A Job Nobody Wants: In Defense of (Gasp!) Drug Dealers

Twice in my life, in separate decades, I lived off the proceeds of dispensing the elements of temporary physical euphoria. Consenting adults came to me and I gave them a drug for which they handed me money. When I was a bartender, the drug was in legal, liquid form. I paid taxes on what I earned and could tell my mother what I did for a living. Even though most of my regulars were alcoholics, I earned none of society's contempt for getting them drunk, many on a daily basis.

When my own addictive choice changed from alcohol to crystal meth, I went from bartending to drug dealing. It started with getting a little extra for my using buddies, to responding to the requests of their friends. At first my only payoff was in my own drugs being free, then I was suddenly turning a profit. It was its own addictive rush.

I was fairly atypical as far as most drug dealers go. I answered the phone on the first ring, I was friendly and my apartment was clean. Word-of-mouth was all the marketing I needed. I never in a million years would have wanted or needed to "recruit" any new customers, and the ones I had were mostly weekend warriors. I was about as far as you could imagine from the stereotype of the unshaven sleazebag who lounges near grammar school playgrounds, trying to "turn" kids into addicts, yet what I did qualified me for membership in one of the most vilified minorities in America.

Let me be clear. This is not an apologia. Meth is a nasty and addictive drug. I do not advocate its use, have not touched it in 5 years, and the most important thing I do is help others stay clean off of it. But just as meth is a symptom of the disease of drug addiction, so are its purveyors. Every dealer I knew was an addict. And if any of you have ever obtained some mushrooms for Burning Man, done a few bumps of coke at a party, or procured Oxycontin from your maid, you have had a direct or indirect relationship of some kind with a drug dealer. There are even many of you who at some point of your life considered one a friend -- probably in direct proportion to his generosity.

As for the harm done by drugs, some interesting statistics. There are an estimated 443,000 deaths a year in this country due to lung cancer, and at least 100,000 alcohol-related deaths. But according to the CDC, there were just under 38,400 drug-related deaths in 2006, less than a tenth than can be attributed to the thoroughly legal drug of cigarettes. And yet the man at the gas station who hands over the 2 packs of Marlboro Lights is never called the scum of the earth, and the manager at Trader Joe's can recommend Grey Goose or a nice bottle of Chardonnay without being compared to a child molester. The makers of Oxycontin, Valium, and Vicodin -- the biggest drug dealers in the word -- spend no time in prison cells.

I promised an entry on preventing recidivism, but when I went through my list of suggestions, they were subsumed by much larger issues of income inequality, improving education, fixing the juvenile justice system and abolishing parole. In the midst of a political battle in which a liberal President with a Congressional majority has immense difficulty getting the extremely popular idea of health care reform passed, writing up proposals for prison reform seemed a quixotic and hopeless task, done far more competently in any case by Senator Jim Webb, or the heroes over at CURE.

What I'm proposing -- or asking, really -- is perhaps even more elusive than the abolition of poverty, but it has the merit of originality. It's a change in perception. I'm not suggesting we idealize drug dealers as some kind of victims, nor is any glamorization a la "Weeds" required. But we need to examine the wholesale dehumanization of drug dealers or those accused of it. (Are you a dealer because you get the 4 hits of X for yourself and 3 friends to go dancing? If you get caught, the law says you are.)

In Afghanistan and Iraq, a civilian in the wrong place at the wrong time can go from "bystander" to "insurgent" with the pointing of a bayonet. Once so labeled, the presumption is always of guilt, and the altered perception of human beings as "terrorists," i.e, not quite human, is directly linked to a willingness to torture them.

By the same token, once someone is labeled a "drug dealer," -- whether or not they are--they join the "homeless" and "terrorists" in the sense of being "other." The orange jumpsuit distances us further -- when we see the prisoner taken in handcuffs from the courtroom, we don't want to think his experience behind those closed doors is like ours would be. We tell ourselves they must be guilty, they're used to it, whatever we need to not empathize, to not imagine how grim and frightening and grey it is back there. We pass the exits to "State Correctional Facility" on the highway and if we think of it at all, it's mostly to shudder in thanks that we're not there.

I remember how many of my fellow inmates never even received one piece of mail. The sense that you've been forgotten is a soul-killing despair. This willingness to throw away and forget men behind walls is the end of a long process of dehumanization that starts with a series of labels. The adjectives may be perfectly accurate, but they also diminish our capacity to remember there's a human being involved, not just a "gang member," a "defendant," a "drug dealer."

