Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers

247 Pages·1974·10.85 MB·English

by  Thomas Szasz

CEREMONIAL CHEMISTRY
Pain tllld P'"""e
o#
Tht! Myth Mentalll~Mu
Law, Liberty, and Psychiatry
The ol P$1choanalysia
Ethic~
P~lustice
ldeologytmd IIUIJnity
The MtJIIU#tJCture of Madness
Tl&e Second Sin
The Aae ot Madnes:r (Ed.)
.scts
Ceremonial Chemistry<:_
TBB RITUAL PERSECUTION OF
DRUGS, ADDICTS, AND PUSHERS
THOMAS SZASZ
~
LAW LIBRARY
SEP191975
.,
.University of Iowa
ANCHOR PRESS/DOUBLEDAY
GARDEN CITY, NBW YOR.K
1974
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Men are qualified for civil hDerty in exact proportion to their dis
position to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in propor
tion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in propodion
as their soundness and sobriety of understandins is above their
vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more dBpJied
to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, iD prdamce to
cuw•nlllin&
the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a
power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, md the lea
of it there is within, the more there must be widloat. It is or
dained in the eternal constitution of thinp, tbat men of inta•wpec
ate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge tbeir feuas.
EDMUND Jk.'UE ( 1791)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With each new book, my debt and gratitude to my brother Georp
expand. His devotion to my work is beyond praise, aDd aDJ effort
to acknowledge it is bound to be inadequate. I wish to tbant also
my daughters, Margot and Susan Marie, for their geoerous efforts
in locating source materials, their tough-minded ICI'utiuy of my
views, and their fresh ideas; Bill Whitehead, my editor at Double
day, for his continuing conscientious assisumce with my boob,
and in particular with this one; my colleague Ronald Carino) for
reading the entire manuscript and for many suggestions for re
vision; Helen Vermeychuk, for advice and gnidaDce with respect
to Greek sources and terminology; the staff of tbe Library <X the
State University of New York, Upstate Medical Center, for uo
tiring efforts to secure many of the references amsulted in the
preparation of this volume; and my secretary, Debbie Murphy,
for her careful and efficient labors.
CONTENTS
PREFACE •
.D
INTRODUcriON
I. PHARMAKOS: THE SCAPEGOAT
1. The Discovery of Drug Addiction 3
2. The Scapegoat as Drug and tbe Drug as Scapegwcat 19
3. Medicine: The Faith of the Faithless 29
4. Communions, Holy and Unholy 39
n.
PHARMACOMYTHOLOGY: MEDICINE AS
MAGIC
S. Licit and Dlicit Healing: Persecutioos for
Witdlcraft and Drugcraft 61
6. Opium and Orieutals: The Model American
1S
Scapegoats
7. Drugs and Devils: Tbe Conversion Cure of
Malcolm X 89
8. Food Abuse 8Dd Foodabolism: From Soul
Watdrina to Weisht Watching 105
Ill, PHARMACRACY: MEDICINE AS SOCIAL
and
CONTROL
125
\l, Missionary Medidne: Holy Wars oo UDholy Dt. .
137
ltl, ~sand Controls: Pan~
l l, ~mptation and Temperance: Tbe Monl
153
Reconsidered
~~w
l~ .. ·~ Coatrol of Coaduct: Authority wnus
11S
A""'ftt'~Qy
Al\ftNNX! A Synoptk Hktory of the Promotioa aDd
I&J
Prohibition of Drugs
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xii
PREFACB
historical backdrop of the ritual persecution of other scapegoats,
such as witches, Jews, and madmen.
And third, I wish to identify the moral and legal implications
of the view that using and avoiding drugs are not matters of health
and disease but matters of good and evil; that, in other words,
drug abuse is not a regrettable medical disease but a repudi
ated religious observance. Accordingly, our options with respect
to the ''problem" of drugs are the same as our options with re
spect to the "problem" of religions: that is, we can practice various
degrees of tolerance and intolerance toward those whose religions
-whether theocratic or therapeutic-differ from our own.
For the past half-century the American people have engaged
in one of the most ruthless wars-fought under the colors of drugs
and doctors, diseases and treatments-that the world has ever
seen. H a hundred years ago the American government had tried
to regulate what substances its citizens could or could not ingest,
the effort would have been ridiculed as absurd and rejected as
unconstitutional. If fifty years ago the American government had
tried to regulate what crops farmers in foreign countries could
or could not cultivate, the effort would have been criticized as
meddling and rejected as colonialism. Yet now the American
government is deeply committed to imposing precisely such regu
lations-on its own citizens by means of criminal and mental health
laws, and on those of other countries by means of economic threats
and incentives; and these regulations-called "drug controls" or
"narcotic controls"- are hailed and supported by countless indi
viduals and institutions, both at home and abroad.
We have thus managed to replace racial, religious, and military
coercions and colonialisms, which now seem to us dishonorable,
with medical and therapeutic coercions and colooialisms, which
now seem to us honorable. Because these latter controls are os
tensibly based on Science and aim to secure only Health, nnd
because those who are so coerced and colonized often worship
the idols of medical and therapeutic scientism as ardent1y as do
the coercers and colonizers, the victims cannot even articulate their
predicament and are therefore quite powerless to resist their vic
timizers. Perhaps such preying of people upon people-such sy111-
•••
PltEPACE XD1
bolic cannibalism, providing meaning for one life by depriving
another of meaning-is an inexorable part of the human condition
and is therefore inevitable. But it is surely not inevitable for any
one person to deceive himseH or herseH into believing that the
ritual persecutions of scapegoats-in Crusades, Inquisitions, Fmal
Solutions, or Wars on Drug Abuse-actually propitiate deities or
prevent diseases.
THOMAS SzAsz
Syracuse, New York
September 1, 1973