Illicit Drugs

Use and control

Adrian Barton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781134007240
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Illicit drugs and their use are a dominant concern of politicians, policy makers and the general public. As such, this second edition of the popular Illicit Drugs: Use and Control provides a timely, up-to-date discussion of the key issues raised in the first edition, whilst also providing new chapters which address:

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• Class, gender and race

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• The geo-politics of illicit drug production and distribution

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• Britain's drug use within a global context

Drawing information from wide-ranging sources, Adrian Barton illuminates the complex nature and broad impact illicit drug use carries in its wake and provides an overview of the contemporary state of the drug 'scene'.

This accessible book, with its inclusion of new pedagogical features, will be essential reading for students and researchers working in the area of drugs and society.

1 British society and illicit drug use

Historical perspectives

Introduction

It is only relatively recently that we have come to conceive of ‘drugs’ as either licit or illicit and ‘good’ or ‘bad’. For example, paracetamol can and does kill humans if too much is ingested, but it is a legal, freely available and socially sanctioned drug that is seen as ‘good’ inasmuch that it acts as a pain relief. Conversely, opium, which historically has been used as an analgesic in much the same way as paracetamol is today, is proscribed and those who do use opium for ‘recreational’ purposes are often stigmatised and criminalised, making opium a ‘bad’ drug. The purpose of this chapter is to examine how we have arrived at this situation. It will begin by offering a very selective overview of drug use from pre-history up to the beginnings of the 1800s. From there it will provide a more detailed look at the manner in which drugs were used, supplied and controlled from around 1800 up until the end of the 1970s. Drug use and control since the 1970s will be integral to much of the content of subsequent chapters.

A further organising principle, which will run throughout the whole of this chapter, is the use of a basic typology to ascertain the nature of drug control throughout history. Holloway (1995: 77) provides a useful analytical tool where he states that ‘three distinct models of regulation can be constructed (around drug control): consumer sovereignty, occupational control and bureaucratic legislation’. However, the same author goes on to note that this typology is a ‘rough and ready’ sorting device. Nevertheless, the above typology enables us to make some sense of the growth of the control of substances from pre-history to the present day, but it needs some words of explanation.

In this work, consumer sovereignty will be taken to mean unfettered access to all manner of substances, with the only barriers to use being either the inability to pay for the substance or the inability to harvest and synthesise the plant. Thus, in pre-history for example, individuals were free to collect and use plant-based substances at will, free from any form of physical or moral control, making access to and use and trade of substances entirely at the discretion of the consumer. Occupational control can be taken to mean the control of the access, sale and use of substances by trades or professional groups, such as the case of the guild system in the Middle Ages. Here, the guilds used the need to be a guild member to limit the extent of trade. Bureaucratic control relates to control exercised over the use, sale and access to drugs by the local or central state and would most closely fit today’s approach to the control of substances.

This opening section looks briefly and selectively at drug use from prehistoric times up until the start of the 1800s. For brevity’s sake I have divided this opening section into three eras: pre-history, Greco-Roman societies and the Middle Ages. The purpose of this historical journey is not to give a definitive historical guide to drug use and control, rather to allow students to realise that alongside many other aspects of social life, the origins of the manner in which we both use and control substances can be found in our history. It is also useful as it allows us to recognise early on in the book that the manner in which societies have thought about, used and controlled what we now see as ‘drugs’ is fluid and is as much dependent on social mores as it is on the pharmacological effects of substances.

Drug use and control: pre-history

Due to a lack of a written language no one can say exactly when people started to use plants for purposes other than to eat and sustain life, just as in the same way no one can be sure about what, if any, restrictions were placed on the use of these substances. However, based on the work of both archaeology and anthropology there is every reason to believe that our pre-historic ancestors would recognise the properties and the uses of plants that that we now understand to be ‘drugs’: that is they would understand that a ‘drug’ can be defined as a substance that instead of being assimilated by the body has the ability, often when taken in very small amounts compared to other substances, to make significant organic and/or mood changes. Evidence supplied by both archaeologists and anthropologists suggests that our ancient ancestors understood this and used state-altering substances in their everyday life for both sacred and profane reasons. Initially, these substances were plant-based and would have been gathered alongside other herbs and plants.

