I detect something of a ‘first principles’ air hanging over this blog at the moment. An impatient urge to push rudely past the tennis-match formality of polite debate and embrace the raw, beating heart of the matter.
This atmosphere may not last and, truth be told, I hope it doesn’t, lest it descends into an arid aesthetism that tends to mitigate heavily against the kind of rumbustious fun we prefer to trade in. That said, I wish to strike while the iron is hot and use this window of opportunity to get something off my chest (where it has been squatting like a toad).
Over at ‘The Edge of England’s Sword’ the otherwise reliably insightful Iain Murray has been conducting his own personal War on Drugs. Iain has referred to a report indicating the cannabis is not a ‘gateway’ drug (i.e. people who use cannabis will not necessarily gravitate towards using ‘harder’ drugs such as cocaine, heroin etc). Iain takes the view that the report is misleading for reasons that, I daresay, he could explain with his customary precision. I think it is fair to say that Iain, along with many others, opposes drug legalisation.
I take objection to Iain’s position and not because I have any persuasive evidence as to whether cannabis is or is not a ‘gateway’ drug. It is because I simply do not care.
It seems that the entire drug debate revolves around the argument of whether or not particular chemical substances have the capacity to cause harm to human beings. Those who favour prohibition argue that things like cannabis and cocaine do harm to human beings for various reasons and, therefore, the state must be empowered to remove them from society. Those in favour of drug legalisation tend to argue that cannabis or ecstacy are no more harmful than, say, tobacco or alcohol and so banning them is hypocritical and counterproductive.
The whole argument is not just flagrantly preposterous, but also has dangerous implications of the kind that much of the blogosphere has been energised to oppose.
If your argument about narcotics is based upon the ‘harm’ issue then you have accepted the principle that it is the government’s duty to deny us access to things that may be injurious to our well-being. This is exactly the argument that is used by ‘public safety campaigners’ when they lobby the government to deprive us of everything from the right to bear arms to smoking to eating fatty foods. Thus do our lives become ever-more circumscribed.
If you support drug prohibition than you have no argument with the gun-grabbers, the health fascists or the enviro-mentalists and I can do nothing but dissolve in fury when I hear so many Conservatives complain of ‘political correctness gone mad’ in response to smoking-bans or the confiscation of toy guns. These idiocies are nothing to do with ‘political correctness’; they are the logical consequences of the widespread acceptance of the prohibitionist principle which provides both the moral validation and missionary righteousness of the nanny state.
What they do to cocaine today, they will do to hamburgers tomorrow.
Despite all the earnest goodwill to the contrary, prohibition is a beast that will not remain tied in a straightjacket. Instead, like a feckless Welfare Queen, it will continue to spawn bastard children that terrorise their fellow citizens. Leaving aside that prohibition is the rubric by which the state arrogates ever more power to itself, it has also infantilised civil society by establishing the assumption that thinking adults are no less vulnerable than toddlers playing with razor blades. Prohibition places government in the role of Big Mummy, snatching dangerous things from our pudgy little hands before we do a mischief to ourselves.
Human beings are chemical creatures and we have interacted with other external chemicals from our emergence as homo sapiens. Just what, I wonder, has so dramatically changed in the phrenology of our species since bored Victorian housewifes sipped laudanum for their headaches, to render any future repetition of this a civilisational disaster?
Did it do them any harm? I don’t know and I don’t care. For the ‘harm’ is not the issue; it is an irrelevence. What most certainly has done a great deal of harm is prohibitionism which has fueled the relentless growth of both government and criminals and which continues to shrink the rest of us into ever-decreasing circles of fear and dependency.
Never mind the cannabis, just say ‘no’ to prohibition.
I recall several years ago in Tampa, Florida, local government officials vetting the possibility of banning sales of chilled beer (generally, Americans prefer beer ice-cold) lest desparate & thirsty yokels pop the top while driving. Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed. To some extent, US nanny-statism is prodded by civil lawsuits, hence, the current threat to hamburgers.
