Social Items

TPQ
Showing posts with label Drugs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Drugs. Show all posts
Gearóid Ó Loingsigh ☭ writing in Socialist Democracy examines Colombian drugs policy.

Latin American and Caribbean Conference on Drugs.

The coca zones of Colombia are in crisis. The cash crop par excellence, i.e. coca is going through an unprecedented crisis, or so we are told. The main promotors of the idea that the coca is in crisis because fentanyl has displaced it and sooner or later it will finish off the coca were from the government. Amongst those promoting this stupidity are Colombian state functionaries from the NGOs, social organisations and of course high-ranking members of the Historic Pact. The very president of the country, Gustavo Petro stated in August that:

The cocaine market in the USA has collapsed and has been replaced by an even worse one: fentanyl that kills 100,000 per year. Cocaine used to kill 4,000 due to the poisonous mixtures from the market clandestine.(1)

It is simply the case that nothing that Petro said at the time was true. Whereas Clinton exaggerated the deaths due to cocaine consumption in order to justify Plan Colombia, Petro sought to minimise them. First of all, we should be clear that fentanyl did not displace cocaine, but rather another opioid, heroin. And the most notorious aspect of fentanyl is not the increase in consumption, but rather that due to its toxicity, a dramatic increase in overdoses. Petro’s government makes statements on the drugs issue without even understanding basic concepts.

The overdue publication of its drug policy allows us to analyse properly what it aims to do, as up till now we have had to put up with a year of contradictory speeches, tweets that don’t say much and complete incoherence in the matter, without even mentioning his stated aim of handing over the Colombian Amazon region to the US military, something that not even Pastrana openly proposed when he announced Bill Clinton’s Plan Colombia.

In a US study published in May of this year, the researchers found that the deaths from fentanyl tripled between 2016 and 2021, increasing from 5.7 per 100,000 inhabitants to 21.6 in 2021. The deaths from cocaine overdoses increased in the same period from 3.5 to 7.9. At the same time there was a 40% decrease in heroin related overdoses, falling from 4.9 in 2016 to 2.9 in 2021.(2) The study just confirmed the analysis of previous research published in December 2022 that looked at increases in mortality since 2001.(3)

Fentanyl is a new problem for the USA, but neither the increase in its consumption nor deaths tell us anything about the future of coca as Petro and Roy Barreras claimed. Quite the opposite. According to the UN, coca crops reached the figure of 230,000 hectares in 2022.(4) Of course, Petro is not to blame for that, he only took over the presidency in August 2022, but it belies his statements that coca is a thing of the past due to the economic crisis in the coca regions of the country.

So, what can be said of Petro’s new drug policy? Well, the first thing is that there is at last a policy outlined in a public document. They took their time in doing it but better later than never. The document proposes with a certain amount of hyperbole Oxygen for the communities affected, through support from licit economies, environmental measures and treating the matter of consumption as a public health issue. It also proposes Asphyxiation for drug trafficking organisations. Furthermore, it proposes being the voice and leadership of “an international diplomatic strategy to change the paradigm in how the drugs phenomenon is dealt with.”(5)

The document kicks off with a correct analysis that contradicts the public declarations made by Petro and other high ranking government functionaries, a few weeks prior to its publication. It is inexplicable how the president can boast about the collapse of coca at a point when it is almost certain his drugs policy was at the printers. It must be due to mediocre functionaries, as this government has continued with the policy of Duque and the previous governments of hiring mediocre friends. But in any case, the document gets somethings right, at last.

For decades, Colombia has made an enormous investment in human and economic terms in fighting drug trafficking. Although there are no official figures on the outlay in fighting drugs, but the Drugs Observatory of Colombia calculates an annual average expenditure of 3.8 trillion pesos [885.2 million euros] ascending to an approximate investment in the last twenty years of 76 trillion pesos [17.7 billion euros]. Whilst some results have been achieved along the way, it is true that the two main goals have not been reached: reduction in the supply and demand for illicit drugs.

