Drugs. We always talk about them with certain fear and shame, product of the bad image society has about them because of the constant media campaign orchestrated against them in the past few decades. But once accepted as one of the many substances that humans can consume to satisfy their needs, arguments for their prohibition seem to fade away.
The most used argument for illegalization is health. A consensus about the negative effects of drugs on health does exist, but in most cases these effects are not as harmful as most of the people believe. This argument by itself seems s insufficient for two reasons.
First, each human being should be responsible of himself and of his actions. If someone freely chooses to consume substances that worsen his health no one should oppose to it by force. Second, from a more practical point of view, there are substances that harm our health that are legal and relatively accepted, like alcohol, caffeine, nicotine and, less extended, cannabis. Also, these accepted substances are not the least harmful, the contrary, they are within the most dangerous for humans.
Another argument widely used against legalization is that it would produce a massive increase in the consumption and, hence, of the addiction. Nowadays access to drugs is relativelt easy even if they are illegalized, so those interested in trying them will probably do. Also, like in the case of health, not all the addictive substances are banned. In fact, nicotine is considered with the highest addiction potential and it remains one of the most popular and socially accepted substances. What the government decides that we can be addict to does not seem to follow any clear principle or any logic.
It is also argued that drugs consumption constitute a “public risk”. The argument against this affirmation is the same as the previous. I would add that there do exist mechanisms less intrusive for individual freedom that would solve the “public risk” problem, like the harshening of the penalties to discourage reckless behavior, or addiction clauses in the insurance contracts that would make much more costly for the assured to be involved in any accident under the influence of drugs.
There is an argument less used against legalization that requires some attention too. It is that drugs can produce useless individuals, leaving idle resources in the economy. This could be true for the most extreme cases of addiction, like in nowadays higher levels of alcoholism. But this problem would have an easy solution using contracts between companies and employees that forbid the latter to consume drugs, like what happens with doping in professional athletes. Also, even admitting this as a general problem, government has no moral authority to force anyone to be productive instead of addicted.
But drugs legalization has some positive aspects too, most of the time difficult to see because of the disinformation culture currently existent. The clearest and most general argument for drugs legalization is individual freedom and self-property. Every individual should be free and responsible for doing whatever they want with his body, including consuming drugs. This covers also assuming responsibly the consequences that this could carry for themselves and the compensation of the ones that it carries for others.
Other argument for legalization is the vague definition of drug or, better said, the thin line that separates what is legal from what is not. As I commented before, drugs don’t seem to be legalized according to their addiction or their harming potential. And social acceptance is not a good measure, because any drug becomes socially accepted when it has been legalized for enough time.
We shouldn’t forget that drugs also have some positive effects that the poor education about them insist to hide. One of the most widely accepted drug applications nowadays is the pain and agony treatment for terminal patients, who have access to cannabis and even LSD in some countries. Even so, both substances are fully or almost fully prohibited in the majority of countries, so a great number of persons are deprived from their therapeutic use, recommended or not by a specialist.
Other possitive effect of drugs that seems to have no weight in government decisions is the creative empowerment, both scientific and artistic. There are plenty of big names of arts and science that used drugs as an inspiration source. There are drugs that stimulate self-exploration and self-knowledge, activities very useful for anyone.
Among those big names who consumed drugs because of their positive effects we find great geniuses like Friedrich Nietzsche, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Sigmund Freud or Thomas Edison, whose achievements are well known and others less known like the astrophysicist Carl Sagan, the discoverer of the double-helix DNA structure Francis Crick, or the writer Ken Kesey, to mention some examples.
At last, there is a positive a much criticized application of drugs: entertainment. Drug effects are very diverse, and most of them can be profitable with no other reason than having a good time. There isn’t any good solid argument against this kind of entertainment that doesn’t violate individual freedom.
There is also a positive effect of legalization that admits little discussion: violence reduction. In an environment where drugs were considered one of many substances, the power of drug lords would disappear and with it all the violence they use to maintain their position. A war is always a war, and the drug war is not less. Each year lots of lives are lost in this war and a massive amount of people is kept captive of a system inevitably violent because disputes can’t be solved by justice or other pacific means.
Legalization would transfer the highly concentrated power of drug lords to small producers and dealers, who wouldn’t be afraid of the violent means of their superiors if they don’t reach their goals, but of the deception of their clients and of the decisions of courts, putting drug industry in the same situation as any other industry in conflict terms. Also, the end of violence would mean less “public risk”, acting as an argument against that affirmation.
Economic growth is a great argument for legalization too. Drug industry is a terribly inefficient one since prohibition prevents real supply and demand from matching. Once drugs were legalized, they would experiment an increase in quality and a decrease in price, as producers and dealers wouldn’t have to suffer the costs of hiding their activity from authorities and the costs of legal sanctions. This price decrease would imply that criminality associated to drug consumption would decrease too, as those who commit crimes to obtain the resources necessary to buy them would need less resources, even reaching a point where they could obtain them in a legal way.
Also, the quality increase would reduce the number of involuntary overdoses coming from the adulteration that drugs suffer now a day, against which consumers have little ways of fighting. All this would mean a reduction of the health problems caused by drugs.
Mixing some of the above arguments, drugs could be also used as a mean of self-destruction using any means they want. Drugs can kill if used in enough quantity, so they could be a method, probably much nicer, to suicide or to commit euthanasia.
A last reason to legalize drugs is the possibility for the government to earn some tax revenue. This is a possibility that libertarians wouldn’t look favorably, but it shouldn’t be forgotten as a useful argument against prohibition.
Nowadays it seems to exist a slow tendency towards legalization, especially with cannabis, but there’s still a long way to go. Some of the most advanced countries are Netherlands, where selling under strict conditions and comsuming are legal; some states in USA, where selling and consuming are legal; or Czech Republic, where possession of certain quantities of heroin and cannabis is legal.
Despite some advances, the way to a free drugs market is still long and harsh, seeming to be more an educational issue than a wellness one. Citizens themselves should decide which substances they want to consume after acquiring sufficient knowledge, not leaving the government, through violence and disinformation, to decide what we can and what we can’t consume.