Ever since Nixon declared the war on drugs, nothing seems to have changed. The opium flowers of the world continue to flourish in their fields, farmers and users alike continue to depend on its sticky, narcotic sap, and governments the world over continue to struggle with how to address the problems caused by its production and consumption.
Raw Opium: Pain, Pleasure, Profits is a documentary film that spans across several nations and ages, forming for viewers the often-missed connections that define understanding of the global drug trade, as well as an understanding of drug addiction.
The film is the first being screened in this year’s Cinema Politica series at Camosun College.
“As we shot this film, it became pretty clear that the war on drugs has been essentially an abject failure,” says director Peter Findlay. “It hasn’t really accomplished its stated objective, which is to get drugs off the street.”
Not only has the war on drugs failed to eliminate the source, it doesn’t attend to the issue of drug dependency. Fortunately, some folks are thinking forward.
Unlike North America, where drug use is treated as a criminal problem and confronted via the criminal justice system, Portugal has made the paradigm shift of addressing drug use as a health issue instead. Portugal, where drug decriminalization took effect in 2001, has seen a decrease in drug-related deaths and usage among teens, as well as an increase in the number of addicts in treatment.
This, says Findlay, is a step in the right direction. “I don’t see any evidence that really proves that you can jail somebody and change their dependency on drugs,” he says. “It has to be a much more integrated counselling and therapy approach, otherwise you’re just going to be processing them in and out of jails.”
Despite evidence that suggests that the justice system fails those who grapple with drug addiction, the fact still remains that for many the issue of drug use and addiction still carries no shortage of moral baggage. Raw Opium encourages its audience to take a step back from their assumptions and to open themselves up to the possibility of a different approach to drug policies.
“What it gets down to is a moral argument that drug users are bad people, or at least they’ve made bad choices and that they need to be punished for those choices,” says Findlay. “And if you punish them enough, and in the right way, they will come to some kind of epiphany. And I just don’t think that’s the case.”
Raw Opium: Pain, Pleasure, Profits
7pm, September 22, by donation
Young 216, Lansdowne campus, Camosun College
cinemapolitica.org