Drug Prohibition

Ill-conceived laws have created today’s drug problem.

Thomas Szasz from the January 1978 issue - view article in the Digital Edition

    

Americans regard freedom of speech and religion as fundamental rights. Until 1914, they also regarded freedom of choosing their diets and
drugs as fundamental rights. Today, however, virtually all Americans regard ingesting certain substances—prohibited by the government—as
both crimes and diseases.

What is behind this fateful moral and political transformation, which has resulted in the rejection by the overwhelming majority of Americans of
their right to self-control over their diets and drugs in favor of the alleged protection of their health from their own actions by a medically
corrupt and corrupted State? How could it have come about in view of the obvious parallels between the freedom to put things into one's mind
and its restriction by the State by means of censorship of the press, and the freedom to put things into one's body and its restriction by the
State by means of drug controls?

CENSORSHIP

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 The answer to these questions lies basically in the fact that our society is therapeutic in much the same
sense in which medieval Spanish society was theocratic. Just as the men and women living in a
theocratic society did not believe in the separation of church and State but, on the contrary, fervently
embraced their union, so we, living in a therapuetic society, do not believe in the separation of medicine
and the State but fervently embrace their union. The censorship of drugs follows from the latter ideology
as inexorably as the censorship of books followed from the former. That explains why liberals and
conservatives—and people in that imaginary center as well—all favor drug controls. In fact, persons of
all political and religious convictions, save libertarians, now favor drug controls.

Liberals tend to be permissive toward socially disreputable psychoactive drugs, especially when they
are used by young and hairy persons; so they generally favor decriminalizing marijuana and treating
rather than punishing those engaged in the trade of LSD. They are not at all permissive, however,
toward non-psychoactive drugs that are allegedly unsafe or worthless and thus favor banning saccharin
and Laetrile. In these ways they betray their fantasy of the State—as good parent: such a State should
restrain erring citizens by mild, minimal, and medical sanctions, and it should protect ignorant citizens Reason
by pharmacological censorship.

Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to be prohibitive toward socially disreputable psychoactive drugs, especially when they are used by
young and hairy persons; so they generally favor criminalizing the use of marijuana and punishing rather than treating those engaged in the
trade of LSD. At the same time, they are permissive toward nonpsychoactive drugs that are allegedly unsafe or worthless and thus favor free
trade in saccharin and Laetrile. In these ways, they too betray their fantasy of the State—as the enforcer of the dominant ethic: such a State
should punish citizens who deviate from the moral precepts of the majority and should abstain from meddling with people's self-care.

Viewed as a political issue, drugs, books, and religious practices all present the same problem to a people and its rulers. The State, as the
representative of a particular class or dominant ethic, may choose to embrace some drugs, some books, and some religious practices and

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 reject the others as dangerous, depraved, demented, or devilish. Throughout hisory, such an arrangement has characterized most societies.
Or the State, as the representative of a constitution ceremonializing the supremacy of individual choice over collective comfort, may ensure a
free trade in drugs, books, and religious practices. Such an arrangement has traditionally characterized the United States. Its Constitution
explicitly guarantees the right to freedom of religion and the press and implicitly guarantees the right to freedom of self-determination with
respect to what we put into our bodies.

Why did the framers of the Constitution not explicitly guarantee the right to take drugs? For two obvious reasons. First, because 200 years
ago medical science was not even in its infancy; medical practice was socially unorganized and therapeutically worthless. Second, because
there was then no conceivable danger of an alliance between medicine and the State. The very idea that the government should lend its
police power to physicians to deprive people of their free choice to ingest certain substances would have seemed absurd to the drafters of the
Bill of Rights.

This conjecture is strongly supported by a casual remark by Thomas Jefferson, clearly indicating that he regarded our freedom to put into our
bodies whatever we want as essentially similar to our freedom to put into our own minds whatever we want. "Was the government to prescribe
to us our medicine and diet," wrote Jefferson in 1782, "our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic
was once forbidden as a medicine, the potato as an article of food."

A THERAPEUTIC STATE
Jefferson poked fun at the French for their pioneering efforts to prohibit drugs and diets. What, then, would he think of the State he himself
helped to create, a State that now forbids the use of harmless sweeteners while encouraging the use of dangerous contraceptives? that labels
marijuana a narcotic and prohibits it while calling tobacco an agricultural product and promoting it? and that defines the voluntary use of
heroin as a disease and the legally coerced use of methadone as a treatment for it?

Freedom of religion is indeed a political idea of transcendent importance. As that idea has been understood in the United States, it does not
mean that members of the traditional churches—that is, Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans—may practice their faith unmolested by the

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 government but that others—for example, Jehovah's Witnesses—may not. American religious freedom is unconditional; it is not contingent on
any particular church proving, to the satisfaction of the State, that its principles or practices possess "religious efficacy."

The requirement that the supporters of a religion establish its theological credentials in order to be tolerated is the hallmark of a theological
State. In Spain, under the Inquisition, there was, in an ironic sense, religious tolerance: religion was tolerated, indeed, actively encouraged.
The point is that religions other than Roman Catholicism were considered to be heresies. The same considerations now apply to drugs.

The fact that we accept the requirement that the supporters of a drug establish its therapeutic credentials before we tolerate its sale or use
shows that we live in a therapeutic State. In the United States today, there is, in an ironic sense, pharmacological tolerance: approved drugs
are tolerated, indeed, actively encouraged. But drugs other than those officially sanctioned as therapeutic are considered worthless or
dangerous. Therein, precisely, lies the moral and political point: governments are notoriously tolerant about permitting the dissemination of
ideas or drugs of which they approve. Their mettle is tested by their attitude toward the dissemination of ideas and drugs of which they
disapprove.

The argument that people need the protection of the State from dangerous drugs but not from dangerous ideas is unpersuasive. No one has
to ingest any drug he does not want, just as no one has to read a book he does not want. Insofar as the State assumes control over such
matters, it can only be in order to subjugate its citizens—by protecting them from temptation, as befits children; and by preventing them from
assuming self-determination over their lives, as befits an enslaved population.

CONTROLLING DANGER
Conventional wisdom now approves—indeed, assumes as obvious—that it is the legitimate business of the State to control certain
substances we take into our bodies, especially so-called psychoactive drugs. According to this view, as the State must, for the benefit of
society, control dangerous persons, so it must also control dangerous drugs. The obvious fallacy in this analogy is obscured by the riveting
together of the notions of dangerous drugs and dangerous acts: as a result, people now "know" that dangerous drugs cause people to behave

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 dangerously and that it is just as much the duty of the State to protect its citizens from dope as it is to protect them from murder and theft. The
trouble is that all these supposed facts are false.

Photo Credit: Reason

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