Focus 580; Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World

In this part of focus 580 will be talking about drugs and the making of the modern world. That's the subtitle of a book that we'll be talking about the title is forces of habit. It's published by the Harvard University Press the author. Our guest is David Cortright He's professor of history at the University of North Florida. It seems that for much of human history human beings have been drawn to mood and mind altering substances. A big change though in our drug use is something that we've seen perhaps in the last couple of centuries that is today. We had people around the world have access to a very wide array of drugs much more so than our ancient forebears. How that happened to be how it is that drugs that at one time were local favorites geographically isolated came to be a worldwide commodities. One of the questions that Professor Cortright takes up in his book and will be discussing this morning and of course whatever questions people have who are listening. You can call in and talk with our guest if you're here in Champaign Urbana where we are 3 3 3 9 4 5 5.

We also have a toll free line and that means if it would be a long distance call for you you can use that number and we will pay for the call that's 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 again 3 3 3 W I L L that's what you get when you match the numbers on the letters. Three three three w aisle and toll free 800. Two two two. W1 Hello Professor court right. Hello. Thanks for talking with us today. You're quite welcome. We appreciate it. I'm just curious how it is you because I know that you've done a lot of writing on this subject how it is you became interested in in mind and mood altering substances and and why and how people use them. Well the inspiration for this particular book came when I was standing in a duty free shop in an airport about 10 years ago. And if you've ever been in a duty free shop you've probably had the same insight namely you're completely surrounded by drugs. There were Marlboro cartons to my right and there were Drambuie bottles to my left and straight ahead

against the wall were coffee beans from Kenya. And aside from perfumes and a few other things most of the products that were available for sale in this duty free shop were psychoactive and I asked myself a simple question which was where did all this stuff come from. Because you know most duty free shops everywhere in the world are the same they offer pretty much the same range of psychoactive products. So I started playing with this and I came to realize if you go back far enough in time most of these products were isolated coffee for example existed only in one place in Ethiopia and gradually spread to Arabia and from Arabia to Europe and from Europe to the New World and eventually 70 percent of the world's coffee beans were produced in the western hemisphere. And you can tell a similar story for virtually all psychoactive products. Well why then let's talk a little bit more about that as you say coffee started in Africa. Tobacco and coca are new world plants.

Right cannabis is something that was native to India. So one day as you say at one point these where to use the phrase I used in the beginning there were local favorites there were things that a particular part of the world people used. And now caffeine is the world's for example caffeine is the world's most widely used drug something that might surprise people. How is it that something like coffee beans for example. Or tobacco ends up being something that goes from a local plant to something that is everywhere in a phrase European imperial expansion. The real engine behind the global cycle active commerce was the expansion of European colonies and in particular the plantation system because you stop and think about it what did Europeans grow on their plantations in the New World in India in Africa. Basically they grew things like tea or

coffee or they produce sugar much of which was turned into rum which is another drug product and that was the that was the real key. The fact that mercantile elites can make a lot of money from drug commerce and drug cultivation and the government's got into the act a really interesting part of the story is how governments went from a position of initial ambivalence or opposition. Making money like mad off of these products so that for example by the late 19th century half of the income of the British government was coming from taxes on various psychoactive products. It's also interesting that in that respect that so many if not all of these things so many of these things began as medicines and had relatively restricted kind of use and that when they were used that way governments maybe weren't paying all that much attention and it was only when they broke out of that medicinal use to widespread we might say

recreational use. Did governments actually start taking notice and want to do things like either regulating them or finding some way that they can make money off of it. Tobacco is a really excellent example of that tobacco was introduced into Europe by the Spanish and it was for the first 25 years or so it was basically discussed as a as a promising new drug it was expensive bought it seemed to have a number of useful therapeutic applications it's only after tobacco and in particular tobacco smoking becomes popular in bordellos and taverns that you get a reaction a strong reaction from European governments and in fact the initial laws some of them were quite draconian involve very severe penalties for smoking Ultimately however towards the end of the 17th century virtually all European governments had capitulated and they simply taxed the traffic and recreational tobacco