Thus, we can speculate that via a process of trial and error Neolithic hunter gatherer tribes began to understand that certain plants, taken either alone or in tandem with others, could heal their bodies. We can equally speculate that they realised plants could also alter their consciousness and began to be used for either relaxation or spiritual purposes. Based on this, we can begin our journey into the history of drug use with a dilemma that still haunts us today: plurality of use. In short, even in pre-history some substances were used for medicinal purposes whilst some substances were used to alter consciousness for religious or recreational ends. How, when and by whom those mind and body altering substances were used was as much a problem historically as it is today.

What types of drugs were hunter gathers and emergent societies using? According to Escohotado (1999: 6–11), our ancestors would be familiar with many of the plant-based substances that are now outlawed. For example, there is reference to poppy heads in Sumerian texts from the BCE third millennium. Egyptian hieroglyphs make mention of the juice extracted from poppy heads – opium – and provide tips on the healing properties of opium, including the use of opium to prevent babies from screaming too loudly. Homer, in Odyssey, refers to opium, again noting its analgesic properties. Most of the poppies that were used in this period were grown in Greece, the South of Spain and North Africa. Given the degree of trade between early Phoenician traders and part of South West England from 1200 to 800 BCE it is probable that poppies or opium found their way to parts of England as early as 1200 BCE.

Archaeological evidence suggests hemp, and by association, cannabis, was cultivated in China from around 4000 BCE. Hemp production and use in India can be traced back to at least the ninth century BCE, where there is evidence it was used to treat fevers and dysentery. Hemp production and use was also entrenched in Western Europe, evidenced by examples of pipes found from the Celtic era, indicating that the Celts were aware of its use as a drug. Similarly, plant-based hallucinogens such as henbane and belladonna have a long history of use in Western Europe and have established associations with religious festivals, sorcery and witchcraft.

It is clear then that our early ancestors had a sophisticated and coherent working knowledge concerning the properties and effects of certain substances and were also aware of a plurality of use. The next key question is if and how access to these plant-based drugs was controlled and managed. Because of a lack of written history it is difficult to be certain about control of use in prehistoric societies. However, anthropologists working in remote and relatively unexplored regions of the globe note that use of drugs for mind-altering events, such as inducing visions, are often controlled by shaman and we can suppose that the same degree of control existed in some prehistoric societies, especially as they developed over time (Parry 2008).

Therefore we can speculate that in certain instances the use and trade of plant-based substances resembled the consumer sovereignty model, as prehistoric people would be free to collect and use plants at their will. Evidence from anthropology (Parry 2008) does however point to a state of affairs where shamen or similar religious leaders could control the timing of access to certain mind-altering substances when used in sacred rituals.

Drug use and control: Greco-Roman societies

Once a written language exists we are able to be more precise about social customs and the manner in which they were controlled, including substance use. By examining evidence left by two of the three most well known ancient civilizations, the Greeks and Romans, we begin to see that the use of substances for medicinal, recreational and religious purposes was common-place throughout every layer of those societies. What is equally instructive is the degree and sophistication of Greco-Roman knowledge about the use substances. Scarborough (1995: 4) notes that ‘Greco-Roman medicine and pharmacology incorporated a very succinct knowledge and command of the dangers and benefits in the use of the opium poppy, and actions of drugs were widely understood’. The same author goes on to note that there appeared to be a sophisticated and nuanced use system in place in ancient Greco-Roman society, which included a widespread practice of assisted suicide using opium.