So change your thinking. Take a moment to question the meanings you attach to certain words, how you allow them to create a sense that what makes us different in the eyes of the law is somehow more important than what makes us similar as human beings. And when you pass one of those busses going down to county jail full of handcuffed men, wave. The man who sees you may need to be reminded that he is still seen.

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Comments

[skatoolaki]

Thank you so much for this. I intend to send it in my next letter to my dearest and closest friend, who is living the rest of his life in a state penitentiary. The times I have had to stand up for him are countless, to make others see him as a person and not just "another inmate". This saddens me beyond words. I have been going there, on visits and special events, for close to ten years and never have I met such compassionate, caring, and intelligent individuals. Perhaps, when young, they did make some mistakes but they are paying for them and have bettered themselves while incarcerated. Not all do, but many more do than we are told of in the media.

I wish I had more words because this piece spoke to me on so many beautiful levels, but I am almost too emotional to get out just what I want to say. To that, then, I will simply say, again, a heartfelt *thank you* for putting a human face on these lost, forgotten men and women. Namaste.

[Eclectic Radical]

One commenter, Terry McIntyre, makes an excellent reference to past and present.

On the British quiz show 'Q.I.', host Stephen Fry referred to the 1910s as the 'Giddy Age.' He spoke of the popularity of absinthe, the availability of cocaine in soft drinks and druggists' stores, the easy purchase of heroin toothache drops and morphine headache pills, and the ready abundance of codeine cough syrup. This was also the height of the popularity of the opium pipe in England and France, at this activity was also legal.

So, clearly, our attitude toward drugs has changed remarkably. What is interesting to note is that, in the 1910s, people were not staging wars and executions over soft drinks and toothache medicine. There was addiction in that era, but there was also responsible, common sense use in that era as well.

Our current attitude toward drugs is based on a Nixon era policy to justify the increased spending on law enforcement needed to keep urban populations under control. The Drug War is an excuse to ignore civil liberties when keeping the little guy in his place. It's not a legitimate law enforcement problem.

[Mark Olmsted - Huffpost Blogger]

Particularly ironic as one thinks of drunk Nixon weaving around the halls of the White House talking to the portraits of dead Presidents.
The current Prohibition is part of a long history in this country of a culture of enforcement and punishment. After all, we kept a huge portion of the population in chains for 200 years, now we send 1/4 of their male population to prison. There are more guns than people in this country. This idea of control through the threat of violence (disguised perservely by the right as "freedom") runs very deep in the American psyche.

[Eclectic Radical]

I think I've mentioned it before somewhere else on HuffPo, but I'll mention it again. The 'culture of enforcement and punishment' is something you are on the money about. And you are very correct in drawing a corollary between slavery and prison. Check out 'Our Enemies in Blue' by Kristian Williams if you ever get the chance. I'm not quite the advocate of revolution in the streets that Mr. Williams is, but he makes a lot of very good points about the purpose of police power and the history of policing in America.

The modern police force can be traced to city guards maintained in Southern cities to control the urban slave population. As social factors changed, the mission of these organizations expanded from control of the servile population to control of the social and economic dependent class.

You know, 85% of the population or so. Us.

[markrogers90803]

As an addict in recovery I feel compelled to say no dealer ever forced me to use crystal meth but our doctor/patient relationship on the daily rat-wheel of my addiction created a desperate cycle for which we were both responsible.

The dynamics of how justice is finally meted out for the dealer and what happens after his debt to society has been paid say little about the magic of redemption that may or may not occur thereafter. But to have an opportunity for transformation and to receive that opportunity without judgment is an act we should all be willing to support.

As it happens, a dealer saved my life. Thanks for the superb writing--

[Sheria Reid]

I once made the observation to members of my criminal law class that "criminal" wasn't a species. Your well articulated discussion made me think of what I was trying to explain to my classmates. I didn't articulate it with your precision; I wish that I had been able to point them to your post back then. There is such power in designating people as "other." It allows us to ignore them, to relegate them to some sub-human level that justifies treating them badly. If you are not already familiar with his work, I think that you would find philosopher Martin Buber's exploration of the interaction of humans with fellow humans and the world at large quite interest. Written originally in German, it has been translated into a work called "I and Thou."

[urnumbersix]

Mark - I hear you. Great article. Even though I am a so-called "upstanding member of society," I know and have known many so-called "shady characters." Yes, some of them were stone-cold sociopaths, but most were excellent human beings who happen to be doing things that are against the law. I remember my good friend who ran pot from Mexico to the Midwest. Like you, he sold to friends, not "recruiting" users. He also ran several successful legit small businesses.