use as opposed to trying to suppress it. You have divided up drugs into at least two if you look at those that are that are perhaps most widespread most frequently used into what you call the Big Three and the little three right there. The big three being the legal ones and the most often used caffeine alcohol and nicotine and then the little three the things that and these of course will be the things that press people most likely to think of when you say drug and we use it that way opium cannabis and coca and that also leads to the interesting question of well why is it that the Big Three are so widely accepted they are all legal and the little three are not. Well the question answers itself in a way. Partly it's simply that bigness confers a degree of immunity. Now there have been some cases in history of where some of the big three drugs have been briefly illegal. I mean the

classic case of course is alcohol prohibition in the United States in the early 20th century. But in general those three drugs alcohol and caffeinated foods and drinks and tobacco products have have been legal since the late 17th century and want a reason for that is that not withstanding the manifest harms of alcohol and tobacco. Making those substances illegal would put a whole lot of people out of work. If you look at the worldwide statistics of the number of people involved in tobacco production and distribution it runs into the tens of millions. Likewise in countries like France where viticulture is extremely an extremely important industry. Lots of people's livelihoods depend on these substances. So one of the reasons for the relative immunity of those particular substances is simply the scale of operations. I wonder I'm sure that some would make the argument that notwithstanding the fact we know

about the hazards of alcohol abuse now we know that nicotine is a carcinogen. Some people I guess might argue and I guess they have to say caffeine as you know as long as you use it in moderate amounts seems to be harmless. They would say well there is a difference in the the negative effects. Between the the two and that we did we would say that use of opium and cannabis and cocaine coca in its traditional use may be something different that those things are more Dilla teary than caffeine and that say moderate alcohol use. Yes but not not tobacco use tobacco. Cigarettes in particular are a deadly drug even when used as intended. And this is something that has struck me of the two big legal drugs that are demonstrably harmful namely tobacco and alcohol. It seems to me that tobacco has become the one that's most controversial and what's interesting is that

very much reverses the position from early in the century in 1910 to the 1920s alcohol was the controversial drug at least in the United States tobacco smoking was fairly widespread or the use of other forms of tobacco but now alcohol is relatively less controversial and tobacco is becoming much more so. The reason for that is simply the accumulation of the damning health evidence. Caffeine as you pointed out lacks the equivalent of cirrhosis or along cancer and for the forseeable future it will remain relatively uncontroversial even though caffeine dependence is a very real phenomenon and a very widespread one as well and certainly nicotine dependence is too and that if for no other reason that makes it very difficult if one decides that we would like people to stop using. Now let me throw something else in here another thing working in alcoholics favor is the growing epidemiological evidence that moderate alcohol consumption the

glass of wine with The Daily Meal can in fact confer Apparently certain kinds of health benefits and that that is not true up tobacco. There is no moderate level of tobacco use that is good for you. Our guest in this hour of focus 580 is David court Wright He's professor of history at the University of North Florida. He's the author of a number of books and we're talking about his most recent which is forces of habit drugs and the making of the Modern World published by the Harvard University Press and questions are welcome we have a couple of people get right to questions are welcome here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Also we have a toll free line good anywhere you can hear us 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Caller first up in Taylorville line number four. Hello. Yes. I'm afraid I have a tendency to arang on occasion while I'm going to do a little more right now. I'm not exactly proselytizing but a drug for example.

The effects of which are outrageously conducive to certain feelings of sense are they trying to make it all legal and throwing people in a bar relatively minute amounts of the stuff is not just not not just wrong headed and mean spirited. But not it's about as ridiculous as trying to get animals to stop. If you'll pardon the vernacular are getting at on Nala. I think at this civilization would be a lot more. Shall we say sensible focus on the ill effects of the major popular and illegal drugs and the pub more money into prevention and treatment. And as for the more dangerous illegal drugs like cocaine Nobody's denying that and heroin. I see no point in throwing addicts into the slammer

for whatever amount of whatever they're doing to their body. Again treatment is the answer. Well a professor expect you probably would in some part agree. And then again maybe not I don't know. What do you think. Well it's certainly it's certainly the case that cannabis is in play as a drug right now there's as I'm sure you and your listeners know there's a lot of controversy about the legal status of cannabis and whether or not it should be used as a medicine. Let me simply say that this is this is true of most drugs at most points in history that it's not simply a given that there are some good illegal drugs and some bad illegal drugs. But the fortunes of various drugs rise and fall. And right now cannabis has become a kind of culture war football in the United States. Personally I I tend to think that the drug war is overdone that it is indeed ridiculous to.

