Johann Hari: Obama and the lethal war on drugs
The death toll in Tijuana, Mexico, is now higher than in Baghdad
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Independent Minds
With the global economy collapsing all around us, the last issue President Barack Obama wants to talk about is the ongoing War on Drugs. But if he doesn't – and fast – he may well have two collapsed and haemorrhaging countries on his hands. The first lies in the distant mountains of Afghanistan. The second is right next door, on the other side of the Rio Grande.
Here's a starter for 10 about where this war has led us. Where in the world are you most likely to be beheaded? Where are the severed craniums of police officers being found week after week in the streets, pinned to bloody notes that tell their colleagues, "this is so that you learn respect"? Where are hand grenades being tossed into crowds to intimidate the public into shutting up? Which country was just named by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff as the most likely after Pakistan to suffer a "rapid and sudden collapse"?
Most of us would guess Iraq. The answer is Mexico. The death toll in Tijuana today is higher than in Baghdad. The story of how this came to happen is the story of this war – and why it will have to end, soon.
When you criminalise a drug for which there is a large market, it doesn't disappear. The trade is simply transferred from chemists and doctors to gangs. In order to protect their patch and their supply routes, these gangs tool up – and kill anyone who gets in their way. You can see this any day on the streets of London or Los Angeles, where teen gangs stab or shoot each other for control of the 3,000 per cent profit margins on offer. Now imagine this process on a countrywide scale, and you have Mexico and Afghanistan today.
Drugs syndicates control 8 per cent of global GDP – which means they have greater resources than many national armies. They own helicopters and submarines and they can afford to spread the woodworm of corruption through poor countries right to the top.
Why Mexico? Why now? In the past decade, the US has spent a fortune spraying carcinogenic chemicals over Colombia's coca-growing areas, so the drug trade has simply shifted to Mexico. It's known as the "balloon effect": press down in one place, and the air rushes to another.
When I was last there in 2006, I saw the drug violence taking off and warned that the murder rate was going to rocket – but I didn't imagine it would reach this scale. In 2007, more than 2,000 people were killed. In 2008, it was more than 5,400 people. The victims range from a pregnant woman washing her car, to a four-year-old child, to a family in the "wrong" house watching television. Today, 70 per cent of Mexicans say they are frightened to go out because of the cartels.
The cartels offer Mexican police and politicians a choice: plato o plomo. Silver or lead. Take a bribe, or take a bullet. Juan Camilo Mourino, the Interior Secretary, admits the cartels have so corrupted the police they can't guarantee the safety of the public any more. So the US is trying to militarise the attack on the cartels in Mexico, offering tanks, helicopters and hard cash.
The same process has happened in Afghanistan. After the toppling of the Taliban, the country's bitterly poor farmers turned to the only cash crop that earns them enough to keep their kids alive: opium. It now makes up 50 per cent of the country's GDP. The drug cartels have a bigger budget than the elected government, so they have left the young parliament, police force and army riddled with corruption and virtually useless. The US reacted by declaring "war on opium".
The German magazine Der Spiegel revealed that the NATO commander has ordered his troops to "kill all opium dealers". Seeing their main crop destroyed and their families killed, many have turned back to the Taliban in rage.
What is the alternative? Terry Nelson was one of America's leading federal agents tackling drug cartels for over 30 years. He discovered the hard way that the current tactics are useless. "Busting top traffickers doesn't work, since others just do battle to replace them," he explains. But there is another way: "Legalising and regulating drugs will stop drug market violence by putting major cartels out of business. It's the one sure-fire way to bankrupt them, but when will our leaders talk about it?"
Of course, the day after legalisation, a majority of gangsters will not suddenly join the Hare Krishnas and open organic food shops. But their profit margins will collapse as their customers go to off-licences and chemists, so the incentives for staying in crime will largely end. We don't have to speculate about this. When alcohol was legalised, the murder-rate fell off a cliff – and continued to drop for the next 10 years. (Rates of alcoholism, revealingly, remained the same.) No, Obama doesn't want to spend his political capital on this. He is the third consecutive US President to have used drugs in his youth, but he knows this is a difficult issue, where he could be tarred by his opponents as "soft on crime".