I recall several years ago in Tampa, Florida, local government officials vetting the possibility of banning sales of chilled beer (generally, Americans prefer beer ice-cold) lest desparate & thirsty yokels pop the top while driving. Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed. To some extent, US nanny-statism is prodded by civil lawsuits, hence, the current threat to hamburgers.
Bravo, David. I have long heald that the War on Drugs is inherently EVIL, in that it flys in the face of Christian teachings. As such, it will corrupt everything it touches.
I recommend all libertarians, no matter your religious bent, support Christians for Cannabis.
If you support drug prohibition than you have no argument with the gun-grabbers, the health fascists or the enviro-mentalists
Are you saying that the practical benefits of gun ownership are as non-existent as getting high on drugs, or is there some big value to poisonous narcotics that people like me have missed? I favour legal guns because they can be put to good use as well as bad. I don’t see how this applies to LSD or cocaine.
Anyway, harm is one argument against drugs, but I’d say the strongest is that proposed by Allen Bloom: the natural order connects ecstatic pleasure with the achievement of great things, the discovery of important truths, victory in a just war and consummated love. Drugs are most dangerous because they destroy the natural order linking effort to great pleasure and achievement to skill, giving highs to anyone and everyone – regardless of effort or talent – in the most repugnant egalitarian way. Who would want to set right injustices in the real world or discover solutions to the real problems of modern life when they can wash them all away in a drug-induced orgasm?
It is because I simply do not care.
Ah, how I love that sentence, David. Agnostics and atheists are as alarmed as Christians when I tell them “I just don’t care whether God exists or not.” In that debate it’s of no consequence, really, but here it’s a delightful two fingers to all the busybodies out there. And it brought a big smile to my face.
I’m not sure I can follow Allen Bloom any more than I can follow Harold Bloom, though.
Peter,
Ah yes, the old, paternalistic ‘natural order of things nostrum. Just another way of repeating the same ‘drugs-are-harmful’ mantra.
In Response To Peter Cuthbertson:
Orgasm is itself fairly egalitarian. Would you reserve it for those who have achieved great things?
I dislike anonymous posts, but since I’m admitting to having committed felonies in the past, I’m afraid I can’t sign my name to this post. If you have some compelling reason to find out who I am, you have my IP address.
When you argue that:
“Drugs are most dangerous because they destroy the natural order linking effort to great pleasure and achievement to skll…”
it seems as if you are arguing that the state should have an unlimited power to regulate the behavior of individuals in order to maximize their contribution to society, as opposed to preventing them from doing harm (if indeed you arguing for criminal sanctions against drug users, rather than arguing that people should voluntarily refrain from using drugs). Personally, I feel that drugs are most dangerous _to society at large_ because they can cause behavior which is harmful to others- the junkie committing a crime to pay for smack, or the drunk who drives, or attacks someone in a bar. I think that the state should have little interest in denying people orgasmic experiences if it cannot be shown that these experiences are a proximate cause of harm to others.
The other point that I would like to make is that you have badly misclassified LSD when you call it poisonous. I have taken _massive_ amounts of LSD in my lifetime- if you were to add it all up and weigh it I suspect that you would have to report the weight in tenths of a gram. If LSD, in the amounts that people regularly take it, were in any way “poisonous” I would be dead a hundred times over. I have experienced _no_ adverse effects, other than a few unpleasant trips caused by external circumstances that I would have preferred not to have to deal with while tripping.
I’m not arguing that everyone should do as much acid as I have- or that everyone should do acid at all. Acid is very strong medicine, and some people react very badly to it. I have seen people really lose it after taking acid repeatedly. Anyone who recommends it as a panacea, or indeed as a harmless substance, is acting very irresponsibly. But I believe that it is inconsistent to argue that the state should ban the use of LSD while allowing the use of alcohol. For every person I have seen damaged by the use of LSD I have seen ten people damaged, to ten times the extent, by drinking. I still drink. I haven’t taken doses in a few years, but given the opportunity, I would gladly do so again.
