Drug Legalization
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Transcript Drug Legalization
Drug Legalization
Arguments for legalizing drugs
Why drug laws should be
repealed
Benefits
Benefits of liberty
Benefits from drug use (pleasure,
medicinal uses, social interaction)
Experiments in living benefit others who
learn from it
Limiting choices harms everyone by
limiting information
Liberty
Drug users are agents
Free
Voluntary
Informed
They don’t threaten rights of others
Mill’s bridge: can only warn of danger
Critique of Government Action
You care most about your own good;
you have stronger incentive to protect
yourself than anyone else has to protect
you
You know most about your own good;
your choices are more likely to lead to
happiness than those anyone else
might select
Costs
Costs
Courts (case loads, costs, delays)
Police ($20 billion/year)
Prisons ($10 billion/year— 1/2 prison
population there for drug-related offenses)
Lost tax revenue: $10 billion/year
Increased Harms
Enforcement is ineffective
Increased harms from drugs
Switches to stronger, more easily
concealed drugs with higher profit
margins
No controls on quality, strength,
contamination
No information about reasonable use
Other Harms
Other harms
Corruption
Violence
Loss of respect for law (inconsistency)
Injustice
“tyranny of the majority”
racial profiling
imprisoned African-Americans
Rates of imprisonment (100,000)
United States: 546
Georgia: 730
Texas: 700
Florida: 636
California: 607
Italy: 89
UK: 86
France: 84
Germany: 80
Holland: 51
Arguments for Drug Laws
Why we shouldn’t legalize drugs
Harms to Users
Drug laws succeed in discouraging use
Legalization would increase harms to
users
More use, including underage use
More addiction
More illnesses, overdoses, deaths
Less recovery; treatment succeeds only
when compulsory
Harms to Others
Associates of users: family, friends, coworkers, customers, unborn
Victims of users: victims of accidents,
violence, crime
Everyone else: increased health care,
insurance costs, lost productivity
Voluntariness
Voluntariness (competence): Is an
addict really exercising liberty?
Voluntary slavery: Are we really “free not
to be free”?
Analogy:
“give me your wallet or I’ll beat you up”— this
is coercion, not freedom
But withdrawal may be worse than a beating
Knowledge
Ignorance: Do drug users really have
enough information to make reasonable
choices?
Analogy: prescription drugs
Drug education?
Cognitive blindspot: Long-term
consequences
Communitarian Arguments
Offense to others
Moral harm
Agent: “debases the soul”
Others: bad example
Social cohesion (expectations)
Liberal Arguments
Exploitation: drug suppliers would be
using users, profiting from their
weakness
Cf. Big tobacco, big alcohol, etc.
Support: insurance against weakness
of will
Lower v. higher-order desires: we may
want something we want not to want
Liberal Arguments
Risk
Some drugs may be so harmful that
it could never be reasonable to use
them
Irrationality: we assume coercion,
incompetence, or ignorance (Mill’s
bridge)
Conservative Arguments
Character
Drug use impedes character
development
Society is not just for adults
Laws must help mold children into
responsible adults
Conservative Arguments
Tradeoffs
Other values are at stake: community,
virtue, productivity, prosperity, safety,
etc.
Increasing liberty to use drugs could
place these in jeopardy
Conservative Arguments
Tradition
Long tradition of drug laws
Society is complicated; we must find
best laws by experimenting over long
time
Product of reasoned choices
Good guide to human nature
Can’t predict effects of legalization