The Moral Case for Drug Freedom
by Laurence M. Vance, Posted December 16, 2010
This article originally appeared in the August 2010 edition of Freedom Daily.
My title is a radical one, and deliberately so.
There is a reason I did not say, "The Moral Case for Drug Legalization," or, "The Moral Case for Drug Decriminalization," or, "The Moral Case for Drug Regulation," or, "The Moral Case for Medical Marijuana," or, "The Moral Case for Relaxing Drug Laws," or, "The Moral Case for Ending the Drug War."
My title is also a positive one. If I were going to give it a negative title I might have said something like:
The Moral Case Against Religious Restrictionists The Moral Case Against Pious Prohibitionists The Moral Case Against Christian Crusaders The Moral Case Against Fundamentalist Fascists The Moral Case Against Puritanical Prudes The Moral Case Against Nondenominational Nazis The Moral Case Against Evangelical Extremists The Moral Case Against Bible-Believing Busybodies The Moral Case Against Meddling Moralists
I want to present the moral case for drug freedom.
In the 15 or so years that I have been writing as a conservative Christian libertarian, and certainly not before that, I had never written anything, until last October for Mises Daily, exclusively about the subject of drugs. I hesitated to do so not because I had only recently came to the conclusion that the war on drugs was a monstrous evil. To the contrary, I can remember questioning the whole idea of drug prohibition and victimless crimes when I was just, for lack of a better term, a libertarian-leaning conservative. My hesitation in writing anything negative about drug prohibition was due to the pathetically predictable negative reaction I knew I would receive outside of libertarian circles, and especially due to the hysterical reaction I knew I would receive from some of my conservative Christian brethren.
The defenders of drug prohibition would argue:
I was in favor of drug abuse. I was a liberal. I was a libertine. I was a pragmatist. I was promoting the breakdown of society. I was ignorant of the harmful effects of drugs. I was sending the wrong message to young people. I was denying established cultural norms. I was focusing on money instead of morality.
Drug prohibitionists who consider themselves religious would argue likewise and add:
I was advocating situation ethics. I was giving up on family values. I was compromising with the world. 7I was undermining Christian morality. I was rejecting Judeo-Christian ethics.
In contrast to the emotional and shallow and superficial arguments against drug legalization by the typical drug warrior, the libertarian case for drug freedom is a utilitarian one and a philosophical one and a practical one, but it is also a moral one.
I would like to begin by making two statements two statements that may not seem radical to most libertarians, but that would not be welcomed in many political and religious circles:
It is neither the job of government nor the business of any individual to prohibit, regulate, restrict, or otherwise control what a man desires to eat, drink, smoke, inject, absorb, snort, sniff, inhale, swallow, or otherwise ingest into his body. There is no ethical precept in any religion or moral code that should lead anyone to believe that it is the job of government to prohibit, regulate, restrict, or otherwise control what a man desires to eat, drink, smoke, inject, absorb, sniff, inhale, swallow, or otherwise ingest into his body.
I am not saying ...
Now, in making these statements, I want to make clear some things I am not saying.
I am not saying that parents have no right to dictate to their children what is and is not acceptable when it comes to drug use. I just believe that father knows best, not that government knows best. Right now it is a crime in my state of Florida for parents to serve a beer or glass of wine to their children under the age of 21 even if their children are married, have their own children, and serve in the military. That is absurd and I don't even drink.
I am not saying that employers have no right to mandate that employees abstain from using a particular drug or all drugs, smoking, having a beard, or wearing a pink shirt. Since I believe in freedom and property rights, I believe in the freedom of employers and employees to make employment contracts without government interference. If the owner of a restaurant insists that his waiters wear white tuxedos then they can either visit the local tuxedo shop or look for work elsewhere.
I am not saying that organizations secular or religious should not be able to require that their members abstain from drug use legal or otherwise. Some organizations may mandate the total abstinence of their members from alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. Others might proscribe just alcohol, just drugs, or just tobacco. Still others might merely disdain drunkenness or getting high. Membership in an organization is voluntary, and one man's paradise is another man's prison. In a genuinely free society, restaurants, stores, churches, private clubs, and fraternal organizations would be free to set their own standards and discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, political ideology, religious piety, and drug use.
I am not saying that there is nothing harmful that can result from something's being eaten, drunk, smoked, injected, absorbed, snorted, sniffed, inhaled, swallowed, or otherwise ingested into one's body. I am well aware of the fact that people die all the time from drug overdoses. However, although people also die from drinking too much alcohol and smoking too many cigarettes, not too many drug prohibitionists ever call for absolute bans on alcohol and tobacco.
