Weil Urges Drug Policy Changes

Optimistic about America's ability to confront addictive substances, Andrew T. Weil '64 urged his audience at the Institute of Politics Wednesday to revolutionize the nation's drug policy.

Weil, director of the Division of Social Perspectives in Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, advocated a fundamental change in the nation's attitude towards psychoactive drug use.

"Americans can come to terms with psychoactive drugs in their midst," he said.

Using the example of tobacco, which Weil said fell sharply in popularity after its ill health effects were released, Weil argued that the U.S. could change the perception and demand for other drugs as well.

Weil said the U.S. has taken the wrong approach to fighting the war on drugs. In fact, he said the war should not be waged at all.

To best reverse the terrible toll drugs have taken on society, Weil proposed three measures.

First, he said, the United States must "commit to backing away from criminalizing drugs."

Weil suggested a gradual dismantling of criminal punishments--rather than establishing a specific timetable, he said, the government should allow time for policy evaluation.

Simultaneously, Weil said the U.S. must "curtail all advertisement of all psychoactive drugs, including tobacco, alcohol and even caffeine."

To complete his plan, Weil argued for "real" drug education, in which both the risks and the benefits of psychoactive drugs are taught to school children.

In the lecture, titled, "A Society of Addicts: Drugs and Public Policy," Weil said that change might happen if American public policy incorporated the qualities of diverse cultures.

While at Harvard Medical School, Weil studied cultures which integrated psychoactive drugs into their daily life. By analyzing the traits that characterize a successful relationship between people and drugs, Weil said he hoped to determine how such a coexistence could form in the United States.

One region Weil cited was an indigenous, isolated village in the recesses of the Amazon jungle. The residents prepare fresh cocoa leaves every day, picking and grinding the leaves from which cocaine is derived.

According to Weil, only adult men are allowed to chew the cocoa leaves, but women are beginning to break that tradition. Adolescents, however, never use the drug.

Although the drug is stored in cans and tubes just outside the home, children expressed no curiosity about trying it--Weil said most young people answered his queries with a simple, "No, I will wait until I grow up."

Weil said this culture of nonabuse, where the users of the drug were not addicted, was healthier than drug culture in the U.S.

Weil hypothesized that because the United States "criminalizes drugs and makes it illegal, our society makes it attractive to young people."

In a sidenote, Weil added that American demand for cocaine has even managed to harm peoples like the ones he studied--Columbian cartels pressure farmers to grow the highly profitable cash crop.

Weil is the founder of the Center for Integrative Medicine and author of the international best-seller Spontaneous Healing.