I mean, in the ethical sense. Medically, all drugs have potential harms variously associated with use, long-term use, overdose, etc. Politically, by buying illegal drugs, you're probably ultimately funding criminals and terrorists (although you might well blame prohibition, not drugs, for that). But setting that aside, assuming no-one gets harmed as a result: is it morally wrong to take recreational drugs per se?It's an important question, because your opinion about this will influence your opinions about less abstract, more immediate issues: whether cannabis ought to be sold in coffee shops, how many years you should spend in jail for dealing coke.
However, no-one really asks this question, directly. The medical and the political aspects of drugs are endlessly debated, but after listening to these arguments for a while, you'll realize that while people on both sides talk about public health risks and harm reduction, most of the time they're really just disagreeing about the abstract question of whether taking drugs for fun is acceptable.
Here's the two major schools of thought as I see them. There are those who see no problem with recreational drug use, assuming no-one gets hurts. If it feels good, it is good. If it makes people happy, what's not to like? If people want to enjoy themselves in that particular way, it's no-one else's business. Call this the 'hedonist' view.
On the other hand, there are those who see drug use as a shameful escape from reality. There's more to life than "having fun", life is serious. You ought to be out there doing something, not just sitting around with a silly grin on your face. That's cheating, getting enjoyment for nothing. Call this the 'puritan' school.
People differ on which one they favour, but most of us identify with both to some extent. Few people are puritan enough to forgo all of life's pleasures, not even a quiet drink or a hot bath. Few hedonists would be happy if their own kids announced that they had no ambition to succeed in any kind of career, they'd just live off their inheritance and buy heroin.
As a whole, society has a mixed view. We have a puritanical objection to people who just take drugs and do nothing else with their lives; "junkies", "crackheads", "alkies". But we have no problem with drug use by people who clearly have engaged with the world, and succeeded.
Musicians, actors, and other stars take industrial quantities of drugs. Everyone knows it. It's not even an open secret in most cases, it's just open. Even gossip columnists don't notice unless someone gets so far gone that they do something funny. We don't care, because, whether or not we actually like their work, they're not just drug users, they're also doing their jobs.
20 comments:
I think the shame is derived from failure in familial and other social roles. However, if drug taking is compatible with social expectations, the act in itself is neutral.
Don't know how dated this is in these modern times, but there's also some people who feel that there are also practical benefits to some drug use, be they spiritual enlightenment or access to inspirational and imagination through alternative states of consciousness.
Isn't the puritan / hedonist explanation a false dichotomy? I object to drug use on the basis of how it affects nearby children and other individuals, regardless if someone is "personally successful" or if I believe they should enjoy their life. The collateral damage you leave behind in others has no relation to either topic.
The idea that drug use is a victimless crime in some situations is mental gymnastics on the part of the user (I don't refer to them, bur rather the lives they touch).
This is where we can utilize science to help us make that moral decision, looking at epidemiological work of children going up with parents that abuse substances.
Isn't the false dichotomy that's at work here the one between "drugs" and legal "drugs"? How is an occasional drink with friends morally different from an occasional joint with friends? Jeremy's point is well taken, in that social drinking of alcohol is compatible with social expectations.
Anonymous 2's argument contains a pretty strong embedded assumption: that to use drugs is in fact to abuse drugs, that it's impossible to use drugs without creating "collateral damage" on others. If you allow that assumption, the discussion really has nowhere to go.
"I object to drug use on the basis of how it affects nearby children and other individuals"
Certainly it can do and it's terrible when it does, we all know the horror stories about drugged out mothers. But that's not typical. Lots of illicit drug users don't have kids and don't take drugs around kids. And I don't think it's about drugs so much as just being a bad parent. People neglect kids for lots of other reasons too.
The judgment that drugs are immoral is just a rationalization for making laws. Or for working up a rage and venting disapproval of users, which may be therapeutic for the venters.
Cocaine, heroin and alcohol can destroy families and employment possibilities. Declaring the drugs as inherently immoral probably has net positive effects for the first two. It's a fiction, of course, since cocaine in particular has a long period during which people use it as an occasional recreational activity.
The worst effect of the moralistic approach is that it prevents objective study of the biology. Beginning in the 1980's, the NIH in the US started insisting on biased research. I don't know if this has changed recently, but from the public pronouncements of some of their officials, it appears they're still in the Dark Ages.
The evidence for harm from cannabis and the psychedelics is at worst orders of magnitude below the criminal and social sanctions. Clearly, these are sumptuary laws, using the language and legal machinery of morality to serve some nasty motives, like envy and racism.
