Drug Use is Entropic
It grows more complex and less orderly with time
The following is an excerpt from p. 237-238 of the Conclusion, “Undoing Drugism” from my new book, Drugism (2022):
While the stages of normalization are helpful for understanding the histories of most drugs, we should apply them loosely and leave room for adjustment. Ultimately, the course that any given drug will take is unpredictable. Despite our deep desire to know and to understand, things will inevitably arise which we are not prepared for and do not understand. This is a fact of life and especially of drug use.
Drug use is entropic.
More simply, drug use is entropic. It grows more complex and less orderly with time, even as trends appear and patterns of consumption are established. Inevitably, new populations derive new meanings from the drug, novel methods of consumption arise, the conditions of its production change, analogues are created, and so on. All of these are chaotic x factors that stymie our attempts to smoothly and completely predict or understand the course that any given drug takes. Countless more x factors abound.[1]
It grows more complex and less orderly with time, even as trends appear and patterns of consumption are established.
This entropic quality of drug use is itself a motivator of prohibition. We are all too often afraid of what we do not understand. Mere ignorance has a way of growing into deadly hostility. And, bizarrely, misconceptions have a way of becoming reality.
We have seen how prohibition is itself a stage in the normalization of many drugs. And while the entropic nature of drug use has often been a motivator, prohibition itself has managed not to dial back the chaos but only to increase it. Drug prohibition exacerbates the same issues it seeks to resolve, and creates more problems where none otherwise existed. Prohibition makes drug use dangerous.
This entropic quality of drug use is itself a motivator of prohibition.
Despite the common conception that prohibition is a demonstration of state power, it instead directly undermines the power and legitimacy of the state. By forbidding law-abiding businesses to produce or distribute a banned substance, prohibition willingly concedes power to those elements of society who do not respect the state to begin with. In so doing, it strengthens the very people who most ardently oppose the state’s own welfare. It also produces distrust and resentment toward the state from the otherwise law-abiding people who happen to use illegal drugs. In the end, drug prohibition weakens the state. It is likely for this reason that historical cases of drug prohibition have rarely lasted more than a century.
Drug prohibition directly undermines the power and legitimacy of the state.
[Continue reading here.]
Footnote
[1] Other variables which complicate the realities of drug use include but are not limited to: personal biological factors such as enzymes, microbiomes, and brain chemistry; chemical and bacterial composition of drugs and paraphernalia; the quality of the drug itself—how potent is it, how fresh is it, whether its chemical composition has changed over time; the headspace, motivations, and expectations of users; and the environmental, social, and political conditions not only that the drug use occurs in but also that the user has been exposed to throughout their lives.
Photo credits
Picture of falling pills from The National Law Review at https://www.natlawreview.com/article/california-adopts-statewide-producer-funded-pharmaceutical-household-drug-and-sharps
Illustration of entropy from Farnam Street at https://fs.blog/entropy/
Photo of bottle and pills scattered on table from Madison Environmental Resourcing, Inc. at https://www.meriinc.com/protect-your-community-with-sharps-collection-on-drug-take-back-day/
Photo of various legal and illegal drugs from the Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council at https://www.rotherham.gov.uk/homepage/191/drugs
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