Drug War Sermon
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - -
by Charles Thomas
A sermon preached Sunday, May 6, 2001
Unitarian Universalist parish in Waltham, MA
Last year at the General Assembly, the Unitarian Universalist Association
passed a study action issue calling for the denomination to develop
alternatives to the War on Drugs. What it calls for in particular
is first to develop a statement of conscience to be voted on at General
Assembly 2002. As we work on this, I think it’s important to
ask, what is the most just, compassionate and effective way to respond
to the worldwide drug situation? I found some guidance and some inspiration
which I’d like to share from the Serenity Prayer which I think
is a good place to start since it has helped millions of people overcome
addictions and helped their families deal with their struggles. It
may be a useful guide to us to keep in mind the three principles:
the serenity to accept the things that we cannot change, the courage
to change the things that we can and the wisdom to know the difference.
Starting with the serenity to accept the things that we cannot change,
it seems pretty clear by now that we cannot eliminate drugs from our
society. We’ve tried for more than a hundred years. We’ve
tried by escalating the War on Drugs from the time of the Nixon administration
through the Regan administration and even the Clinton administration,
during which there were a million and a half arrests every year for
drug offenses - 75% simply for possession. We’re now spending
on the federal level, 20 billion dollars a year and easily double
that on the state and local level. We’re filling our prisons.
We’re having a tremendously devastating, disproportionate effect
on racial minorities and other under-privileged people who are filling
our prisons. Yet despite this cruel, costly and counter-productive
War on Drugs, since the 1990’s, drug use has been increasing
among young people. Overdose deaths have been increasing. Younger
and younger people are using more and more dangerous substances every
year.
We have simply failed. Even the American people as a whole now seem
to recognize this. The Pew Research Center recently did a survey,
which found that 75% of the American people say that not only has
the Drug War failed, but that it is actually unwinnable. Yet when
asked what should be done, they recommend essentially the same things
that we’ve been doing, which is a heavily law-enforcement based
approach with some treatment and a little bit of education.
Even drug use in prison exists, which shows that even if we were to
turn our society into a prison and restrict freedom that much, we
would still have people using drugs in this society. Even if we can
snap our fingers and make all of the presently illegal drugs disappear,
we still have alcohol, tobacco and caffeine. We’ve tried to
make alcohol disappear earlier in the century but that didn’t
work.
Even if we could snap our fingers and make those drugs disappear,
we’d still have prescription drugs. People, young kids, trading
each other Ritalin. People are using painkillers now, all kinds of
abuse of prescription drugs. Aside from even the abuse of the prescription
drugs, there are even the questions brought up about the medical use
of prescription drugs. We have books called Listening to Prozac
and another book called Talking Back to Prozac. We see the
tremendous gray area that exists between drug abuse and self-medication.
Some people may be using illegal drugs, perhaps even more effectively
than the prescription drugs, in a misguided attempt to treat whatever
pain and suffering they may be experiencing from their personal psychological
difficulties or whatever extra burdens they might be facing in society.
Even if we could make those disappear, people can sniff glue and gasoline
to get high. There will always be a way for people to ingest something
to alter their states of consciousness. Even if we could make that
disappear, there are a tremendous variety of other addictions out
there. There are addictions to food, both to overeating causing obesity
- one of the leading health problems in our society - or on the other
end of the continuum, anorexia nervosa, bulimia, and all kinds of
obsessive-compulsive disorders. There are sex addictions, gambling
addictions and people losing their homes because they’re spending
their money. I knew a woman who lost her home because she spent most
of her family’s income at church bingos. Television! How many
people watch too much television or video games or the Internet or
things that hurt others when they could be doing more constructive
things with their lives? Our society’s addiction to money, to
power and to reputation may prevent us from doing what we are called
to do at any given moment.
In sum, we all have addictions and we are called as the readings have
pointed out, to have compassion for others who have addictions and
to recognize that in the area of drug policy, a drug-free society
is a helpless and destructive fantasy. But that doesn’t mean
that we should give up. That doesn’t mean that we should just
wash our hands of the problem and let people who have drug addictions
suffer. Instead, we are called to have the courage to change the things
that we can - and there’s a lot that we can do.