I agree to some extent that we object to the potential harm done by drug takers. But the argument is weakened by the legality of the two most harmful drugs: alcohol and tobacco are hands down the worst drugs. Alcohol doesn't just destroy lives, it destroys families, and sometimes it even destroys communities (outback Australia for instance). So if you object on these grounds then alcohol should be the number one objection (but generally speaking it isn't). Alcohol also kills more people than all illegal drugs put together (according to NHS figures). We might also be against recreational driving by this argument as it kills people as well.
I think @Neuroskeptic has hit the right note. I would say "libertarian" rather than hedonistic - the argument that society can't tell me what to do is libertarian. It also includes people who for instance take cannabis for medicinal reasons, or who take soon to be illegal herbal remedies. Why should the state regulate individual behaviour when it does not impact others? Indeed even when it does have an impact, it should be dealt with locally. This is the libertarian position. (The UK Liberal party was founded on these principles but seems to have lost them).
The trouble is not so much with drugs as with intoxication - which is not limited to substances, but can include all kinds of mind/mood altering things like gambling. People who are intoxicated tend make poor decisions. At worst (as @anonymous points out) they are a danger to society, at best a danger to themselves.
But our laws have grown over centuries by evolution under the influence of a numerous different ideologies and pressure groups, not by rational inquiry. To be governed by reason in these matters was obviously judged to be politically unacceptable by the previous Labour Govt (and the present Conservative-Liberal coalition shows no signs of of a more libertarian attitude). The people are not ready for rational drugs policies, their masters say. Though we do seem to accept that mild intoxication by alcohol is OK, and most people turn a blind eye to moderate illegal drug use (as @Jeremy says - the act can be neutral).
How would one legislate effectively against intoxication anyway? It seems to me that it would be difficult to enforce. Unfortunately sanctions against those who cause harm are not sufficient to deter people from intoxication, and intoxicated people do not weigh the consequences of their actions.
So. Yes it's an interesting discussion, and you've put your finger on some good points but it won't have any effect on the public discourse about drugs, because drugs aren't really the issue.
Being dutch i can vouch that prohibition causes druguse to rise. In the Netherlands drugs are mostly illegal but not really on the list of priorities. There is a lot of token action to satisfy the international agreements, but it's still common practice to send drugmules back on a returnflight without courtprocessing (you just get declared undesirable alien) if they carry less then 2 kg.
TV at primetime carry programs on how to safely use drugs, presenters use drugs on tv to show the effects.
All this caused drugs to lose their 'forbidden fruit' allure so youngsters are quite blase about them.
The do have now huge problems with drugrelated crimes, but those are the same as everywhere. Big organized crime.
Still percentage of addicts is much lower then with countries with enforced prohibition. This has been the case for about 40 years now, and still the Netherlands are the 3rd most prosperous nation of the EU. If drugs were really inherently bad this would not be the case.
Anonymous 2 here:
Tiel is right. There is an underlying assumption to my argument: using drugs outside of their mandated, primary purpose is abuse.
What determines this primary function? Information. Restrictions on substances exist to protect consumers who don’t have access to research that experts do. The shorthand for what it should and shouldn’t be used for based on evidence. I’m sure you could make a claim for Adderall as a recreational drug (or better yet, a nootropic), even considering side effects, potential for dependency, and other physiological problems that might emphasize it not being the best candidate. Regardless, there are probably better, safer substances out there. Then again, my point assumes politics isn’t involved, which we know is not the case.
You’ve given me something to think about.
I concede that my argument is tenuous at best, and in reality, I think Jayarava nailed the point regarding intoxication perfectly.
Neo was that your NYE? sitting on a snowman getting high as a kite? Weeeeeeeee I’m mushing your brain snowman. :)
Not sure how you'd discuss in ethical sense without getting into the specifics of culture/politics/history. For example, take the hedonist, they want to maximise pleasure, act on desires. But a consequential hedonist, make it utilitarian, wants to maximise pleasure for the greater good, even if it hurts a few others. Whereas a virtue ethicist, altruist, natural rights, contract ethicist and so on are concerned with duties, moral obligation, belief systems and would do the 'right' or 'good' thing by society, religion or upbringing etc. Also Anon mentioned a newish thought in ethics, sympathy, self-sacrifice, de-centred thinking.
So to make normative assumptions on drugs based on ethics depends on which angle and many other factors. Like environment, is that particular drug prevalent in that particular society; is the drug embedded within social hierarchies; how accessible is it etc. Take the West, perhaps the psychedelic experience of the 70s was a lesson learnt to curtail certain drugs from being readily dispensable to society at large. Whereas Somali dudes abstain from alcohol yet can chew khat 5 hours at a time, *guabble*guabble* spit with gum, peanut or just the bitter twigs. But harvesting those twigs in a city in Yemen is killing their water supplies yet the govt hasn't banished it from production or from recreational use. In Kenya, Mungiki adherents profess rastafari religious drug dependence and face Mt Kirinyaga worshipping the precious weed mungu. I suppose there’s a lot of political monopoly and even spiritual/medicinal monopoly, from the poppy fields of Afghanistan like you say, espagnol, mafia networks to who knows.
