I’ve been reading The Legalization of Drugs: For and Against, by Douglas Husak and Peter de Marneffe. Fascinating stuff. Husak, who is well known for his views on this subject, argues the case for legalization, whereas de Marneffe argues against. I was a bit surprised to see de Marneffe taking this side: I knew him twenty years ago, and although people change I wouldn’t have expected him to be taking a puritanical line.
Simplifying dramatically, Husak’s argument is that even if it can be shown that taking drugs is very bad for you, it is still hard to see the argument for locking people away, sometimes for many years, as punishment for harming, or risking harm, to themselves. In response, de Marneffe’s first restricts the discussion primarily to heroin, and argues, plausibly enough, that it is a very bad idea for adolescents to take heroin as this will adversely affect at least their emotional development, and perhaps much else too. It is also very bad for children if their parents are addicts, as this is likely to lead to abuse and neglect. These risks are so severe, he argues, that they amount to an argument that heroin should not be legalized.
So how does de Marneffe respond to Husak’s argument? It seems he accepts it! (p. 129) He agrees that no one should go to prison for taking heroin. On de Marneffe’s view production and sale should be illegal, including dealing, but no one should be punished simply for using. And if this applies to heroin – de Marneffe’s worse case – it must apply more generally.
Now, if the ‘for’ and ‘against’ positions converge on the judgement that no one should be jailed for using drugs, does this merely mean that de Marneffe was simply the wrong person to argue the ‘against’ case, or is it rather that there are no good arguments to defend the current law in all civilized countries? If there are good, or even interesting, arguments I’d be interested to hear them. I’m not going to open comments on this, as I will be away for 10 days or so, and not posting. But if anyone would like to email me at j.wolff@ucl.ac.uk, I’ll do a round up when I return.
On the issue of harm, here are some fascinating figures from a UK report, which quotes a Cato Institute Paper. The following are ‘Deaths from Drug Use Per 100,000 Drug Users’. Tobacco: 650. Alcohol: 150. Heroin: 80. Cocaine: 4. Marijuana: 0. (p. 38 of overview report).
Of course I know it isn’t as simple as this, but these are thought-provoking numbers.
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