Photos: J. Vespa/Wire Image (l); Getty Images
When any public figure dies tragically, the Internet becomes a mass scramble of analysis, theories, and the general clucking of thousands of armchair experts eulogizing a person that they never knew. It brings out both the best and the worst in people and, in the case of Philip Seymour Hoffman, a lot of social commentary; endless reams of commentary in fact, specifically on the subject of drugs and addiction. Occasionally though, someone throws their hat into the egetical ring who provides, if not insight, at the very least an interesting perspective. Yesterday The Guardian published an essay by Russell Brand in which he claims that Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death was sad, yes, but also an inevitable result of bad laws and a fractured social perspective that essentially criminalizes drug addiction.
"Addiction is a mental illness around which there is a great deal of confusion, which is hugely exacerbated by the laws that criminalise drug addicts," Brand writes. "If drugs are illegal people who use drugs are criminals. We have set our moral compass on this erroneous premise, and we have strayed so far off course that the landscape we now inhabit provides us with no solutions and greatly increases the problem."
While Brand fails to provide any hard data as to the failure of drug laws in getting people to stop doing drugs, anecdotally it certainly seems to be the case. People do drugs. A lot of people. And making them illegal is hardly a deterrent. After all, even our President copped to smoking illegal weed. Brand goes on to write:
"No self-respecting drug addict is even remotely deterred by prohibition. What prohibition achieves is an unregulated, criminal-controlled, sprawling, global mob-economy, where drug users, their families and society at large are all exposed to the worst conceivable version of this regrettably unavoidable problem."
Interestingly, Brand points to progressive drug laws in Switzerland and Portugal as a model that should be adopted. Switzerland has experimented with a more pragmatic view towards what they deem an "uncontrollable" drug scene by focusing on it as a health issue rather than a criminal one. "We had to change perspective and introduce the notion of public health. We extended a friendly hand to drug addicts and brought them out of the shadows," Ruth Dreifuss, a former Swiss president and interior minister said in a briefing back in 2010. Their methods have included needle exchange programs and safe injection rooms with showers, beds, and medical supervision. The result, according to health officials, has been a significant statistical drop in drug related deaths as well as crime.
Why this is interesting is that Brand, a recovering drug addict himself, isn’t out there drumming the "Legalize It!" beat, he’s merely pointing towards a better system of engaging with drug addicts. Something that maybe could have saved Philip Seymour Hoffman’s life. Perhaps that’s a long shot theory, but unfortunately we’ll never know. What Brand seems certain of, however, and it is certainly an opinion worth giving weight, is that drug addicts are dying because of a broken system:
"We know this system doesn’t work—and yet we prop it up with ignorance and indifference. Why? Wisdom is acting on knowledge. Now we are aware that our drug laws aren’t working and that alternatives are yielding positive results, why are we not acting? Tradition? Prejudice? Extreme stupidity? The answer is all three. Change is hard, apathy is easy, tradition is the narcotic of our rulers. The people who are most severely affected by drug prohibition are dispensable, politically irrelevant people. Poor people. Addiction affects all of us but the poorest pay the biggest price."
Brand has certainly voiced some odd theories and beliefs in his day, but it’s undeniable that he is an intelligent, articulate, and thoughtful person. And he does have one thing that most of our current lawmakers don’t: experience with the darkest depths of addiction. He knows what the bottom looks like, so he can at least speak about it from experience. And when we have to rely on our comedians and entertainers rather than our elected politicians to give those struggling with disease and addiction, those who are in many cases stuck at the bottom, a voice, that’s a pretty sorry state of affairs. Not that comedians and entertainers don’t have anything good to say on the subject, it’s just that they are not the ones who can effect change, at least not on the level of an elected government official.
Hoffman’s death is undeniably sad. As are the deaths of the thousands of other addicts in the throws of a disease, who likely had hopes and dreams and fears and people who cared about them, and all of the other ingredients that make up a fully formed human being. Certainly it wouldn’t be such a bad thing that, beyond a truly impressive filmography, Hoffman’s legacy was also to positively impact the lives of others struggling with addiction. Brand seems to hope for this as well, although his hope comes equipped with a pretty scathing indictment of the current social failures that have created this situation in the first place.