The remedy that worsens the disease
There is a starting point that is hard to deny: there is a problem with drugs, but there is an even greater problem with the policies designed to combat them. Instead of reducing the harms associated with the use of psychoactive substances, a good portion of the measures implemented over the last few decades have multiplied them, adding new—legal, health, and social—damages that are often more serious than the original ones.
The result is a paradox that any minimally informed observer eventually detects: the solution devised for the problem has reformulated it into something larger and more opaque. The question that more and more people are asking is inevitable: could the remedy be worse than the disease?
A crossroads, not a dead end
Hidalgo’s text insists on an important nuance: we are at a crossroads, not a dead end. There are alternatives left to explore and paths yet to be traveled. To see them, he proposes setting aside the debate over the intentions behind current policies—whether they are sincere, clumsy, or self-interested—and focusing on the only thing that should count: do they work? Are we satisfied with their results? Could we do better?
We can still find a way out of the labyrinth we have entered.
The thought experiment: what if skiing were prohibited?
To shift the angle, Hidalgo uses a classic tool of satire: applying the rules of the drug world to a socially accepted activity and observing the result. The chosen sport is skiing. The question stops being “can we do better?” and becomes “can we do worse?” The answer, based on experience, is that you can always do worse.
Let us imagine, then, a country where skiing is persecuted just as the consumption of certain substances is today:
- Manufacturing, trafficking, or facilitating in any way the use of skis, boots, bindings, and poles is punishable by several years in prison, extendable when aggravating circumstances exist, in addition to fines proportional to the value of the seized equipment.
- Only “lawful” uses—industrial, therapeutic, scientific, and educational—are permitted, subject to administrative permits so cumbersome that anyone who requests them crashes into a practically impassable bureaucratic wall.
- Possessing ski equipment outside of those scenarios, or using it in public spaces, is sanctioned as a serious public safety offense, with fines that can skyrocket depending on the case.
- Accumulating more gear than is considered “for personal use” is interpreted as being intended for trafficking—”ski-trafficking”—and carries prison sentences. The added problem: no one has established what quantity marks the boundary, so not only traffickers end up behind bars, but simple enthusiasts who happened to own too many pairs of skis.
The machinery is not limited to pursuing the supply. It also tries to suppress the demand, starting from the premise that skiing is inherently harmful and, therefore, must be avoided at all costs.
The official narrative of danger
In that parallel world, institutions and public figures speak of skiing almost exclusively in terms of risk, as if getting injured were the only possible outcome of putting on skis. The media seeks out spokespeople aligned with that condemnation: psychiatrists, doctors, and coroners willing to censor the practice. When they collect testimonies from skiers, they choose the clumsiest, most reckless, or unluckiest ones, preferably those who are repentant.
The symbolic dimension is carefully managed. It would be unthinkable to admit that an institutional figure or a member of the royal family had ever stepped foot in a ski resort; if it had happened, it would be hidden behind a thick veil. Meanwhile, family and school are conceived as key environments for prevention: at home and in class, children and young people are instructed in the supreme competence of “non-skiing.”
When prohibiting worsens what it intends to avoid
The satire culminates by showing the real effect of this entire apparatus. Those who decide to ski anyway—and there are many—can only resort to a clandestine market: expensive equipment, without quality controls and of uncertain origin. They learn as best they can, on their own or with the help of acquaintances from the sports “underworld,” and go down unconditioned slopes, without information about the state of the snow or weather conditions.
The available information is scarce, biased, and oriented toward non-consumption. Barely a few programs survive that are aimed at those who already practice the sport: what in the real world we call harm reduction. In Hidalgo’s fiction, that approach is labeled as daring and controversial for one reason: instead of demanding total abstinence, it assumes that the activity exists and tries to ensure that those who engage in it do so with the best information and the least possible harm.
The media refers to the most infamous specialists, well-versed in condemnation and censorship.
The punchline is evident. Applied to skiing, those rules would seem absurd to us; applied to drugs, we have normalized them. The satire does not argue that skiing and consuming substances are comparable in their risks, but rather points out an inconsistency in how we manage danger depending on the activity that generates it.
Critical reading
It is worth reading this text for what it is: a piece of satirical opinion, not a study. Its strength lies in the analogy, and like all analogies, it has limits. Skiing and drug use do not share the same risk profiles, the same potential for dependence, or the same effects on third parties; equating them without nuance can oversimplify a complex debate.
That said, the underlying argument connects with a broad consensus in public health: policies that only pursue abstinence tend to push consumption into the shadows, where quality controls, reliable information, and healthcare are lacking. Harm reduction does not promote consumption; it starts from the fact that consumption exists and attempts to minimize its harms. At Psiconáutica, we defend that informed, moral-free perspective, always remembering that no substance is harmless and that the best harm reduction comes from honest information, not propaganda—neither for nor against.