Yet remember: opinions are febrile in a depression. At the birth of the last great downturn, support for alcohol prohibition was high; within five years, it was gone. The Harvard economist Professor Jeffrey Miron has calculated that drug prohibition costs the US government $44.1bn per year – and legalisation would raise another $32.7bn on top of that in taxes if drugs were taxed like alcohol. (All this money would, in a sane world, be shifted to drug treatment.)
Can the US afford to force this failing policy on the world – especially when it guarantees the collapse both of the country they are occupying and their own neighbour?
Drug addiction is always a tragedy for the addict – but drug prohibition spreads the tragedy across the globe. We still have a chance to take drugs back into the legal regulated economy, before it's too late for Mexico and Afghanistan and graveyards-full of more stabbed kids on the streets of Britain. Obama – and the rest of us – have to choose: controlled regulation or violent prohibition? Healthcare or warfare?
To join the fight to legalise drugs, good organisations to join are Transform or Stop the Drug War.
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Comments
Most of the social problems that are unthinkingly attributed to drugs are actually the direct result of prohibition. And prohibition, self-evidently, hasn't worked despite 70 years and billions of dollars.
Chances are (no one can be certain for sure) that if you legalise hard drugs, consumption will go through the roof and will have incalculable on societies. And remembers, narcotics like heroin and crack-cocaine are far more addictive than, say, tobacco.
Also, as Johann Harri himself admits, to believe that the durg cartels will simply move from criminal enterprise and become law abiding citizens, should all drugs become legalised, is naive and wishful in the extreme. If anything, these people will become more desperate in finding alternative (read illegal) avenues to make money.
Actually Billy gram for gram nicotine is way more addictive than Heroin. As Johann stated in his article after the prohibtion era in Amercia the Alcohlism rates remained the same. It may not be a parralel that would naturally flow on, however it is the closest comparison we have available.
Ask yourself this; do you think that the nations attitude to heroin and crack cocaine would change overnight? would "normal" "law abiding" members of society - of which i'm sure you include yourself - go out and buy some heroin the day it became legal because you could? Would the nations parents ignore the odd needle under their childs bed as some do the odd joint end in an ashtray?
We are talking about LEGISLATION and REGULATION of substances that millions of poeple use every day anyway - not people and that the government is missing out on billions of pounds in tax because of their prohibtion. Did you know the tax from cigarettes pays for the NHS on it's own?!
As for the cartels, we have to fight them no matter what they deal in, but giving them a multi-billion dollar global industry to play with is just plain stupid.
What you -and others fail to understand- is that the total direct cost of the war on drugs and the detrimental overall consequences of this war on our western, free, democratic society cost us way too much.
We could have saved money and could have continued to strenghten the core values of our western society through a more liberal approach. Yes, that will take time, it will take a huge effort from our side, and yes, we definitely need to get better at raising up new generations.
Prohibition signs and pig wire are hopefully not the hallmark of your future society...
People need to understand that people will ALWAYS use drugs. This will not stop.
The only studies been carried out when it comes to legalising a previously illegal substance and rates of abuse, they either stay the same or go down.
Do you seriously think the majority of people don't use junk because is it illegal, or do you think they don't use it because they don't want to? What will not happen is all of a sudden most people in the country go out and become heroin addicts!!
But more than this, most heroin addicts I have worked with want to be free of their addiction - but while the drug and its use is so demonized getting effective help is usually extremely difficult.
Heroin - the legal stuff that doctors use - is a cheap, safe, and effective drug. In proper doses it is less toxic than alcohol. Providing it free to users who want to come off the stuff (as they do in Switzerland, Denmark, Canada and elsewhere) is a much better option than telling people to pull their socks up.
Get a grip people!!!!!
All this huffing & puffing about drug cartels - how about Big Pharma? Our society is being invaded by the pharmaceutical industry on a scale that leaves the illegal drug cartels in the kindergarten. Our children are at risk from cynically manipulated medicines & foodstuffs, & general practitioners of medicine are these days less like the "family doctors" we knew of old, & more closely resemble street-corner drug pushers. Pursuing delusional "wars on drugs" is just a denial strategy - the real villians are not wearing pin-striped suits & shoulder-holsters. They wear white jackets, sit in trendy little surgeries & urge us to "keep taking the tablets"
Of course it would take time to show dividends, however, the present option has had plenty of time to show its worth, but has shown virtually nil dividend in all the time it has been in operation. It has simply resulted, as Johann says, in massive expenditure of cash and resources, in turf wars on a huge scale here in the UK, resulting in murder, corruption and mayhem in almost every city and walk of life.
