-Caveat Lector-
>From http://www.observer.co.uk/drugs/story/0,11908,718157,00.html
}}}>Begin
Why a high society is a free society
Drugs should be legalised - their prohibition is an intolerable intrusion into private
behaviour
A C Grayling
Sunday May 19, 2002
The Observer
One measure of a good society is whether its individual members have the autonomy
to do as they choose in respects that principally concern only them. The debate
about heroin, cocaine and marijuana touches precisely on this. In my submission, a
society in which such substances are legal and available is a good society not
because drugs are in themselves good, but because the autonomy of those who
wish to use them is respected. For other and broader reasons, many of them
practical, such a society will be a better one.
I have never taken drugs other than alcohol, nicotine, caffeine and medicinal drugs.
Of these, I have for many years not taken the two former. I think it is inimical to a
good life to be dependent for pleasure and personal fulfilment on substances which
gloss or distort reality and interfere with rationality; and yet I believe that heroin,
cocaine, marijuana, ecstasy and cognates of these should be legal and available in
exactly the same way as nicotine and alcohol.
In logic is no difference between legal and currently illegal drugs. Both are used for
pleasure, relief from stress or anxiety, and 'holidaying' from normal life, and both
are,
in different degrees, dangerous to health. Given this, consistent policy must do one
of two things: criminalise the use of nicotine and alcohol, in order to bring them in
line
with currently illegal substances; or legalise currently illegal substances under the
same kinds of regime that govern nicotine and alcohol.
On civil liberties grounds the latter policy is preferable because there is no
justification in a good society for policing behaviour unless, in the form of rape,
murder, theft, riot or fraud, it is intrinsically damaging to the social fabric, and
involves
harm to unwilling third parties. Good law protects in these respects; bad law tries to
coerce people into behaving according to norms chosen by people who claim to
know and to do better than those for whom they legislate. But the imposition of such
norms is an injustice. By all means let the disapprovers argue and exhort; giving
them the power to coerce and punish as well is unacceptable.
Arguments to the effect that drugs should be kept illegal to protect children fall by
the
same token. On these grounds, nicotine and alcohol should be banned too. In fact
there is greater danger to children from the illegality of drugs.
Almost everyone who wishes to try drugs, does so; almost everyone who wishes to
make use of drugs does it irrespective of their legal status. Opponents say
legalisation will lead to unrestrained use and abuse. Yet the evidence is that where
laws have been relaxed there is little variation in frequency or kind of use.
The classic example is Prohibition in the USA during the 1920s. (The hysteria over
alcohol extended to other drugs; heroin was made illegal in the USA in 1924, on the
basis of poor research on its health risks and its alleged propensity to cause insanity
and criminal behaviour.) Prohibition created a huge criminal industry. The end of
Prohibition did not result in a frenzy of drinking, but did leave a much-enhanced
crime problem, because the criminals turned to substances which remained illegal,
and supplied them instead.
Crime destabilises society. Gangland rivalry, the use of criminal organisations to
launder money, to fund terrorism and gun-running, to finance the trafficking of
women and to buy political and judicial influence all destabilise the conditions for a
good society far beyond such problems as could be created by private individuals'
use of drugs. If drugs were legally and safely available through chemist shops, and if
their use was governed by the same provisions as govern alcohol purchase and
consumption, the main platform for organised crime would be removed, and thereby
one large obstacle to the welfare of society.
It would also remove much petty crime, through which many users fund their habit. If
addiction to drugs were treated as a medical rather than criminal matter, so that
addicts could get safe, regular supplies on prescription, the crime rate would drop
dramatically, as argued recently by certain police chiefs.
The safety issue is a simple one. Paracetemol is more dangerous than heroin.
Taking double the standard dose of paracetemol, a non-prescription analgesic, can
be dangerous. Taking double the standard medical dose of heroin (diamorphine)
causes sleepiness and no lasting effects.
A good society should be able to accommodate practices which are not destructive
of social bonds (in the way that theft, rape, murder and other serious crimes are), but
mainly have to do with private behaviour. In fact, a good society should only interfere
in private behaviour in extremis.
Until a century ago, now-criminal substances were legal and freely available. Some
(opium in the form of laudanum) were widely used. Just as some people are
damaged by misuse of alcohol, so a few were adversely affected by misuses of other
drugs. Society as a whole was not adversely affected by the use of drugs; but it was
benefited by the fact that it did not burden itself with a misjudged, unworkable and
paternalistic endeavour to interfere with those who chose to use drugs.
The place of drugs in the good society is not about the drugs as such, but rather the
freedom and the value to individuals and their society of openness to
experimentation and alternative behaviours and lifestyles. The good society is
permissive, seeking to protect third parties from harm but not presuming to order
people to take this or that view about what is in their own good.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
End<{{{
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