What is Drugism?
Something we all know but never had a word for--until now
Clockwise, from top left: tea leaves; coca leaves; a handful of coca leaves; a handful of tea leaves. See photo credits below.
The following is an excerpt from p. 7-10 of "Introduction: What is Drugism?" from my new book, Drugism (2022):
Put simply, drugism refers to the judgments people make about drugs and their users. A more complete definition might be: the plethora of assumptions and preconceptions which people hold about particular substances and the people who use them. The idea has been articulated many times, by countless individuals, but it seems none of them have found quite the right word to represent it.
More than a century-and-a-half ago, in 1860, mycologist and naturalist Mordecai Cooke wrote,
…it is custom with some people to blame, without limit, those who indulge in nervous stimulants of a nature differing from their own, while serving the same purpose.[i]
Everyone uses drugs, Cooke argued, and it is no wonder that different people should use different drugs. To judge people by the drugs they use, according to him, is “evidence of...narrow-minded prejudices” which society is better off without.[ii]
Cooke conceived these ideas in an era before global drug prohibition, when the notion that some drugs are better or worse than others was an emerging concept, still in its infancy. In Cooke’s era, opium, cocaine, and cannabis were all available without restriction. His conclusion—we all use drugs, so do not judge what others put in their bodies—was very fitting for the times.
We all use drugs.
Similar ideas reemerged a century later, in the 1960s and ‘70s, due in large part to an influx of substances and a general rise in drug use. Exposure to rapidly-changing trends of drug use produced a generation of scholars who rejected long-held assumptions about drugs.[iii] Among them was Jock Young, a British sociologist who wrote extensively about drugs. He noted that sometimes users of specific illegal drugs morally judge users of other illegal drugs. As an example, he pointed to the large number of cannabis users who hold disdain for heroin users—a perfect example of drugism.[iv]
Young noted that most legal and political processes serve only to reinforce such judgments of drug use, or drugisms.[v] He argued that social and legal persecution of specific drugs actually exacerbates alienation among drug users, leading to progressively worse relations between users of legal and illegal drugs—a process he and others called deviance amplification.[vi] Young’s argument, somewhat cutting edge for its time, has become more commonplace as attitudes toward drug use once again soften in the twenty-first century.
Another scholar from the 1970s, psychiatrist Thomas Szasz touched on the phenomenon when he wrote of the arbitrary distinctions between legal and illegal drugs.[vii] For Szasz, drugism was inherently political.[viii] Likewise for Paul Rock, who saw drugs as a central motif in US politics.[ix] And indeed, drugism is political, but it has not always been expressed that way.
Drugism is political, but it has not always been expressed that way.
Some have framed the issue in more purely social terms. For example, Irving Horowitz, a political scientist who taught at Rutgers University in the 1970s, noted that the legal status of drugs is determined not by pharmacology but by social processes and power relations. “The entire drug culture,” he insisted, is based primarily on social factors rather than pharmacological ones.[x] To the extent that drug use is political, for Horowitz, these politics emerge from the social landscape around a given substance.
Others, particularly those writing around the turn of the millennium, have also described drugism in less strictly political, more broadly social terms. For example, Terence McKenna, writing in the early ‘90s, observed that “we are discovering that human beings are creatures of chemical habit with the same horrified disbelief as when the Victorians discovered that humans are creatures of sexual fantasy.”[xi] The “horrified disbelief” which McKenna noted was, in essence, drugism.
Or consider Richard DeGrandpre, who, in 2006, wrote that “what people think about a drug depends greatly on who uses it.”[xii] A few years later, Carl Hart described the widespread “prejudices about drug use.” He explained that drug use is “often used to delineate group membership and social standing.”[xiii]
“What people think about a drug depends greatly on who uses it.” -Richard DeGrandpre, The Cult of Pharmacology
All of these things are true, and they can all be summed up with the word drugism. The term at once represents assumptions about drugs themselves as well as judgments of and/or actions toward people who use them, be they social, scientific, political, economic, etc. Drugism is applied to individual substances and to entire groups of substances. It can be favorable (i.e., promote the use of a given drug), negative (condemn the use of a given drug), ambiguous (neither promote nor condemn), or a nuanced mixture of all three.
Drugism is not a new word, but it has been used in the above sense only within roughly the last decade. The first use of the word drugism that I am aware of occurred in 1970, in a publication entitled Hippyism Existentialism Drugism, written by Christian educator William L. Hogan. While Hogan did not define drugism, the way in which he used the word suggests that, for him at least, it referred to the general practice of using drugs in daily life, be they prescription pills, pot, or heroin.[xiv] Hogan’s brief, pamphlet-like book is a rallying cry against the drug use that had overtaken the US in the 1960s, written from a conservative Christian perspective.
In the 21st century, drugism developed a different, more nuanced meaning than that which Hogan had conferred upon it. In 2010, a team of scholars by the names of Liliana Cambraia Windsor, Ellen Benoit, and Eloise Dunlap used the term in an article entitled “Dimensions of Oppression in the Lives of Impoverished Black Women Who Use Drugs,” published in the Journal of Black Studies. Windsor, Benoit, and Dunlap described drugism as a “dimension of oppression” which, along with classism, racism, sexism, etc., are perpetrated by people and institutions alike. Ironically, they used the term in a way which itself succumbed to stereotypes about people who use certain drugs, when they wrote that it was “not realistic” to expect “functional behavior” from “drug addicts.”[xv] For Windsor, Benoit, and Dunlap, to expect “drug addicts” to be “functional” constitutes drugism. While their definition for drugism is pretty spot-on, this supposed example is disappointing and itself only perpetuates drugism.