Peter Cuthberston should understand that getting high on cocaine is, in itself, a benefit. Just like getting drunk on wine, or using a gun to avoid the emotional distress of being mugged.
Of course, there can be a downside if people get addicted. But an individual can assess the pros and cons to themselves better than the State. I have used cocaine half a dozen times in the last ten years and had a ball. Was this a “bad use” Peter? Who was I hurting? What business is it of yours?
The problem with Peter Cuthbertson’s argument isn’t that the natural order doesn’t exist or shouldn’t be taken as a moral guide, but that the argument from it he proposes is faulty. The ecstasy of winning an unjust war is as great as winning a just one, since everyone views their cause as just. The invention of great falsehoods feels, to the inventers, like the discovery of great truths, which is why there are so many falsehoods. Moving from error to malice, there are men who enjoy rape more than love, or who get off on murder. It’s not clear that the natural order of ecstatic pleasure is particularly tied to what can legitimately be called achievement. And it’s especially not clear that it’s the within the natural order to use the violence of the state to limit esctasy to non-chemical sources.
And now for some shameless self-promotion: Cannabis and the First Principles of Adulthood, at my blog.
There’s something I’ve been challenging the prohibitionists to explain to me for some time now, and none of them have been able to come up with a good answer.
Cocaine, marijuana, and heroin were made unlawful here in the United States in stages after about 1914. Prior to that, one could possess as much of these items as one wanted, and sell or buy them in any quantity whatsoever.
So, if the mere re-legalization of illicit drugs will inevitably and without fail lead to the downfall of the Republic, would the prohibitionists please explain to me how it is that the United States went from a fifth-rate agricultural backwater in 1776 to a world power of the first rank by 1900, a period when now-illicit drugs were lawful to possess and readily available to the public?
The War on Alcohol, a.k.a. Prohibition, was a miserable failure in the 1920s, and the present War on Drugs isn’t any better.
Pitty Blogger doesn’t allow a comments section, eh Aaron? Good post, however.
Hale, your post reminds me of this Kopel/Reynolds law review article concerning the shift in the US at the turn of the century from the principle of sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas (you should use what is yours so as not to harm what is others’) to salus populi est suprema lex (the good of the public is the supreme law) at the turn of the last century. While it’s framed around sex-crime laws, the same principle applies here and goes to the heart of libertarian first principles.
Vulgar Summary of Libertarianism:
The simple question here is: Whose ass is it?
If the act in question involves MY ASS (or any of MY CRAP), then it’s MY BUSINESS, and everyone else should PISS OFF. I will do what I DAMN WELL PLEASE with both my ass and my crap. If something terrible happens to my ass as a result of my DUMBASS, then that’s MY PROBLEM and not yours.
If the act in question involves KICKING SOMEONE ELSE’S ASS (or wrecking THEIR CRAP), then suddenly it becomes THEIR BUSINESS, and possibly the GOVERNMENT’S BUSINESS.
The key issue is the definintion of ownership and property. Does the government have a claim on your ass? If so, it’s not really yours, now is it? The traditional word for this is slavery.
Britons appear to be concerned by increasing crime against individuals: burglary, theft on the street, murder. How much of that anti-social behavior is performed by persons in real need of more of their illicit drug [or, usually, drugs] of choice?
David Carr simply doesn’t care whether cannabis is, or is not, a gateway drug to the “harder” drug.
The British people ARE, however, starting to consider whether lax prohibitions against cannabis use are leading directly to the mayhem being performed against the person.
Re: J J Coupal’s comment: Far more likely those crimes against others are due to HMG’s removal of the right of self-defense !! Not all felonies are committed in pursuit of illicit drugs; many are done simply because they can be, without fear of retaliation by the victim or the ‘judicial system’.
