Excellent piece on drug legalisation by Jamie Whyte.
This simple principle means that you cannot
properly recommend something by considering only its benefits, nor
condemn it by considering only its costs. This latter mistake is the
one favoured in the drugs debate. People go on endlessly — and often
exaggeratedly — about the health risks of taking drugs, as if this were
sufficient to show that drugs are bad for you. This is absurd. If you
consider only the costs, then everything is bad for you. Eating has its
costs, such as the price of food and the risk of choking. Should we
conclude that eating is bad for you?
The real question is not whether drug use has costs. Every
activity has. The question is whether these costs exceed the benefits
of drug use. It is easy to show that they do not, but we should first
recognise what the main benefit is. This should be obvious but, for
some reason, nobody involved in “the drugs debate” ever mentions it.
The main benefit of taking drugs is that it is pleasurable. In fact, it
can be incredibly pleasurable. That is why people do it.
And also why it is good for them. Drug users are simply people
for whom the pleasure outweighs the risk of death, illness, addiction
and all the rest. In other words, they are people for whom the benefits
of drug use exceed the costs. They wouldn’t be drug users otherwise.
The same is not true of everyone. Some value health more and pleasure
less. For them, drug taking would deliver a net loss. Fine: these
people would not take drugs even if they were legal.
Legalise them all and tax the hell out of them.
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