September 2001
Just a Pipe Dream
by Filip Palda
In a recent series of articles for the National Post Diane Francis explained that marijuana is a benign drug, which should be legalized for the pleasure of its users and the multi-billion dollar tax revenue it could bring government.
She may have to wait a while, however, before government gives dope smokers its blessing to surround themselves with what Arthur Conan Doyle described as the "sweet balsamic odour of oriental tobacco." Politicians will board almost any profitable enterprise, cutlass in hand, to hack their way to private treasure chests. What stops the Captain Hooks of government from plundering the marijuana trade?
Marijuana is not legal because for most users it is a drug with just one function. Marijuana stupefies its user so that he who once shone in conversation becomes under its influence a dullard who unsettles family and friends with inanities and disconnected thoughts. Put differently, marijuana is a uniphasic drug whose effect is to scramble the mind.
Alcohol and tobacco are deadlier drugs than marijuana, but they belong to the biphasic class of drugs. Tobacco can stupefy, but it can also uplift. Alcohol, in moderate doses, gives its user energy and allows him to talk and act with verve. Montaigne believed that drunkenness was gross and brutish, but that "wine has the capacity of tempering the soul and giving health to the body." Plato forbade that men should get drunk before the age of 40, but considered convivial drinking at a symposium to be useful provided the group of drinkers had a leader who maintained order.
The young who smoke marijuana have always been impatient with their elders who preach sermons with a highball in their hand and a cigarette hanging from their lips. What adults may have trouble getting across is their unease about a drug whose central function is to increase chaos in the mind.
University of Chicago psychologist Mihali Csikszentmihalyi has devoted his career to studying mental chaos and the activities that enhance or diminish it. There is no precise mathematical definition of mental chaos, since no comprehensive model of the mind exists. Acknowledging this limitation, Csikszentmihalyi gave his loose definition of chaos as a state in which the individual has little control over his thoughts.
To test his ideas, Csikszentmihalyi attached a beeper to several hundred volunteers and 8 times a day signaled them to write down what they were doing and how they were feeling. Through such "experience sampling" he found that people felt a special lift when they were tackling a challenging problem which could be broken down into manageable steps, each of which, once climbed, gave the individual a sense that he was in control of his mind and that the structure of his thoughts was of his own making and not a random flitting from one idea to the next.
Whether studying top executives and artists, or factory workers and goatherds, Csikszentmihalyi found that all could summon, at their will and without the help of drugs, what some would call happiness.
The enthusiasm and productivity of his subjects were infectious and tended to affect those around them, much like Mary Poppins convincing her charges that "in every job to be done there is an element of fun." Csikszentmihalyi called the feeling such people experience "flow," and theorized that flow banishes the state of entropy into which unoccupied spirits tend to fall.
Marijuana inhibits flow by robbing its users of the ability and desire to concentrate. Nothing productive or uplifting comes from its recreational use. Marijuana is neither a demon drug nor a major threat to society, but it remains shady among those who value productive individuals with whom it is a joy to work and live.
Some societies, such as the Dutch and the Swiss, seem remarkably tolerant of marijuana use. Their example is not pertinent to North America, however. Both The Netherlands and Switzerland control drug use not by government law, but by popular custom. They are ancient societies in which the community—not the state—limits how far individuals may dissipate themselves.
North America is a busy, rootless place in which the only sign of a neighbour may be a garbage can put out on collection day. Our mobility allows us to go where there are the best opportunities for making money, but darting about comes at a cost. It seems that in such an environment, people feel they must ask government to censor conduct that stable communities once contained with the wag of a few fingers
Perhaps this is why the US, which has a dynamic free market economy, also has a government increasingly opposed to marijuana, in spite of evidence showing that making marijuana and hard drugs illegal has turned hundreds of thousands of Americans to crime. If eighteenth century British painter and satirist William Hogarth came to the US today, he would paint a portrait of politicians preaching the evils of marijuana from their well-appointed offices, while in the background, toothless, stubble-chinned criminals entice women into prostitution to pay for their drugs, and young men drive off in the stolen cars they need to pilfer to subsidize their habits. Canada wheezes behind the US, but is blighted by a similar breed of craven politician willing to market morality to a population no longer willing to enforce morality on its own.
We are unlikely to see marijuana sold at newsstands or in supermarkets anytime soon.
References
Montaigne, Michel de. "On Drunkenness." In The Complete Essays. Tr. M.A. Screech. Penguin Classics. Reprint edition September 1993.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1991). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper Collins.
Filip Palda is Professor at l'École Nationale d'Administration Publique in Montreal, and Senior Fellow of The Fraser Institute. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago.
info@fraserinstitute.ca
4th Floor, 1770 Burrard Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6J 3G7
Tel: (604) 688-0221 Fax: (604) 688-8539 Book Orders: 1-800-665-3558 ext. 580
You can contact us at the above email address for any comments or information requests. Please report any dead links or technical problems.