Provide severe sanctions for a drug like cannabis. But I should say that the book itself is not a polemic it's not a kind of oh this drug should be treated more severely or less severely than that drug. As a historian it's not my business to interject my own political views it's simply to try to offer an A CAN'T of qualify these various substances are treated differently. Well let me let me ask you this question and see what you think. It seems that you are the way we talk about drugs. Sometimes comes down to an argument and maybe not a very productive one but an argument between those people who think that we should approach it as a as a moral issue and those who people who would say well no it is not a moral issues as a public health issue and too different and so depending on which of those you take a different approach it is dictated if you think that use of this drug as is problematic has as as one thinks about

historically drug use. Has that always been the case that is wrestling between these those two different ideas that it's a it's a moral issue that it's maybe more of a public health issue. No that's a fine insight and in fact for a fairly substantial percentage of the population moral considerations overwhelm everything else. I mean it's simply wrong it's sinful to do this. The government ought to suppress sinful behavior. Therefore these drugs ought to be illegal. And I don't want to hear about cost benefit analysis or anything else in more general terms. There are five politically significant reasons why people oppose drugs and the moral issues are only one subset of those five. The first is the harm that drugs do directly to individuals and others. Drunk drivers people who take years off their lives etc.. The second and this reason has become increasingly important in the 20th century the second big consideration is social

costs. I'm sure you're familiar with arguments that people who abuse alcohol and tobacco run up all of our insurance premiums and tax bills because they use more Medicare and Medicaid services etc.. The third reason the one you referred to is that the religious are the moral conviction that drugs are wrong period. The fourth general reason why some drugs are illegal or strictly regulated is that they are associated with a disliked or deviant group. And going back to the previous caller's question I think that might be one very important reason why cannabis is on that list of Schedule 1 controlled substances as is historically it has been associated. With lower class blacks with Bohemians with the Latin American immigrant workers and so on. And fifth and finally if a drug is perceived rightly or wrongly to be undermining the security of the group whether that group is defined as a nation tribe whatever

then it's also likely to be subject to prohibition and or severe restriction. You know it's it's interesting in one part of the book you talk about in that the section where you raise this question of why is it that particularly these six things and maybe also one mind might add other related substances like sugar and chocolate Why is that. These things were embraced by Europeans as they went around the world and not other things. That it's it's noteworthy that substances that were used by the indigenous people of the Americas where the Europeans were very suspicious of them were apparently interested in them maybe for a variety of reasons but but maybe the big reason was their association with those cultures particularly with the religions of those cultures and that Europeans didn't want it didn't want to go near that. Yeah and in particular psychedelic drugs the drugs that caught on with Europeans tended to be drugs that had regular and predictable effects. Drugs

like Coyote for example were much less popular. In fact not at all popular as items in global commerce I think in not only because they were associated with the supposedly diabolical native rituals but also simply because of the unpredictability of their effects. We have some of the folks to talk with. Next up a caller in southern Illinois this is line number one. I don't know and another wide issue of things common to you know just about anywhere but in my view and I've experimented with a lot of and so I haven't so I've found my religion you know Christ anyway. My view is that you know if you want to use the same thing you said about tobacco you know employs a lot why the number of people well if you look at it this way with drugs being illegal then that money is going to a wide number of people who are experts. I mean just taking advantage of people and everything kill them slaughter on everything. But if you was to make it legal

Eventually I mean that money would go to the people in society. You know that might use it a little better and eventually these people would abuse it enough. It would shorten my lifespan I mean I hate to say but really we don't need him around anyway I mean if that's what they want to do. Aren't we free to do anything I mean all we want to do is just keep on putting a rule against the rule and really any change in man's heart. You can't change what He desires because I mean there's all kinds of sexual stuff with children but you just got to go ahead in this. I mean I agree there are things we need to do but I think that we are doing it from the wrong the wrong side of the ladder but you know it's easy for me to say because I'm not up there to don't want to but I think there are a lot more successful ways but I mean but it's better for me to just keep it talking as far as the law if I just keep the drugs illegal will now get all these big money rolls I get to confiscate these million dollar mansions and these and these luxury cars that come property of the state. I think is more involved in making money off of what they get to take away because if I

