Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (69 page)

4
Miller,
Case for Legalizing Drugs
, 5–6.

5
This exchange is as recalled by Bruce.

6
Billie Holiday’s withdrawal, as discussed earlier, was so threatening to her life not because withdrawal is inherently life-threatening, but because she was so weak. A person whose immune system is weak can be killed by an ordinary flu.

7
John Henry Merryman, ed.,
Stanford Legal Essays
, 284. http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/3212846/withdrawal-from-heroin-is-a-trivial-matter/, accessed March 3, 2013; http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleID=62279, accessed January 8, 2014.

8
DeGrandpre,
Cult of Pharmacology
, 29. See also “The Effect of Housing and Gender on Morphine Self-Administration in Rats,”
Psychopharmacology
58, 175–79.

9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kS72J5Nlm8&list=PL6301BC630AE6F23E&index=106&feature=plpp_video, viewed November 1, 2012.

10
This discussion of the experiment is informed heavily by the two original studies of Rat Park by Alexander and colleagues: “The Effect of Housing and Gender on Morphine Self-Administration in Rats,”
Psychopharmacology
58, 175–79, and “Effect of Early and Later Colony Housing on Oral Ingestion of Morphine by Rats,”
Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behaviour
, vol. 15, 571–76.

11
Slater,
Opening Skinner’s Box
, 165.

12
See “The View from Rat Park” by Bruce K. Alexander, http://globalizationofaddiction.ca/articles-speeches/177-addiction-the-view-from-rat-park.html, accessed November 1, 2012.

13
Slater,
Opening Skinner’s Box
, 168.

14
Bruce K. Alexander,
Globalizing Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit
, 195. Although in other interviews and in his writing Bruce has talked about the idea of rats being addicted as a shorthand for their heavily using drugs, he stressed to me that we perhaps need to be more careful with these terms: “What would that look like in a rat? I think the question is moot, really, we just don’t know what addiction would look like in a rat . . . How could you possibly know if a rat was addicted?” Since rats cannot tell us about their psychological state we cannot know about their cravings and longings. We can talk about heavy and compulsive use, which can be measured; but Bruce believes “addiction” also implies a mental state, which we can’t measure in rats. To be clear, “addiction,” when I use it in this chapter about rats, is shorthand for very heavy use when they are in unhappy situations.

15
Dan Baum,
Smoke and Mirrors
, 49.

16
Reinarman and Levine,
Crack in America
, 10; Maté,
Hungry Ghosts
, 142.

17
As reported in the documentary
The Most Secret Place on Earth: The CIA’s Covert War on Laos
.

18
Baum,
Smoke and Mirrors
, 50.

19
Ibid., 48. There’s a useful discussion of drug use by U.S. troops in Vietnam in Valentine,
Strength of the Pack
, 117–32.

20
Reinarman and Levine,
Crack in America
, 10; Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld,
Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience
, 49–50.

21
Maté,
Hungry Ghosts
, 142. DeGrandpre,
Cult of Pharmacology
, 117.

22
Maté,
Hungry Ghosts
, 146.

23
Baum,
Smoke and Mirrors
, 62. Miller,
Case for Legalizing Drugs
, 54–55.

24
See Bruce K. Alexander, “The Rise and Fall of the Official View of Addiction,” http://globalizationofaddiction.ca/articles-speeches/240-rise-and-fall-of-the-official-view-of-addictionnew.html, accessed March 12, 2013.

25
See Jessica Warner,
Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason
.

26
See Nick Reding,
Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town
.

27
Bruce K. Alexander, “The View From Rat Park,” http://globalizationofaddiction.ca/articles-speeches/177-addiction-the-view-from-rat-park.html, accessed March 12, 2013.

28
http://www.cedro-uva.org/lib/cohen.addiction.html, accessed February 5, 2012. See Peter Cohen, “Is the Addiction Doctor the Voodoo Priest of Western Man?” at http://www.cedro-uva.org/lib/cohen.addiction.html, also published in
Addiction Research
, special issue, vol. 8, no. 6: 589–98.

29
More recent evidence reinforces this. When there have been heroin shortages in Europe in the twenty-first century, far from getting clean, users have in fact turned to even deadlier intoxicants. See https://reportingproject.net/occrp/index.php/en/ccwatch/cc-watch-indepth/1901-heroin-shortages-drive-users-to-deadly-alternatives, accessed March 30, 2013.

30
DuPont himself did not use the imagery of hijacking or chemical slavery in his speech, and does not like these metaphors, but they recurred at the conference many times.

31
http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events/2011/addiction-what-to-do-when-everything-else-has-failed, accessed December 15, 2012.

32
Matthew E. Brashears, “Small Networks and High Isolation? A Reexamination of American Discussion Networks,”
Social Networks
33 (2011): 331–41.

