Opinion: Time for Drug Users to Come Out of the Closet (or Open Their Drawers)

05/18/2015 - 11h07

The term "outing" refers to the act of publicizing the sexual orientation of others, usually celebrities or politicians who are in the closet.

I think we should begin to consider another type of outing, just as urgent as the first kind, or perhaps even more so. We need to open the closet (or would it be the drawer?) for drug users.

It is a fact that the policy of prohibition has been a worldwide failure. The social cost of the war on drugs is infinitely greater than the cost of the controlled and legal use of these substances. This is one of the great tragedies of the last century, and it has continued into this one.

Most of the readers of this text do not live under the state of exception justified by the war on drugs, and they do not run the daily risk of seeing their child shot by police or traffickers. So it's easy for them to outsource the problem. Out of sight, out of mind.

I smoke grass, skunk and hashish occasionally. I used to use MDMA, my drug of choice, more heavily, though today I try to limit it to once every two or three weeks because of the declining quality in Brazil. Here it's also hard to find decent opiates, acid and mushrooms, which I can only get abroad.

I recognize the risks I take in consuming these substances and the irresponsibility of buying a product that is not labelled. Still, none of them has caused me as much physical and emotional harm as alcohol, the only legal drug I consume. The only one, in fact, to which I am addicted.

The debate is urgent. Perhaps I'm naïve, but I hope that public figures bring an end to prohibition - which kills more than any drug - by opening their drawers.

Translated by TOM GATEHOUSE

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