have a problem with you it builds a wall in me and you know if I'm trying to hide something from you I build a wall between the two of us and it causes conflict Well that's what's happened when these people are trying to hide the drugs that they're doing it builds a wall between them and other people in society and call this conflict. I mean all the thing up and was OK. You can I know as you said I think you do not know what your purpose really to take on the issue of whether drugs should or should not be legal or even how as a society we should approach that depending upon where you know which way we decide and we want to go. I suppose though some people again to pick up on what the caller had to say some people would make the argument that legalization and the taxes that you could impose would in fact end up making you more money if that's what you thought this was really. How about. Yeah that's actually the call leads into an interesting area. Remember that the second general consideration that I mentioned a moment ago is social costs. And one of the common arguments in favor of legalization is oh gosh we could save money on

police. We could tax the commerce in these psychoactive products and use the money to provide drug treatment. And it's all true. There are lots of ways you could save money. The big question David is whether the net social savings would be there. In other words suppose in a legalization scenario you have less expenditure on prisons police etc. you save millions of dollars. But suppose also that the number of users increases. Which is one very likely outcome. You might each use your might be costing society less than under prohibition but because there would be more users the total amount of harm and expense might increase. And it's really to be honest with you it's devilishly tricky when you look at the likely social savings and social costs under various policy scenarios to figure out what exactly would happen.

Let's go to another caller. This is Belgium line number four. Hello. Yes go on with your discussion about. Social Cost It seems to me that the social cost that we confirm upon other portions of the world is enormous. We've taken we decriminalize criminalized to drugs here or wherever country not want to pick but we criminalize drugs here. But since the desire is here we obviously go to another spot in the world to get most of these drugs not all of them but most of them. Therefore we institute a cost on that other culture that other economy that other other group of people who may not even consume and by keeping it illegal we are making it more costly for them to live in their world. There you know whether it's they have or have corrupt police or corrupt judicial system

or just combat the cost of drugs period because we supply it. It is not a money to these people who are who are actually not the people who probably don't make the money but the people who are doing the importation are and the corruption are really making the most of the money and those people may very well not be just crooks they may very wealthy very powerful people realize that these billions and billions of dollars would be just as good in their pockets. Any poor peasant or any poor drug addict. Well let me let me comment on that in a couple of ways First I'm not inclined to defend U.S. drug policy. They're not what I'm saying sir. What I'm saying is that the social cost is much larger than just the monetary cost. That's what I'm trying to say. Oh absolutely I think that's a fair point although the other comment I wanted to make or that or the other thought that was inspired by your comment is simply that. In a lot of these countries that are heavily involved in drug trafficking these

countries would have serious problems anyway. And the reason I say that is one of the things I discovered is that drug trafficking tends to flourish in countries which are divided by civil war and it which there is no strong central government. This is true. Well actually Colombia is a really good example because of the current political and guerrilla problems they have in that country but if you look at China if you look at Afghanistan if you look at any number of nations where the drug trafficking is a big part of the political economy what you see is that different factions in those countries are basically using the drug traffic to finance their acquisition of weapons and as a basis for their attempt to gain political control of the country that is not something that is purely and simply a concomitant of U.S. policy. A lot of those problems were there and antedated U.S. involvement in those countries.

That's right. You know exactly I don't think I'm saying the you know we're not the only people that use drugs. Right. A portion of the world and some of the trade in these drugs. You say traditionally goes places like the Golden Triangle and in Bangkok and Burma and Thailand that are there every one of these places is exactly like you say the drug money supports the various various the feria factions and it supports private armies. Exactly. Yeah. And so all these costs are so great why not decriminalize it and get that course not of it. So you would cut down on these private armies and these different things like this corruption of the police and the judiciary and on and on and on we can just continue talking about it forever it seems like. Well I'm sure you've correctly identified one of the benefits of legalizing all drugs everywhere in the world is that there would be less money available for private armies to finance their girl operations. That's undoubtedly true but you know when I say decriminalization I don't mean just like that but you're right you know from drug dealer on the corner do it but do it in a very intelligent way physicians

and from system evolved and I think to me a much more intelligent way. Yeah the buzz word that that usually does the buzzword that's commonly used to describe that policy is controlled legalization by which is meant taxed controlled sales no sales to children may be through a physician etc.. Yeah exactly. Thank you very much and I would thank you. Let's go to someone else here line to enter Vanna. Hello hello. Yes I've often wondered if they suck or legal drug companies the big drug companies don't have. The vested interest and pressure the government to keep illegal drugs. You are right. So that they can start legal drugs illegal drugs would take care of business. How do you feel about that. I think you made a fine line between legal drugs and illegal drugs. It just depends on who's selling it. Yeah I think it's probably the case that drug companies are