For example, according to the works of Dioscorides (CE 70), there were at least two types of opium available: that which was prescribed and dispensed by the physician-pharmacist or the numerous druggists that flourished in both societies, and that which could be cultivated at home. Scarborough (1995: 7) notes that the garden variety would have been less potent and used for ‘ … bread and as a plant with a nourishing oil, as well as some limited use as a narcotic’. In this way, it would appear that families in the Greco-Roman period used opium in the same way we use medicines such as paracetemol. However, just as in contemporary society it would appear that advice and guidance from those with knowledge of illness and drugs was sought for the more serious complaints again, it would appear that opium was a staple drug of the physicians. Indeed, opium use was so widespread in Roman society that its price was fixed by the state.

Moreover, it would appear that there was little concern about what we would now refer to as addiction: Escohotado (1999: 20) notes there is no Latin phrase for ‘opium addict’ but there were at least six that refer to alcohol addiction. Thus, we could argue that in Greco-Roman society there existed a hybrid of control that incorporated the consumer sovereignty model that was inherited from pre-historic society, working in tandem with the beginnings of an occupational control model emanating from the emerging druggist trade.

However, the widespread approval of substance use – the consumer sovereignty model – is dependent on a social and cultural acceptance of self-medication and diagnosis, as well as a belief system that does not stigmatise or condemn inebriation, as well as a separation of law and morality. All of these flourished in Greek society and in Roman society during its pre-Christian era, but as Escohotado (1999: 24) notes, the conditions that supported the consumer sovereignty model ‘underwent a collapse when the Roman Empire became Christianised (sic)’. Escohotado (1999) argues that whilst early Christian groups such as the Coptic sect were often involved in heavy drinking and feasting as part of the Eucharistic celebrations, later branches of the religion condemned all forms of inebriation including heavy drinking and the use of plant-based substances; as a result many Christians became abstemious.

Over a short period of time, feasting associated with the Eucharist became largely symbolic with the use of bread and wine restricted to the priest. Equally, the use of plant-based substances as an aid in religious ceremonies became the subject of moral condemnation and curbed the influence of priests from outside the Christian religion. As well as restricting the use of opium for religious and recreational purposes, the Christian religion attacked and proscribed one of its key historical uses – as a method of suicide – on religious grounds. Under the Christian doctrine suicide is a mortal sin and thus the subject of moral, social and religious sanction, owing to the belief that one’s life belongs to God and only God can choose to end life.

Another important change was the fact that prior to the establishment of Christianity various religions and sects had existed side by side. However, very soon all non-Christian forms of worship and belief were seen as associations with ‘false prophets’ and in some cases associations with the devil, and any accompanying form of inebriation was seen as morally lax. Interestingly, in the Greco-Roman world, law and morality had been kept separate. Thus, whereas prior to the rise of Christianity there had been tolerance of inebriation for religious and relaxation purposes, the world, post-Christian expansion, became a different place.

There are numerous examples of recourse to law and prohibition to support this. For example, in around CE 388 the Roman Emperor Valentinian decreed the death penalty for participation in ‘nocturnal ceremonies’;in CE 391 Bishop Theophilus incited the burning of the library in Alexandria destroying some 120,000 texts, many of which contained pharmacological knowledge and information passed down from early Greco-Roman scholars; Charlemagne declared that opium was the work of Satan. Therefore, the expansion of Christianity saw a shift in the method of control of access, use and trade in substances. The consumer sovereignty model was superseded by a mixture of occupational control and the beginning of bureaucratic control as the nascent state intervened in the use of mind-altering substances. By the time we reach the Middle Ages the state and the Church had become as one and we see a very different approach to the use of drugs.

Drug use and control: Middle Ages to the 1800s

It is instructive to note that the early Middle Ages are also sometimes referred to as ‘the Dark Ages’. This is taken to mean that the type of social structures and cultural and literary achievements promoted by the Greek and Roman civilisations collapsed, and in their wake came a time of uncertainty. Plagues and pestilence were common, as were wars and invasions. In Britain we can see that the period from around CE 400 to the early 1500s was one of huge social, political and religious change, and all three conspired to impact the manner in which certain substances were used and controlled.

