Professor Examines Failure of Drug Policy

Anyone who has ever taken a sociology class is all too familiar with the idea of social constructs. Conversely, anyone enrolled in a science class has likely encountered their fair share of “objective truths” -- facts so ingrained in the public consciousness that they do not even warrant questioning. These competing frameworks of knowledge collide in discourses on drug policy, forcing us to reexamine the ways in which we define “drugs” and “addiction.”

Associate Professor of Sociology Rebecca Tiger, the final speaker at the 2016 International Politics and Economics Symposium on The Global Illicit Drug Trade, explored these ideas in her speech “(Re) Imagining Drugs and Addiction: The Past, Present and Possible Future of Drug Policy” on Friday, Oct. 28.

Tiger, whose research centers on punishment, social control and critical addiction studies, began by asking, “What ideas animate drug policy?”

She challenged the audience to rethink hegemonic concepts of drugs and addiction -- that is, to unpack the human-made concepts that we have come to accept as scientific truths.

“There’s no such thing as drug in nature,” Tiger stated. “Drug is created.”

Likewise, the scientific “discovery” of addiction can be more accurately described as the invention of the idea of addiction. After all, it is no coincidence that the emergence of addiction theories coincided with growing public concerns over people’s problematic relationship with alcohol in the mid 1700s to late 1800s. The constructed definition of a “chronic relapsing brain disease” was repeated over and over again until it was simply accepted as fact. Physicians and psychiatrists adopted the addict as their newest subject, determining the standards for a “healthy” and “unhealthy” mind.

Challenging the “scientific” claims that undergird modern theories of addiction, Tiger pushed the audience to consider how “harm” is constructed. She highlighted the historical shift of the “dangers” of marijuana -- a drug once portrayed as lethal and now widely accepted as harmless -- to exemplify the social and temporal subjectivity of harm.

“An idea that we think of as natural is actually negotiated,” Tiger pointed out.

Through the pathologization of human behavior, she reasoned, the concept of the “addict” became a justification for state control. Policymakers decided that a regulatory regime was needed to reform these “fundamentally flawed” members of society. This demonization of drugs was codified into law by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration.

Yet, as Tiger emphasized, these regulatory measures did not stem entirely from a genuine concern over individuals’ well-being. Rather, the criminalization of drug use served to disproportionately target communities of color, as public narratives linked drugs to the socially ostracized “other.” African-Americans became the face of the national crack epidemic, in much the same way that Chinese laborers in the U.S. were associated with opium in the late 19th century. The “junkie” -- a word that conjures up the same, stereotyped image in most of our minds -- spread through skewed media coverage, creating the foundation for the disastrous, deeply racialized War on Drugs.

Bringing nuance to an issue that is often conceptualized in black-and-white terms, Tiger offered a critical analysis of the bifurcated model of addiction, a framework that dominates current public discourse on drug use. She pointed out the perceived distinction between “good” and “bad” junkies: those who become dependent through no fault of their own (such as Adderall users) versus those seen as “irredeemably deviant” and “dysfunctional to the core.”

This unfair and entirely constructed binary is perhaps best exemplified by Tiger’s humorous observation that “good” junkies “get to write New York Times articles, articulate their subjectivity.” Meanwhile, “bad” junkies fall victim to the criminal justice system.

“Jail has become a treatment tool to remind addict of commitment to sobriety,” Tiger said. “Coercion is framed as enticement.”

Having broken down the ways in which the media, policymakers and the medical field create and capitulate ideas of drugs, addiction and appropriate treatment, Tiger switched to a more hopeful tone. In search of “promising avenues of disruption” to the status quo, she proposed a more expansive definition of the title “expert” to include individuals with lived experience on the topic. The Urban Survivor’s Union -- a coalition of drug users who advocate for respect, dignity and social justice for themselves and their peers  -- is one such group. Noting the absence of this unique expertise on Friday’s panel, Tiger recognized the limitations of the symposium itself.

Furthermore, she suggested a reconceptualization of drug usage as a new kind of consciousness rather than as a mental degradation. This call for radical open-mindedness resonated with some audience members and perhaps disquieted others. But the purpose of Tiger’s talk was likely not to indoctrinate everyone into a new worldview; it was to spark discourse on a topic riddled with misconceptions and stigma. This dilemma is best encapsulated by a poignant analysis that Tiger offered in the heart of her speech.

“Drug is the effect, not the cause, of a regulatory regime,” she stated. “The problem of drugs is actually the failure of drug policy.”