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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 3

Poet Defends Scum

Poet Defends Scum

[James K. Baxter, bearded, bare-footed and saintly in his dedication to people, is an unconventional and enigmatic figure. Regarded as New Zealand’s foremost poet, he surprised many people this year by his decision to leave the comforts of family, income and respectable society to live in a run-down area page 61 in Grafton, Auckland.

There he has been working to help rehabilitate junkies and other social outcasts.

He has formed the first ‘Narcotics Anonymous’ association in New Zealand in which former drug users help present users to break the habit.

In the light of his experience with these people, Mr Baxter was asked to give his views on the nature of police activities, Health Department facilities, and social attitudes related to their problems. The following is an account of those views he expressed to Times reporter Michael King.]

People I care about are being mucked around.

Police activities in Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin, of which I have had personal experience, have become increasingly a feud with younger people.

In this feud the belligerence appears to be ninety-nine per cent on the side of the police, it’s very rarely the policeman gets knocked about, but it’s common for it to happen to other people.

I think this is because the police force exists with an unchecked power structure.

Again and again young people have complained to me that they have been unable to take legal action against the police after being beaten up, because there have been no other witnesses – the police will not act as witnesses against each other.

The ordinary citizen is protected and insulated from any reports of such incidents. It is a bad, bad situation like that in mental hospitals where people won’t be believed because they are mad. We are told that kids are breaking the law and of course they can be expected to tell lies.

In Auckland there seem to be three crimes: to exist, to be poor, and to be Maori. People I know have been badly mistreated, apparently for no reason.

With regard to drugs, I don’t think marihuana should be legalised, but a truce should be called on present police prosecutions.

This should be done because it is smoked widely, because it is less harmful than cigarettes (which can be proved medically), and because many people are weaning themselves off dangerous drugs with marihuana, and this may save their lives.

I believe that any law which is administered in a violently punitive fashion, which laws relating to drugs are, defeats its own ends.

It is also disturbing that the head of a large mental institution in this country can say publicly that junkies are the scum of society – this is a paranoid, blanket statement.

And the doctors who hand over to the police information divulged in psychiatric sessions are breaking their Hippocratic oath. This is frequently done.

The present measures to combat drug use are inadequate.

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Police are not helping drug users to recover – they only search for drugs.

I have also learned from doctors and nurses that mental hospitals have no facilities to offer which are successful in breaking drug habits.

In my opinion this is because they are treating people as objects rather than subjects.

The whole public attitude to drug using is loaded with fear, fantasy and punitive legalism.

The medical superintendent to whom I referred has said that marihuana means instant promiscuity.

But anyone who has used it knows it has a depressing effect on the sexual faculties.

More positively, these are some of the things I would suggest.

I want the police to be policed and not allowed to run wild.

I want communal centres where people who have habits can help others who wish to free themselves.

And I want this country to retain the democratic respect for the free will of the individual.

I have co-operated with ex-drug-users in Auckland in setting up the beginnings of a Narcotics Anonymous Association in New Zealand. I hope it continues.

I believe that the use of drugs in New Zealand will increase one hundredfold as the mental dungeons of our society become more oppressive.

The largest number of drug users may well be among the affluent, respectable people who cannot bear the nullity of their suburban home life.

The most dangerous drugs, those which are most readily available and used, are amphetamines, which can kill people in four years.

I would prefer these respectable drug users not to be abusive about their fellow junkies, who happen to be poor.

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