I am not saying that anyone should eat, drink, smoke, inject, absorb, snort, sniff, inhale, swallow, or otherwise ingest into his body any drug legal or illegal. I am not advocating that anyone take any drug legal or otherwise. The older and more informed I get, the more I am leery of ingesting any drugs, including over-the-counter medications and FDA-approved, physician-prescribed drugs.
I am not saying that I think it is acceptable for anyone to take drugs for any reason other than for medicinal or therapeutic purposes. I consider any other use to be a vice. But as the 19th-century political philosopher Lysander Spooner reminded us, "Vices are not crimes."
I am not saying that I approve of school-bus drivers' smoking a joint while they drive their buses, or mechanics' getting buzzed while they repair your car, or people's walking around stoned in public. Why is it that drug prohibitionists think that all Americans would be on a perpetual high if drugs were legalized? And why is it that they accuse freedom-lovers of desiring or being indifferent to such a society?
I am not saying that individuals and organizations should not be concerned about drug abuse. Most of the negative externalities that result from people's taking drugs are due to the government's war on drugs. In the absence of drug prohibition, drug abuse could be handled the same way as alcohol abuse by families, friends, churches, rescue missions, Alcoholics Anonymous-type programs, physicians, psychologists, and treatment centers.
The beating heart
All I am saying is that I want the government out of my body. I want the state out of my home, my car, my job, my church, my family, my club, my doctor's office, my insurance company, my bedroom, and my life. All I am saying is that it should be none of anyone's business as far as the law is concerned if someone wants to get drunk, high, or stoned in a hotel bar, at a social event, or in his own home. All I am saying is that it is unjust to lock someone up in a cage for smoking a plant. All I am saying is that I want the government to take its hands off drugs and drug paraphernalia, (which are also illegal). Now, I neither use drugs nor own any drug paraphernalia, and I would buy neither even if they were legal, but just the same, I want the government to keep its hands off my property and your property. In the end, it all comes down to property and freedom, as I will argue throughout this essay.
Although evangelical, fundamentalist, independent, and other conservative Christians are some of the first groups that come to mind that zealously back drug prohibition, this is far from a religious issue. The myriad of drug laws in this country and around the world for that matter cannot be laid at the feet of conservative Christians. Support for drug prohibition can be found across the political and religious spectrum, encompassing liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, atheists and theists, the religious and the irreligious. I have heard it said by some libertarians that deep down inside of every man there beats the heart of a libertarian. I disagree. I think rather, and not just on this issue, that there beats the heart of a statist, an authoritarian, and a busybody who wants to remake society in his own image and compel others to live in ways that he approves of. There is no shortage of Americans willing to kill for the military, torture for the CIA, wiretap for the FBI, destroy property for the DEA, and grope for the TSA.
Speaking as a libertarian believer in moral absolutes in general and the ethical principles of the New Testament in particular, I reject federal, state, and local drug prohibition of any kind. I am against drug criminalization, drug regulation, drug restrictions, drug licensing, drug taxing, drug oversight, drug testing, and limiting drugs just to medical use.
xxx
This article originally appeared in the September 2010 edition of Freedom Daily
Believers in a free society should challenge all laws on drug trafficking, drug manufacturing, drug sales, and drug use. They should object to the 750,000 arrests of Americans every year for marijuana possession. They should protest the incarceration of tens of thousands of Americans for drug-related offenses. They should contest the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914, the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 and its subsequent amendments, the Chemical Diversion and Trafficking Act of 1988, the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act of 2003, and the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act 2005.
Lovers of liberty should be against the office of the national drug czar, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Narcotics Rewards Program, and the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.
All freedom-loving Americans should oppose the DEA and its headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, its 21 domestic field divisions, its 227 field offices, its 86 foreign offices in 62 countries, its academy at the Quantico Marine base, its administrator, its deputy administrator, its chief of operations, its chief inspector, its chief financial officer, its chief counsel, its assistant administrators, its 10,000 employees, its 5,500 special agents, its foreign-deployed advisory and support teams, its mobile enforcement teams, its Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program (DCE/SP) (which eradicates millions of cultivated outdoor and indoor cannabis plants every year and seizes millions of dollars of cultivator assets), its $2.5 billion budget, and its Office of Aviation Operations with its 106 aircraft and 124 pilots.
I reject the government's war on drugs just as I reject the government's war on poverty, war on cancer, war on terrorism, and war on liquids on airline flights.
