Comment: What if we got rid of our existing drug laws and replaced them with a new law that legalised and carefully regulated all psychoactive substances, from cannabis to MDMA, methamphetamine and LSD to magic mushrooms? And which also included legal drugs such as alcohol and nicotine.

“Wow,” you might say, “that’s a radical proposal.” But is it?

In pondering this question, the concept of ‘zombie ideas’ came to mind. These are dominant ideas that refuse to die, despite often extensive evidence of their failure—such as prohibition, which has utterly failed in all its aims.

We’re all afraid of zombies though, right? And we should be, they kill people, cause multiple harms, and interfere with clear thinking through fear and panic. But why should we be afraid of prohibition? Because prohibition is one of these zombies and it does just this—it kills people, causes multiple harms and, through fear and panic, interferes with clear thinking and evidence-based drug law reform. We are trapped and unable to escape from this zombie idea.

So how can we finally slay the prohibition zombie and stop our drug laws being driven by fear and panic? Well, perhaps by regulating the supply of all substances and taking a fresh health and harm-reduction approach to drugs. The way Aotearoa currently attempts to tackle the use of psychoactive substances has failed and is creating enormous harms. We need to stop.

Instead of clinging to zombie ideas, we should reinvigorate ideas that are evidence-based, rational and sensible, rather than labelling alternative ways of thinking ‘radical’ in order to dismiss them.

Harm caused by ‘zombie’ approaches

The harms created by drug laws are staggering to behold, both globally and closer to home.

Take the violence associated with the illicit drug market—one of the silent harms of prohibition that we see in Aotearoa, driven by ‘cracking down’ on those who use and sell drugs. This only fuels conflict, tension, and overdoses by forcing trade underground and increasing the risk of people taking drugs of unknown quality.

Inequities in policing and convictions of particular populations, such as Māori, are another devastating, often silent harm enacted in the name of the ‘war on drugs’ (which is really a ‘war on people who use drugs’). Māori are 5.7 times more likely than other groups in Aotearoa to have contact with the police and are charged nearly four times more often for drug possession than Pākehā. As one of my research participants once said, drug law reform “will be a healing for Māori”.

The rise in overdoses seen in Aotearoa from 2017 to 2021 is yet a further harm from prohibition that is often silenced. Legalising all psychoactive substances would go a long way to significantly reduce the number of overdoses.

Harms are also caused by drug convictions, often hidden from view. And these harms affect the most vulnerable—those already living with complex problems such as addiction and trauma. Consider the person who said “I was broken for quite a long time [after being convicted of cannabis possession], I was always living with that in the background”, and the person who said “the worst thing about having a drug conviction is that it forces you to live on the margins”. Is this the very best we can do in 2024? To shame people, stigmatise them, and make already difficult lives harder?

By comparison, how often do we hear the noise of clickbait stories about drugs, guns, gangs, crime or methamphetamine ‘addicts’ alongside tired, well-worn, unimaginative political rhetoric about the need to ‘crack down’ and ‘get tough’? Stories that often blame drugs for harms fuelled by prohibition. Stories that protect the zombie idea of prohibition.

Changing the story

Treating drug use as a crime is not effective, so why are we desperately clinging to this zombie approach? One reason is the way we tell stories about drugs and the people who use them. Our prohibitionist drug laws provide the script for our stories—laws that could impose life imprisonment on someone who gives magic mushrooms to a friend.

These stories are embedded with moral objections, fear, and hostility towards people who use drugs and they contribute to stigma. We are so indoctrinated by the hype we have created about drugs such as methamphetamine that we cannot imagine change or a new approach. Moral hysteria blinds our view, perpetuating harmful drug policies.

“What about drug checking,” you might think, “isn’t that enough?” Yes, we have drug checking in Aotearoa, which is brilliant. But harm reduction initiatives such as this are largely needed to reduce the harm from prohibitionist drug policies. So why not get rid of prohibition and make the supply of psychoactive substances safer instead?

It is time to relinquish our zombie ideas. Our stories and our drug policies need to be evidence-based. Otherwise, they are little more than misleading rhetoric causing widespread and often devastating harms.

Rather than tweak our zombie ideas, who has the courage to start again? To stand up and start the much-needed drug law reform process? We need courageous and bold leadership to address the harms related to the use of psychoactive substances and prohibition. Without acknowledging the multiple harms that prohibition brings, reform and debate will be an empty exercise.

Perhaps a first step should be thoughtfully assessing and acknowledging the harms that the current system engenders.

Let’s start to tell a different story—one without zombies and without policies that cause more harm than the drugs they are supposedly protecting people from. We need to radically rethink our approach to drugs.

The new organisation Harm Reduction Coalition Aotearoa might just help us do this. It’s calling for all drugs to be legalised and their use and supply carefully regulated. Let’s finally slay the prohibition zombie.

This article was originally published on Newsroom.

Fiona Hutton is an associate professor in Criminology at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. She is a member of the Harm Reduction Coalition Aotearoa.