“The British people ARE, however, starting to consider whether lax prohibitions against cannabis use are leading directly to the mayhem being performed against the person”
Really? What, ALL the British people? Who started that ball rolling? Are they all attending a big conference somewhere? No wonder the streets are quiet today.
Or, much more likely, Mr.Coupal has invoked the British as a vehicle for rolling out a proposition to which he himself subscribes but is too embarrassed to say openly.
However, he has got a point in a way because cannabis is one of the many things that will be blamed for Britain’s increasing spiral of violent crime. Along with television, Hollywood, capitalism, consumerism, global warming, Margaret Thatcher, lack of public spending…etc…ad nauseum…
MommaBear: In the US, 80% of all crime consists of drug law violations, crimes to protect drug related business interests, or to generate funds for drug purchases. While allowing Brits to defend themselves is a good thing in and of itself, far more can be done to reduce crime by ending the Evil War on Drugs.
I, too, am a well-known felon, but I’ve never had any problem at stating the fact of the matter. It’s been my experience of twenty-five years that the IRS cannot get out of its own way long enough to arrest me, anyway, so it’s no big deal to me.
The “anonymous” respondent here is absolutely correct. The thing is; I am equally certain that Peter Cuthbertson is correct, in one crucial aspect: he “cannot see”.
This is, of course, neither here nor there. That’s because the “benefit” that I’ve derived is not his. This, you see, is in the nature of values. It is a crucial — fatal — logical error to divorce value from valuer. Now, I’ve little doubt that Peter “cannot see”, and I say “god bless ‘im”. He should live his life as he sees fit.
Likewise: me, thank you,
Me? I have seriously enjoyed LSD. (Yo, “anonymous”: here’s to “tenths of grams”.)
“Everyone gets to go to hell in their own go-cart.”
(Beck’s Axiom of Pedagogic Reality)
“No do-gooders allowed.”
(Cautionary Corollary)
Try to understand, Peter: it’s none of your affair.
Bravo! My view on this straightforward and harsh – what substances go into my body are my business, not that of the State or any other person or entity. If I end up messing up my health and my friends and loved ones desert me, as they would be right to do, that is my problem.
End of story.
Next!
So far, I have never seen any drug banner positively address the fact that most–if not all–of the social pathologies attributed to drugs are, in reality, stigmata of a black market.
If a drug-user does harm to another–whether because of his use of drugs or not–then prosecute that harm. But do not use that harm as a stalking horse for gratuitous intermeddling in the private lives of citizens.
Fair enough, David. As I’ve said before, I’m not a libertarian, despite my libertarian tendencies. If something does more harm than good to society, I think that democratic society has a right to debate the issue and come to conclusions about what to do about it. On both sides of the Atlantic, society is pretty much agreed that hard drugs need to be controlled for those reasons (any opinion poll will bear me out on this). Marijuana is a bit of a grey area, although the evidence that it is a public health hazard is getting stronger (I’ll have an article about this on Tech Central Station soon).
I regularly say that most of the evils of this world are the result of personal choice. That choice cannot be diverted from the context around us. The context is that drugs are illegal. Their sale and distribution is controlled by some very evil people. When someone buys drugs they do so in full cognizance of that fact. They subsidize evil. It’s all very well to wax lyrical about your rights or how you are being forced (pshaw! unless you’re addicted, in which case…) to buy drugs from evil men by government policy but it does nothing to mitigate your individual act. If no-one bought drugs, then none of the evil would happen. That’s the other side of the coin of the idea that the evils of drug lords are caused by government.
Drugs cause dreadful individual problems. I used to think broadly the way you do, but began to change my mind after hearing this story. A dear friend of my wife and her then husband got addicted to heroin in New York, when they were living an upscale lifestyle. Things changed, as they tend to when something like that happens and they moved back to Richmond, VA. Their dealers there were not upscale marketing executives, but the hardcore of street dealers, the sort the poor have to put up with. At one point, her husband had handed over cash for a bag when the dealer put his gun at the wife’s head, demanding the drugs back. When she saw her husband looking at the drugs, weighing up which was more important to her, she knew her marriage was over. The illegality of the substance simply forced an issue here that derived from the use of the drug itself, and not from its legal status.
