Anthropological Views on Drugs & Pharmaceuticals: Ethnographies & Social Contexts, Assignments of Law

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ANTH1006 SUMMARY NOTES CONTENTS: 1 Topic Page(s) Drugs, Pharmaceuticals and Anthropology 2 Ethnographies of Drug Use 3 Hallucinogens 4-5 Drug Symbolism 6 Drug Law Reform 7 Cannabis 8 Cocaine 9 Neuropharmacology 10-12 Drug Abuse and Addiction 13-14 The War on Drugs 15 A Law Enforcement Perspective on Drugs 16 Drugs and Incarceration 17 Alcohol, Drugs, and Indigenous Australia 18 Political Economy of Opiates 19-20 The Political Economy of Tobacco 21 Tobacco and Shamanism 22 Erectile Dysfunction Drugs 23 Steroids 24 Emergency Contraception 25 The Placebo Effect 26 Drugs, Pharmaceuticals, and Anthropology Reading​:​ ​Robson (1999) ‘​The Consequences of Drug Use’ - Drug effects not just dependent on the pharmacology of the drug - Great majority of ppl who use drugs are ‘invisible’ → never come to the attention of doctors, the law or police - Heavy addiction (which we stereotypically associate with drug usage) is very rare Lecture​:​ Intro​- - Common misconceptions about drugs including that they’re instantly addictive, there can be ‘gateway’ drugs & that their effects are purely pharmacological - Definition of drugs is still uncertain & contested- Oxford = “A medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body” → do we include sugar in this? Zinberg’s theory of drug use​: - DRUG:​ the pharmacological action of the substance itself. - SET:​ The attitude of the person at time of use, including his or her personality structure, and what they *expect* the drug to do. (Individual attitudes are significantly influenced by social values and social expectations.) - SETTING: ​The influence of the physical and social setting in which use occurs. Are you doing it in a hospital under medical supervision, using it with friends or on the street? 2 dimensions: - social sanctions​ → E.g. we drink with friends in the evenings then we don’t think that they have a problem but we don’t drink vodka in the morning → we’d think they have a problem → usually harm-minimising - social ritual ​→ Binge drinking = not harm-minimising at all, drinking songs Divide between legality & illegality is socially and historically determined, not based on objective ranking of the dangers of drugs ​→ smoking still legal but the most dangerous drug w/ most health consequences - this class will look at the social context surrounding drug classification and use, and how this changes historically Criminological understandings of deviance → drugs ​(Erikson, 1962 ‘Notes on the Sociology of Deviance’) - All societies have moral boundaries that separate members from non-members. - Society thus needs deviants to mark its moral boundaries. Deviants, and our reactions to them, help to publicise those moral boundaries → e.g. very public war on drugs, media coverage of drug raids - Therefore, society develops ways of ensuring a steady supply of deviants, like prison. Punishment for deviance isn’t even intended to stop deviance. It ensures a steady supply of deviants. The post-propaganda approach to studying drugs: need all of these elements 1. how drugs work in our bodies (​neuropharmacology / medicine​) 2. how addiction works (​psychology​) 3. how experiences with drugs are mediated by: - cultural symbolism (​anthropology​) - the social organisation (subculture) of users (​anthropology and sociology​) - drug law and international markets (​political science and economics​) 4. the history of drug use (​history​) 5. drugs in popular culture and the media (​media / cultural studies​) 6. and how drugs are pleasurable for many (​philosophy and literature​) In short: ​an interdisciplinary approach 2 - 1950s CIA research found that LSD produced transitory psychoses and symptoms similar to schizophrenia; called a “psychotomimetic” drug, (means madness mimicking) - In late 1950’s-1960’s LSD was tested on unsuspecting army soldiers, testing it as a ‘madness gas’ to disorient enemy soldiers - 1950s: CIA secretly financed LSD experiments in 15 prisons and mental institutions - Inmates were unsuspecting guinea pigs, in some places inmates were given LSD for more than 75 days → bad ethical implications → not giving people a choice - 1953: ARTICHOKE program superseded by MK-ULTRA. Drug and mind-control program; went beyond interrogation experiments. Experiments to see if LSD could cause people to act strangely in public Moral entrepreneurs: Huxley - Famous writer Aldous Huxley first experimented with mescaline under supervision of psychiatrist Osmond. Described experience in The Doors of Perception - Huxley’s theory that the function of the brain was eliminative – i.e. it acts as a screening mechanism “to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by the mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge.” Hallucinogens bypass the screen - Huxley and Osmond argued that terms “hallucinogen” and “psychotomimetic” were inappropriate b/c implied negative states (hallucination, psychosis). Osmond coined the term “psychedelic” “mind-manifesting” Moral entrepreneurs: Leary & Ginsberg - 1954 -1959 Director of clinical research and psychology at California hospital - 1959 Appointed to Harvard, established psilocybin research project with Richard Alpert