“The invocation of ‘evil’ in the language of the nineteenth century Temperance Movement and the twenty-first century war on drugs is more than a trivial coincidence. To secularists, the word ‘evil’ may be synonymous with ‘very bad.’ But to the religiously inclined, evil can represent the unified and active force of Satan in opposition to all that is good. Defining a problem as an unqualified evil makes it that much easier to draw normative boundaries and crack down on those who fall on the wrong side of the divide—the evildoers. As a moral crusade, prohibition is a fight against evil, a shining path to the pearly gates. The problem with this position, both practically and theologically, is that drugs are chemicals without a moral agenda. Even drugs that are undoubtedly bad are not evil.” Peter Moskos, Cop in the Hood p.160

Moskos’ experiences in the Baltimore city police department make for entertaining reading, but his academic approach to the drug war misses the forest for the trees. While drugs are indeed simple chemicals with no intrinsic evil, drug addiction is a spiritual crisis that engenders evil actions. Addiction (from the Latin “religious devotion”) is evil because it opposes life. The drug addict abandons society, rejects his or her obligation to others, and escapes his or her own feelings. If we want to live in a functional society, we can never decriminalize all drugs.

Alcoholism is evil. Alcohol is not. The reason that alcohol is legal is that its addiction is harder to slip into: hangovers, social pressure, and alcohol’s own potency each ensure that an addict must work hard to become enslaved. It takes a lot of despair to drive drunk to work at eight in the morning. Not so with opiates, for instance. That high is easy, and there is no hangover. Physical dependency begins without the desperation that drives a drunk. Opiates satisfy consumer society’s injunction to enjoy better than any product because they are chemicals: they directly increase enjoyment in a reliable way, and often become available in easy installments of $10.00.

So what should we do? Instead of a war on drugs, perhaps we should wage a war on addiction. The “normative boundaries” of a war against evil have their motivational purpose: as Donald Barthelme once wrote, “Fear is the great mover, in the end.” We should fear addiction and condemn drugs. But Moskos is right to insist that a carceral state isn’t the proper vehicle for the war.

Related to drugs in Baltimore, an article in the NYRB: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/oct/14/life-wire/ that discusses the TV show the Wire would have benefited from a more careful viewing.

For example:


[Chris and Snoop] open Season Four using a nail gun—a nod, perhaps, to Cormac McCarthy’s cattle bolt—to kill young black men (number one males, in police terminology).
-they use a silenced gun, this is not a nod toward McCarthy.

For a feminist heroine the show has only the quite imperfect Detective Kima Greggs, and only because in her strength, humor, passion for work, and apparently secure hold on her biracial identity and lesbianism, she is slightly better than almost anyone else.

-so Rhonda and Marla Daniels don't count?