more interested in keeping their legal drugs the drugs that they already market. Keeping them relatively accessible to the public that's a bigger priority as you as you may or may not know drugs are not simply legal or illegal. The government assigns them to a scheduled schedule one is absolutely prohibited schedule 2 is very tightly controlled it's extremely difficult to get access and schedule three four and five basically provide more liberal access to these drugs. And there have been cases where the government confronted with evidence of abuse and addiction has considered. Increasing the degree of regulation of a pharmaceutical product and then usually the drug companies will line up their lawyers and they'll march into the hearings and they'll present their case for why this drug should not be moved from say Schedule 5 to schedule 3. They do that all the time. It's not as obvious to me that they that somebody who's

market marketing an SSRI a massive drug like Prozac Sara Tonin rehab take inhibitor. Why. Why legalizing heroin would endanger the market for something like Prozac I don't I'm not sure I agree with that. Let's just put it that way. OK. Did Prime Minister have the rules about what they can put on the market. That is that would Oh yes yes and then and they are keen on defending the status of drugs they market and they're very vigilant. So one of the things that can get drug companies into into trouble on this is a major theme in the book is something called diversion. Ethical drug companies market drugs as medicines. The truth is that often drugs leak out of the medical distribution system. A drug like

amphetamines for example and then people start using it for non-medical purposes and when that happens the government starts to get really interested in tightening up regulations and then the pharmaceutical companies become extremely nervous because they don't want the regulations so tightened up that they're going to lose a lot of business. That's where the real conflict comes I think. So you don't think. That if I suggested that the attack company behind keeping it that only the strikes are going on. I don't have any evidence for it let's just put it that way. OK thank you. Thank you for the call. Let's continue and the next person here would be Chicago line one. Thank you. Well one reason for not curtailing or admonishing people to for the reduced alcohol and smoking and even the soft drink is because of the high tax revenue the government paying for through the

sale of it which among the highest forms of taxation revenue that the government has what on earth would they tax if they didn't have these areas to maintain a level of revenue. And so there we have it for there. We just think we the caller dropped out a little there but I think we took his his point. Yes and I think it's an excellent point in fact there's a section of the book which is called tax addiction which refers to the tendency of governments to become dependent upon revenues from substances like tobacco and alcohol. It's a very fine point. However if you think about this in policy terms you realize that well you know if we really had the political will to place greater restrictions on alcohol and tobacco we could always increase the sales tax or we could always bump up the income tax two or three percent. And there are other

ways that we could make up the revenue gap. I mean it's not like we're condemned to forever have widespread commerce in these substances simply because we derive a certain percentage of the revenue. Well you know given that one wonders a given just how deeply embedded in our culture these particularly the big three are and the fact that they do. People do develop dependencies on them. I would suggest that it would be buried. It makes it difficult to imagine a time when there is one. Maybe but imagine a time when there would be fewer people smoking but one can hardly imagine a time when there would be no one drinking coffee or even the way they would you know when drinking alcohol. Yeah that's a fair point it's not just the economic heft of these particular industries it's the cultural habit. In fact I guess that's part of the point of the title of the book forces of habit. The most spectacular case I think is actually drinking in the

Soviet Union. There's a whole section of the book that deals with that as a kind of case study in the failure of not one but two attempts to drastically restrict the legal availability of alcohol one was during the Bolshevik Revolution. Very few people know that the Bolsheviks were practically as ardent prohibitionists as their American counterparts. And then of course the one example that most people can immediately call to mind is is that of the Gorbachev regime in the late 1980s. Both were spectacular failures and the primary reason is near as I can tell is simply that among the Russians or at least those of Slavic ethnicity drinking is simply a cultural given. It is it is a very very deep cultural habit. We have about 10 minutes left in this part of focus 580 Our guest is David court Wright He's professor of history at the University of North Florida and has written this book that explores drugs and the making of the modern world