Even though 843,905 hectares of coca were forcibly eradicated between 2012 and 2022, the planted area in this period increased by 327%. In 2022, Colombia had 230,000 hectares of coca with a productive potential of 1,738 tonnes of cocaine. As for demand for psychoactive substances, between 1996 and 2019 an increase of 5.1% to 8.7% in the consumption of all illicit substances (marijuana, cocaine, base, extasy or heroin) was observed.(6)

The document then goes on to acknowledge that the collapse in cocaine consumption is not real but rather on the contrary there has been an increase. It states that one of the first hypotheses was a global fall in demand for cocaine.(7) They are trying to save their own skin. There was no data to sustain the supposed hypotheses: none. It was dreamed up by mediocrities and no one else made the claim. The document goes on to say “However, according to the latest Global Cocaine Report from the UNODC (2023), demand has risen.(8) At least we are having a debate about the reality of poorly written studies from the children of the lovers of their friends who they hired.

So, what do they propose? It would seem that they propose a shift in the punitive model without abandoning it completely. They accept that the fumigations have not worked and that the periods of greatest fumigation do not match those of a lesser supply of the drug.(9) But the punitive element continues to be an integral part of the policy, the supposed shift is a mirage.

The evidence has shown that a security strategy on its own is not enough (the emphasis is mine) but rather it must go hand in hand with actions to prevent crime and deal with the underlying causes.(10)

The document takes a look over the international treaties in the area, softening the real demands of the Single Convention of 1961 stating that it doesn’t prohibit anything but rather submits the plants and the drugs produced to a strict control. There is not enough space here to go into detail on that debate. But once again what the government is saying is not really the case. The Single Convention does actually allow for some coca crops for medical and industrial purposes, mainly in Peru and also opium in India. But it is not the case that Colombia has misinterpreted those treaties. And this is a major issue, as any change in the paradigm is dependent on changes in those treaties or better still their complete derogation and the drawing up of new treaties under a new paradigm.

Whilst it is true that a country can allow coca crops for licit purposes, that is done with the permission of the UN control bodies, i.e. the USA. Even traditional consumption of the coca leaf is frowned upon in the Convention. Article 26.2 states that:

The Parties shall so far as possible enforce the uprooting of all coca bushes which grow wild. (emphasis is mine) They shall destroy the coca bushes if illegally cultivated.

Although Article 49 permits chewing of coca leaf in countries where it was already legal on the 1st of January 1961 (subparagraph 2a), it does so on the condition of banning it and eradicating it once and for all by 1986 (subparagraph 2e), something which was not achieved. Whether they like it or not, this treaty has not been misinterpreted and the whole UN framework i.e. US policy in the area is the problem and not a misinterpretation of previous governments. The supposed freedom to grow and licit use of coca that Petro imagines is not real.

Some states in the US legalised the production and recreational consumption of marijuana and clashed with the federal banking system that was not willing to receive funds from the industry, forcing many producers to resort to mechanisms more suited to money laundering in illicit industries. 

Something similar happened in Uruguay. The country regularised the recreational production and authorised and regulated the state control of it. However, not even the Bank of the Republic of Uruguay was willing to receive money from a lawful activity in the country due to a fear of reprisals from the USA.

It would seem that the architects of the law did not foresee the problem that would arise in the banking industry, owner and lord of the commercial and financial transactions in Uruguay. Were the Uruguayan legislators aware that it was not just a matter of convincing the international system of prohibition to reclassify cannabis as a substance in the drugs conventions but that they also had to convince the banking system to accept money from cannabis transactions? 

Everything seems to indicate that the directives the banks implement are those that are simply related to the formality of Cannabis being a prohibited substance and the fact that the money from the cannabis market is legal, illegal, black or white has no bearing on decisions.(11) 

Uruguay found itself at the mercy of the repressive whims of the US government and in practice was not autonomous nor sovereign. Any drugs policy should take as its starting point that Colombia is not sovereign in the matter and it faces a massive enemy when it comes to solving the problem: the USA. It is not a matter of a restrictive interpretation by Colombian governments, but rather the reality of imperialist domination. This was the case with Uruguay.

… according to the Uruguayan government implementing a national law [on drugs] depends on the modification of a foreign law. Note that at no stage is a modification of international drug treaties that Uruguay has ratified mentioned, but rather a federal law that internally classifies cannabis in the USA.(12)

The government has no proposals in the matter and its proposals for the peasants are remoulds of the previous policies with a slightly modified language. They no longer talk of crop substitution but rather licit alternatives or economies. And the licit alternatives for the countryside are the usual ones, exportable monocultures.

