Abstract
In this chapter and the next, I evaluate nonreligious harm-based arguments against recreational drug use. Again, harm-based arguments ground the wrongness of recreational drug use in a claim about the harm it involves. What differentiates one harm-based argument from another is the type of harm recreational drug use is claimed to involve as well as the alleged subject of the harm. As for the type of harm, it is usually claimed that recreational drug use is physically, psychologically, or socially (including economically) harmful. As for the subject of the harm, it is typically claimed that recreational drug use is harmful to the user (self-regarding harm) or to someone other than the user (other-regarding harm). In this chapter, I evaluate harm-based arguments that focus on self-regarding harm.
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Notes
Howard Abadinsky, Drug Use and Drug Abuse: A Comprehensive Introduction, 7th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2011), 74.
See also Norman E. Zinberg, Drug, Set, and Setting: The Basis for Controlled Intoxicant Use (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984).
This list is compiled from four different sources. See Douglas Husak, Drugs and Rights (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 46;
Martin Plant, Roy Robertson, Moira Plant, and Patrick Miller. Drug Nation: Patterns, Problems, Panics, and Policies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 85–86;
David Richards Sex, Drugs, Death, and the Law: An Essay on Human Rights and Overcriminalization (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982), 183;
and Steven Wisotsky, Beyond the War on Drugs: Overcoming a Failed Public Policy (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1990), 22. The distinction between a drug’s objective effects and its subjective effects is pertinent here. The objective effects “result from being under the influence of a substance and can be measured,” while the subjective effects “cannot be measured on a consistent scale and are grounded in the experiential reality of the user”
(Charles Fau-pel, Alan M Horowitz, and Gregory Weaver, eds., The Sociology of American Drug Use, 2nd ed. [New York: Oxford University Press, 2009], 10 and 13). As is indicated by the list of ways recreational drug use can affect the user positively, I have in mind both kinds of effects, though predominantly those that are subjective.
See Douglas Husak, “Reasons to Decriminalize,” in The Legalization of Drugs: For and Against, edited by Douglas Husak and Peter de Marneffe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 87.
C. L. Ten, Mill on Liberty (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), 116.
Regarding informed recreational drug use, Battin et al. write that “informed decision making about the use or avoidance of any drug—w hether prescription, OTC [over-the-counter], herbal remedy, common-use, religious, sports-enhancement, or even illegal recreational— is confounded by the overwhelming quantity and variability of ‘information’ available” (Margaret Battin, Erik Luna, Arthur G. Lipman, Paul M. Gahlinger, Douglas E. Rollins, Jeanette C. Roberts, and Troy L. Bocher, Drugs and Justice: Seeking a Consistent, Coherent, Comprehensive View [New York: Oxford University Press, 2008], 70).
Norman E. Zinberg, Wayne M. Harding, Shirley M. Stelmack, and Robert A. Marblestone, “Patterns of Heroin Abuse,” in Recent Developments in Chemotherapy of Narcotic Addiction, edited by Benjamin Kissin, Joyce H. Lowinson, and Robert B. Millman (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1978), 13.
See Angus Bancroft, Drugs, Intoxication, and Society (Cambridge: Polity, 2009), 79. Sullum contends that another source of distorted information is the attempt by some (particularly adolescents) to live up to a perceived social expectation to use drugs recreationally.
See Jacob Sullum, Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use (New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2003), 3–4.
Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society (New York: HarperCollins, 2013), 327.
See Peter de Marneffe, “An Argument for Drug Prohibition,” in The Legalization of Drugs: For and Againstl, edited by Douglas Husak and Peter de Marneffe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 109.
Wendy Mariner, Leonard Glantz, and George Annas, “Pregnancy, Drugs, and the Perils of Prosecution,” Criminal Justice Ethics 9 (1990): 33.
Howard Rahtz, Drugs, Crime, and Violence: From Trafficking to Treatment (Lanham, MD: Hamilton, 2012), 11.
Michael Shiner, “Drugs, Law and the Regulation of Harm,” in Drugs: Policy and Politics, edited by Rhidian Hughes, Rachel Lart, and Paul Higate (Berkshire, England: Open University Press, 2006), 64.
For more on enthymemes, see Patrick Hurley, A Concise Introduction to Logic, 8th ed. (Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2003), 275ff.
John Lawn, “The Issue of Legalizing Illicit Drugs,” Hofstra Law Review Vol. 18 (1990): 703.