My thoughts return to that effort that was taken on some 2 or 3 years ago, with groups of qualified folk testing pubs, cinemas, clubs and other public venues for signs of drug use, I don't recall the actual figures now, but I do recall their findings were simply horrendous, with evidence of drug use in mostly every place they tested, suggesting massive hard drug use at all levels of society.... surely this points to the catastrophic failure of the present system?
I know ive lost the plot now, Irak = oil, Afganistan = oil pipe line + drugs????
there is people in the US that look at violence in Mexico wondering what is wrong with those people... while holding a mariguana cigarette
The government, once so worried about "moral hazard" has poured hundreds of billions into failed banks.
We were even promised "for all time" that there would be no third runway at Heathrow...
Governments change their minds on things all the time.
Now is the time for change - while so many of our old, failed, certainties are crumbling.
Prohibition is stupid, and worse, cruel.
It is astonishing that neither of these things has been done before, and a dead give away that the Government and those who support the drug war know their position is ideological or for political gain, and will not stand up to proper scrutiny. Several parliamentary committees and numerous other bodies have noted the need for much of this research but the Government refuses to do it.
I would challenge anyone who supports current drug policies on this thread to publicly back this call for a full cost benefit analysis, starting with a full impact assessment of current policies. If they won't, then everyone reading this will know they understand fully that proper research would shoot their position down in flames.
Just one thing, tho' - don't bother to spend the fiscal proceeds of legalisation on drugs treatment. Addiction is so intransigent its hardly worth treating.
The new secretario of interior is Fernando Gomez Mont.
This is the only route to putting all the pushers and barons out of business.
Plus we could get the service folk back from that insane 'mission' in Adghanistan
With the numerous municipalities in the US that HAVE legalized marijuana for instance, it seems it would be much more widely accepted today.
Although I think it will either take another 40 years of progressive thinking, or the complete collapse of the state of Mexico to force any real change. Crises has a way of enacting immediate change.
but it demonstrates that even when they are available everywhere, most people are not consumers or they can coexist with them (sure there are many many problems related to both).
I think it's clear that the major drug dealers are governments, US on the lead. And that they don't want to pay taxes because all the richness they make will fade.
They know all these arguments, and for sure they laugh at them, because in higher spheres rests higher corruption.
I'M MEXICAN AND LIVE IN MEXICO AND I'VE BEEN READING YOUR BRILLIANT COLUMNS OVER THE LAST 6 MONTHS. CONSIDERING SO, I FEEL DISAPPOINTED BECAUSE OF THE WRONG DATA YOU'RE PROVIDING US.
1. JUAN CAMILO MOURINO IS NO LONGER THE INTERIOR SECRETARY BECAUSE HE'S DEAD. HE PERISHED IN AN AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT ON LAST NOVEMBER AT MEXICO CITY.
2. NUMBERS OF PEOPLE KILLED DUE TO TRAFFICKERS VIOLENCE ARE TOO MUCH HIGHER IN BOTH 2007 AND 2008.
3. THOUGH THE ABOVE MENTIONED, IT IS UNACCURATE AND EXAGERATED THAT 70 PERCENT OF MEXICAN POPULATION (OVER 104 MILLION PEOPLE) IS AFRAID OF HANGING OUT.
I REALLY HOPE THE NEXT TIME YOU WRITE ABOUT SOME POOR STRANGE COUNTRY LIKE MINE YOU SPEND MORE TIME ON DOING YOUR RESEARCH. THANKS
It seem as if these U.K. reporters are more busy trying to build up an image of a country they hardly know than putting ALL the facts together before writing.
Classic imperialistic mentality! And to top it all up they go on and call the U. S. "America".
Marvellous newspaper this is!
If the answer is, 'No,' then you have no reason to assume that more people are going to do it than do now anyway.
The problems caused by drug addiction have never been greater than after 80 years or so of prohibition.
Drugs will always exist - total eradication is impossible. We therefore need to learn how to live with them, and educate people as to their harmful, beneficial, benign and dangerous effects, then let people make their own choice, as we do with alcohol, tobacco, cars, kitchen knives, and many other things that can be lethal.