And the iron hand continues for the peasantry. They have talked a lot about distinguishing between large and small-scale coca producers, increasing the definition of small-scale producer as one that has up to 10 hectares. But the iron hand continues. They have said that they will not use forcible eradication but…

Forcible eradication will be applied to crops that: (i) do not fall into the category of “small-scale grower”, (ii) increase in area, (iii) planted after the publication of this policy (regardless of size), (iv) have infrastructure for the production of base and cocaine hydrochloride, (v) do not fulfil their commitments to substitution and other mechanisms on the path to licit economies.(13)

Many peasants have some infrastructure to produce base, an infrastructure that is not all that complicated. So, I don’t know who these peasants who will not be subjected to forcible eradication are. It is not all that different from the policies of Uribe and Pastrana and borrows policies from Plan Colombia, the Exporting Stake of Uribe and the directives of the former Social Action and of course the Peace Laboratories of the European Union and the nefarious apologist for the economic policies of Uribe and also in passing the World Bank, the priest Francisco de Roux: the so-called Productive Alliances.

• Productive agreements between the public sector, private sector and grassroot economies

These consist of a tripartite collaboration between the state and the private sector as drivers of the productive reconversion, through actions such as capitalist investment, transfer of know-how and insertion into local, national and international markets. To that end the “Productive agreements for life and hope” will be implemented, in which the state will offer benefits to the businesses that commercially associate themselves with the communities. The Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism will facilitate and strengthen these type of alliances.(14)Not that long ago in 2017, various current senators and representatives of what is now called the Historic Pact publicly denounced a proposal from Santos on the countryside. They stated:

… limits [the communities] chances of defining the productive and economic model that would allow the building of peace with social justice, by tying it to technical criteria… that give priority to the establishment of alliances and chains of production between small and large producers and the efficient use of rural land, technological innovation, technical aid, credit, irrigation and commercialisation that favour an entrepreneurial large-scale agro-industrial production.(15)

So, what about now? Ah of course, the proposal is yours, and it doesn’t matter whether it is the same proposal or not, but rather who makes it. And if the peasants do not agree with the economic model being imposed, what will happen to them? Well, “a differential treatment will be promoted that will be transitory and conditioned on their signing up to processes on a path to licit economies”.(16) In other words, they are going to jail.

As for money laundering, there is nothing new. The government is obliged by various international treaties to fight against money laundering. But the language used is telling.

This last point (laundering) is based on identifying high value financial targets, understood to be persons or legal entities, goods, assets or bodies that due to their nature, volume or characteristics may be exploited by criminal groups (emphasis is mine) to hide or channel illicit funds and thus launder money from criminal activities.(17)

As with other governments, including the USA, the banks are seen as another victim. More so than the peasants, exploited by criminal groups when in reality they themselves are criminal enterprises. The massive laundering of assets that HSBC carried out in Mexico cannot be understood in any other light. There are no measures taken to jail the banks’ directors, cancel their banking licence, freeze their assets, fine them to the point of leaving them naked in the street. No. The asphyxiation the government talks about is like the law, to be applied to some but not to others. They are more concerned about illegal mining in coca zones than the laundering of assets only yards from the Presidential Palace.

The document is very similar to previous policies with some small changes, a slightly distinct language and “new” proposals that are not new. Perhaps we could say that it indicates some goodwill in some aspects, but nothing more. Petro can’t fight for a new paradigm without changing the current one.

Proposing a revision of the international legal framework does not imply a conflict between prohibition or total freedom in the market for psychoactive substances. On the contrary, it means coming up with intermediate solutions such as alternatives to prison, harm reduction strategies and the responsible regulation adult use substances such as cannabis. The progress, failure and lessons learnt from international cooperation on drugs represent an opportunity for the international community to evidence based innovative strategies and policies.(18)

Harm reduction is policy in most of the world, including some parts of the USA. Alternatives to prison also, though in practice it is not always the case in all countries. What is put forward is the current state of play, not a big struggle to change the paradigm. It is a disappointing document, more so than previous policies, as this one tries to play with the language to stupefy, fool and lie to us. In the end, it is another lost opportunity. If you want to see something innovative in drug policy, you would be better off taking a drug, preferably a magic mushroom.

Notes

(1) H13N (16/08/2023) El mercado de la cocaína se desplomó por algo peor: fentanilo”; dijo el presidente Petro. Sandra Segovia Marin. 