its title forces of habit and it's published by the Harvard University Press. And we have some other callers will just keep on here and next in line is Mount Carmel lie number three. Hello. Oh. I was wondering if in your book if you touched on the impact of growing crops like coffee the impact it has on world hunger. Oh absolutely magic kraut that crops that could grow for food. Oh that's a great question. I do. And in fact I was really struck by the environmental effects of drug crops something like 40 percent of the arable land of Northern Latin America is given over to coffee cultivation. And not only does that mean that you're not growing wheat or corn or something else on that land. The kinds of coffee that are grown also have a major environmental impact for example of 40 or 50 years ago most of the coffee that was grown was shade coffee. And people would grow coffee bushes beneath avocado trees and other kinds of fruit trees. Which were perfect habitats

for all kinds of songbirds. But beginning I believe in the 1960s a new kind of coffee which could be grown directly in the sun was developed and that for reasons of economic efficiency that that displaced a lot of the old shade grown coffee. And so that as trees were cut down to open up these coffee fields to the sun a lot of avian habitat was destroyed. So the point is the closer you look the more you get into this the more you see that the mass cultivation of tea coffee tobacco and other crops used to manufacture drugs has had profound environmental consequences. OK well thank you very much. Well thank you for the call that's go next to Herb and a line too. Hello. Yeah. Common question common is that when you mentions how a lot of civil people engage in civil wars and look to drug trade we should include Reagan and Oliver North.

And merely the fact that they are at such a high return investment operations are for enterprise says nothing at all about whether or not it's you know they're right in trying to do what they're trying to do. You know you dummy Reagan was one arm our most popular president and he thought OK. Well I question that and do a little bit more to your topic which is to the way drugs start from one spot and move on to another more or less. And I'm hoping you know a little bit of you know something about a drug I keep asking people who are on this show that that you know talk about drugs but even even a statesman's from India don't know what I'm talking about it's really distressing I hope you do. Have you heard of a drug called

Giovanni. No I have not. Please enlighten me. Gad Well you know it brings up a whole issue but. Let me let me. Maybe the best way to do this is to read a paragraph from from where I first heard about it says scientists upping and puffing on a trek up a mountain in southern India and noticed their guides from the Kani tribe didn't look tired at all. They also noted that guides were plucking and eating berries from a plant growing on the slope. Basically what happens is they they they ask one of the guys and they find out about this plant and there's this. It makes you give them a sudden burst of energy and they don't feel hungry for several hours and they don't feel thirsty or tired either. And anyway they created this drug called Giovanni from in India and the Indian tribe that that is getting

a royalty from it. And apparently it's totally non addictive. And I've been curious to know of you to my mind it brings up all these notions of wealth in fact you had a drug that had a you know had a an effect like this substance. But you know it sounds like it's really similar to cot cot. Q You a T pronounce COT is a is a bush that grows in and around the Arabian Peninsula. Is that the point. I don't know a lot about this particular substance but but it does lead us in an interesting direction and that direction is this the process of the confluence of the world psychoactive resources is ongoing in the. Even though I've written a book that's a history of the last 500 years there's no reason to suppose that the process that you just described of discovering a new stimulant

plant and how that plant might in fact become an international commodity that that whole process is still wide open although I would I would like to add one point. If this happens with you Vonnie it will be the exception and not the rule because the main engine of psychoactive novelty in the modern world is not the discovery of plants like this in remote parts of the world. It is the creation of synthetic and semi-synthetic drugs by pharmaceutical companies. That's where most of the new global drug commodities are going to come from. Yeah but I can't I can't picture of pharmaceutical for example putting out on the label. You know this will energize you to keep you awake for hours. You know and have no harmful effects. I get how sure I can imagine that I'm a runner. And if you go to a running store you can buy a little packages of instant energy

mix and if you if you actually take the trouble to read the ingredients you'll see that 90 percent of the stuff that's in the package is basically caffeine from various plants that contain caffeine but that through the health food industry and I don't mean to disagree with you but I think that if this thing is marketed on a global basis the most likely way that it would be done would be through through something like that. Health and Health food and tonic industry. Yeah exactly but not the pharmaceutical industry. Well probably not in part because they have. Literally thousands of other and probably cheaper stimulant drugs available that can be manufactured synthetically. Well anyway I wanted to ask you if if it is brought to my mind what a lot of teenagers think about ecstasy now that ecstasy allows them to stay up all night and dance and they don't see any kind of negative impact to it.