We can reduce the harm to individuals and to society, which is caused
or exacerbated by the drugs themselves. We can reduce the harm caused
to individuals and society specifically by the drug policies. Education
and treatment, starting in our own families, starting in our own congregations
and communities, we can learn. Together we can learn about the effects
of different drugs. We can learn why people use drugs and what some
safer alternatives to drugs might be for people who are seeking to
eliminate pain in their lives or experience other states of consciousness.
Whatever their reasons might be we can learn alternatives. There’s
a lot written about such endeavors. Your congregation has a copy of
the book, From Chocolate to Morphine by Andrew Weil - everything you
need to know about mind-altering drugs. But besides the literature,
we can also have dialogue with each other. I propose that our UU church
communities become safe spaces to talk where we can discuss with each
other openly and honestly about our own experiences with drugs, positive
as well as negative, legal as well as illegal. From caffeine through
prescription drugs to marijuana to whatever else people might have
experienced. Learn from each other, seek ye first to understand. Then
through communication we can help.
Communication! Not handcuffs, guns, courts, and prisons, but helping
each other through harm reduction methods. We can help each other
learn to have the least destructive relationships with drugs as possible.
If someone is in a relationship with a person who has a serious drug
problem we can help them find ways to help and if necessary, even
to leave a destructive relationship. But do not put the person in
prison.
So harm reduction, that’s an alternative paradigm. That’s
an outside-the-box solution which most people haven’t heard
of. May I see a show of hands, how many people have heard the term
“harm reduction” before? Very few. Usually in drug policy
we talk about supply reduction vs. demand reduction. And oftentimes
when people see the devastation that supply reduction has caused -
with prison overcrowding and planes shot down in Peru - people say,
well how about demand reduction? But demand reduction can include
arresting and incarcerating users as a misguided attempt at deterrence.
It can include all kinds of other destructive things.
Harm reduction is a way to treat drugs like any other health issue.
Harm reduction starts from the premise that drugs are in society.
It starts with that prudent acceptance that drugs are here, drugs
are with us, drugs will continue to be with us and how do we reduce
the harm that drugs cause? A good analogy is sex education. For example,
none of us want 14 yr-olds running around having lots of sex with
each other - it’s certainly not what we encourage through our
UU sex education program or anything. But we also recognize that while
we may encourage abstinence as the ideal for sex and for drugs - especially
among young people - if they are going to have sex anyway, for God’s
sake, use a condom so you don’t get pregnant or get AIDS or
other diseases.
Similarly, there are harm reduction methods for dealing with drugs.
We know some. Everyone will recognize some of these for how we have
harm reduction approaches for the legal drugs. Don’t drink and
drive. It doesn’t say don’t drink, but if you are going
to drink, don’t drive. Second-hand smoke. Don’t expose
other people to second-hand smoke. If you are addicted to cigarettes
and choose to take the dangerous smoke into your lungs, at least don’t
expose others to it - reduce that harm. Nicotine gum. If you’re
addicted to nicotine, chew gum instead. You’re still getting
the drug, you’re still getting the nicotine, but you’re
not exposing your body to the carcinogens in the smoke. Don’t
smoke in bed. Certainly don’t burn down your house or your neighborhood.
And also, know when to say when. Messages like that. Know how to set
limits. Know the difference between one or two glasses of wine with
dinner or one or two beers on a Friday night vs. going out and getting
drunk, drinking at work or drinking at school. For whatever someone’s
drug of choice might be, these same principles apply - to not be high
when you have other responsibilities that you’re intoxication
might impede.
