Drug War Stupidity: Drug Abuse or Word Abuse?

There is great deal of loaded terminology attached to drug war propaganda. According to the prohibitionists, anyone who smokes cannabis is a "pot head" or an addict and all use of any drug is synonymous with "abuse." However, this type of word play is a perversion of language. Words mean different things for a reason. Changing the meaning of abuse to force it to fit an argument is intellectually dishonest "word abuse" and is harmful to both, the drug users and to the language itself.

Drug use does not mean drug abuse. There are plenty of legitimate uses for drugs. Cannabis is helpful in treating nausea (and quite a few of other things), mushrooms can be effective at reducing depression, morphine can ease the pain of an injury, and so on. To use something to a positive end is (in my mind, at least) a positive thing. I would even extend this principal to recreational use. Boredom, dissatisfaction, the desire to feel better, and a number of other things are legitimate reasons to smoke a joint or drink some mushroom tea, if you ask me. Applying the word "abuse" to these types of uses is an abuse of the term. These people are not addicts because they wish to improve their state of mind or increase their psychical comfort. Rather, they are doing what all people are driven to do by nature. That is to say, they are trying to improve their standard of living and increase their level of happiness. Few would say that a person who works very hard so that he or she can buy some luxury item is abusing their money. The same principal is it at work with drug use. One consumes a substance to make their life a little nicer for a little while and that should not equal abuse.

This type of "word abuse" is a very conscious tactic employed by the prohibitionists to devalue all drug users and discredit their arguments in favor of drug law reform. If a cannabis consumer is labeled as a "pot head", their hobby becomes a character flaw in the eyes of society. His or her opinion has its value stolen and his or her rights matter less than before because he or she is an "addict" and can not be trusted. If a person eats mushrooms and they are branded as a drug abuser, they are no longer reliable in the eyes of the masses. It doesn't matter that these judgments are untrue and based on meritless prejudices because outside observers usually won't take the time to weigh the claim. Instead, these observers will believe what they are told and dismiss the words of the drug user.

Linguistic abuse like this has negative consequences besides wounding drug users. Specifically, it robs strong and useful words of their meaning and makes it difficult for a listener or reader to grasp the intended weight of these words. If all drug use is called abuse, how do we know what someone means when they say "I am worried that my son is abusing drugs"? If the word "abuse" had not been abused by drug warriors, we would know that we should be concerned for that person's son. Sadly, because prohibitionists have rendered the word "abuse" meaningless, we can no longer determine the severity of the risk that this imaginary son faces. The fictitious parent could be overacting because they found out that their son smokes weed after school twice a week or they could mean that their son is having a weakly seizure because he is mainlining way too much cocaine every day. This same type of problem has arisen in other contexts recently, too. A few weeks ago, I watched a podcast that highlighted the use of the phrase "an actual Nazi." As the hosts of that podcast pointed out, calling a person a Nazi used to be sufficient to express the idea that the person in question supports Nazism. Now, because that word has become a catch all pejorative for anyone who is acting like a dick, we have to preface "Nazi" with "actual," if we want people to understand that a person supports Nazism. There are many other examples but the principal is the same. When we abuse words, our language is cheapened and weakened.

For the sake of fairness, I should mention out that drug abuse is a real thing that can exist but that is irrelevant here. To use my previous example, constantly injecting cocaine or heroin is probably a bad idea and likely qualifies as abuse, in my opinion. However, just like most douche-bags are not Nazis, most drug users are not drug abusers.

This is a small issue in terms of the drug war but it is not unimportant. Language and how we use it matters. By abusing words like "abuse," we harm drug users, we harm the words, and we harm our ability to express ourselves in a way that is clear and concise. If you oppose the drug war, please oppose word abuse or we risk losing our voices to the same thieves who stole our freedom.

Peace.

This was another installment in my continuing series of Drug War Stupidity posts. If you liked this post, please feel free to check out my page for more similar content.

Unless otherwise credited, all the images in this post were sourced from the free image website, unsplash.com.