NCJ Number
159481
Date Published
1994
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This paper argues in favor of letting Americans take any drug they want to take.
Abstract
The author claims that drug addiction and drug abuse cannot be defined without specifying the proper and improper uses of certain pharmacologically active agents. He submits that these judgments have nothing to do with medicine, pharmacology, or psychiatry, but are moral judgments. Most propagandists against drug abuse seek to justify certain repressive policies because of the alleged dangerousness of certain drugs, and often falsify the facts about the true pharmacological properties of the drugs they seek to prohibit, but ignore the moral dimensions of the problem. While it is true that individuals can and do harm themselves with the drugs under discussion, the author considers it none of the government's business what drugs people put into their bodies. In support of his view, and as subjects for further consideration, he offers the following: (1) Opium is much less toxic than alcohol. (2) We must distinguish between pharmacological effects and personal inclinations; some take drugs to help them function and conform to social expectations, some to ritualize their refusal to function and conform to social expectations. (3) The war on addiction is expensive and counterproductive. Is it not possible that the spread of addiction is due more to the work of addictmongers than to the lure of narcotics? (4) Physicians should be removed as intermediaries between laypersons and their bodies; the language and contents of the pharmacopoeia should be directly available to all. Freedom of self-medication, within certain limits which the author describes, should be as fundamental a right as freedom of speech, thought, and religion.