Psychoactive substances - from alcohol to ayahuasca, cannabis to coca - have been used recreationally, medicinally, and spiritually since time immemorial.
What, then, can explain the antipathy toward drugs? The answer is a cocktail of history, politics, prejudice, and scapegoating.ĭrugs were not always demonized. And tobacco is much more socially accepted than cocaine or even cannabis. But moderate drinking is actually celebrated, or at least tolerated, in many societies. Those death tolls are dwarfed by cigarette smoking, which leads to more than 480,000 deaths annually in the U.S. That’s more than the approximately 70,200 deaths caused by all prescription and illegal drugs combined in 2017. And as Australian researchers Nicole Lee and Jarryd Bartle point out, if harm were the sole measure by which substances were classified as illegal, and condemned as evil and immoral, alcohol would top the list.Īlcohol is responsible for 88,000 deaths annually in the U.S. Only 11 percent of people who use illicit drugs are “ problem drug users” - those who have drug use disorders or dependence-according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. But the animosity directed at “addicts,” and the impulse to punish them severely, is out of proportion to the threat these individuals pose. Unroll people’s attitudes about drugs, and you often reveal a hash of racial and socioeconomic stereotypes.ĭrugs can certainly be harmful, and there is every reason to be concerned about the consequences of addiction. About 30 percent believe recovery from such addiction is impossible - a view they share with Duterte. Only 22 percent of Americans are willing to work with someone who has a drug addiction, according to a 2014 Johns Hopkins study. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has blamed drug use, among other factors, for turning young people into gays and lesbians (which he sees as a bad thing).Įven in the U.S., where many states are legalizing or decriminalizing cannabis, attitudes toward people who use psychotropic substances such as heroin, meth, cocaine, and-to a lesser extent-cannabis are generally negative. In South Africa, one politician said the substance abuse scourge was more detrimental than apartheid. In the early 2000s, Thailand launched a similarly murderous-and popular-drug war. Nine out of 10 Filipinos reportedly back Duterte’s brutal crackdown. I’d be happy to slaughter them.” As a result of Duterte’s war on drugs, over 27,000 individuals have been killed in the last three years.ĭuterte’s tactics and rhetoric sound exceptionally violent, but the notions that inform them are held by many people around the world. In 2016, Duterte infamously announced at a press conference, “Hitler massacred 3 million Jews. These are the people Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte wants to kill. Laughing, he said he drew it with a ballpoint pen while he was high on shabu.Ī young Filipino port vendor sketched this pattern on his shoes while he was high on drugs. Once, one of them pointed to his Converse sneakers and asked if I noticed something different. In many ways, they are like young people everywhere-dreaming of better lives, pursuing relationships, expressing themselves through music and art. They said they sometimes use shabu to feel good about themselves.
Many of them lack family support, have minimal education, and endure the constant precariousness of poverty. But when it became clear I wasn’t a police informant but an anthropologist doing fieldwork, they allowed me to hang out with them.
Shabu, they said, boosts their energy as they carry heavy merchandise, gives them confidence to overcome their insecurities and talk to customers, and keeps them awake until the wee hours of the morning, when many interisland ferries arrive.Īt first, they were scared to talk about their illicit drug use. It was late afternoon, and they were about to begin their work as food and beverage vendors at a port in the Philippines.
“It’s our vitamin,” 20-year-old Jarod (a pseudonym) told me, as he and his friends took out a tiny sachet of shabu (methamphetamine).