Metamorphoses: Clashing Symbols in the Social Construction of Drugs

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Abstract
In order to understand the nature and intensity of the debate over the reform of “drug” legislation, it is necessary to appreciate the aesthetic forces which influence attitudes to this question, and the symbolic meaning which is attached to the imagery of drugs. The “war on drugs” is a war about emotional imagery and contested symbols, and in particular about the idea of the boundary—a matter crucial to the metaphysics and social organization of Western society. At the same time, it will be argued, it is the failure to recognize that we are dealing with the symbolic realm which bedevils both drug users and legislative policy. The reification of symbols causes and perpetuates the very problems that are intended to be solved. In their fetishization of the objects of drug use, the law and the addict are far more alike than one might think.

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