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Mexico: Destination drug addiction?
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Mexico has recently removed criminal consequences for personal use of many drugs, including cocaine (Google Images)
Since when has personal accountability involved incarceration? It must have happened around the same time when the idea to prohibit people from certain recreational activities. In a recent article by the New York Times entitled, In Mexico, Ambivalence on a Drug Law I found myself repeatedly asking myself how we, as a world society, have gotten to a place where we expect the judicial system to keep us in line.
A female cocaine and heroin addict was interviewed and quoted frequently throughout the article. It was apparent the author was trying to convey a sense that even the most hardened druggies are dumbfounded by the fact that Mexico’s government essentially legalized all drugs for person consumption. However, to say legal is a little misleading.
Under the new law in Mexico, small amounts of cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and acid will now lead to a referral to a free drug treatment program, not jail. If a person is caught three times with the specified personal amounts, they would then be forced to attend drug treatment.
Interestingly, in the article a former addict says he thinks jail is a great place to clean up, and get to that all-important bottom of the barrel place that forces people into sobriety. Maybe it says more about the efficacy of drug “treatment” and the theories associated with said treatment when an addict says jail works better to get a person to the place they need to be to escape the grasp of addiction. Oddly, if this man really understood the motivators involved in getting someone off drugs, he probably would have been able to kick his habit without any help or instigation from an outside source, like jail.
When examining addiction it is important to keep in mind personal accountability and preference. As someone who was diagnosed with pseudo-addiction while taking threads of opiates, I may have a skewed perspective on some on this. At the same time, the impact of my pseudo-addiction was certainly the same as what anyone with a full-blown addiction would experience.
During the worst part of my pseudo-addiction I became homeless. I lost my home in foreclosure, lost my well-paying job, and lost a lot of relationships with people I thought were my friends. Some of the relationships I have with my family are forever changed from all of this. The drugs that influenced my body and mind so destructively were given to me by my doctors, and they are all legal.
Dilaudid, morphine sulfate instant release, Avinza, and morphine sulfate continuous release turned me into a slobbering mess for three years. Low and behold I eventually came to the realization that the feeling I achieved when “using” these drugs was not worth the repeated illness they caused me to experience. It seemed like I just needed more and more of these “legal” drugs to impact my pain, and after a while I began to wonder if I wasn’t creating the pain in my mind as a way to justify my continued use of all these drugs.
Once I was off opiates long enough to realize my pain wasn’t all in my head, I realized the opiates weren’t killing my pain, they were killing me. Most importantly, I was certainly not at my lowest point when I chose to stop taking these drugs. In fact, I stopped using opiates at the same time I graduated from college. I was hardly at a low point, or rock bottom.
With my physical affliction, most doctors can justify my consumption of large amounts of opiates. These drugs are still readily available to me, and even when I tell doctors I don’t want any opiates they still try to push them on me. Yet without any sort of rehab I’ve been able to do this. Had I been sent to jail during any of this, my life would have been destroyed. I wouldn’t have been able to finish school, because I would have lost my federal aid. Yet still in the United States this is what we would do to someone incarcerated for their addiction.
Point being, the availability of any given substance does not necessarily keep someone in a state of addiction. It seems easy to forget humans are animals, and we seek to avoid pain for reasons that lead to our survival. In most people, this is a very strong urge (and understandably so). Is the urge to find escape from pain (mental or physical) something someone deserves to be incarcerated for, under any circumstance?
I applaud Mexico for starting down the right path. However, I have to question the message it sends when we can't fully commit to something. If drugs are legal for personal consumption they need to be legally obtainable. This is where the serious crimes comes into play anyway. Taking the crime out of drugs will turn criminals into business men and women. It's a lot easier to control a legitimate business than an outlaw gang.
Addiction of any kind is not a judicial issue, it is a medical issue. Above all, how can anyone ever be expected to be accountable for their actions when they aren’t given a fair chance to be accountable?
Click here for more articles by Angela
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