The problem is that anyone who challenges drug policy is branded as a junkie or a maniac. I am unaware of any other policy that has been pursued so vehemently - despite consistently failing and exacerbating the problems it set out to rectify - as the war on drugs. Prohibition lasted for the majority of the 20th century, and during that century drug use and avaliability has soared. Until people accept that absolute sobriety is not - and never has been - a natural human condition, propaganda will continue to drown out the truth about drugs, violence will reign over regulation, and more unnecessary suffering will ensue.
The belief that legalisation and regulation would result in increased consumption of drugs is also misled. Alcohol is legal, but do most people drink all the time? No. Holland has a more sensible drugs policy than most of its counterparts, and the level of cannabis users there is no higher than in countries where cannabis is illegal. Interestingly though, Holland's hard drug addict population has remained stable since the 1970s, whereas in the U.K it has spiralled upwards.
It seems that people would prefer to take the illusory moral highground, regard drug users as sub human, prolong and even start wars, continue to allow murderous gangs to roam the streets of most countries in the world, and allow innocent people to fall into addiction and be criminalised instead of helped.
I commend Mr. Hari for sticking his head above the parapet and having the bravery to speak the truth about the ugliness of current drugs policy and its glaring inadequacies.
James Bradley
http://www.correntewire.com/was_bailout
Another missing piece is the role of state intelligence agencies such as the CIA in the drug trade and money laundering. These agencies would lose a crucial source of funds for carrying out "off the books" operations if drugs were legalized. http://www.serendipity.li/cia/tue/t
Finally, in the US many local and regional law enforcement agencies are absolutely dependent on drug war funding and legislation - a good number derive a substantial portion of their budget from assets seizures. The drug war has been a convenient excuse for the militarization of local police agencies - claiming that the agencies must "up arm" in order to be on equal footing with the armories of drug organizations.
In short, there are many powerful and vested interests on both sides of the law who would strongly oppose any efforts to end the drug war by legalization.
It seems to me that there is a great consensus among the intelligent people reading these articles that legalisation and regulation is the wisest path and an acceptance that prohibition is incredibly damaging and expensive to our society and is devastating the countries that grow our drugs.
It isn't good enough to sit at our computers patting commentators on the back though. This issue deserves to be thrust to the front of the political agenda as it is the single issue that could bring about great benefits in these difficult times through the application of simple common sense.
In this economic climate we cannot afford to be building new prisons and filling them with people who steal to feed their addictions. If heroin and cocaine were available on prescription to the addicted we might even be wise to consider an amnesty for prisoners whose motivation for acquisitive crime was purely to fund drug use.
It is important to be clear to those who will argue against us that this isn't liberalisation. I have no desire for anyone other than trained pharmacists to be able to sell narcotics. Age limits should be in place and strictly enforced. The scientific evidence on the affects of strong cannabis - often presented as harmless - point to teenagers being at risk of permanent damage. We have a duty to protect them. Legalisation will also protect children from those who will hand out free drugs to create new customers for their illegal product. We cannot tolerate prohibition when it creates people who will seek out rebellious teenagers and try to recruit them into their army of destitute or prostitute customers.
I watched the excellent documentary "Killer in a small town" recently and was incensed by the fact that addiction will drive women to work the streets even when a predatory killer is likely to have killed their friends. The women killed by Steve Wright need not have been working as prostitutes. If drugs were legal or prescribed, it is likely that the girls would not have encountered crack or been compelled to sell themselves to buy it.
I want to march on parliament to make my feelings known, surrounded by a diverse group of intelligent people who don't actually want to take hard drugs, but know that it is not fair to destroy the lives of those who make that mistake.
Who's with me?
Conversely, contributors longshotdeux and billy_gibbons have both commited the same logical fallacy of presuming that if drugs were legalised there would be a significant and considerable rise in use; whilst it cannot be stated without equivocation that incidence would decrease independant scientific studies of representative samples of the US population have consistently shown no discernible desire or intent among the non-drug taking public to use drugs in a legal environment.
I am also bewildered as to why ewanhoyle believes that "those who make that mistake" are indeed making a mistake in deciding to take illicit drugs. There are, undoubtedly, people who make the mistake of attempting to temporarily escape personal grief and problems but most users take illegal drugs for other logical and sensible reasons: to become creative, to experiment with and experience altered states of consciousness, to heighten sexual arousal, to increase concentration, to induce sleep or lethargy, to quicken reactions and speed of thought. These are, of course, only a few reasons off the top of my head; there are many more.