33
Benavie,
Drugs: America’s Holy War
, 12.

34
Ibid., 11.

35
DeGrandpre,
Cult of Pharmacology
, 85.

Chapter 14: The Drug Addicts’ Uprising

1
This account of the origins of VANDU is based on my interviews with Bud and others who were there at the time and later—Ann Livingstone, Dean Wilson, Donald MacPherson, Liz Evans, Philip Owen, Gabor Maté, Bruce Alexander, Clare Hacksell, Coco Cuthbertson, Laura Shaver—and writings and documentaries as referenced in the endnotes.

2
http://www.cosmik.com/aa-december99/bud_osborn.html, accessed April 1, 2013.

3
John Armstrong, “Poet had a choice of gutters,”
Vancouver Sun
, April 6, 1996.

4
Bud Osborn,
Hundred Block Rock
, 13.

5
Ibid., 26.

6
Osborn,
Hundred Block Rock
, 33.

7
Ibid., 111.

8
Benavie,
Drugs: America’s Holy War
, 43.

9
Pisani,
Wisdom of Whores
, 232.

10
Maté,
Hungry Ghosts
, 101.

11
Susan Boyd, Donald MacPherson, and Bud Osborn, eds.,
Raise Shit! Social Action Saving Lives
, 92.

12
Ibid., 84.

13
http://www.scribd.com/doc/103641727/Independent-Counsel-Report-to-Commissioner-of-Inquiry-August-16-2012, accessed October 25, 2012.

14
Boyd, MacPherson, and Osborn,
Raise Shit!
189.

15
Ibid., 35.

16
A good discussion of this process can be found in “The Establishment of North America’s First State-Sanctioned Injection Facility: A Case Study in Cultural Change,”
International Journal of Drug Policy
vol. 17 (2006): 73–82, available online at http://www.communityinsite.ca/pdf/culture-change-case-study.pdf, accessed April 1, 2013.

17
http://news.streetroots.org/2012/03/14/vancouver-bc-s-drug-revolution, accessed April 1, 2013.

18
As seen in the documentary
The Fix
.

19
Boyd, MacPherson, and Osborn,
Raise Shit!
, 19.

20
Greg Joyce, “Downtrodden March in Vancouver,”
Edmonton Journal
, July 12, 2000, accessed via LexisNexis November 5, 2012.

21
Bud Osborn,
Sign of the Times
, 26–30.

22
Boyd, MacPherson, and Osborn,
Raise Shit!
50.

23
Ibid., 59.

24
Ian Mulgrew, “Health Board’s Rabble-rousing Social Conscience,”
Vancouver Sun
, July 24, 1999, accessed via LexisNexis November 5, 2012.

25
Osborn,
Hundred Block Rock
, 79.

26
Boyd, MacPherson, and Osborn,
Raise Shit!
, 89.

27
I know about this moment because it was featured in the excellent documentary
The Fix
.

28
 
Ibid. This quote comes from the documentary.

29
http://www.theprovince.com/news/Life+expectancy+Downtown+Eastside/7202585/story.html, accessed November 5, 2012.

30
http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=6ee496bd-5a4c-4bca-8323-42d3f4d91df1, accessed February 27, 2013.

31
Robert Matas, “BC Drug Deaths Hit a Low Not Seen in Years,”
Globe and Mail
, December 9, 2008, accessed via LexisNexis November 2, 2012.

32
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Osborn+true+hero+Downtown+Eastside/9816842/story.html, accessed May 14, 2014.

33
I could not make it there, alas. This was described to me by Liz Evans, who was there.

Chapter 15: Snowfall and Strengthening

1
I had been back and forth to Britain all through the researching of this book, but this was the point when I decided to return for good and focus my energies on researching the effects of the drug war outside North America.

2
Namely John Marks, Russell Newcombe, Pat O’Hare, Cindy Fazey, Allan Parry, and Andrew Bennett.

3
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-16355281, accessed April 24, 2013.

4
The best explanation of British drug policy today is in Alex Stevens’s excellent book
Drugs, Crime and Public Health: The Political Economy of Drug Policy
.

5
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/oct/31/race-bias-drug-arrests-claim, accessed April 24, 2013.

6
Kohn,
Dope Girls
, 84–85.

7
Ibid., 129.

8
Ibid., 120.

9
Ibid., 158.

10
Trebach,
Heroin Solution
, 90.

11
Ibid., 93.

12
King,
Drug Hang-Up
, 190–207; G. Bammer, “Drug Abuse: The Heroin Prescribing Debate; Integrating Science and Politics,”
Science
5418 (1999): 1277–78.

13
Gray,
Drug Crazy
, 155.

14
Trebach,
Heroin Solution
, 104.

15
Holiday,
Lady Sings the Blues
, 182–83.

16
Anslinger archives, box 1, file 10, “New York Forum: Saturday April 28th 1962, Program Transcript.”

17
King,
Drug Hang-Up
, 212–14; Ambros Uchtenhagen, “Heroin Maintenance Treatment: From Idea to Research to Practice,”
Drug and Alcohol Review
30 (March 2013): 130–37.