Know yourself. Know the different things that make people particularly
vulnerable to having destructive relationships with drugs. Do a good
self-assessment: age, biological predisposition, compulsive tendencies,
mental illness, life philosophies towards work and to responsibility,
spirituality, attachment, non-attachment. All of these things are
things that we can be discussing and learning from each other in our
communities. And then, translating into society, into policies, education
programs, harm reduction-based treatment programs which accept that
while abstinence may ultimately be the ideal goal for most people
with substance abuse problems, there are people who are determined
to continue to use illegal drugs. Robert Downey Jr. and Daryl Strawberry
were arrested, put in treatment, arrested and incarcerated, again
and again and again.
When can we take the log out of our own eye and accept that some people
are determined to use some illegal drugs and then help reduce the
harm through harm reduction treatment programs? Needle-exchange programs,
so that people who are injecting substances don’t get AIDS,
methadone maintenance is certainly one. There are drugs that people
can give if someone has an overdose of a narcotic that you can inject
them with that can block the effect and help revive them. Instead,
because of the fear that’s out there, the fear of people getting
arrested, we have the perverse result of our existing drug policies.
If a group of friends are together using heroin and one person overdoses,
the others will take off and leave their friend to die because they
know that if they call 911, they’re all going to jail.
Those are the kinds of effects that we have from our present policies
and that we can change and that we can go even as far as a UU resolution
in 1973 called for, and that is for heroin maintenance. Let people
go to a doctor if they’re already addicted to heroin so that
they can know what the supply is, so that they don’t have to
spend hundreds of dollars a day, that they can get it for free or
at cost, which cuts down on the muggings and the burglaries and the
other things that they need to do to support their habits. It’s
a way to welcome them into the system, put them in regular contact
with people who they know care about them, put them in regular contact
with treatment professionals.
These policies have been tried in Switzerland and they’ve worked!
They’ve worked! They’ve allowed heroin addicts to come
in and get heroin from a doctor and overdose deaths went down, crime
went down and they got job training. In fact, many, once they’re
in the system have actually decided to quit. They also have the security
of knowing that if they fail, if they relapse, that they haven’t
already exposed themselves to the system as a criminal and have to
worry about then being grabbed and put in jail. Instead, they know
they can keep going back to a therapeutic environment.
These are just some of the possible policy results that can come by
recognizing among other things, the difference between use and abuse.
When we talk about alcohol, we recognize that most drinkers are social
drinkers that don’t really cause any harm to anyone else and
arguably little or no harm to themselves. When we think of illegal
drugs, we think of people completely strung out, destroying their
own lives, hurting others. But in fact, the Institute of Medicine
has found that even among heroin users, only 30% will ever become
dependent at some point in their lives: with cocaine, its about 17%,
alcohol 15%, marijuana, only 9% and that dependence is less severe
than the dependence on alcohol, tobacco, or various pharmaceuticals.
So when we think of drug users, it’s also important to keep
in mind that we’re not only talking about people with problems,
we’re also talking about people with just tiny little specks
in their eyes. We’re talking about people who have a responsible,
healthy relationship with substances like marijuana. There are many
that come to mind. Al Gore was a regular marijuana user and admitted
as much. Newt Gingrich used marijuana, as did Clarence Thomas on the
Supreme Court and Carl Sagan, a very intelligent person, used marijuana
on a near daily basis. Arnold Schwarzenegger used marijuana and it
certainly didn’t harm his physical health it seems. Scott Peck,
author of The Road Less Traveled admitted in a subsequent book that
all throughout the 70’s he used marijuana several times a week.
And he wrote The Road Less Traveled - the all-time best-selling self-help
book in the middle of the 1970’s. So the all-time best-selling
self-help book was written by a regular marijuana user. In fact, one
of the founders of Johns Hopkins University was a morphine addict.
So there are people out there who can still lead productive, constructive
lives despite problems with drugs or even have a responsible relationship
with drugs.
I think the guiding principle is temperance. People think that temperance
means prohibition because they think of the Temperance Movement that
led to alcohol prohibition. Or at the very least people think temperance
means abstinence. For some people, abstinence is the only temperate
way to be. But temperance also means moderation. Temperance means,
essentially, harm reduction.
So these are the spiritual issues that we bring to it. These are the
ways that we can help start to develop more loving, more just policies
right here in our backyards through communication with each other.
