Stages of Drug Normalization
From warfare to Wall Street
See photo credits below.
The following is an excerpt from p. 234-237 of the Conclusion, “Undoing Drugism” from my new book, Drugism (2022):
The drugs which I have focused on here (salt, sugar, DMT, ketamine, etc.) are all quite different from each other. They arose at very different times and places in our collective history. Their roles in our societies, the effects they tend to elicit, and the politics around them are all, as we have seen, unique, complex, and varied.
That said, although these drugs are apparently disparate, they in fact have much in common. We have seen throughout their various histories more than a few similarities. Another reason I have walked through these histories in such detail is to show the extent to which all of these drugs have passed through stages of normalization which are themselves somewhat consistent from drug to drug.
Popular drugs tend to go through stages of normalization which are somewhat consistent from drug to drug.
For example, we have seen, time and time again, that the first major phase of any drug’s mass popularization is warfare. Most popular drugs were introduced to most societies through their militaries. In Chapter 1 we examined how this trend is rooted in the history of salt, itself an ancient military staple.
After military exposure, the next stage of most drugs’ normalization is typically a sort of trendy popularity among the upper class. Eventually the trend spreads beyond the elite and by the time it becomes accessible to the working class the given drug is often prohibited or otherwise subject to restriction. This transition from upper class luxury to working class commodity has historically taken centuries, as we saw with sugar. Since industrialization, however, the process happens in a matter of decades, as we saw with ketamine.
Most popular drugs were introduced to most societies through their militaries.
It is typically at this point in a given drug’s normalization process that it becomes prohibited—if it becomes prohibited. Although drug prohibition has been a recurring theme in history, it is not inevitable. There are practically countless drugs that have never been subject to prohibition, de facto or otherwise. But there are also quite a few drugs that, although they have not been explicitly banned, have seen restrictive measures—typically exorbitant taxes—that function as a type of prohibition-in-effect. We saw this with salt and sugar, for example, both of which have at various times been either so expensive or taxed so highly that they were inaccessible to large numbers of people via legal means.
But when groups that are socially stigmatized or politically disadvantaged get their hands on a drug, and particularly when that drug is generally new to a given empire or nation, prohibitive or restrictive measures are almost to be expected. Drugs have been prohibited or otherwise highly restricted for ages. Restrictive state control of drugs dates at least to the fifth century BCE, when kykeon was forbidden for use outside of the highly secretive Eleusinian rituals in Ancient Greece. One of the oldest documented drug busts was that of the Greek general Alcibiades, who was caught after he smuggled some kykeon home to share with his friends in 415 BCE.[i]
Although drug prohibition has been a recurring theme in history, it is not inevitable.
Alcohol, cannabis, coffee, tobacco, and more have all experienced periods of prohibition throughout history. In fourteenth-century Egypt, people who cultivated cannabis were punished with execution. A few centuries later, when the same country was invaded by the Napoleon Bonaparte and the French, they once again banned cannabis cultivation and consumption there.[ii] Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, coffee and tobacco were both prohibited in much of what is now Germany as well as England and the Ottoman Empire. Violators were, again, often punished with execution.[iii] And of course alcohol has been banned numerous times in various places throughout the world.[iv]
In each case, prohibitive measures were inherently tied to social and political anxieties held by each society’s respective ruling class. And in each case, prohibition failed to effectively accomplish its stated goal.
Nearly every drug that has been prohibited has eventually been re-legalized and most of them have become significant sources of tax revenue.
Almost inevitably, every drug that has been prohibited has eventually been re-legalized and most of them have become significant sources of tax revenue. As Alfred McCoy and others have demonstrated, drug prohibition tends to result not in reduction but instead growth in popularity of the drug in question. Sooner or later, the revenue generated by said drug grows large enough to outweigh whatever benefit the respective state has obtained from prohibition.