and Huxley. Conducted experiment with theology students at Harvard: ​9/10 reported having an intense religious experience when they took ‘shrooms. - Leary & Ginsberg wanted to take psychedelics to the masses, thought it would transform human kind - Leary and Alpert accused of conducting research outside the medical model; dismissed from Harvard in 1963. But notoriety helped popularise Leary (“Mr LSD”) and psychedelics. Leary coined phrase “Turn on, tune in, and drop out.” - Links back to idea about what scientific research should look → negative publicity - After they left harvard, created Millbrook commune of over 30 ppl who stayed up all night tripping - Atmosphere at Millbrook highlights importance Leary placed on proper “set” and “setting” in achieving euphoric, religious experience with the aid of psychedelics. Contrast with intimidating atmosphere of the CIA experiments → explains the labelling of LSD as a psychotomimetic drug. Psychedelics and counter-culture aesthetics - Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco as the centre of “psychedelic lifestyle” in the mid-1960s: drugs, communal living, sexual freedom. LSD sold on mass scale. - 1969: Woodstock music festival as apogee of the psychedelic revolution and counterculture. The decline of psychedelics - New drugs (PCP, STP) hit the market. - LSD on the black market: tainted supplies, controlled by mafia - Manson murderers attributed to LSD + extremist protest groups Weathermen and White Panthers carried out more than 4,000 bombings in 1969 and 1970. - These events discredited and undermined the psychedelic subculture. The symbols of the psychedelic lifestyle now mainstream, nostalgia, exploited by commercial interests. Key points - The relevance of​ Zinberg’s theory of set and setting ​determining experiences of drugs - Himmelstein’s theory of moral entrepreneurs​ in shaping the way a drug is seen in society - The scientific approach we use to studying drugs determines what we look for and, to some extent, what we find.​ Research that looks only for public health harm or biomedical benefits associated with drugs will never capture religious, spiritual, transcendental striving that many people are looking for when they use drugs, and it was this scientific bias that researchers like Huxley, Leary and Alpert were trying to rebel against. 5 Drug Symbolism Reading(s) ​Manderson (2005) ‘Possessed: Drug policy, witchcraft and belief.’ - Draws comparisons between witchcraft & drug laws → both reflect the need for a scapegoat, revolve around the idea of possession - Much like how witch-hunters hoped for witches to validate their fears, the war on drugs needs deviants & drugs to justify our fears ​“the prohibition of drugs is not an attempt to destroy but rather to dramatize and cauterize our anxieties” Manderson (1995) 'Metamorphoses: Clashing Symbols in the Social Construction of Drugs.’ - Our irrational fears & anxieties lie at the heart of drug policies → reasons for drug laws aren’t rational - The needle as a boundary violation & drugs more widely as a violation of mental boundaries - “Contemporary drug legislation fuels the very obsession it wishes to destroy” Lecture Drugs and pollution: influence of Mary Douglas - Anthropologist mary douglas → hypodermic syringe as a ‘boundary violation’ & pollution - Our idea of ‘dirty’ & pollution is subjective → needle is the best example of this, “metal out of place” Drugs & Possession - In contemporary criminal law = punishment is for intentional & wrongful acts → drug law deviates from this - Unlike the rest of the law you don’t have to have an intention to use/sell the drugs → your knowledge of its existence is enough → we assume that drugs ‘possess’ individuals and have an agency of their own - You have to prove that they’re not your drugs → proximity establishes a presumptive crime Drug law as symbolic theatre - Drugs become a scapegoat for all of the social problems - The theology of drugs dramatises what it looks like to lose your identity and agency - Drug law isn’t about safety or harm minimisation → some of our most dangerous drugs are legal e.g. alcohol & cigarettes → the current regime of prohibition is only making the drug problem worse - Laws are about symbolic meaning → they show us what not to be, they dramatise our anxieties - Drug laws aren’t about stopping drug use, they’re about establishing a moral code within society Double-sidedness of drug symbolism - Needle and other drug paraphernalia hold disgust to non-users, but to users, these connontate physical pleasure & social rituals - Needles associated with both sex & death e.g. sexual metaphors used to describe intravenous drug use - Phallic needle, act of penetration, orgasmic experience of the rush Drug fetishism: the law and the addict - Manderson: both the law and the addict share a common obsession - Drugs as fetishes / displaced language for talking about social problems - Prohibitionist legislation: drugs as scapegoats. Drugs as symbols of social fears are treated as ​cause​ of those fears. Society blames the drugs, not the social problems they represent → e.g. for the most part drugs don’t solely cause domestic violence, poverty, unemployment, but people use drugs because of these social problems → drugs given too much agency to refocus attention from social issues 6