I say these things as someone who doesn't use illegal drugs, wouldn't use illicit drugs if they were legalized, and would prefer that no one else use them either. I would remind those who say I am being too extreme that extremism in the defense ofliberty is no vice. I guess I could just say that I oppose root and branch every facet of the government's war on drugs, but I want not only to make myself perfectly clear, but also to get people to realize just how broad in scope is the state's war on personal freedom.
Seven reasons
I am choosing my words carefully and deliberately: liberty and freedom, individual liberty and personal freedom. These ideals, along with the sanctity of private property, are fundamental in combating the drug war. That does not mean that there aren't a multitude of other reasons to oppose drug prohibition laws. I can think of seven.
One, the state's war on drugs, like its war on poverty and its war on terrorism, is a failure. It has clogged the judicial system, unnecessarily swelled prison populations, fostered violence, corrupted law enforcement, eroded civil liberties, and destroyed financial privacy. It has encouraged illegal searches and seizures, ruined countless lives, wasted hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, hindered legitimate pain treatment, turned law-abiding people into criminals, unreasonably inconvenienced retail shopping, and had no impact on the use or availability of most drugs in the United States. The costs of drug prohibition far outweigh any possible benefits.
Two, drug prohibition is unconstitutional. Conservatives who revere the Constitution should support both the freedom to use drugs for any purpose and a free market in drugs. Nowhere does the Constitution authorize the federal government to intrude itself into the personal eating, drinking, or smoking habits of Americans.
Three, it is not the purpose of government to protect people from bad habits, harmful substances, or vice. As the economist Ludwig von Mises wrote in Human Action,
- Opium and morphine are certainly dangerous, habit-forming drugs. But once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of government to pro- tect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments.... And why limit the government's benevolent providence to the protection of the individual's body only? Is not the harm a man can inflict on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily evils? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and seeing bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and from hearing bad music? The mischief done by bad ideologies, surely, is much more pernicious, both for the individual and for the whole society, than that done by narcotic drugs.
Five, there is no government ban on alcohol and tobacco. Yes, they are heavily regulated, but anyone is free to drink and smoke as much as he wants in his own home. Alcohol abuse and heavy tobacco use are two of the leading causes of death in the United States. It seems rather ludicrous to advocate the outlawing of drugs and not the outlawing of alcohol and tobacco.
Six, vices are not crimes. The average American unfortunately equates making the moral case for drug freedom with making the moral case for murder, theft, or arson. But nothing could be further from the truth. In part one, I mentioned Lysander Spooner, and, because I cannot improve on his work, I refer you to the powerful and immortal words at the beginning of his 1875 treatise, Vices Are Not Crimes:
- Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property.
- Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.
- Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property....
- Unless this clear distinction between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws, there can be on earth no such thing as individual right, liberty, or property; no such things as the right of one man to the control of his own person and property, and the corresponding and co-equal rights of another man to the control of his own person and property.
- Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.
Practical and utilitarian arguments against the drug war are important, but not as important as the moral argument for the freedom to use or abuse drugs for freedom's sake. The moral case for drug freedom is simply the case for freedom. Freedom to use one's property as one sees fit. Freedom to enjoy the fruits of one's labor in whatever way one deems appropriate. Freedom to use one's body in the manner of one's choosing. Freedom to follow one's own moral code. Freedom from being taxed to fund government tyranny. Freedom from government intrusion into one's personal life. Freedom to be left alone.
It is those of us who advocate the liberty to take drugs and a free market in drugs who are taking the moral high ground. How can anyone with any sense of morality support seizing someone's property, destroying his family, and locking him up in a cage to be raped and humiliated for smoking a plant the government doesn't approve of? What kind of a moral code contains stipulations like that? The case for drug freedom is a moral case because the war on drugs is a war on natural, civil, personal, and constitutional rights. Two wrongs don't make a right. It is not right to act immoral to prevent someone from doing something deemed immoral.
In presenting the moral case for drug freedom I am not distinguishing between legal and illegal drugs or between drugs for medical use and drugs for recreational use. Drugs in and of themselves are not necessarily bad; it depends on how and why they are used. The question is who is going to determine those things. Will it be the individual, in consultation with his family, friends, church, and physician; or will it be the state, in consultation with its legislators, regulators, agents, and bureaucrats? In a free society it is the individual; in an authoritarian society it is the state.
Some libertarians have the idea that absolute drug freedom is a philosophical concept that is fine to intellectually assent to but should never be publicly proclaimed. They consider it an embarrassing, nonessential issue that is best not mentioned outside of libertarian circles. In this regard I like what Mises said:
- [As] soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individual's mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest detail.
I am not arguing for the benefits of drugs; I am arguing for the benefits of freedom. Mises again makes a good point:
- A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police.
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