Death of a junkie

The death of Philip Seymour Hoffmann at only 46 has elicited all the usual reactions when confronted by the tragic and untimely demise of the famous and talented. And with good reason, for Seymour Hoffman was undeniably talented: one of the great character actors of our age, in fact... and I can't help but note the poignant irony that one of his more memorable performances was a portrayal of Truman Capote - who similarly lost his life to addiction (alcohol, in that case) at a very young age.

Seymour Hoffmann died of an apparent heroin overdose in his New York apartment. He was found with a needle still stuck in his arm, and the following detail has now emerged: "Among the drugs found in Hoffman's apartment were several packets stamped with the ace of hearts, as well as the ace of spades... both are said to be brand names for heroin which street dealers employ."

There were 70 such packets of heroin in his home.

This brings us to the first of several uncomfortable aspects to the case. If Philip Seymour Hoffmann were Maltese - which we could have talked about as a possibility before his death, seeing as Maltese nationality is a commodity can now be purchased - consistency would demand that we treat him as a criminal, just as we treat all other people found with large quantities of drugs in their homes.

Under Maltese law, the quantity of heroin alone would be enough to secure a conviction for trafficking, even if we were talking about infinitely less dangerous drugs such as marijuana. Technically the law does not make any distinction at all between these two drugs, or indeed any other substance scheduled under the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance.

Admittedly, now that Seymour Hoffmann is dead there is not much Maltese law would be able to do even if it were applicable to his case. But in principle it would be compelled to consider this as a potential drug trafficking scenario... when I somehow suspect that no one in his right mind would sincerely believe that Philip Seymour Hoffmann actually made a living out of selling illegal drugs.

Even the press reports were worded to the effect that he was merely a consumer, not a dealer; the brand names quoted above are supplied as 'proof' that the heroin was purchased from street dealers... making these shady, disreputable and conveniently nameless customers the real villains of the piece.

All this is neatly packaged for our consumption with the express aim to make us feel a sense of injustice at the loss of such great talent. But I'll resist the temptation to seize on the glaring double standards, whereby the identical death of Joey Nobody would have been ignored or even sneered at by the same international press.

Seymour Hoffmann's death illustrates so much more than that. The amount of heroin retrieved from his apartment amply shows that it is possible - probably even normal, among those wealthy enough to afford a permanent stash - for the non-trafficking drug user to have large amounts of drugs at his or her disposal at any given time. In so doing, it instantly debunks the local myth, perpetuated by our law courts, that large quantities of drugs automatically equate to an intention to traffic.

Anyone familiar with the underworld of heroin addiction - and if this does not include you, I'd recommend Life (Keith Richards' recent autobiography) as a first step - will know that all the world's junkies, great or small, share the same basic fear: running out of dope. To avoid this unthinkable scenario, the addict is compelled to frequent the same circles, and to live life in umbilical connection to his or her preferred supplier/s.

Wealthy and well-connected addicts will cultivate many such dealer-client relations, and their fear of running out of supplies will eventually lead them to 'stock up'. Poorer addicts have no such luxury, and these are often the ones who end up mugging old ladies in dark alleys, or driving their parents to destitution.

But back to the local legal scenario. A living Seymour Hoffmann caught in Malta with 70 sachets of heroin would have to be tried for drug trafficking, when most people would laugh at the idea that he was an active drug trafficker. If convicted he could have been sentenced to up to 25 years. And in that small example alone, you have a clear picture of how local legislation does not really give a toss about whether the results of its implementation are 'just' or not. It seems far more concerned with vindicating the ignorance of the politicians who drew up those laws in the first place.

And not only do Maltese politicians legislate on drugs without so much as informing themselves on the subject - but they have so far deliberately shut out all such information: studiously ignoring all the advice of experts in the field (including government's own drug agency, Sedqa) for years. Unsurprisingly, the results are primitive, unsophisticated and uncouth, and seem to be entirely uninterested in actually tackling the most crucial purpose for which they were devised: i.e., to minimise loss of life and other negative consequences of drug-taking.

This was also indirectly illustrated by Seymour Hoffman's demise... and arguably also by Joey Nobody's, though we all ignore such deaths when they occur. It would arguably be much more difficult to accidentally overdose on heroin, if heroin were a perfectly legal substance available from the closest pharmacy.

At a glance, the scenario would be familiar to anyone with any knowledge of how heroin actually works. I have never heard of the 'ace of hearts' of 'ace of spades' varieties - that might just be a New York thing - but what all such street names have in common is that they tend to represent a degree of purity of the drug on offer. You can in a sense consider them as the illegal heroin version of the colour-coded brands of legal cigarettes. If you but a pack of Marlboro Reds, you know they will be stronger than Marlboro Lights, etc.

Purity of heroin depends largely on how it was 'cut' - i.e., mixed with other substances to reduce the purity to non-lethal levels. As Keith Richards will tell you, the 'beginner' way to cut heroin is to aim for a 2% solution. As one's tolerance grows, the dosage can be increased... but never to much more than the original 2%. Even then, the addict who takes a break (usually for detox purposes) is advised to return to the original 2% dose instead of continuing with the higher dose, as tolerance also wears off over time.

And here's the rub. When you're buying stuff off the streets from unlicensed and unregulated dealers, you can simply never be certain of the purity of what you're buying. All it takes for a fatal heroin overdose is to unwittingly inject yourself with a purer mix than the one your body is used to coping with. When that happens, death is normally swift, as it seems to have been in Seymour Hoffmann's case.

This is why one of the core arguments of a much maligned legalisation lobby is that all such deaths can be dramatically minimised by introducing market regulations to the heroin industry, as we already do with all sorts of other potentially lethal but perfectly legal things. A sachet of heroin bought from a pharmacy will have been put through the same rigorous testing and adhere to the same corporate standards as all other pharmaceutical products. You would have the purity marked on the side of the box, just like tar and nicotine with cigarettes.

Another frequent cause of heroin fatalities involves unrelated health issues. People recovering from debilitating illnesses may not realise that their tolerance to the drug will have dropped along with their immunity system and all other bodily defence mechanisms. In such cases, even the standard dose one is accustomed to can and often does prove lethal.

Again, if heroin were a legal product it would carry instructions - necessary for other reasons too, by the way: injecting yourself with anything is not a skill one is born with, and can be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing - and health warnings to inform potential users of the risks they are running.

To be fair there are counter-arguments... even if legal, heroin remains an impossibly dangerous thing to mess with (as Philip Seymour Hoffmann's death also graphically illustrates). But this in turn only underscores how monumentally unjust the local drug laws really are, by insisting on not making any distinction between killer substances like heroin and other drugs which do not entail even a fraction of the risks.

I won't go into the economic arguments of the legalisation lobby because that would require the space of several more articles. But a point must surely be reached when we ask ourselves why we even have drug laws in the first place... if the results of their implementation seem to directly increase drug fatalities instead of reducing them.