His was no "Weeds" tale. No drama. He had a great appreciation for music and the arts. His own code of ethics and morals were solid. I would trust him with anything. BUT, the most painful thing I saw was when he was busted by the Feds (one of his friends flipped him) in a sting -- and the Feds made Him flip his best friends in order to lower his federal sentence. He was on his 3rd strike. He had to. I have never witnessed so much emotion from a male. The fact of his friends were going down because of him literally broke his heart. We wrote a little while he was in Club Fed, but he was a broken man and our communication fell off. I wish I knew where he was now because I would still like him as my everyday friend. I will always remember him. Fondly.

[Terry Mcintyre]

When we move a substance or activity "beyond the pale", do we not lose the ability to govern its use by normal social interactions? In many European families, it is common to have wine at the dinner table; small children drink small portions. They learn that people who drink too much look foolish, so they don't do that.

At one time, many people made poppy tea for headaches. In the words of an elderly lady, if you drank too much, you got goofy, so you didn't do that. Coca leaves are still chewed in some countries - in fact, Coca Cola was named after cocaine and kola, two primary ingredients in the original recipe.

Now that these drugs are illegal, how do you learn the norms of acceptable or reasonable use?

[Mark Olmsted - Huffpost Blogger]

That's very true. I know many crystal users who were not "reined in" by social pressure. They knew they were in taboo territory and would tend to shift entirely into a psychology of living outside of the norms, justifying very little attempt at harm reduction.
Unfortunately, there is no rational discussion to be held about legalizing any drug but pot. I don't know anyone who wants to do meth who was dissuaded by its illegality, but many who don't get sober because there isn't tax revenue for treatment beds and recovery programs.
There is simply no rational justifcation for alcohol and cigarettes to be legal, but not other drugs, The unnecessary creation of a criminal class causes untold harm, not to mention a terrible financial burden to society. And then there are other vicitims who never get discussed: the wholy innocent families of prisoners. They have broken no laws but get punished as if they have, particularly the children of inmates who are several times more likely to become inmates themselves.

[iblogleft]

Critical thinking... Imagine that.

[abbeysbooks]

First of all we have mediocre intelligences in Congress to begin with. I doubt if most of them could make it any other way and it's better than being a postal clerk. They are not really well educated in the liberal arts and cannot connect dots very well as they have not been scientifically trained. We are a nation of idiots which is the way Europeans label us.

Nicotine is the fastest, most addicting drug on the planet. Perhaps crack cocaine is now. Nicotine has been around for a long long time. Snuff is nicotine. It not only causes the user's death but his family suffers many illnesses and often death from second hand smoke (I had asthma from it and used to almost die). It affects me in public places and makes me sick for days. Heroin, grass, and cocaine do not hurt me this way.

[abbeysbooks]

This is a fine article. Thank you. As to your interest in language I recommend Benjamin Lee Whorf's Language Thought and Reality edited by John Carroll 1964. Whorf was an insurance adjuster who perceived that a good many fires were caused by language. In a warehouse fire he observed that the workers were very not careful l with their cigarettes and matches around large containers marked "empty" but were very careful around the same containers that were marked "full" when their explosive potential was just the opposite. He was given a lot of time off to pursue his studies in "linguistic anthropology" which finally teemed him up with Sapir at Columbia and the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis: we perceive what our language sees for us. The famous example is the eskimo language with its many words for snow and the Inuit fine perception of many gradations of snow. You will love the essay on the Hopi language with its verbs: intention and durative forms. As in Jaycee Dugard's case, a detective that says he had no hope of finding her alive, is not the detective that is going to solve the mystery of her whereabouts.

[Mark Olmsted - Huffpost Blogger]

Thank you for that!

[ReElectNoOne]

Many like having a scape goat in order to deflect attention away from themselves. Putting labels on people makes this easier to do by "legitimizing" the labels.

No one doubts the outcry that would ensue if Congress tried to ban tobacco, which they could do under the same "commerce clause" that permits them to outlaw pot. But if done, you would then see tobacco users treated the same as today's drug users. Prisons would swell till there were no free people left to pay for them!

Congress does not make rational decisions from the perspective of right vs wrong or what is best for the public. They make decisions by weighing such factors as the impact on their campaign funds or perceived threat to re election. Decisions based on moral or public benefit grounds are the exception, not the rule. Were it otherwise we would not be banning most drugs that are less dangerous than tobacco. We could tax them, provide rehab with some of the money and leave people alone to deal with addiction as adults...just as people already need to deal with tobacco and alcohol addiction.

It is not about the substance, it is about the label attached to it's users and how we then use those labels to point fingers at those who are "bad" because of the label.