession of a marijuana cigarette as one during which sanity departed the ken of the political leaders in our nation, and also the populace who should be holding them accountable and steering them along a line of moderation. No we do not want our children growing up to be drug addicts or to nurture attitudes that it is ok to use these substances. But we do not wish them to see us as either idiots, or as hypocrites smoking like a fish and getting drunk “fo so”, while belabouring their ears on the evils of weed.
Yours faithfully,
Robin Williams
Editor’s note
By virtue of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Control) (Amendment) Act No.3 of 1999 the principal act was amended to provide that where a person is convicted of being in possession of cannabis not exceeding five grammes and the court is satisfied that such cannabis was in his possession only for personal consumption the court may impose a fine and make an order requiring the person convicted to perform community service for a period not exceeding six months in lieu of imprisonment.
The provisions of the principal act were certainly draconian but what is equally significant is that the rehabilitation Centre mandated by the Act was never set up, thus removing that option.
