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There is a recent opinion on The Guardian, As the mayor of Amsterdam, I can see the Netherlands risks becoming a narco-state, where she wrote, ” Spurred on by globalization and the international criminalization of drugs, the illegal drugs trade has become more lucrative, professional and ruthlessly violent. The effects have been disastrous. In the past decade, the port of Rotterdam, the largest port in Europe, has become a global transit hub for cocaine. The Dutch authorities have increased their efforts to combat drug trafficking, but they have not turned the tide. Amsterdam, as an international financial hub, now serves as a marketplace where the demand for drugs is being determined, and negotiations and payments are being made from all over the world.”
The drug problem may seem complicated, but a rudimentary question to start with is this, why do people use drugs? Why does the need make drugs so valuable? What do drugs do that makes them seem useful?
The answer sought is not a list of situational or experiential outcomes, but the operations at the source, the human mind.
What if people in the Netherlands or in Europe knew what drugs did and it is possible to see that something else might do it for them, without the drugs?
Also, what if the streams of young people available for violent drug crimes are made to see how the situation induces them, from their minds?
The problem of drug use is among other things, a neurobiology situation. This means that while there might be other factors, the two direct factors responsible for drug use and violent crimes are the electrical and chemical impulses of nerve cells.
So how might it be possible to provide a display of the features of these impulses, especially with how they relay and shape experiences?
How is it also possible to show the situations that some are in, and what the drugs did, when used?
Many people often say life’s problems got some on drugs and into gangs. How might the drugs have made a perception of help, where the consequences were eventually ignored?
Any drug policy, strict or lax, without considerations for direct mechanism of drugs interplaying with experiences on the mind, even conceptually, may not be encompassing enough.
Simply, if an illegal drug appeared to taper anxiety, how did it do it? If a person is motivated by money to deal drugs, how did that happen in the mind, including for the anticipation of reward and comparison with others. If drugs work as stimulants or sedatives, how do they do so in a way that is directly at play, with the life experiences of the individual?
In neurobiology, there are already known pathways, including for reward, dopamine and so forth. There are also details on receptor activation, and so on.
However, what is also necessary is an explanation of how experiences are eased by drug effects, such that the drug can change what an experience is. This is the display that may be useful in deterring new people from taking on drugs and regular users to begin a path to getting clean, as well as to prevent more recruits into drug crimes.
Theoretically, the human mind is the collection of all the electrical and chemical impulses of nerve cells, with their features and interactions. These impulses mechanize their functions in sets. The sets have their features.
This means that all experiences are functions of sets of impulses. The features of sets include principal spot, sequences, distribution, early-splits, thin and thick formations, prioritization, pre-prioritization, arrays and so on.
Reward, conceptually, can be described as a collection of higher rations of certain chemical impulses that end up in a principal spot which becomes an array where other sets of impulses join.
Conceptually, the mind organizes information in sets of impulses with their configurations. Sets of impulses can be said to be available in clusters of neurons. In those clusters, some neurons from elsewhere may send fibers in to provide their own chemical impulses.
So, while the experience of something may be happening, the dopamine fibers may provide an outsize version of the impulse, which may take part in an interaction, conceptually, of electrical and chemical impulses in the right mix to result in the experience of reward. This experience may then allow for sadness, worry, anxiety or others to be in pre-prioritization in that interval.
It is possible to provide this as a digital display across devices, spots, homes, schools, offices, social centers and so forth, to ensure that drugs are not just seen as powerful, but their crosslink with experiences are exposed, giving people more awareness and a better chance of relating with what might be happening within, for a higher probability of saying no.
The Netherlands can continue their work with Europol, Interpol, the Rotterdamse havenautoriteit, harm reduction and so forth. However, the human mind relays maybe another tool against this thorny global problem.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
The post Neurobiology: How the Netherlands Might Combat Drug Trafficking and Violent Crimes appeared first on The Good Men Project.