But when we think of policies, people like to polarize it. If anyone
opposes our existing policies, they must be legalizers - they must
want crack cocaine sold over the counter in 7-11’s.
There are a wide range of policies between total prohibition, which
is what we have now where anyone can be arrested and incarcerated
for possessing even one marijuana cigarette and total legalization.
There are policies like decriminalization where you can still be fined
like a traffic ticket for possessing a substance. There are policies
like medicalization and a whole wide variety for us to look into.
Different policies may apply for different drugs. In 1970, the UUA
recommended the complete legalization of marijuana, treating it like
alcohol. For other substances, like heroin, perhaps medicalization,
getting it from a doctor or licensed clinic may be the best possible
policy.
But we need to have a guiding principle of minimizing harm and having
the wisdom to know the difference between what we need to accept and
what we can change - the wisdom to distinguish between the harm caused
by drugs vs. the harm caused or exacerbated by the policies themselves.
There are some obvious harms caused by the policies themselves: prison
- the high percentages of prison rapes are just appalling and that’s
what we’re sentencing people to; filling our prisons, misdirecting
resources that could be going towards violent crime or making treatment
available.
When we think of drug-related violence, in almost every case, it is
violence related to the business, the turf wars, the people bringing
the drugs into the country and the gang warfare. That’s where
the violence is. It’s not people getting high and running out
and shooting each other. Al Capone wasn’t shooting people because
he was drunk. He was shooting people because there was tremendous
profit to bring alcohol in. Or people who, because of the high prices
that they have to pay for their substances, need to go out and commit
crimes to get money to do so.
Overdoses. Like I said, most overdoses would be preventable if people
knew the exact purity of what they’ve got and if they had the
ability to call 911 should someone have an overdose. At least it wouldn’t
be fatal.
Treatment programs, which reduce stigma, remove the fear of arrest
and can certainly cause more people with problems to voluntarily enter
treatment instead of needing to be forced into treatment. A lot of
opponents of drug policy reform say, “Well we need the carrot
and the stick approach.” As a UU, I find this appalling. That’s
treating people like donkeys. It’s dehumanizing. It’s
not respecting their worth and their dignity. It’s talking about
a stick as an effective way to help someone with a medical problem.
We need the wisdom to distinguish between the immorality of drug use
and the immorality of drug laws. That even if any use of any drug
at all is a sin, it creates distance between one’s self and
one’s ultimate reality. Still, as Jesus said, “Let he
who is without sin cast the first stone.”
All of us have problems. We need to help each other extend a helping
hand, not a clenched fist. Treat drug users like any other health
issue. And I propose then, to wrap up, that our policies that hopefully
we’ll recommend in our statement of conscious would be that
users should not be arrested or otherwise penalized simply for obtaining
or using their drugs of choice. We know from research in states that
have removed criminal penalties for marijuana possession that removing
criminal penalties does not increase use, so there’s really
nothing to lose by doing that. I think most in accordance with our
principles is that our policies should be non-punitive and non-coercive.
We can trust the transformative power of love.
It’s hard to trust when we know people who are suffering from
addiction. But that is our religion. That we judge a tree by its fruits
and that if someone has a problem with a substance and we try and
help them, that ultimately its up to us to decide what we’re
willing to accept. And if someone can live with a substance without
causing any quantifiable harm to others, then we need to accept them
as such. We can live together in peaceful co-existence with users,
abusers, addicts and abstainers.
Never give up trying to help. Never give up trying to improve the
quality of people’s lives. But overall, we can be the denomination,
the first denomination, to have the courage to push the envelope,
to broaden the debate in our society about how we deal with drugs,
to accept one another and encourage each other’s spiritual growth.
Those are our principles. I have the faith that we can live up to
those principles: that we can build a land where we bind up the broken,
that we can build a land where we set the captives free. Amen.
Interfaith
Drug Policy
Initiative, P.O. Box 6299, Washington,
D.C. 20015
Phone: 301-933-7681 Fax:301-933-7682 |
|