Further, as we will see, the costs of prohibition (social, financial, and otherwise) are themselves obscene and unnecessary. In most cases, the state comes to its senses, the drug is integrated into the mainstream economy, and it gradually becomes socially normalized. The periods of prohibition rarely last more than a century.
Periods of drug prohibition rarely last more than a century.
The exception that proves the rule, of course, is the still-ongoing prohibition of certain opioids that has existed across the globe since the early twentieth century, and in China, on and off, since the eighteenth century. Cannabis has not yet been federally restricted for a full century, and tryptamines, just over half a century. Cocaine is, still to this today, used medically and crack has been subject to federal legislation for less than forty years.
And already, cannabis prohibition has started to crumble across the globe, with several nations embracing full legalization. Many more have chosen to decriminalize all drugs. And within the US, voter ballots and city council measures are increasingly easing restrictions on tryptamines, amphetamines, and opioids.
Somewhere in the transition from contraband to legal commodity, most drugs pass through a stage in which they are valued as expensive medicines. During this phase, use of the drug may be legally permitted for some people but not others, usually under the guise of medical use. Currently, cannabis, tryptamines, ketamine, and MDMA are in this stage. In previous centuries, sugar, tea, coffee, chocolate, and tobacco all underwent a similar process before they became fully normalized and available to all.[v]
The order and duration of these stages of normalization is not fixed.
I must clarify however that the order and duration of these stages of normalization is not fixed. In each case, from drug to drug and society to society, the specifics will vary. What is consistent, however, is the overall progression through various stages of normalization. While the precise order and timespan differs from case to case, nearly every popular drug was first spread through military campaigns. After catching on with the upper class, drugs generally become more and more accessible for the general population. Often enough, drugs are scapegoated for various sociopolitical anxieties and, as a result, prohibited or otherwise restricted.
The only case in which the prohibition stage has lasted more than a century is that of certain opioids. And even so, numerous nations have already decriminalized those opioids, others provide safe consumption sites, and opioids more broadly are still widely available via prescription across the globe. For all of these reasons, even the seemingly monolithic prohibition of opioids has already shown signs of decay.
Even the seemingly monolithic prohibition of opioids has already shown signs of decay.
[Continue reading here.]
Endnotes
[i] Hari, Chasing the Scream, 150.
[ii] Stoa, Craft Weed, 33 and 35.
[iii] Szasz, Ceremonial Chemistry, 185-186 and Pendergrast, Uncommon Grounds, 11-14.
[iv] Courtwright, 158 and 195.
[v] See throughout Courtwright; Mintz, Sweetness and Power; Pendergrast, Uncommon Grounds; and Norton, Sacred Gifts, Profane…
Sources
Courtwright, David. Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 2001.
Hari, Johann. Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, New York, NY. 2015.
Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Penguin Books, NY. 1985.
Norton, Marcy. Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY. 2008.
Pendergrast, Mark. Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World. Basic Books, New York, NY. 1999.
Stoa, Ryan. Craft Weed: Family Farming and the Future of the Marijuana Industry. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. 2018.
Szasz, Thomas. Ceremonial Chemistry: The ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers. Learning Publications, Inc., Holmes Beach, FL. 1985.
Photo credits
Photo of sugar bowl from Walmart at https://www.walmart.com/ip/Stainless-Steel-Sugar-Bowl-with-Clear-Lid-and-Sugar-Spoon-8-1-Ounces-240-Milliliter-Sugar-Container-for-Home-and-Kitchen/1128161500
Photo of heroin from the Alcohol and Drug Foundation at https://adf.org.au/drug-facts/heroin/
Photo of cannabis leaves from NORML at https://norml.org/blog/2021/08/10/these-states-possess-the-highest-number-of-cannabis-consumers-per-capita/
Photo of coffee cup from SciTechDaily at https://scitechdaily.com/drinking-two-to-three-cups-of-coffee-daily-is-linked-with-a-longer-lifespan/
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