(2) Spencer, M.R. et al. (2023) Estimates of drug overdose deaths involving fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and oxycodone: United States, 2021. Vital Statistics Rapid Release; no 27. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. May 2023. DOI:  P.3

(3) Spencer MR, Miniño AM, Warner M. Drug overdose deaths in the United States, 2001–2021. NCHS Data Brief, no 457. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2022. DOI: 

(4) El Colombiano (09/11/2023) Cultivos de coca en Colombia vuelven a romper récord: fueron 230.000 hectáreas en 2022. 

(5) Ministerio de Justicia (2023) Sembrando Vida Desterramos el Narcotráfico: Política Nacional de Drogas (2023 -2033). Colombia. 

(6) Ibíd., p.16

(7) Ibíd. P. 18

(8) Ibíd.,

(9) Ibíd., p.24

(10) Ibíd., p. 26

(11) Galain, P. (2017) Mercado Regulado de Cannabis vs. Politica Bancaria

(12) Ibíd.,

(13) Ministerio de Justicia (2023) Op. Cit. P.46

(14) Ibíd., p.49

(15) Open Letter (18/04/2017) the signatories are Senator Iván Cepeda, Senator Alberto Castilla, , Representative Alirio Uribe, Representative Ángela María Robledo, Representative Víctor Correa y social organisations Fensuagro, Coordinación Étnica Nacional de Paz- Cenpaz, Comisión Colombiana de Paz, Grupo Género en la Paz , CINEP/Programa de Paz, Grupo Semillas, Corporación Jurídica Yira Castro.

(16) Ministerio de Justicia (2023) Op. Cit p.52

(17) Ibíd., P.72

(18) Ibíd., p.82

⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.

Coca, Fentanyl And Drug Policy In Colombia

From the Daily Beast a claim that The Dutch Are Waking Up to Discover They Live in a ‘Narco State’.

By Nadette De Visser

The Dutch government and Dutch society failed to realize the country had moved from consuming drugs to producing them, and on a global scale.

Amsterdam — On the morning of Sept. 18, Derk Wiersum, the public defender for a key witness against the international drug kingpin Ridouan Taghi, was walking to his car with his wife in a quiet suburb of Amsterdam when he was shot and killed.

The murder of the 44-year-old Wiersum, who left two children behind, represented a new and dangerous threshold of violence here that shocked not only the public, but the entire judicial system. For the first time in Dutch history the criminal world murdered a legal representative of the state itself.

This is the Netherlands 2019, not Sicily 1992, but the assassination of a dedicated public servant like Wiersum attests to the sense of impunity gangsters in Amsterdam currently enjoy, and appears to be part of a strategy to intimidate not only Dutch state representatives but Dutch society as a whole.

Ironically, the Netherlands has seen a decrease in murders and overall violent crime, but there is a deep sense of urgency among Dutch police as they face the growing power of criminal networks on Dutch soil.

“The Netherlands is at risk of becoming a narco state,” Dutch Minister of Justice and Security Ferdinand Grapperhaus warned in August. The cops are concerned they are losing their grip. Some say they have lost it already.

Continue reading @ the Daily Beast.

Dutch Narco State


Patrick Donohoe writes on the breakdown of social cohesion and solidarity.

I was ready to board a flight from Vancouver in Canada to head home to Ireland after a week in Las Vegas; tired after a 4am rise the last thing I wanted to hear was there would be no operational TVs for the ten-hour flight home. It's a time when even 36,000 feet in the air we are still connected to technology, so like when I recently left for work without my phone you feel a mild form of irritation at being naked of something to keep your mind occupied to pass the time, that all addicts of junk technology feel when without it. In my teen years (1993-1999), I consumed books at a rapid rate, mostly history related and anything relating to the struggle up north. My only distraction in those years was television and we only had one, which my old lad controlled much of the time with an iron grip. So, with a book I packed, with the good intention of reading on holiday, and didn't, I was going to read for ten hours like it was 1999 again.

The book I read Chasing the Scream which was a history of the drug war and making the case that what we think of drugs and addiction is wrong and why the war on drugs was creating a war for drugs that had whipped a carnival of reaction and was causing those involved to become more and more violent to establish and solidify their grip on a lucrative trade. It highlighted the inhumanity of how we treat addicts, mindful the genesis of their addiction was rooted in childhood sexual and physical abuse, and a neglected youth. The title of the book was a reference to the father of the drug war Harry Anslinger's first experience of a drug addict who was screaming in agony in the distance and this stayed with him throughout his life and affected him negatively and saw him embark on a war on drugs that rather than solve a problem that didn’t exist, but made it worse.


