Szasz

Thesis: A free trade in drugs, including addictive and dangerous ones, is morally defended by appeal to Mill's "simple principle" of personal liberty.

-The essay challenges existing reasons for why society has either a right or a moral obligation to prohibit addictive drugs.

Mill's principle: "the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection" or, reworded, "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." The principle is a second order rule for rejecting paternalistic prohibitions on adult behavior.

-From this, it follows that "current drug laws" are immoral, and so "we have a right to be intoxicated" and a "right to self-medication." It is just as important as our right to free speech, and it is our right for the same reason (i.e., not a an inalienable human right, but as a right conferred on utilitarian grounds).

Current Policy: “Drug addiction is a state of periodic or chronic intoxication detrimental to the individual and to society, produced by the repeated consumption of a drug (natural or synthetic). It’s characteristics include: 1) An overpowering need (compulsion) to continue taking the drug and obtain it by any means, 2) a tendency to increase the dosage, and 3) a psychic (psychological) and sometimes physical dependence on the effects of the drug.” (343)
 The first short coming, and potentially major short coming, of this view is that you can only be addicted to illegal substances. This seems to make addiction a moral problem instead of a medical problem.
 The definition, and current medical opinion, also tries to make addiction a disease and, like all diseases, we ought to do out utmost to try and eradicated it

- But is this really fair?

Three major objections to current policies.

1) We are inconsistent in our treatment of very similar substances, particularly alcohol.

2) We routinely confuse cause and effect, confusing the bad effects of criminalizing behavior with the bad effects of the behavior, and confusing the symptom of a bad or unconventional life (excessive use of "self-medication") with the cause of a bad or unconventional life.

3) We impose a Puritan work ethic on everyone. But doing so is unjustified. It shows we do not really value individual liberty.

PROPOGANDA: Prohibitions often exaggerate the dangers (technical) side of drug use. And in fact, even if durgs are dangerours, it seems to be an irrelevant issue.

-Why?

  • We ban free trade in many non-addictive drugs (e.g., insulin), and we permit sale and use of many things that are more dangerous than narcotics (e.g., guns). If it is legal to own a shotgun, it should be legal to buy narcotics.
  • On utilitarian grounds, we should only prohibit the unwanted consequences of drug use. As with alcohol, we should enforce bans on harm to others, e.g., public intoxication (the harm of being a public nuisance), driving while under the influence, etc.

WITHDRAWAL PAINS:

We assume that drug use, because of its addictive and destructive nature, ruins lives (that it "poisons" users) and causes crime. This isn’t necessarily true for two reasons:

-1) Lots of addictive habits can be broken, either with or without medical assistance; the success of “quitting” usually depends on the desire of the addic

-2) Often times the people who are addicted and continue to stay addicted may have personality traits that society would find undesirable anyways

  • Taking drugs away from social "drop outs" will do nothing to make those people "buy in" to society.
  • And the expense of drug addiction, and its connection to violent crime, is due to lack of free trade in what would otherwise be cheap drugs.

SELF-MEDICATION:

-There’s no fact o support that the reason for the prohibition of certain drugs is because of their addictive potency

  • 1) Lots of drugs that are neither addictive nor dangerous are prohibited
  • 2) Lots of things that are more dangerous than drugs are not prohibited.

-So it’s not just that humans are too fallible to responbily use the drugs.

  • The point S is making here is a general attack on the current dr./patient medical model.
  • We should have a right to self-medicate
  • This is also brought up in the SCIENTIFIC MEDICINE section

-CHIDLREN: Obviously, children are a special case, but we deal with them as such in all kinds of instances.

  • Alcohol
  • Sex

SCIENTIFIC MEDICINE:

-There are some big inconsistencies to what things are permitted vs prohibited, and the determinations of the classification are based on two things.

  • 1) Social Tradition: we just accepted old distinction, and are slow to change them even with new evidence
  • 2) Scientific Judgment: This assumes that there are professional who a) know the facts better than we do and b) can interpret and apply those facts better.
  • Neither of those, but especially the latter, is necessarily true.
  • Another attack on the Dr./Patient model

LIFE LIBERTY AND HIGHS

-The Big question seems to be: does a person have a right to take a drug, any drug—not because he needs it to cure an illness, but because he wants to take it?

  • S thinks that the reason people would answer NO to this question isn’t really based on any scientific evidence, it’s based on moral claims.
  • Watch out for dangerous drugs and drug abusers
  • But this is inconsistent, since we are “allowed” to engage in lots of other dangerous practices.
  • As long as alcohol is allowed, narcotics should be allowed. There are no significant differences between them.