Abstract
The current debate on recreational drug policy is roughly a contest between prohibition advocates and legalization advocates. This paper offers a third alternative that is a compromise between those two. The centralized-use compromise can secure the autonomy interests that are important to defenders of legalization, and it can prevent harms to others that are the focus of prohibition arguments. The centralized-use compromise also offers a possible way to reduce the black market while also reducing the rate of addiction and the associated debasing harms to self.
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Notes
In this paper, the term ‘recreational drugs’ will refer to currently illegal recreational drugs. This terminological choice is in service to a goal of this paper, namely to offer a potentially politically viable alternative to the presently most-discussed general drug policy positions. There are significant differences in the political challenges of making something that is currently illegal into something that is not versus making something currently legal into something that is not. Therefore, to avoid an unnecessary burden, the centralized-use compromise will not here be applied to legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco.
For the remainder of the paper, I will usually refer to both the legalization and decriminalization positions as ‘legalization’. This is not meant to obscure the legitimate differences in these two policy approaches, but instead to emphasize the similarities in their underlying philosophical motivations.
Boyum (2001) takes a similar general approach.
As a second example, consider how people often behave during the first few months of falling in love.
This is Wilson’s position, though there are objections. However, since the centralized-use compromise is focused solely on currently illegal drugs (see fn. 1), this point in the dialectic can be accepted.
One reason that it does not need to be resolved here is that the centralized-use compromise aims to limit addiction in ways that are unavailable to other prohibition alternatives. So the intended end result of the centralized-use compromise is fewer drug abusers even if there are more drug users.
In 2004, an estimated 19.1 million people in the United States used recreational drugs every month (Office of Applied Studies 2005).
It is notable that even in the absence of hard data about how many people are deterred from using recreational drugs by the current drug laws, defenders of prohibition should concede that the numbers are huge if they are also going to argue that the current total costs of drug prohibition are justifiable.
Miron (2001, p. 848), concurs.
While any argument against the current drug prohibition laws in the United States might be bolstered by criminal and epidemiological data from other countries with less stringent drug laws (like the Netherlands, Portugal, or Uruguay), such data will not be used here to justify the centralized-use compromise. This is done to circumvent a possible objection from advocates of prohibition that data from other countries about the effects of more lax drug laws is not applicable to the United States on the grounds that Americans do not share the same values, history, or circumstances as people in other nations.
This is similar to how vaccinations are usually administered at pharmacies. No customer is sold a syringe; instead, the pharmacist or some other medical professional personally injects each customer.
This is similar to a standard requirement for acquiring a driver’s license.
Some further restrictions will be necessary. For example, a good case can be made for denying pregnant women access to certain recreational drugs. Additionally, a version of this proposal could cater specifically to the elderly and infirm who may not want the excitement and entertainment desired by younger drug users, but would benefit greatly from the availability of recreational drugs in a more subdued environment.
For discussion of licensing as it pertains to sellers and home-use consumers, see (Leitzel 2007 pp. 163–165).
These need not be physicians. It takes relatively little medical training to safely administer most drugs, especially if the drugs need not be injected.
Such ‘precommitment’ restrictions are arguably consistent with one’s autonomy (Scoccia 2008).
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Glick, J. The Centralized-Use Compromise on Recreational Drug Policy. Res Publica 20, 359–376 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-014-9248-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-014-9248-8