High Price

recognize that it can be difficult trying to determine who is a credible drug expert. In your attempt to evaluate the drug information presented, it might be helpful to ask a few simple questions: (1) How much drug was given to the animals and is it similar to amounts used by people? (2) Was the drug injected or swallowed and do people use the drug in this way? (3) Were the animals first given smaller amounts of the drug to allow the development of tolerance, which prevents many toxic effects, or were naive animals just given larger amounts initially? (4) Were the animals housed in isolation or in groups? All of these factors potentially influence drug effects on the brain and behavior. You should be skeptical when “experts” attempt to extrapolate data collected in laboratory animals to humans without appropriate consideration of these critical factors.
    Law enforcement is another profession that is frequently called upon to educate the public about drugs. Few efforts have had a more harmful effect on public education and health. In general, police officers are trained to apprehend criminals and prevent and detect crime, in the service of maintaining public order. They don’t receive training in pharmacology, nor do they receive any in psychology or any other behavioral science. As I have consistently pointed out within these pages, the effects of drugs on human behavior and physiology are determined by a complex interaction between the individual drug user and her or his environment. Without the appropriate training it’s extremely difficult to draw conclusions about how a particular drug might have influenced someone’s behavior.
    It’s true that cops make numerous drug arrests, but it would be a mistake to assume that they become knowledgeable about the effects of drugs as a result. Being pursued or arrested by the police is an aberrant situation. This, in itself, even without any drugs, can cause heightened suspicion, anxiety, fear, and the fight-or-flight response in the suspect. Consider also that some people who are arrested for drugs have preexisting psychiatric disorders, while others may be intoxicated from using multiple drugs, including alcohol. When all of these complexities are added to an already abnormal setting, it is often difficult to tease apart the effects of a particular drug from those of nondrug influences. Yet, in some public education campaigns carried out by police officers, the disturbing behaviors are uncritically attributed to certain illegal drug effects. This is an important vehicle through which drug-related myths are perpetuated. The point is that law enforcement officials are not qualified to serve as drug education experts simply because they make arrests that may involve drugs.
    Both the scientists who study toxicity in animals and the police who arrest users and sellers often have a limited view of the complexity of the ideas I have presented to you. No one whose professional experience focuses only on one aspect of illicit drug use can be considered a real expert in the sense of being able to imagine all the intended and unintended consequences of continuing our current policy of treating illicit drug use primarily as a criminal issue.
    The media, too, is another major source of drug misinformation. Throughout this book I have provided multiple examples of how the media has generally fanned the flames of drug hysteria. It seems as though there’s a “new deadly drug” nearly every year. And invariably some police officer or politician is interviewed, warning parents about the dangers this drug poses to their children. (Of course, neither cop nor elected official should be the professional educating the public about the potential effects of drugs.) Usually, after the hysteria has subsided, we discover that the drug in question wasn’t as dangerous as we were initially told. In fact, it wasn’t even new. But by then the new laws have been passed and they require stiff penalties for possession and distribution of the so-called new, dangerous drug. I am not optimistic that the media will change its reporting on drugs anytime soon. Drug stories are just too sexy, and sex sells everything from newspapers to documentary films.
    Nonetheless, you should know that scientists have studied nearly all of the popular recreational drugs in people. We have learned a great deal about the conditions under which either positive or negative effects are more likely to occur.