The civic and social upheavals of the time led to something of a purge on the use of substances designed either to heal or alter consciousness, due, in the main, to rising concerns about heresy against the Christian church and the impact magic, particularly that performed by witches, had on the condition of the environment and the morality of the population. Specifically, there were concerns about women and women’s sexual activity in relation to substance use. Bailey (2003: 1) notes that in the mid-1430s, an unknown cleric described a nocturnal gathering in which the devil appeared to his followers in order to welcome a new convert. Whilst the mainstay of the cleric’s description revolves around sex and cannibalism it is instructive for our purposes to note that once the carnal pleasures had been sated, the devil instructed his disciples in ‘magical arts and would give them certain magic potions, poisons and unguents’, which could then be used to harm or corrupt other members of society. Chief protagonists in these types of activities were ‘witches’ who were particularly persecuted for their ability to use ‘potions’ and cast ‘spells’, all of which were unholy activities and represented a potential corrupting presence to Christian society.

Integral to this is the concept of the ‘flying witch’ and her broomstick. Whilst popular mythology and children’s’ fairy tales would have us believe that female witches actually ‘flew’ the reality is grounded in sexual activity. Both Bailey (2003) and Escohotado (1999) note that according to the Christian inquisitor’s records many of the women burnt for witchcraft admitted to using wooden dildos anointed with ointments to produce sexual satisfaction. However, the inquisitors were unable to detail these sexually explicit confessions so engaged in the use of metaphors in their reports. Thus, ‘flying’ became a metaphor for the erotic dreams and images leading to the female orgasm and ‘broomstick’ became a metaphor for a dildo. The fact that these women either prepared the ointments themselves or obtained them from other female ‘witches’ led to their persecution, arrest and punishment. Thus, arguably for the first time we see the state begin to wage war not only on ‘drugs’, because of the impact certain substances had on the morality of populations, but also on ‘drug dealers’ for being the ones that supplied the substances.

And what a war it was: Bailey (2003) tells us that from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century over 200,000 people were burnt as witches and the state confiscated the property of millions more. Interestingly, whilst the witch hunts could be seen to be a form of control by the criminal justice agencies of the use and distribution of some drugs, there was also a form of control of the supply and use of drugs by professional and trade organisations aided and abetted by the local state.

Holloway (1995) reports that in late medieval Europe craft guilds were formed with the express intention of overseeing and regulating the activities of people practising a certain craft or trade. Dyer (2002: 223) goes further and argues that ‘often regulation was used … [by guilds] to secure control of commodities and exclude competition’, and this regulation was endorsed and backed by the town officials. This is an important development because it means that for the first time there was an organised and active professional attempt to control ownership, and by association the lawful supply, of certain substances, backed by the emerging local state. Certainly the supply of substances by pharmacists and apocatharies seemed to be a profitable enterprise for the expanding merchant class. Holloway (1995: 78–79) informs that ‘organized commerce in the supply of drugs in the principal urban areas of England was [visible] from at least the fourteenth century’.

So, by the time that we leave the Middle Ages and begin to enter the 1600s and 1700s, we can see a system of control where any attempt at consumer sovereignty was proscribed either by religion or by law. That is not to say self-diagnosis and recourse to folk remedies did not exist – they clearly did. However, especially in the increasingly urbanising towns and cities, the scope for finding plants on which to base remedies began to constrict, meaning that more and more people had to purchase plants and patent medicines from guild-based apothecaries.

According to Pomeranz and Topik (2006), it was the development of a free market form of commerce and trade around the 1600s and certainly into the 1700s that began to shift the use, supply and purchase of substances into a form that would be more familiar to us today. As Pomeranz and Topik (2006) go on to describe, around the end of the 1600s and the beginning of the 17...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface and acknowledgements
• 1 British society and illicit drug use
• 2 Measuring the ‘problem’: drug use in contemporary Britain
• 3 The British state’s legal and medical responses to illicit drug use
• 4 Illicit drug use
• 5 Illicit drugs
• 6 The geo-politics of illicit drug production and distribution
• 7 Illicit drugs
• 8 Illicit drugs
• 9 Policing the problem: current trends in UK drug policy
• 10 Comparing British drug policy
• Bibliography
• Index