Few things are as effective in eliciting the ire of neoconservative Republicans as is talk of decriminalizing recreational drug use.<\/p>\n
Given that the Republican Party is supposed to be the party of personal responsibility and \u201climited government,\u201d this is indeed a tragic commentary on the times.<\/p>\n
Well over 40 years ago, the psychoanalyst Thomas Szasz showed that in a society dedicated to individual liberty, drug criminalization can have no place.\u00a0 Szasz wrote that he favored a free market in drugs for the same reason that the Founders favored a free market of ideas: Just as it is none of the government\u2019s business what ideas a person puts into his head, so it is none of the government\u2019s business what agents a person puts into his body.<\/p>\n
While Szasz noted the economic benefits that drug decriminalization promised to deliver\u2014tax revenues; dramatic reductions in the price of drugs as well as in the number of fatalities from drug overdoses; a precipitous decline in all drug-related crimes\u2014his argument was primarily a moral one.<\/p>\n
And this is because Szasz recognized that while the prevailing discourse over drugs is carried on in the idiom of health<\/em>\u2014drug users are said to be \u201caddicts<\/em>\u201d who are \u201csick<\/em>\u201d and, thus, in \u201cneed<\/em>\u201d of \u201ctreatment<\/em>\u201d\u2014this is but a smokescreen designed to conceal what amounts to nothing more or less than moral judgments. <\/em><\/p>\n Just a casual perusal of the prohibitionist literature readily bears this out.\u00a0 Take, for instance, James Q. Wilson, about as staunch a prohibitionist as they come.\u00a0 The drug prohibitionists, he fully acknowledges, aim to \u201csave people from themselves.\u201d\u00a0 Furthermore, Wilson\u2019s rationale for maintaining the legality of some \u201chighly addictive\u201d substances, like nicotine, while criminalizing others, like cocaine, is unmistakably moral in nature.\u00a0 The latter, he asserts, \u201cdestroy[s] the user\u2019s essential humanity<\/em>\u201d (emphasis added).<\/p>\n Wilson writes: \u201cTobacco shortens one\u2019s life, cocaine debases <\/em>it.\u00a0 Nicotine alters one\u2019s habits.\u00a0 Cocaine alters one\u2019s soul<\/em>\u201d (emphases added).\u00a0 Cocaine use, unlike tobacco use, \u201ccorrodes those natural sentiments of sympathy and duty that constitute our human nature and make possible our social life.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilson\u2019s analysis of drugs is instructive in another respect to which Szasz spoke: drug prohibitionists invariably accentuate the \u201cdangerousness\u201d of drugs.<\/p>\n More specifically, as Szasz observed, they must exaggerate <\/em>the dangerousness of drugs.\u00a0 There are two reasons for this.\u00a0 First, in a society, like the United State, that has traditionally valued freedom, dangerousness alone is no<\/em> justification for criminalization.\u00a0 Secondly, each day we encounter a myriad of perfectly legal things\u2014like automobiles, household cleaning agents, tall buildings, knives, etc.\u2014whose potential for dangerousness is at least as great as that of drugs.<\/p>\n So, it can\u2019t be the case that drugs are just<\/em> dangerous.\u00a0 It must be the case that drugs are really, really <\/em>dangerous!<\/p>\n That people can and do harm and kill themselves via drug use is a brute fact, Szasz readily admitted; but it is a brute fact precisely because people can and do harm and kill themselves by all sorts of means.<\/em>\u00a0 This capacity for self-destruction is \u201ca fundamental expression of human freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n Respect for the liberty of individuals is radically incompatible with laws designed to \u201csave them from themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, laws designed to criminalize drugs are antithetical to liberty.<\/p>\n Drug prohibitionists, like Wilson, are quick to inform us that drugs harm not just drug users, but families and whole communities.\u00a0 Szasz, however, speaking on behalf of those of us who value human freedom, is equally quick to remind us that, in reality, if any entity is responsible for any harm to either the user or anyone else, it is the user, <\/em>a living, breathing person\u2014<\/em>not some lifeless, inanimate chemical agent with a god-like power to \u201chook\u201d anyone<\/em> that comes near it.<\/p>\n This, though, is no grounds for singling out drug use for criminalization.\u00a0 Human beings are mutually dependent.\u00a0 Hence, there isn\u2019t a single kind of action that, for good or ill, doesn\u2019t impact others. In a society devoted to preserving the liberty of the individual, the only actions that should be criminalized are those\u2014like murder, violence, rape, burglary, etc.\u2014that are essentially <\/em>other-directed in their harmful effects.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t that we undermine liberty just <\/em>by preventing the individual from partaking of potentially dangerous activities that are essentially <\/em>self-regarding.\u00a0 Szasz warned that liberty suffers from depriving individuals of personal responsibility.\u00a0 <\/em>Moral maturity is possible only if persons have the freedom to make tough, even scary, choices.\u00a0 A government that divests human beings of such opportunities by saving them from themselves not only arrests moral growth; it sets in motion a moral regression, a process insuring a permanent class of adult-children.<\/p>\n Szasz was correct when he argued this point over 40 years ago.\u00a0 He remains correct today.<\/p>\n No people or party committed to liberty can support the cause to save people from themselves by making them into criminals.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Few things are as effective in eliciting the ire of neoconservative Republicans as is talk of decriminalizing recreational drug use. Given that the Republican Party is supposed to be the party of personal responsibility and \u201climited government,\u201d this is indeed a tragic commentary on the times. Well over 40 years ago, the psychoanalyst Thomas Szasz…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n