It reminded me of the time my father had a severe stroke. He had a six month stay in hospital. The person in the bed beside him in his ward was a great guy. He was always looking out for my old lad and letting us know how he was doing during the night and that. He didn't have to do it, but he did. He had a good soul, I suppose. He was a person who had a history of addiction and his internal organs were in a bad way; not due to the drugs themselves but the contaminants in the drugs that criminals put in them to increase their profits. He thought he was going to have a liver transplant, but everyone else, including us, knew he was going to die, and they had chosen not to tell him. It seemed cruel, everyone else knew but him. He became close to my family and, likely due to his time as an addict, he had no family around him when he was taken to a private room to die, other than my own mother and sister for company. He died in agony, his internal organs failing. His screaming haunted my mother. I thought of that as I was reading Chasing the Scream flying over the Atlantic last year. We’re still chasing the screams of addicts and those in emotional distress.

Inspired by Johann Hari's book, I wrote an article for this website making the case for republicans to take themselves out of the drug war and to campaign for evidence-based law reform pointing at the examples set by Portugal and Switzerland and for us to re-examine how we treat addicts leaving them in the hands of criminal gangs. I touched on the need for a social recovery to tackle addiction in our society, believing the issue was not with the substances involved, but the pain and trauma being felt in society that was causing people to connect with foreign substances to escape their everyday life.  Just as depression which is kinetically linked to addiction, is not a simple matter of a rise in chemical imbalances in the brain, the reasons in their concurrent rise are multifaceted, with the causes all around us. Thankfully, the solutions are also and need to be holistic in our approach to remedying them.

Today, one-in-five Americans are taking at least one drug for psychiatric problems (one in four middle aged women are taking antidepressants); France has one-in-three taking psychotropic drugs of some kind; with Britain being among the highest in Europe also. We take so many antidepressants they are in Western countries' water supply given so many take them and are excreting them that they can't be completely filtered out of our water supply.

We are told now is the greatest time to be alive with so many technological advances and with the advent of the internet and social media, we are the most connected society in human history and, in many ways, they're right; and yet so wrong at the same time. We see depression and anxiety have been on a steady upward trajectory and it's worth noting for the first time in the peacetime history of the United States white male life expectancy has decreased for the last three years in-a-row, largely down to addiction and suicides. Is there just simply a rise in chemically imbalanced brain defects, or - and this is worth noting for those of a left-wing persuasion - is the kind of hyper-capitalist and hyper-individualistic economy and society we've built making us ill and depressed?

In Johann Hari's book on depression, Lost Connections, he tells the story about a wand in the 18th century, that was claimed could heal physical pain. A thick metal rod, that had been patented by a company, which they called "tractor". The company claimed their metal rod, just like how lightning rods draw lightening, the tractor would draw the sickness and pain in your body and propel it out of your body and into the air without it ever touching you. People crippled by rheumatism, people tortured by pain, really did see their pain recede and hopeless cases were walking again free of any pain or impediment. The company who patented the tractor said they couldn't give their secret away as others would copy it and they would lose the money on what was their creation after all. Some doctors baffled by the amazing results did their own tests disguising an old stick as a metal rod and telling patients it was one of the now-famous Perkins wands; with it, they achieved the same results. A man with unbearable pain in his knee began to walk freely shortly after having the 'wand' waved over his body, and a patient with crippling rheumatic pain in his shoulder was able to lift his hands from his knees for the first time in years. There were other doctors who carried similar studies with the same results. What had been going on was the placebo effect - the process of patients given dummy medication and their strong belief in the story that this would make them better can invariably make it so. Just like some American soldiers in WWII who needed to be operated on when they had run out of opiate-based painkillers, had been operated on with a saltwater drip, which they had been told was morphine, so they didn't go into shock. The soldiers reacted just as they had been given morphine. There was no screaming or shouting. It worked just like it was morphine, because the soldiers believed it to be so. The tractor wand, of course, like the saltwater drop, was a fraud.

