Nod to Helen Clark

re: "Reforms 'can't end' with legalised cannabis" (BP, April 18, 2023) 

Dear editor,

It was a welcome corrective to traditional thinking of six decades to see the Bangkok Post's "Reforms 'can't end' with legalised cannabis" on the front page for a few hours. Former New Zealand prime minister and current member of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty, Helen Clark is correct on all counts. The 60-year-old punitive approach to recreational use of drugs has been an abject failure that has not reduced drug use, except in places like Singapore, where moral decency is rejected in favour of extreme force, including judicial killing in accord with law made up for that purpose, to impose the shining totalitarian vision of some, albeit perhaps a majority, on an entire society. Singapore resembles too perfectly the fabled city state of Omelas described in writer Ursula K. Le Guin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas". In that moral horror story, all looks light, cheerful, healthy and perfectly happy; that glowing happiness is dependent on the abuse of an innocent child locked away in a dark place, an evil that all know of but of which none speak. 

Ms Clark is right that not only have the last six decades of drug wars indefensibly killed thousands of drug users, but they have not reduced the natural human urge of thousands of years to use drugs for fun. The populist drug wars have, however, very effectively debased the public morals of societies practicing such morally indefensible abuse of individuals. Ms Clark is right to praise Thailand's recent decriminalization of cannabis, and to insist that it needs to go further in the pursuit of good morals for society. 

The drug wars and their killings, their overcrowded prisons, their massive economic, social and moral costs to society, are premised on the notion, shared by communist and right-wing authoritarian ideologies alike, that human beings are not born to be free, but to serve as productive units for self-serving groups wielding political power. 

The lame excuses that drugs must be suppressed to "protect society" or to "protect children" are false claims. That such claims are not truly believed even by the parents and populist politicians who promote them is proved by the fact that they do not apply their reasoning with any attempt at consistency. The facts are that whilst all drugs, cannabis, alcohol, yaba, heroin, cigarettes or whatever, are harmful to the user, as Ms Clark sensibly admits, when it comes to harms to society, the drug that is far and away the most harmful is alcohol, as concluded in such studies as those of Professor David Nutt et al. ("Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis" The Lancet, 2010, DOI 10.1016/S0140-6736(10)61462-6 ) and Associate Professor Yvonne Bonomo et al. ("The Australian drug harms ranking study", 2019, Journal of Psychopharmacology, DOI 10.1177/0269881119841569  ). Since alcohol is the single most harmful drug to non-users and society generally, were the advocates of prohibition sincere in their principles, they would be calling for the imprisonment and execution of the alcohol barons, those wealthy executives of famous businesses producing and peddling that very popular recreational drug to the great harm of society. Were they consistent in their professed moral convictions, the anti-drug advocates would be demanding that the law imprison those in possession of the drug alcohol to further uselessly, harmfully, swell the grossly overcrowded prisons. They conspicuously are not. 

Those pushing the 60-year tradition of suppressing some popular drugs whilst allowing free rein to a more harmful drug might think themselves acting for the good of society or the family, but they are wrong. Their confused, delusive, irrational and morally corrupt vision is the path towards Omelas, founded on an unspeakably vile truth lurking at the dark heart of their ideal society. 

 Felix Qui 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on April 22, 2023, under the title "Nod to Helen Clark" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2554676/handout-pros