I also agree that increased use is unlikely. If heroin and crack were only available to existing addicts on prescription, then there would be very little chance of young, vulnerable people being offered free samples by existing addicts who have turned to dealing as a means to make ends meet.
Even if sales of softer drugs were to increase, I would much prefer users go to a pharmacy and have point-of-sale safety advice than be exposed to the lottery of street dealers.
The only matter with which I would take issue is the availability of drugs and to whom as alluded to in your second paragraph (14/03/09 posting). I, as previously intimated, am vehemently in support of legalisation, as I understand you are, but I believe that not only addicts but everyone in society should be permitted to use drugs; it is a fundamental human right of every free, mature, compus mentus and sentient person. Provided the user is not harming any other person who has not consented to be harmed, any attempt by the state or anyone else (to deprive access to drugs) is entirely illegitimate, a la Mill's Harm Principle. The problem with decriminalisation and why I believe it would ultimately fail is because unless the demand for drugs on the black market is profoundly undermined by a legally regulated and taxed system (not prescription) thus creating significantly cheaper retail prices, there will still be a demand for the black market and illegal dealers will continue to supply users with impure and adulterated products.
For a more comprehensive explanation of what I am postulating visit www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Drugs (Dr Susan Blackmore is a scientist and university lecturer who is a fervent proponent of legalisation).
I suspect your experiences of drugs have brought you to the opinion that people who are curious should be allowed to give them a shot. I respect that (if it is your opinion), but in my ideal world people would be happy enough in their lives that they don't feel they have to augment their sensory experiences, and run the risk of consequences. I do believe that cannabis has links to psychosis, ecstasy is linked to midweek depression and that before trying any drug a young man or woman needs to be fully aware of all the potential risks.
I believe the only sensible place for any currently illegal drug to be available is a pharmacy and that first time users need to be fully educated on safe use, indicators of danger and available support organisations. Where drugs have a range of strengths or characters, for example cannabis with it's range of THC/Cannabidiol ratios, pharmacies would have a duty to stock as full a range as practicable and be trained to advise on alternatives should users wish to have a different experience.
If heroin is to be available to non-addicts, and I would only support this if it was necessary to eliminate illegal trade, then I think it wise for there to be a "cooling-off" period such as is in place for gun purchases in America for first-time users. I also feel that there would need to be strong penalties for anyone introducing children to any currently illegal drug. I feel the decision to take any drug should only be made by a suitably educated adult. I don't know where the age limit should be set, but there should definitely be one.
I feel quite privileged to be in a position to advocate the legalisation of drugs whilst thinking that anyone taking drugs has failed to find pleasure without cheating, which I find quite sad. I think the argument is best taken forward by people with a similar background to myself who can instantly rebut the "you just want to get high without getting arrested" argument with a declaration of purity. We would of course need advisors with first-hand experience, knowledge of philosophy and who have read Susan Blackmore ;) Cheers for the link.
I do of course drink regularly and accept that this makes me a hypocrite, which also places me in the same boat as many of the pro-prohibitionists I imagine.
Cheers for engaging me in discussion kenneth. I've enjoyed it greatly and have written this stuff down for the first time. Have you tried hill-walking at all? I find getting to the top and savouring the view quite exhilirating. You feel like you've earned the pleasure. ;)
Something which I have never understood and which I continue to find unpalatable is the presumption and insistence that drug use is invariably compensating for failure, that users are troubled, unhappy individuals and/or that to use drugs is to mask underlying and latent problems rather than face up to them. Why is it that illicit drugs and their use are (exclusively) perceived in this fashion? One argument would be that it is a form of escapism but that is not necessarily problematic; it depends on from what the user is escaping. Surely, though, watching a film at the cinema, reading a fictional book or holidaying in another country are all perfectly analogous insofar as they are all forms of escapism as well; yet there are no platitudes expressing concern from any quarter of society. The reason, I would surmise, is that as society we have all experienced decades of intolerance where drugs have been classified as illegal; society tends to, maybe not consciously but subconsciously, identify anything illegal as immoral or innately 'wicked' or 'evil' and consequently over a sustained period of prohibition has identified drugs as being so. To construct a relevant syllogism:
1) Everything which is illegal is immoral,
2) Drugs are illegal,
hence
3) Drugs are immoral
The form of deductive reasoning here is, of course, perfectly valid but the argument is unsound because the first premise is false; just because something is illegal does not make it immoral or wrong in any shape or form. Conversely, just because something is legal does not make it moral or acceptable (eg slavery).
