nealalex's review
3.0
I was looking for some historical perspectives from this series of interviews (republished from the British Journal of Addiction), bearing in mind that till the 80s cocaine wasn’t considered addictive. Most of the interviewees studied alcohol and alcoholics (aka alcohol abusers, problem drinkers…), which isn’t surprising, since this journal was originally the Journal of Inebriety. Some of them argue for a role of the old UK system of prescribing heroin to addicts, and for the possibility of leading a normal life while addicted, something that’d put you outside the mainstream nowadays. It’s hard to imagine that ‘in those days, the black market was entirely diversion from legitimate prescriptions plus the odd theft from pharmacists, etc’. Conversely, another interviewee makes the point that “You can’t create a market by decriminalisation without providing any supply”, meaning that if possession is decriminalised but production isn’t, the gap will be filled by production somewhere, whether that other place likes it or not.
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