Drugism refers to the overall range of judgments + assumptions made about various drugs + the people who use them.
In 2015, an anonymous blogger [@Drugism on Twitter] offered a more comprehensive definition for drugism which managed to avoid endorsing stereotypes. Actually, they offered several definitions for the word, among which was “the belief that all users of a particular drug possess characteristics specific to that particular group of drug users, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior to another group of drug users.”[xvi] Although it is a bit wordy, this is a workable definition. The same blogger also defines drugism as “the belief that the drug user identities of members of one’s own ethnic or cultural group are superior to the drug user identities of members of other ethnic or cultural groups.”[xvii] Also wordy, but a decent definition. Of all the definitions this anonymous blogger offered, my favorite one is also the most concise: the belief that some people’s drug use “is more deserving of workable public health legislation” than other people’s drug use.
All of these definitions can be consolidated and reduced into a shorter and simpler one, which we introduced at the start of this section. Drugism, then, refers to the overall range of judgments and assumptions made about various drugs and the people who use them.
We all hold assumptions about substances, whether consciously or not.
Unfortunately, everybody is drugist.[1] We all hold assumptions about substances, whether consciously or not. It is an undeniably natural instinct to want to qualify things, to determine their essence, and to believe that essence is somewhat consistent. The same way that people have done so and, in the process, created entirely imaginary and inherently harmful notions of gender and race, people have likewise created entirely imaginary and inherently harmful notions of drugs and the people who use them.
I must clarify that in no way do I wish to compare isms. Drugism is not any more of an issue—an indeed, it is, probably, ultimately, less of an issue—than other, more systemic types of discrimination, such as classism, racism, and sexism. Nonetheless, although drugism is perhaps not as large a problem as other isms, it nonetheless exists with its own urgency.[2] Drugism exists, and it creates real problems for real people. To the extent that it does, it is worth our attention. Only after we understand drugism can we begin to undo it.
Drugism exists, and it creates real problems for real people.
Footnotes
[1] Drugist, i.e., endorsing or expressing drugism; not to be confused with druggist, a term that describes someone who sells drugs and which has largely fallen from popular use.
[2] Drugism is also very frequently intertwined with the other types of discrimination mentioned above. It is often used as a cover for the expression of these other forms of bigotry.
Endnotes
[i] Cooke, The Seven Sisters…, 172.
[ii] Cooke, 173.
[iii] Acker, 215.
[iv] Young in Rock, ed., 119.
[v] Young in Rock, ed., 121.
[vi] See Chapter 6, throughout, in Rock, ed.
[vii] Szasz, 179.
[viii] Szasz, 137-139.
[ix] Rock, ed., 12.
[x] Rock, ed., 159-160.
[xi] McKenna, Food of the…, 256.
[xii] DeGrandpre, The Cult of…, 133.
[xiii] Hart, High Price, 90 and 260.
[xiv] Hogan, Hippyism Existentialism Drugism, throughout. Hogan writes that drugism is a byproduct of Existentialism on 5, and on 20 we find the following formula: “Hippyism + Existentialism = Drugism.”
[xv] Windsor, Benoit, and Dunlap, “Dimensions of Oppression...,” 11.
[xvi] “Defining Drugism.”
[xvii] Ibid.
Sources
Acker, Caroline Jean. Creating the American Junkie: Addiction Research in the Classic Era of Narcotic Control. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD. 2002.
Cooke, Mordecai. The Seven Sisters of Sleep. Park Street Press, Rochester, VT. 1997.
“Defining Drugism.” Drugism Daily, Sep 16. 2015. https://drugism.wordpress.com/2015/09/16/defining-drugism/ [See also the same blogger’s Twitter page @Drugism at https://twitter.com/Drugism. Highly recommended.]
DeGrandpre, Richard. The Cult of Pharmacology: How America Became the World’s Most Troubled Drug Culture. Duke University Press, Durham, NC. 2006.
Hart, Carl. High Price. HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY. 2014.
Hogan, William L. Hippyism Existentialism Drugism: A Survey Report. Wenonah, New Jersey. 1970.
McKenna, Terence. Food of the Gods. Bantam Books, NY. 1992.
Rock, Paul E., ed. Drugs and Politics. Transaction Books, New Brunswick, NJ. 1977.
Szasz, Thomas. Ceremonial Chemistry: The ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers. Learning Publications, Inc., Holmes Beach, FL. 1985.
Windsor, Liliana Cambraia, Ellen Benoit, and Eloise Dunlap. “Dimensions of Oppression in the Lives of Impoverished Black Women Who Use Drugs.” Journal of Black Studies, Sep 1, 2010; 41(1): 21-39. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49641238_Dimensions_of_Oppression_in_the_Lives_of_Impoverished_Black_Women_Who_Use_Drugs
Photo credits
Tea leaves from Depositphotos at https://depositphotos.com/61283365/stock-photo-fresh-tea-leaves-in-the.html
Coca leaves from iStock at https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/coca-leaves
Handful of coca leaves from Adobe Stock at https://stock.adobe.com/search?k=coca+leaf
Handful of tea leaves from Booking.com at https://www.booking.com/articles/around-the-world-in-8-cups-of-tea.html
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