One of the primary facts worth knowing about the modern drug war debate is that it has been contaminated for decades. Anyone endeavoring to advance this conversation must navigate a dense fog of false dichotomies, red herrings, racist demagoguery, and McCarthian fear-mongering that serves to amplify the absurd while obscuring even the most simple truths.

While discussing this matter yesterday with NORML's Paul Armentano, I learned of a marvelous ancient document which sets forth in basic terms the fundamental strategies that have long been employed to destroy the drug war debate. "Themes in Chemical Prohibition" by William L. White was published in 1979 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. It is easily the most insightful material ever produced by that agency:

THE PROHIBITIONIST THEMES

A review of chemical prohibitionist literature reveals eight themes which appear to emerge from the tactics of most such movements. The tactics utilized to produce these themes are as follows:

1. The drug is associated with a hated subgroup of the society or a foreign enemy.

2. The drug is identified as solely responsible for many problems in the culture, i.e., crime, violence, and insanity.

3. The survival of the culture is pictured as being dependent on the prohibition of the drug.

4. The concept of "controlled" usage is destroyed and replaced by a "domino theory" of chemical progression.

5. The drug is associated with the corruption of young children, particularly their sexual corruption.

6. Both the user and supplier of the drug are defined as fiends, always in search of new victims; usage of the drug is considered "contagious."

7. Policy options are presented as total prohibition or total access.

8. Anyone questioning any of the above assumptions is bitterly attacked and characterized as part of the problem that needs to be eliminated.

After almost 30 years, this remains a complete inventory of the instruments one can expect to find in any prohibitionist's tool belt. It reads like the Bill of Rights of drug prohibitionist rhetoric, a universal guide that could well be found folded up within the coat pockets of drug war generals from Washington, D.C. to Vienna.

Only through strict adherence to these principles is it possible to effectively defend a drug war that destroys all which it claims to defend. Only under these rules could the continuation of costly and catastrophic public policies be considered politically viable, while even partial reforms bear a burden of presumed political suicide. Only in this climate of perpetual hysteria can our leaders be intimidated and stripped of their will to lead, forced instead by perceived orthodoxy to reluctantly, yet willfully, march us further into the drug war abyss.

This post isn't about how to end the drug war. I don’t quite claim to know that, although I've got a few ideas. Rather, this is an introduction, for anyone who may need it, to the rules of mainstream drug policy debate. We must know each of these rules by heart, because it is our duty to break them at any and every opportunity.