In the modern day, the placebo effect even plays a significant part in the process of the testing phase for potential drugs to getting it from the lab and ending up in our pharmacies and into the public domain. Any potential drug, such as antidepressants, must go through a rigorous process involving testing on two groups: one is given the real drug and the other is given a sugar pill, or some other placebo. Then the researchers compare the groups' results. You are only allowed sell the drug by the Food and Drugs Agency (FDA) if the real drug performs significantly better than the placebo. That would seem clear cut and fair enough, right? The thing is though there is a third group they left out. That being the third group they would give nothing to; no actual drug, no placebo - nothing. You need that group to test to see the rate that people will get better by themselves, with no chemical or placebo help. When tests were done involving three groups the results showed 25% would get better by themselves; 50% of them got better due to the story they were told about them, the placebo and 25% due to the actual chemicals. So, what of the research done with the two groups, it must show significantly more of an effect than the placebo to make it to market, remember? The problem with that is most of the research done to see if drugs work and can make it to market is done by the big pharmaceutical companies themselves. In secret. Over 40% of these studies never see the light of day. They also only publish the results that would make their drug look good and better than their rivals'. It's the same reason McDonald's would never release their studies that say their food is likely to make you overweight. It's called "publication bias".

The problem for the big pharma companies with a Freedom of Information Act request they must release their full medical research and those analysing the effects of antidepressants using the third group of participants of no drug or placebo, did just that. The results showed, for example, in one research trial, Prozac - possibly the most commonly known antidepressant - was given to 245 patients. They released the results for only twenty-seven of them. They just so happened to be the twenty-seven people the drug seemed to work for. The Hamilton Scale, which is the barometer for measuring how depressed someone is; with it starting at zero, which is someone as happy as can be, all the way to fifty-nine, which is someone ready to jump from a bridge. When scientists looked at the real data from the tests on anti-depressants it was found they do cause an improvement on the Hamilton Scale, but by only 1.8 points. To put it in perspective, a good sleeping pattern puts you up six points. That is three times the chemical effect of anti-depressants. While this was not completely insignificant, it was minimal. What it looked at a glance was the story itself was making them feel better for a time, but the underlying problem would reassert itself in time. The side effects though: weight gains, sexual dysfunction and profuse sweating etc were all very real.

Earlier on in this decade, Gallup conducted a poll worldwide, across 142 countries, and asked millions of people how they felt about their work. We spend most of my week there and we spend more time with our co-workers than we do with any of our family members or partners. Only 13% of those polled said they were engaged in their work, meaning they enjoyed it. 63% of them were not engaged, meaning they sleepwalked through their day and 24% of them were not only unhappy in their job, they actively acted out their unhappiness, which meant twice as many people hated their jobs as loved it. One researcher who studied the results advised the days of the 9-to-5 life are over in modern society. For example, one in three British workers checked their work email, couple that with 80% of employers in Britain seeing it as okay to phone workers outside of working hours. Today the typical worker starts his working day at 8:18am and will leave at 7:19pm. As Johann Hari put it in his book Lost Connections: "so this thing that 87% of us don't enjoy is spreading over more and more of our lives."

What I found in this same book was when it studied who was likely to be stressed in a job; who was more likely to suffer a heart attack; who was likely to be depressed. The common misconception was the boss, the person at the top of the tree who must make the stressful decisions that affect other people. An extensive study of the British civil service it was found those lower down the pay grade and ladder were four times more likely to suffer a heart attack than those at the top of the civil service. It was found those who had more control over their work and had some autonomy to make decisions were less inclined to be stressed and depressed about their work. When they examined their lives outside of work, they found those higher up the grade had better social lives and activities involving friends. Those who worked boring low status jobs had the reverse, they would just want to collapse in front of the television after work. One of the researchers put it simply: "when work is enriching, life is fuller".

While it is said we are the most connected society in history, the opposite could be said. What we are, also, is the loneliest. A survey done a few decades ago asked people in the U.S. how many real friends they had that they could turn to in the event of an emergency. The most common answer was five. The same asked a few years ago gave the most common to be zero. Not the majority, but the most common none-the-less. When Americans asked how many people in their lives, they felt really knew them; again, the most common answer, depressingly, was zero. An experiment to measure how loneliness increased stress levels was conducted for the first time, which involved participants wearing heart rate monitored and when they reached levels enough that would cause the monitors to beep, they had to take note of how lonely or connected you felt. One the second day when their monitor beeped, they had to spit into a test tube and give it to the lab. When you are stressed your heart rate would go up and your saliva becomes flooded with a hormone called cortisol. What the data told them was being lonely caused your cortisol levels to soar and being acutely lonely was as stressful as suffering a physical attack. Other studies done on lonely people comparing them with people with healthy social connections; when exposed to the cold virus it was found the lonely socially isolated people were three times more likely to catch the cold virus than those who were connected into a friends and social structure. When coupled with that, a scientist Lisa Berkman, did a similar comparison over a nine-year period and she discovered that isolated persons were two to three times more likely to die in that period. Cancer, heart disease, respiratory problems were all more fatal when people were alone. Its known stress is a killer; but loneliness?