I should also add that what may seem okay to the highly-paid, educated types who frequent Samizdata may not have the same effect on people of lower socio-economic classes. See here for the scientific explanation. I don’t want another 60s destroying working-class communities. Keep your divorce and your drugs to yourselves (whoops, class warrior mode accidentally engaged there).
I’m not a great supporter of the war on drugs. My position is explained here. I’d prefer a moral strengthening of society such that fewer people used drugs, but in the meantime, I think prohibitions are reasonable.
If you disagree with that for philosophical reasons, fine. I don’t care. In the meantime, I suggest everyone who wants a high thinks about the actual consequences of their actions, rather than simply ignoring individual responsibility and blaming the government.
Iain, a few comments. Imagine for a moment that the heroin deal-gone-bad was instead a mugging. The mugger puts a gun next to the wife’s head, and insists that the man hand over all of his money. If the man had to think about that, he would be considered immoral, just as a man who would trade his wife for heroin is lacking in the ethics department. However, the first thought that pops into my mind regarding this new situation isn’t “damn that money, we should go back to a barter system, or better yet not have any possessions at all so that people like him won’t have their relationships destroyed because they were incited to trade their wives for material goods!” As a libertarian, I place responsibility for one’s actions squarely at the feet of the individual in question. It doesn’t matter if a substance is 100% likely to cause this type of behavior. If the individual knows this and voluntarily chooses to partake of it, that is a flaw in the individual that is best addressed at the individual level. Banning money won’t stop people from attempting to take what isn’t theirs, and it won’t stop people from making what another individual would consider a poor choice between money and something ‘more important’. Likewise, banning heroin will not get rid of the criminal elements of society, nor will it get rid of those who make poor choices. It will merely provide a super-normal profit (in the economic sense) to the criminals, and subject those who have a tendency towards poor decision-making to situations that would otherwise never occur.
I agree with you when you say that every individual needs to take responsibility for their actions. But remember in your calculus to include the opportunity costs, or you’ll be lacking a full account of the situation. Those who acquiesce to nanny-state laws are responsible for black-market crime in as direct a way as heroin was responsible for your friend-of-a-friend’s poor decisions. Furthermore, those who fight such laws are helping to contribute to a future in which there is little or no black-market crime. That isn’t something that anyone who supports the prohibition mindset can claim.
It is also a fact that humans have searched for altered states of consciousness for as long as civilization has existed. I might point to the Dionysian cult that many famed Greek philosophers were a member of, which initiated its members via a brew of ergot, which contains the precursors (and several less potent versions) of LSD. There was also a widespread usage of mushrooms in the religious ceremonies of the mayans, aztecs, and in many Slavic cultures. Or we could talk about the traces of hallucinogenic snuff found in many an archaeoligical site in the Americas and Africa, or the continued popularity of such snuffs in modern tribes.
This is not to say that because people have always used drugs, or because seeking altered states is a part of our nature, that it is inherently good or right. To do so would be to commit the naturalistic fallacy, to argue that what is natural is good. On the contrary, I’m trying to point out that what is natural is not necessarily right; this applies equally to the desire to seek drug experiences and to the desire to maintain the normal chain of events in the brain. Ultimately, the ‘right’ of a situation must be decided by the individual in question. If in that decision-making process that individual harms another, that other person has the right to take their grievances to the table and the two can come to a mutually agreeable settlement. Or one of them will use force to coerce the other. Like most libertarians, I’d rather minimize the use of force. By instituting a government prohibition, force could theoretically be used against all who engage in ‘deviant’ behavior. I’d much prefer that it only be used in cases where there is a clear infringement upon the rights of another.
-Kian