V Without Victory

In the near future, Roche’s New Jersey factory where Valium was invented will be closed.

The pill engraved with a V was introduced in 1963 to combat “A Whole New World… of Anxiety” and became the most used psychoactive substance in the world. In the U.S. alone it was prescribed to almost 60 million people in 1974, much more than the total number of illegal drug users in that country.

Valium was first tested on the mothers-in-law of Roche executives. The executives, according to Robin Marantz’s piece in the New York Times, were so impressed with the results that they launched a massive marketing campaign to convince doctors and their patients to write a huge number of prescriptions.

Valium became so popular, according to Marantz, that today its original oxymoronic claim no longer sounds ridiculous: “Using drugs to make you feel more like yourself.”

Roche will open a new plant to produce psycho-pharmaceuticals in Manhattan, the same island that three Latin American presidents visited last week to ask for balance in the global fight against illegal drugs. A “scientific” balance, said [Colombian President] Santos. A balance “without prejudice” that explores the alternatives of “markets and regulation,” according to a bolder statement by Felipe Calderon of Mexico.

After the speeches, in a supplementary event, Yuri Fedotov, executive director of the U.N. office against drugs and crime, appeared skeptical about the request. Besides reluctantly “taking note” of the presidents’ requests, he added that the current strategy had a “wide consensus” within the global community. Sadly, he was not mistaken. The United States, Russia, India, Pakistan, Canada and even Brazil have been little moved by the disastrous results of the war against drug trafficking in Latin America.

To put it bluntly, not even Valium vapor pumped into the ventilation ducts of the United Nations would dispel the anxiety of Protestant, Muslim and Catholic Puritans at the discussion of market alternatives for, let’s say, cocaine. As Fedotov said, “A change in the 1961 Convention is not realistic in the short term.”*

But perhaps Calderon went too far — he is on his way out, after all. Something has been gained when we now speak of drugs as a “public health issue.” The phrase is making the rounds among politicians in the White House, Colombia and the United Nations. There is more hope for millions of addicts than there was 10 years ago.

But the crux of the problem, the growing population of young hedonists in Western democracies who buy drugs but are not addicts (roughly 80 percent), still has not been solved. The main contributors to drug trafficking, the healthy, silent minorities of the drug problem, are still not part of the discussion.

If there is hope in Manhattan, perhaps it is in the new Roche factory. This time, the executives should test the new drug on their children.

*Editor’s Note: Fedotov’s statements, accurately translated, could not be verified.