The collective structure of society has eroded. In the U.S. in the ten years between 1985 to 1994 active participation in community organisations fell by 45%. In Clondalkin, the working-class estate in Dublin, where I grew up in the 1980's and 90's, the street parties and Summer projects are gone. I recently asked someone what had happened here and the simple answer was the people who were parts of residents’ committees moved out of the area, and nobody filled the void. I wonder are areas like Clondalkin a microcosm of the U.S.? It looks like we've turned away from community and turned inward; peoples' sense of belonging to a community is plummeting. The same can be said of our family lives. We eat together less as families; we go on less vacations together and just general activities as a family are all down. The social construct that binds us together, our sense of community and family, is slowly dissolving. We've redefined what human nature is. Our ancestors evolved in the savannas of Africa and survived in tribes. They took down bigger stronger animals on the plains of Africa because they worked collectively and cooperated. They did everything together; looked after their sick and pooled their resources. So human nature is honed towards being part of a tribe, not being alone in the hyper-individualistic capitalistic society we seen today, that is making us ill, mentally and physically.

A study called the Aspiration Index asked people straightforward questions. Do you think it is important to have expensive possessions and polar-opposite questions such as do you think it's important we make the world a better place? Alternatively, they then asked the same people if they were happy or unhappy and if they were suffering from depression or anxiety. The study was conducted on 316 students and the results showed those who answered the questions indicating they would be happier with accumulating stuff and status were far more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety. When studies were done on 140 eighteen-year-olds and various other age groups and economic backgrounds the results were the same. Studies done to find the everyday emotions and moods of materialistic people found they were sicker and angrier. It's been found those who have intrinsic motives, those who do things because they genuinely value them, such as someone who plays an instrument because they genuinely love music. Then there are extrinsic values, which are people who do things because they'll get something in return such as likes on social media and status off it. It's worth pointing out, we all have some of these values in us, nobody is totally driven by either or. It was looked at those who has extrinsic values, if they had achieved their goals of getting valuables and status, they had not increased their general happiness one iota. The opposite side of the spectrum fared much better in that if they achieved their intrinsic values were far less likely to be depressed or anxious. When they helped a friend in need; became closer to their kids, did some charitable work because it was the right thing to do or doing anything for other people made them happier in their lives. 

The problem with all of this is our consumer culture. Go to the best schools, get the best grades, get a great paying job, flaunt your earnings by your nice house, car and clothes and that's the key to happiness and being valued by society. There have been twenty-two studies since and all have shown the more materialistic and extrinsically motivated you are the more depressed and anxious you will become, along with the fact you will have shorter relationships and they will have worse quality as people with extrinsic values place a higher emphasis on looks and how much you will impress other people if you're with them. So if something better looking comes along … you know the rest.

Similar studies have been done all over the world, on all continents, with similar results. What they have commonly been referred to as 'junk values' and we have moved more towards them and this has accelerated with the advent of the internet and social media. The commercialisation of our society has a part to play with this new value system taking place. The money spent on advertising has sky-rocketed over the decades and it's known the more teenagers are advertised to the more materialistic they become. In Lost Connections an ad executive puts it that at its heart advertising "is making people feel without their product, you're a loser. Kids are very sensitive to that...." And in a consumer society enough is never enough. There is no end. Capitalism needs consumerism. You're working more and more; your bosses are contacting you more and more outside of working hours. It was put perfectly that we all have intrinsic values as human beings, but it is too easy to distract us from them with our social model of consumerism that we begin to act extrinsically, and our economic model is built to do this that. Its existence depends on it. 

