Drug Policy Deontology

On some level, drug prohibition is just deeply wrong. Policy analysis is important. We shouldn't be too flippant about over-ruling a cost-benefit analysis with an emotional appeal. We need to bring empirical evidence to bear, employing theoretical insights from economics, psychology, sociology, political science, and, yes, even philosophy. We should do a careful accounting of costs and benefits. But at the same time there are some bright lines that we should never cross. Using violence to stifle drug use is one such bright line. (By the way, in my reading the dry, dispassionate cost-benefit analysis clearly renders a verdict against drug prohibition. It's a policy that fails even on its own terms.)

There is a friend of the family I know who is on high-dose opioids for chronic pain. I'll refer to him by a made-up name: George. George is actually a composite of several people I know. He's been on several different opioids: high-dose Oxycontin, the fentanly patch, and presumably several other drugs I'm not aware of. Some people in my family think George is "faking it" and just likes to get high. Others think he has a real problem and needs the medicine to function. George is sometimes hard to get along with. This probably colors people's views of his prescription drug use. Other family members say, No, no, don't judge his very real problem in light of his otherwise problems. He suffers from a very real problem that can affect even the best of us. There is always this back-and-forth about whether people like George should be cut off or continue receiving their prescription.

I have a serious question for the "cut George off" folks. Who owns George? Who owns his body? Who does George's brain and bloodstream belong to? Anyone who claims the right to cut off George is claiming an ownership right in George's body. More to the point, they're claiming controlling ownership of George, as if poor George only owned 49% of shares in himself and a controlling board of trustees owned the rest of him, enough so to overrule him.

I can force myself to discussed drug policy in a detached, dispassionate way. I can make economic arguments, cite statistics, weigh evidence, and so on. But I actually think the moral case against drug prohibition is the strongest. People are sovereign over their own bodies. To try to dictate someone else's behavior under the threat of violence is to claim outright ownership of them. That seems wrong to me.

We don't have to argue about whether George is really in pain or just faking it to get high. George has the right to get high if he wants. If he's a burden on someone who has to clean up his problems, that person can cut George off or kick him out. I don't think George has a right to impose obligations on other adults because of his own irresponsibility. Whomever George is burdening has a basic right to sever the relationship. Or that person can choose to carry the burden and use the threat of cutting-off to change George's behavior. I don't object to that kind of soft power. Private action to solve a private problem is fine. But it's wrong to use of state power to force George into compliance. It's wrong to arrest him or his dealer for engaging in a mutually agreeable transaction. It's immoral to detain, beat, cage, and sometimes kill people because they consume or sell "the wrong" psychoactive substances.

Maybe I am really a consequentialist at heart, because I feel some unease as I write this all down. What if the George I am discussing is a child? Don't I have the right to stop him from ingesting something that's potentially dangerous, and physically restrain him if he doesn't comply? What if I have private knowledge that George is about to ingest something truly dangerous? Say, I know he's accidentally put something toxic into his tea, or he's about to ingest some heroin that is from a batch that just poisoned a bunch of addicts in the community (and I know this but George doesn't). Don't I have an obligation to slap it right out of his hand? What if there is a drug that turns people into violent zombies? Don't I have a right to restrain someone before he's overcome with irrational drug-fueled rage and before he gains the super-human strength of someone in this condition? (The tendency of any actual drugs to do this has been grotesquely exaggerated, by the way, though some kinds of "synthetic cannabis" appear to have this effect. Oh, if only there were a safe, naturally occurring version of synthetic cannabis!) These are extreme examples. I could stipulate that we're mostly talking about adults within the normal range of rationality. But it does seem like I veer to consequentialism whenever it gives a different answer from the pure deontology of "don't use force to stop drug use." But actually I think the bright line rules of deontology make sense. I favor legal homosexuality (a fairly recent development, let's remember) and gay marriage not because of a cost-benefit analysis, but because in some deep sense it's wrong to interfere with people's love lives. I favor "not throwing babies into fires" because it's just deeply wrong. (Perhaps some extreme environmentalist, like Thanos, would want to weigh the potential benefits of population reduction here. But most people just instantly see the right answer without requiring analysis.) I favor legal prostitution because I think sex workers own their bodies, and the state has no right to dictate what they can do with it. Bright line rules along the lines of "don't interfere with other people's affairs" get us to the right answer for most of these questions most of the time. The moral arguments against drug prohibition (among other prohibitions) is the most important one.

Unfortunately, claiming the moral high-ground is not a good way to win arguments and convince skeptics. "You're just evil" is a good thing to say if you want the listener to stop listening to anything else that comes out of your mouth. It's a poor way to communicate with people who really need to hear you, unless you're drawing a line in the sand and trying to "win." ("We hold these truths to be self-evident..." isn't something you say to the King of England if you're trying to open up a dialogue on moral inquiry.) I'm putting all this down because this is what I really think, and I feel like I might as well say so once in a while. If anyone who has read this far is a proponent of drug prohibition, I just want you to think about how deeply wrong it is to claim ownership of other people's bodies. Maybe that's not the framing you would use for your preferred policy, but that's in essence what drug prohibition does. If anyone thinks it is okay to violate self-ownership to meet some kind of policy goal, to "optimize" society by twiddling various policy nobs and levers, then let's think about cases where this would abridge a freedom that you cherish. Suppose the social science rendered a clear verdict in favor of banning private and home schools, or against legalizing homosexuality, or in favor of banning certain kinds of speech, or in favor of forced racial segregation. Most of us rightly recoil at even considering these things. My own drug policy deontology isn't something weird that I just made up. It's something everyone is doing all the time for the freedoms they happen to approve of. Let's apply that attitude more broadly. Other people's freedoms shouldn't require your approval.