Drugs, the Gateway Myth & Winehouse

The autopsy is not yet complete and it would be reckless to predict its outcome. Even if Amy Winehouse’s death was not caused by an overdose the drug debate, that beast that never lies idle for long, has once again been roused. Here we go again.

The plethora of statistics on drug abuse mislead as readily as they inform. Not unusually, I rely on anecdotal evidence (guilty, no doubt, of this) and I have enough friends who decided to steer clear of drugs altogether to know that drug addicts are far from passive victims of their own genes.

As I observed the drug taking habits of my peers, it became clear that those determined to indulge would not be easily deterred. Of those who set out brimming with a righteous determination to avoid drugs, many later succumbed. Not under malign peer pressure, but because they could see with their own eyes that their friends were having fun and were still alive in the morning. This crucial point is often omitted in the muddy waters of the drugs debate. On the whole, people take drugs for the same reason they drink, not through misguided Reactance, nor because they want to dice with death or break the law, but because drugs can be enjoyable. People also take drugs when they’re manically depressed or attempting suicide, but we’re warping the debate if we let ourselves believe that’s true in anything close to the majority of cases.

Those determined to make the penalties of using cannabis more severe cite its role as the ‘gateway’ drug. It's a redundant argument. Whilst it’s true I know no one who graduated directly from Stella Artois to crack cocaine, the idea that cannabis is the first station on a line that includes cocaine, ecstasy and heroine and terminates at early death simply isn’t borne out by the facts.

Yes, the majority of habitual drug takers began by smoking cannabis, but a minute proportion go on to become full blow addicts. Such is the stigma and clouded thinking around drugs that those who would usually be proponents of free will, who place such value on individual choice and responsibility in other aspects of life, are curiously willing to abandon the principle when it comes to drugs. There are countless places along the way to withdraw, to say no more, to resist something harder. When it comes to drug use I suspect those who campaign for a so-called ‘zero-tolerance’ approach are guilty of a focusing effect. It is death that makes the headlines. Besides, it appears to me that stricter controls on cannabis push the young into the arms of criminal dealers who have a vested interest in seeing them hooked on something genuinely lethal.