When I wrote previously on addiction it was also through the lenses as a republican, and critiqued them for the simplistic attitude that the problem with addiction is simply the substance. I argued that it was much more nuanced than that and I hope I've done that here with the depression and anxiety epidemic we see today in the Western world. I see, sometimes, the same lazy assertions for this from republicans. I've seen it being blamed on the rise of cocaine use, as without a doubt the day after it usually brings on a depressive state to the user, but so too does alcohol. The 'fear' as it is known is now a scientific fact. It increases the heart rate the following day and causes anxiety with a cycle of irrational thoughts, negative thinking and regret of behaviour while under the influence, but republicans don't target alcohol. Far from it, we use it to fundraise for our various causes knowing well binge-drinking will be the norm at said events. I'm not anti-alcohol and drink it myself, but it's the simplistic notions that disappoint me. The addiction and depression epidemics we see today are symptoms to the wider hyper-capitalistic economies we see today and that is something nearly all republicans can rail against. In 1800’s Britain, there was a gin addiction craze. You read that right, gin. It’s as freely available today as it was then, with more variants and flavours than ever today. But how was gin such an issue you ask? In England at the time, people were being moved from the countryside to the sprawling cities of London and Manchester etc, where they lived mainly in slums with deprivation all around them. This caused multiple problems, such as addiction, with gin being the main protagonist. There were propaganda pieces on the evil drink gin that was capturing their citizens and turning them into slumbering alcoholics. It seems almost funny now to see something like gin, that’s become such a trend in modern society, be once vilified as the cause for mass addiction. We know that to be silly now, and the cause was much more profound than a mere substance. 

I see today our issues involving addiction and depression being much more profound than mere substances and brain chemical defects, as it was in 1800’s Britain. The need to ditch the old tired arguments against evil substances is over and the conversation on a social recovery needs to begin. The studies and information on the causes are there for all to read. It's up to people to promote a new society and economic model that promotes it as the one we have now is making us ill. In the immediate now, maybe read this and reflect on your environment and those around you.

It's a cruel irony that those suffering from depression are treated by being filled with drugs of a legal kind with questionable results and very real side effects that can exacerbate the problem for many. Of course, the addiction and depression epidemic has become an industry for many, most notably big pharma so it's not much of a surprise that a conversation in the chambers of political power on a social recovery to take on addiction and mental illness has not been forthcoming, so like many of the positive changes in Ireland in recent times have come from grassroots bottom-up activist-based campaigns, who, in time, made it politically expedient for those in power to act. The political ideology in Ireland I belong to - republicanism - disappointingly, has not been the positive force it could be in the fight. I see populist slogans on boards telling people ‘Say No to Death Dealers’. It is simplistic nonsense given how multifaceted the causes of the addiction problem are. Saying no to gin in the 1800’s wouldn’t have cleansed England of the causes of their gin addiction, neither will such slogans cut it in Ireland 2019. It’s akin to campaigning for those suffering from depression and centralising the campaign on boards stating “Let’s End Chemical Brain Imbalances’, implying that is the central crux of the problem. Someone must break the mould on these problems, so why not republicans? 

To talk of treating addicts with love and compassion keeping in mind the root cause of addiction is childhood trauma, physical and or sexual abuse, a neglected childhood and broken families, is not going to get anyone any macho points. Neither will talking of social recoveries to tackle the depression and anxiety epidemic. It will involve talking to ordinary people in lay man terms about the system we have around us that forces two parents to work leaving children to develop away from their parents in understaffed creches; a system that leaves so many with a deep sense of lack of control and power in their workplace and a world of zero hour contracts leaving so many living on the breadline and in constant stress with no freedom from economic necessity. We have the emptiest people in power, and they won't submit to positive change until it's made politically expedient for them to do so. But that change isn't just about legislative law kind of change, but about changes on an individual and collective level. We can ignore the pain and screams of those in addiction and emotional, mental distress and continue to address them with nothingness and platitudes.

The New Ireland we hear referenced a lot since Brexit has to be about repairing our ruptured social bonds and building a country where people feel they belong, where their life has meaning and they have a say in their workplace. If we don’t then we’ll continue the be chasing the screams of our most abused and disenfranchised citizens and that will be a New Ireland not worth the paper it’ll be written on.



Patrick Donohoe is a member of the United Ireland Society, Áth Claith. Its aim is to make the economic and social case for Irish unity and a more egalitarian Ireland.

A Drugged & Depressed Society

Guest writer, the Parisian domiciled Frankie McKillen with his views on the drugs issue.


TPQ's Belfast Rockabilly Frankie McKIllen


Fuck it, I quit.

Charlo Greene famously said those words live on KTVA after she reported on a segment about pot to concentrate on legalizing marijuana in Alaska. What she said before dramatically quitting her job was ...

Fuck it, I Quit

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)