And so I'm just curious if you happen to know of any ecstasy is strictly a synthetic drug. Not you know it doesn't come from a plant at all or anything it's not natural anyway if you know of any other instances where where there are supposedly positive psychoactive effects. But that in. It's still criminalized like ecstasy I guess. OK last last comment is simply that there is no drug that has no negative effects. Even a drug that is relatively benign is caffeine which is a stimulant like Giovanni. It changes brain chemistry and this is something I want your listeners to understand. There's no free ride when it comes to drugs. It's true that some drugs are much more harmful than others but changed brain chemistry and dependency is possible with virtually any psychoactive

substance. And I'm sure that further studies of Giovanni if it doesn't it contain a powerful stimulant. What indicators much we just have a couple of minutes left we have two other callers and probably can't get them both but trying at least one here will go to Crystal Lake Blaine for Hello. Yeah hi. We have to remember the CIA introduced the cocaine to the Bloods and Crips gang gangs in California going fantasy in California and then exchange rate for cocaine which is a sudden cruise. They offered guns and weapons and that and that but a high price for cocaine gangs. So that in that respect is one interesting aspect of the high price of cocaine. Also affected children with some of the sick and we frankly gangs and crisis are usually people with us so many attachments are there and they're like a cult and it does effect those poor kids that keep the richer kids. Perhaps

it's their resistance to change that if they did the CIA should be held responsible and in turn the CIA when it's cocaine so they could buy one. My thinking to say Nancy Cantor is in Nicaragua and similarities right usually do have problems with drug sales. But yet we have to remember most of the Civil War says really but it rebels. Focusing on a tragically Jeems like church for instance and basically when we invaded a country and control a lake that's where the Civil Rights Movement way and that's gotten and we just we just have a religion about a minute left and I appreciate good the comedy of the call I want to get back here to the guest and see if you want to make some response to what the caller had to say. Sure I do. The thing about San Jose.

I'm not an expert on the history of American journalism but my reading indicates that that story has been pretty much discredited that there was no direct CIA trafficking involved. However going back to the point that the caller from Urbana made it is true that the CIA has turned a blind eye to trafficking by certain groups especially during the Cold War when it suited the interests of the CIA. So there is definitely CIA complicity but I'm pretty skeptical when it comes to the notion of direct CIA trafficking with bloods and crips that seems a little bit farfetched to me. Well I think you know this is a very contentious subject but I also believe that the paper actually issued a retraction on the story right and backed away from it and the guy who wrote the story. That would end is a loss but a long time since I remembered reading anything about this. But it does I guess raise in my mind at this somewhat related issue that and it's something that you talk about in the book of the ways in which drugs have been used as as a means of control by by people who go into places and they like to

keep the population docile and drugs have been used in that way they have so they are indeed the opiate of the people. Absolutely the opiates plural. And it's not just opium and Chinese laborers although that's probably history's most famous example. But alcohol and tobacco have been used historically to siphon off the wages of low income workers and keep them in a state of dependency. There's just there's no question about that. Another connection is between drugs and prostitution prostitution is a very difficult line of work. It is emotionally devastating for many women and they have basically kept themselves going by using drugs. So there are many many ways. In which drugs have been used to control and exploit labor. The book as we've said before is really not not doesn't really address the issue of control of the use of drugs. Having said that though and as a result of your thinking about these issues and writing about it do you think that you

gain any particular insight into that very question if indeed there is some drug you decide that we decide or society decides he'd like people not to use. How it is you get them to stop. Well. Without going into the details of policy I am convinced that society has every right to regulate drug use. People selling poisons to other people is an industry that is something that should be regulated. I mean it's like. Environmental pollution. You know why we don't simply say IT industry Oh yeah pollute the environment as much as you like and you can think of unrestricted drug commerce as being a means of polluting the human environment. What the tobacco companies did with the expansion of the cigarette industry in the early to mid 20th century is a perfect example of this. So if in principle I'm not opposed to regulation of psychoactive commerce in fact I don't see how you could possibly go back to a laissez faire situation. But of course the devil is in the

details. And to say that it's our right to regulate is not the same thing as saying oh yes let's have a full bore drug war. And I think many of the callers were responding to their sense of injustice and excess in the drug war which sense I share. We'll have to leave it at that we want to say Professor quite right thank you very much for talking welcome. Our guest David court Wright professor of history at University of North Florida. The book is forces of habit drugs and the making of the Modern World published by the Harvard University Press.