For the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s, drugs were a weapon in the war to "liberate your head", a key to personal revolution against old ideas and morals. This has led to a perception of the left as a bunch of potheads. But oppression is rooted in class society. Nothing you can smoke, swallow or inject is going to remove the reality that the majority of us have to work in unsatisfying jobs and get mightily ripped off doing so.

So socialists don't see getting stoned as a revolutionary activity. Nor do we consider it a sin. All forms of recreational drug taking, including legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco, are a product of alienation. As individuals we have so little control of our lives that anything that makes it easier to relax, get happy and avoid our problems for a bit is going to be popular. And the more frustrated and hopeless you feel, the greater the attraction of escape, which is why heavy drug use is more prevalent amongst the poorest and most oppressed sections of the community.

Of course, sustained drug use is more dangerous than some other products of alienation, like reality TV or attachment to pets. Excessive or prolonged use of any drug can have serious physical and psychological side effects, and addictions can feed back into the cycle of powerlessness and poverty. Even disregarding possibilities of death or long-term psychosis, drug dependence is going to make it hard to get organised and participate in any of the activities - strikes, demos and so on - that fight alienation at its source.

Because the system we live under, capitalism, is the cause of drug abuse, socialists resist all attempts of the state to punish the victims. The persecution and jailing of illegal drug users is one of the greatest hypocrisies of capitalism.

The criminalisation of certain drugs is not intended to protect anyone. Alcohol abuse is clearly linked to road accidents, violence and thousands of deaths, and creates massive health problems - but use of ecstasy, a suspected factor in under ten deaths in Australia, can carry a jail term.

The ban on marijuana has more to do with the historical association of pot with American black culture early last century than its health risks. From the 1920s, racist campaigns in the US spread paranoia that jazz, cannabis and other elements of "wild Negro culture" were corrupting the white youth of America. Of course, it's easier to jail people for using cannabis than for dancing; and the depiction of smokers as depraved maniacs stigmatised blacks as dangerous and immoral.

The criminalisation of drugs continues to be strongly linked with racism. In the US the "war on drugs" chiefly takes its toll on black communities, where huge numbers of people receive severe sentences for minor possession. Blacks are stereotyped as violent drug dealers, and the use of drugs such as crack cocaine is blamed for the poverty, crime and social dysfunction within the ghettos and used as an excuse for continuing oppression and the withholding of social welfare. The differential treatment can be seen in the sentences handed out to those convicted of using crack - an average of three years in 2003, as compared to those using powdered cocaine - on average, three months. Of course cocaine is associated with rich white professionals.

In Australia, drug dealing is associated by our politicians and media with "Asian gangs", while law and order campaigners stigmatise suburbs with high Asian populations, such as Cabramatta or Footscray, as centres of organised crime and drug trading. In Sydney, you can expect to see drug-sniffing dogs at Mardi Gras and at raids on gay bars. Oppressed groups, rather than poverty, unemployment and frustration, are blamed as sources of the problem. Facilities to help people with drug problems, such as needle-sharing programs to prevent disease or safe injecting rooms to prevent deaths from overdoses, are depicted as "encouraging criminals".

This is all a bit much when you consider the heavy involvement of governments in the spread of drug use. The cultivation of vast amounts of heroin throughout Asia began with Britain's war to force the sale of opium to the Chinese population - a previously unaddicted market. British troops were issued 72 million amphetamine tablets during World War II, while the Vietnam War helped spread amphetamine use much more widely among the American and Australian populations. The US government's infamous Iran-Contra deal introduced vast quantities of heroin into North American cities in order to fund the sale of weapons to both sides in the Iran-Iraq war. Destabilisation of the Middle East and control of its oil was worth thousands of new addicts in the US, just as it's recently been worth thousands of Iraqi lives.