Dan Brock, “Medical Decisions at the End of Life,” in A Companion to Bioethics, edited by Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001), 232.
Joel Feinberg, Harm to Self: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 61.
Elizabeth Foley, Liberty for All: Reclaiming Individual Privacy in a New Era of Public Morality (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 182.
Douglas Walton, Informal Logic: A Pragmatic Approach, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 113.
Samuel Freeman, “Liberalism, Inalienability, and the Rights of Drug Use,” in Drugs and the Limits of Liberalism, edited by Pablo De Greiff (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 125.
Ethan A. Nadelmann, “Drug Prohibition in the United States: Costs, Consequences, and Alternatives,” Science Vol. 245 (1989): 942.
Paul Smith, “Drugs, Morality and the Law,” Journal of Applied Philosophy Vol. 19, No. 3 (2002): 241.
Sidney Schnoll, “Pharmacological Aspects of Youth Drug Abuse,” in Youth Drug Abuse, edited by George M. Beschner and Alfred S. Friedman (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1979), 257.
Edward M. Brecher, Licit and Illicit Drugs (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), 528.
Douglas N. Husak, “Liberal Neutrality, Autonomy, and Drug Prohibitions,” Philosophy and Public Affairs Vol. 29, No. 1 (2000): 66.
For an illuminating discussion of the moral status of killing oneself, see Shelly Kagan, Death (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), chapter 15.
Working Party of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal College of Physicians, Drugs: Dilemmas and Choices (London: Gaskell, 2000), 92.
Paul Gahlinger, Illegal Drugs: A Complete Guide to Their History, Chemistry, Use, and Abuse (New York: Plume, 2004), 387.
As Carl L. Hart et al. write, there is a “considerable amount of folklore about the dangerousness of PCP users, although actual documented cases of excessive violence are either rare or nonexistent” (Carl L. Hart and Charles Ksir, Drugs, Society, and Human Behavior, 14th ed. [New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011], 42). Regarding the claim that those reported to have behaved violently while on PCP often having a history of psychosis or antisocial behavior, see Jeffrey A. Roth, “Psychoactive Substances and Violence,” Research in Brief (Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, 1994), 4.
John Corvino, “Why Should Not Tommy and Jimmy Have Sex: A Defense of Homosexuality,” in Contemporary Moral Problems, 8th ed., edited by James E. White (Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006), 271.
Ibid.; Lindsey Tanner, “Drug Overdose Deaths up for 11th Straight Year,” USA Today (Associated Press), February 19, 2013, available at http:// www .usatoday .com/story/news/nation/2013/02/19/drug-overdose-deaths/1931261/;
and Christopher M. Jones, Karin Mack, and Leonard Paulozzi, “Pharmaceutical Overdose Deaths, United States, 2010,” Journal of the American Medical Association Vol. 309, No. 7 (February 20, 2013): 657–59. According to J. S. Cohen, the number of annual deaths due to prescription drug use is as high as 100,000.
See J. S. Cohen, Overdose: The Case against the Drug Companies (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2001).
The poor diet and physical inactivity number comes from Ali H. Mokdad, James S. Marks, Donna F. Stroup, and Julie L. Gerberding, “Actual Causes of Death in the United States, 2000,” Journal of the American Medical Association Vol. 291, No. 10 (March 10, 2004), G225: 1238, 1240.
The use of prescription drugs number comes from Cohen, as quoted in Douglas Husak, “Reasons to Criminalize Drug Use,” in The Legalization of Drugs: For and Against, edited by Douglas Husak and Peter de Marneffe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 48.
Robert L. DuPont and Ronald L. Goldfarb, “Drug Legalization: Asking for Trouble,” in Drugs: Should We Legalize, Decriminalize, or Deregulate?, edited by Jeffrey Schaler (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1998), 70.
Michael Levin, “Why Homosexuality Is Abnormal,” in Ethics in Practice, 2nd ed., edited by Hugh LaFollette (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 233.
Rita Carter, Susan Aldridge, Martyn Page, Steven Parker, and Chris Frith, The Human Brain Book (London: DK Adult, 2009), 38.
See, for example, Russell Shafer-Landau, ed., Ethical Theory: An Anthology (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), Part V.
Husak, Legalize This! The Case for Decriminalizing Drugs (New York: Verso, 2002), 78–79.
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© 2015 Rob Lovering
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Lovering, R. (2015). Harm-Based Arguments. In: A Moral Defense of Recreational Drug Use. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137528681_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137528681_2
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