When you think about it, drugs are a commodity, and the ethical nature concerning a commodity is context dependent. So it probably isn't the drug itself but the social nature having ethical implications. Like taking illicit things is wrong, substance abuse is wrong, creative outlet is cool, selling an image is a must and so on like you say. I'd say there's an ethical dilemma to excess, or access in some cases which isn’t just unique to substance abuse.
* correction: i meant 'majority' and not 'good' for utilitarians.
I think one of the differences between alcohol and other types of drugs is how they are used: many folks can use alcohol in moderation, but not so much when it comes to drugs like cocaine and heroin. The latter drugs are always used to the point of intoxication and seem to really cause users to engage in awful conduct. As I'm fond of saying, how many people are out there robbing banks to fund their alcohol or marijuana habits? Very few. But anyone who works in addictions knows that the cocaine and heroin often leads to very destructive and violent behavior in many users. Thus, the idea that folks can just use these drugs without harming anyone is really a fallacy.
Tiel Aisha Ansari: Absolutely. Alcohol is acceptable, I think because it's clearly compatible with life and work - we know it is, because almost everyone drinks and most of them are functional.
And I think as a society we don't have any problem with illicit drug use by people who are functioning well. It's not just celebrities, we all know that "the rich" are fond of cocaine or whatever; I don't think anyone has a moral problem with that (except those who object to the rich spending their money on luxuries while others are starving, but that's not about drugs, it's about wealth.)
Human actions can be good or bad, non-human objects cannot, independently of specific actions. Classes of actions can be meaningfully said to be good or bad when there are morally relevant similarities among their set members. As your post suggests, the class of actions falling under the description "taking drugs" have very few morally relevant similarities. Whether or not any particular individual's indulgence in drugs is good or bad is constitutively a matter of their highly particular psychological and social context; but that view is largely incompatible with how policy decisions are actually made. So the debates tend to be case studies in (to use apt but not currently popular terms) splitting and reaction formation.
? that's kind of elitist.. pure grade coke is difficult to obtain even for the 'rich'. Well it's illegal so in that respects it's morally wrong, whether you can function with drugs or not is besides the point. Noone is above the law. If you want to get high, try something else that won't risk jail or tarnish your reputation. Snuff boxes are out of fashion now.
above is in reference to Neo's comment.
Mister O I agree. Also drug cartels can quickly finance election war chests. Maybe why certain drugs are illegal yet lax by celebs. Celebs and politics are linked. Are they selling rebellion, make money, throw a selected few in prison? A beautiful disturbing policy trend? Definitely the dark side to politics.
This has been debated time and again!
And in more generality and better...
..it's reason and experience, not reason and evidence. Public policy and laws are about lobbying and evidence, not morality. That post is opinionated chatter, doesn't discuss ethics but somehow manages to confuse morality for laws (they seem to have taken 'sin laws' at face value) which is disturbing. Neo's post takes an academic approach. That post, aside from bastardizing Mill, not sure what it's on about.
My position is that we're all addicts. We do what makes us feel good, because we're machines made out of meat, and feeling good is our feedback mechanism to tell us we're on the right track. I smoke weed and play video games. Neither of these acts contributes in any major way to society. Nor does it do any real harm.
People who get their rush of seratonin and endorphins through success in business are also adicts. They will continue to pursue such success even when their wealth is such that those of us who don't carry their maladaptive response would have quit our jobs and spent the rest of our life relaxing on a beach.
The primary difference between a crack addict and a success addict is that crack addicts break into peoples houses and steal their TVs, while success addicts spill millions of gallons of oil in the sea, clearcut huge swathes of land, and spend much of their wealth maintaining an economic system which requires pointless suffering to be inflicted on innocent people in order to remain viable (capitalism can not function without substantial involuntary unemployment.)
Personally, I'd rather have more crack addicts than more economic success addicts, becase I feel that the harm they do to others is less pervasive and intense.
Other people have other addictions - some people eat, some exercise, some drink and get into bar fights, and some gamble away everything they own. Some play video games, or get into pointless arguments in online forums.
Drug addicts should be arrested when their addiction leads them to commit a real harm to others, exactly the same as anyone else should be arrested when they commit a real harm to others. Otherwise, the only real difference between us and them is that because our drugs are produced right inside our brains, we have an easier time rationalising our behaviour.
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