the war on drugs is a wa...id gordon - mises daily

7/27/2019 The War on Drugs is a Wa...Id Gordon - Mises Daily

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-war-on-drugs-is-a-waid-gordon-mises-daily 1/3

The W ar on Drugs Is a War on Freedom

Mises Daily: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 by David Gordon (http://mises.org/daily/author/64/David-Gordon)

(https://mises.org/store/War-on-Drugs-Is-a-War-on-Freedom-The-P10874.aspx)

[ The War on Drugs Is a War on Freedom (https://mises.org/store/W ar-on-Drugs-Is-a-War-on-Freedom-

The-P10874.aspx) • By Laurence M. V ance • V ance Publications, 2012 • X vi + 103 pages]

The efforts, spurred by Mayor Bloomberg, to ban large cans

of drinks deemed too sugary have been much in the news

lately; and a peculiar point in the mayor's defense of this

measure is highly relevant to Laurence Vance's excellent

book. What struck me as odd in the mayor's comments was

that he confined his defense to pointing out the dangers to

health posed by the drinks he wished to ban, along with

the attendant monetary costs that illnesses that resulted

from consuming these drinks might impose.

It never seemed to occur to Mayor Bloomberg that whetheran individual decides to consume a harmful substance ought

not to come under governmental supervision. The decision

is the person's alone to make. What was odd about the

mayor's comments was not so much that he rejected this

view, but rather that he did not deem it worthy of

mention. State paternalism for him required no defense.

As Vance reminds us, it is not only libertarians who reject paternalism. To the contrary, the view that

the state can address only acts directed against others, not ones that affect immediately just an

individual himself, is integral to the classical-liberal tradition. It received its canonical statement from

John Stuart Mill:

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way,

so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to attain it.

Each is the guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are

greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by

compelling each to live as seems good to the rest. (p. 13, quoting Mill)

Mises applied Mill's principle to the subject of Vance's book, drug regulation, in characteristically

incisive fashion. To allow regulation of dangerous drugs opens the door to attacks on freedom of

speech and of the press:

Opium and morphine are certainly dangerous, habit-forming drugs. But once the principle is

admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own

foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments.… And why

limit the government's benevolent providence to the protection of the individual's body only?

Is not the harm a man can inflict on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily

evils? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and seeing bad plays, from looking at bad

paintings and statues and from hearing bad music? (p. 24, quoting Mises(http://mises.org/humanaction/chap27sec6.asp) )

For Vance, the fundamental issue in drug regulation is individual rights. He does not at all deny that

these drugs can cause great harm; but the issue of regulation is not to be settled by balancing the

benefits and harms of open access to drugs against the benefits and harms of their regulation or

prohibition.



Practical and utilitarian arguments against the drug war are important, but not as important as

the moral argument for the freedom to use or abuse drugs for freedom's sake. The moral case

for drug freedom is simply the case for freedom. Freedom to use one's property as one sees

fit. Freedom to enjoy the fruits of one's labor in whatever way one deems appropriate.

Freedom to use one's body in the manner of one's choosing. Freedom to follow one's own

moral code. Freedom from being taxed to fund government tyranny. Freedom from

government intrusion into one's personal life. Freedom to be left alone. (pp. 12–13)

This passage illustrates Vance's force and eloquence, often based, as here, on the repetition of a keyphrase.

If consequences are for Vance not the most important consideration in morality, they nevertheless

matter. (By the way, it's a common misconception that supporters of a rights-based morality ignore

consequences and that for them these carry no moral weight. To the contrary, almost all supporters of

moral rights think that consequences are also morally important. I think that Vance ought not to have

contrasted "moral" with "practical and utilitarian" considerations. Both rights and consequences are parts

of morality.) Much of the book consists of a concise yet comprehensive account of the bad effects of

drug regulation. The war on drugs has led to the highest prison population of any country in the world.

The United States leads the world in the incarceration rate and in the total prison population.

… Almost twenty percent of the state prison population are incarcerated because of drug

charges. Almost half of the federal prison population are incarcerated because of drug charges.

There are almost 350,000 Americans in state or federal prison at this moment [November 2011]

because of drug charges. (p. 71)

The drug war has had manifold invidious effects on civil liberties.

The war on drugs has destroyed financial privacy. Deposit more than $10,000 in a bank account

and you are a suspected drug trafficker.… The war on drugs has provided the rationale for

militarizing local police departments.… The war on drugs has resulted in outrageous behavior

by police in their quest to arrest drug dealers.… The war on drugs has eviscerated the Fourth

Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures. (pp. 57–8)

In its deleterious effects on freedom, the drug war recalls the worst excesses of Prohibition. For these,

the short contemporary account of the revisionist historian Harry Elmer Barnes, Prohibition Versus

Civilization: Analyzing the Dry Psychosis (Viking Press, 1932) is well worth seeking out and reading.

These immense costs have not brought with them extensive good results. To the contrary, the drug war

has been a manifest failure. "In spite of decades of prohibition laws, threats of fines and/or

imprisonments, and massive propaganda campaigns, drugs are available and affordable" (p. 26).

Vance, it is apparent, has launched a remarkable war of his own, conducted with superb generalship,

against the drug war; and one of the arguments in his campaign strikes me as an especially effective

one. The harms of tobacco and alcohol vastly exceed the ill effects of dangerous drugs, yet there is no

call to ban them. Prohibition is recognized by nearly everyone as a failure, not to be repeated. If this

is so, how can one justify banning less dangerous substances?

Alcohol abuse and heavy tobacco use are two of the leading causes of death in the United

States. It seems rather ludicrous to advocate the outlawing of drugs and not the outlawing of

alcohol and tobacco. (p. 11)

Vance writes from a viewpoint that will surprise many readers. He himself does not condone the use of

dangerous drugs. To the contrary, he is a Christian and a Bible scholar of considerable note and he

regards their use as sinful. "As an adherent to the ethical principles of the New Testament , I regard

drug abuse to be a vice, a sin, and an evil that Christians should avoid even as they avoid supporting

the government's war on drugs" (p. 79).



(http://mises.org/store/Product.aspx?ProductId=10874)

If Vance takes this view of drug use, why is he so adamant that people have the right to consume

these drugs? His answer will be of interest to all students of moral theology. He holds that Christians

can with perfect consistency uphold the distinction between vices and crimes, with only the latter an

appropriate area for forcible suppression.

No Christian would be in favor of criminalizing all sins. Not

when the Bible says that "the thought of foolishness is sin"

(Proverbs 24:9). Why, then, are some Christians so quick to

applaud making some sins criminal just because the state

happens to select them and not others? (p. 84)

Vance's admirable remarks on this topic will I suspect be of great

interest even to those who do not share his faith.

The W ar on Drugs Is a War on Freedom is an outstanding

contribution to the contemporary battle for liberty. It has the

potential to do great good, and Vance deserves high praise for his

magnificent work.

Comment on this article.

David Gordon covers new books in economics, politics, philosophy, and law for T he Mises Rev iew (http://mises.org/periodical.aspx?Id=2) , the quarterly review of literature in the social sciences, published since

1995 by the Mises Institute. He is author of T he E ssential Rothbard (http://mises.org/store/Essential-Rothbard-The-

P336C0.aspx) , available in the Mises Store. Send him mail (mailto:[email protected]). See David Gordon's

article archives (http://mises.org/daily/author/64/David-Gordon) .

You can subscribe to future articles by David Gordon via this RSS feed (http://mises.org/Feeds/articles.ashx?

AuthorId=64) .

Copyright © 2012 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby

granted, provided full credit is given.

the war on drugs is a wa...id gordon - mises daily

Documents