Later On

I went to Toasty’s for breakfast this morning. They make their own (excellent) corned beef hash, so I like to have two poached eggs atop that, along with whole-wheat toast, sliced tomatoes, and coffee. Great breakfast, and this morning a nice conversation with the guy sitting beside me at the counter. He’s reading his way through Martin Cruz Smith, so I recommended Smilla’s Sense of Snow.

Jack in Amsterdam pointed out this column by John Gray in The Observer:

The war on drugs is a failed policy that has injured far more people than it has protected. Around 14,000 people have died in Mexico‘s drug wars since the end of 2006, more than 1,000 of them in the first three months of this year. Beyond the overflowing morgues in Mexican border towns, there are uncounted numbers who have been maimed, traumatised or displaced. From Liverpool to Moscow, Tokyo to Detroit, a punitive regime of prohibition has turned streets into battlefields, while drug use has remained embedded in the way we live. The anti-drug crusade will go down as among the greatest follies of modern times.

A decade or so ago, it could be argued that the evidence was not yet in on drugs. No one has ever believed illegal drug use could be eliminated, but there was a defensible view that prohibition could prevent more harm than it caused. Drug use is not a private act without consequences for others; even when legal, it incurs medical and other costs to society. A society that adopted an attitude of laissez-faire towards the drug habits of its citizens could find itself with higher numbers of users. There could be a risk of social abandonment, with those in poor communities being left to their fates.

These dangers have not disappeared, but the fact is that the costs of drug prohibition now far outweigh any possible benefits the policy may bring. It is time for a radical shift in policy. Full-scale legalisation, with the state intervening chiefly to regulate quality and provide education on the risks of drug use and care for those who have problems with the drugs they use, should now shape the agenda of drug law reform.

In rich societies like Britain, the US and continental Europe, the drug war has inflicted multiple harms.

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My brother-in-law and his wife are now on their way, and we are enjoying the memories of a very good visit. We topped it off last night with a fine dinner at Max’s Café in Pacific Grove.

Besides the fine time we had together, I also had the opportunity to experience how little of my mind I know. I’m an introvert, it seems, and after a certain amount of time socializing, I really need some alone time. (This applies also to The Wife and to her brother.) As The Eldest commented, it’s not that introverts are shy, for many are not, it’s that they really require solitude.

The odd thing was that I could tell I needed some time alone, and I could even tell that I needed to be awake for that time—when I came home late one night, I had to stay up until I had had enough time alone to recover whatever it is that’s being recovered during that time. I could tell what I needed, and I could tell when the need had been satisfied, but whatever was actually going on was totally invisible to my conscious mind. I couldn’t tell what was happening (in my own mind) during that recovery time, but I could tell that I gradually felt better. It’s odd to have a process going on without being able to tell what it’s doing—but I could feel the effects. I gradually relaxed and felt better.

You’d think if it was happening in my own mind, I could tell what it was, but the multitudinous unconscious processes work away without the conscious mind’s awareness—which is, of course, why they’re called "unconscious." But I certainly could tell the effects.