HIT HOT TOPICS
DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES
We need to dig deep for inspiration and redouble our efforts against
reactionary policies, heard this year’s HIT Hot Topics. DDN reports.
Photography by nigelbrunsdon.com
‘L
et me take you
to Columbia,’
said Sanho Tree,
fellow at the
Institute for Policy
Studies and a
director of its Drug Policy Project.
‘Here farmers grow coca because
it makes economic sense to them,’
he said. ‘They don’t stand a chance
of growing other crops and coca is
one crop that doesn’t require much
infrastructure.’ Yet the government
had been trying to eradicate coca
for decades, primarily through
crop dusters – aircraft that sprayed
the area with a potent form of
Roundup, a herbicide that caused
rashes, vomiting and illness as well
as the death of crops and animals.
The drugs that cost pennies to
produce would be worth thousands
by the time they hit our streets,
thanks to the politics of prohibition,
which inflated their value at each
risky link in the drug trafficking
supply chain, he said.
Then there was the ‘pogrom’
mentality – ‘if you get rid of these
people, it will be ok’ – as seen in
the Philippines, where Duterte had
presided over 30,000 deaths.
Meanwhile President Trump’s
wall was failing to have any impact
on preventing drugs from crossing
the border between the US and
Mexico, with the many other
smuggling methods including
tunnels, planes, torpedoes bolted
under freighters and drones – not
to mention the four-inch gaps
between slats that enabled drugs to
be handed through the wall itself.
So how do we end up with such
reactionary policies? ‘Because they
sell’, said Tree. ‘People want easy
answers.’ But we needed to step
back from the ‘madness’. ‘We need
to ask why we do what we do,’ he
said.
‘We’ve built a fundamentally
sick society, and when I think about
this in terms of drug use, I wonder
if it’s a predictable response to a
world gone mad,’ he said.
SUPERFICIAL ACTION
According to Pavel Bém,
commissioner at the Global
Commission on Drug Policy, we had
become used to ‘acting only on the
surface of the problem’. As former
mayor of Prague and drug czar of
the Czech Republic, he had been
instrumental in bringing about a
period of decriminalisation.
‘There is evidence that drug
policy is wrong and needs to be
reformed,’ he said. ‘But this is not
enough. We need never-ending
passion. For good policy reform we
need heroes.’
The hero in his country, at the
time, was former president Vaclav
Havel, he said. ‘At this time I was
the drug czar. He asked me, “why
aren’t smokers in jail?” It was the
human rights angle, the ‘emotional
momentum’ that introduced harm
reduction services, including needle
exchanges and outreach.
As president of Caso Drug Users
Union, Rui Coimbra Morais had
witnessed the evolution of the
decriminalisation model in Portugal
– its progress and its paradoxes.
‘The country is not a paradise for
users, but it’s better,’ he said. ‘But
stigma doesn’t change overnight,
globally and from society.’
We were so busy ‘creating
illusions that we fit and should
be normalised’, but we needed to
change these narratives. ‘I felt all
my life that I don’t fit – and now
I don’t want to fit,’ he said. The
important thing was to get back to
basic things – the knowledge that
you are not alone. ‘We are many,
we are not alone,’ he said. ‘We have
to connect much more with the
levels of freedom I find in different
places.’
VITAL CONNECTIONS
Biz Bliss from The Psychedelic
Society suggested that ‘sometimes
we need a reboot, remembering
what’s important, connecting with
the self.’ She invited her audience
to ‘connect with the heart space’,
by looking deep into the eyes of the
person (probably a stranger) next
to them.
The idea was to put people in
vulnerable situations where they
were forced to be uncomfortable.
‘We try to create spaces to
remember what it’s like to connect,’
she said.
Through a ‘beautiful retreat
centre’ north of Amsterdam, she
tried to create the ‘perfect set
and setting’ through an intimate
sharing circle with music, enhanced
by taking mycelium truffles in
ginger tea. Once people learned
to get familiar with their feelings,
including grief and pain, the idea
was to learn to ‘use this space’
without psychedelics and ‘access
the experience’.
Photos, clockwise from top left:
audience questions, Sanho Tree,
Pat O’Hare, Megan Jones, Biz Bliss,
Harm Reduction Union, Support
Don’t Punish, Mick Webb, Prun Bijral,
audience participation, Pavel Bém,
questions, Rui Morais and Lizzie
McCulloch, Katy McLeod.
8 • DRINK AND DRUGS NEWS • DEC 2019-JAN 2020
WWW.DRINKANDDRUGSNEWS.COM