I find the idea of a 'cooling-off' period very innovative and sensible; although I favour legalisation I do not advocate a completely 'free' market where vendors have carte blanche to sell where, when and to whom. The drugs market would have to be strictly regulated: minimum age limit, licensed traders and premises, properly packaged and measured doses, taxation to fund treatment and education, and pure, unadulterated drugs sold. If 'cooling-off' periods are used in other industries and are successful (and I believe both to be true) then there is no reason why they cannot be equally implemented in this case. It is not despite but because of my libertarianism that I support this measure because I strongly support personal responsibility; with rights come responsibilities and if people deserve the right to take drugs then they must also accept the accompanying responsibilities.
I have tried hill-walking many times, Ewan, and may I say found it to be a most gratifying pursuit indeed.
For starters, pain is a vital indicator of poor health and the continuous use of a pain-killing drug with strong withdrawal symptoms eliminates the users' ability to recognise pain indicative of injury or illness. This should delay treatment of serious medical conditions that would be recognised much earlier by non-users with a normal pain experience. Recent research also indicates that opiate drugs have strong immunomodulatory effects that would cause a greater susceptibility to bacterial and viral infection.
On the other hand, diamorphine (heroin) is often prescribed to patients experiencing severe pain associated with cancer, so it's effects are probably not all that drastic. I don't know how the health effects of heroin would measure up against the health effects of smoking tobacco, and I suspect any scientific comparison might show our attitudes to the drug to be fairly hysterical. Like all illegal drugs however, heroin is not "safe", and that is why there should be suitable education regarding risks before first use in any legal future.
"watching a film at the cinema, reading a fictional book or holidaying in another country are all perfectly analogous insofar as they are all forms of escapism as well"
These forms of escapism do not come with negative effects on your health, and that is what sets them apart from the use of any illegal drug (or admittedly alcohol or cigarettes) as forms of escapism. If the seeking out of escape in the form of these drugs that go along with attendant risks is chosen over the seeking of other forms of escapism that come with no risks, then it could be argued that the decision to take drugs is a failure (either to identify an equally pleasurable pursuit which is not harmful, or to expend the energy required to experience a previously identified harmless pursuit that would provide equal pleasure.) This argument makes me a failure - for my regular consumption of alcohol - so I think I'll stop there and go to bed. :)
Regarding the concern, "use of a pain-killing drug with strong withdrawal symptoms eliminates the users' ability to recognise pain indicative of injury or illness", I have to confess I haven't ever actually contemplated this hypothesis until now and would commend you for making a very valid point. This concern is theoretical (although no less plausible for being so) yet from my own experiences of ingesting the drug I have experienced pain relief from heroin in that I was fully conscious and aware of, rather than suffering from, pain and therefore found that the effects did not negate my ability to discern whether or not I had an ailment and if so, to what extent. From conversing with other users I have also ascertained that I am not alone in experiencing this sensation thus affirming ability to determine injury or illness is not diminished.
In my last posting the observation, "watching a film........forms of escapism as well", was merely intended to provide examples where escaping from reality was not necessarily problematic and could be socially acceptable as opposed to instances of escapism with detrimental health implications. There are, however, numerous other examples I could give where, although the act or pleasurable pursuit is socially acceptable (or at least not deemed immoral), also involves a minimal degree of risk: rock climbing, unprotected sex, go-carting, sky-diving, eating junk food, skiing, sun-tanning.
The reasoning in your dichotomy where, faced with the prospect of engaging in one of two equally pleasurable acts, it would be illogical to opt for the act which involved a greater risk or a risk not present in the other is perfectly valid. This argument, though, presupposes that it is actually possible to derive "equal pleasure" from different acts which is subjective and ambiguous to say the least; surely pleasure, both quantitatively and qualitatively, is impossible to define and therefore compare. Every act, pleasurable or not, is completely unique and stimulates different emotions and responses on different occasions; the pleasure derived from reading a book is different from that from an LSD trip; the pleasure derived from eating junk food is different from that from being high on cocaine; the pleasure derived from go-carting is different from that from clubbing on ecstasy. In addition, even if gratification and enjoyment were equal in comparable acts, 'variety is the spice of life', as they say.
My drug test people will go apeshite if legalization means kidnapping is the cartel's only revenue stream growth t/f?