Alcohol is also a drug. If Dalrymple really means "drugs" when he says "drugs", it would follow that he's advocating for prohibition to protect alcoholics from themselves.
We seem to have found a relatively tolerable equilibrium around alcohol where the substance is widely available, the majority of individuals who can enjoy it recreationally are free to do so, and yet it's legally just as intolerable for an intoxicated person to harm others as it would be for a sober person to take the same actions. Some individuals have addiction problems, and we have varyingly effective programs in place to help them deal with that, but ultimately the right of the majority to enjoy it responsibly (and the rights of the businesses to sell it to those who can use it responsibly) trump the "rights" of the minority to be protected from themselves by the government.
Maybe to get the same equilibrium around other drugs, we would need harsher punishments for the antisocial behaviors that we're actually trying to prevent by banning the drugs themselves. All I know is that anyone who unironically makes "ban the intoxicants" claims without considering what we can learn from our most widely accepted and normalized intoxicants is speaking on some level other than the literal and logical.
I am not an expert, but it seems to me that there is a difference between drugs in how fast and how likely they cause addiction and ruin your health. For example, if something makes people addicted immediately and reliably, then the "equilibrium" is to ban it.
A possible rule of thumb would be to find out what kind of drugs old people use: that would be the kind that is least likely to kill you quickly. (Of course such drugs would be uncool, but that's kinda the point. If only young people use something, you should probably spend 5 seconds asking yourself why users never get older.)
It seems that the old people's favorite drug is alcohol.
I have a lot of elderly neighbors. Alcoholism's been a major factor in about half the deaths in the past few years. The runners-up in this popularity contest are cannabis of the grow-it-on-the-sly strength, and opioids because they're nasty but people tend to start them later in life.
If we're being literal about drugs as "non-caloric chemicals we ingest to modify our physiology", the most popular drug in the elderly is probably a blood pressure med of some kind.
and yet it's legally just as intolerable for an intoxicated person to harm others as it would be for a sober person to take the same actions
Even America hasn't been able to solve drug abuse with negative consequences. My hope is mainly on GLP-1 agonists (or other treatments) proving super-effective against chemical dependence, and increasing their supply and quality over time.
I'm not claiming that we've solved any substance abuse! I'm claiming that you and Dalrymple appear to be ignoring the potential lessons we can learn from the equilibrium that society has reached with the most widely used and abused modern intoxicant. The equilibrium doesn't have to be perfect, nor to solve every problem, in order to be a relatively stable and well-tolerated compromise between allowing individual freedom and punishing misbehavior.
Stable is not a virtue, nor is our equilibrium well-tolerated. The problems it causes in terms of health, cost and homelessness are central political issues and have been for a long time.
I also have no idea why you assume I’m “ignoring” these “lessons” you’re handwaving at. It’s a pretty annoying rhetorical move.
I like Dalrymple’s writing, but this piece makes it clear that he’s no philosopher. His attempted rebuttal to the “philosophic argument” is sloppy and weak, full of equivocations, failures to pursue lines of reasoning to their logical endpoints or to see obvious implications, etc. I expected more, and was disappointed.
As someone with a libertarian bent, I was taken aback by the persuasiveness of author Theodore Dalrymple’s arguments in his 1997 essay Don’t Legalize Drugs.[1] I’ve assumed for a long time, without ever investigating or challenging my belief, that full decriminalization and legalization of all drugs would do society more good than harm. But Dalrymple’s essay made me reconsider my position.
Dalrymple worked as a psychiatrist in a poor British neighborhood for over 20 years. He’s seen the dredges of society and that largely shaped his worldview. In his essay, he steers clear of any puritanical or moral arguments that doing drugs is bad, and instead examines what effect they have on society holistically.
He states that the proponents of drug legalization, with whom he disagrees, have two principle arguments: philosophic and pragmatic. Dalrymple contends that each of them are flawed.
(1) The philosophic argument
Dalrymple opens by first providing a definition:
He believes this philosophy works nominally, but falls apart when it's put into practice:
In sharp contrast to Dalrymple’s concern for people affected by addiction, there’s a college professor who advocates microdosing heroin and the legalization of all drugs for adults. The professor states that the majority of adults can use hard drugs recreationally without falling prey to addiction. Some research suggests that, depending on the drug of choice, upwards of only “25% of illicit drug users have a substance use disorder.”
So, while the professor is technically correct that the majority of people could avoid developing an addiction from using hard drugs, he misses the point. Namely, that as a society we protect vulnerable subpopulations from themselves at the cost of everyone else’s freedom. It’s the same reason we don’t permit children to drive—while it would be convenient to have your eight-year-old do your grocery shopping, their developing brains could inadvertently bring harm to themselves or others.
A few months ago I walked into my gym’s sauna and the guys in there were talking about their "addictions" to their phones. One physically fit man mentioned that TikTok is incredibly addictive for him. I dryly said, “for me it’s heroin.” The other guys chuckled at what I intended to be a joke, but the physically fit man took me seriously and said, “oh, you also use heroin?” Apparently he recreationally uses it, along with other drugs like crack cocaine and meth.
I asked, “You don’t have any problems with addiction?”
“Nope. It’s just a fun thing to do a couple times per year.”
“Can I ask, what got you into doing hard drugs?”
He told me that in college, with one of his friends, they started experimenting with hard drugs. That's when he found out that drugs are fun and don’t cause any issues for him. His friend, however, went on a five-year meth bender followed by several decades of being homeless.
I followed up and asked, “Is there anything in life that you feel addicted to?”
“TikTok. When I start scrolling, I'll look up and somehow eight hours have passed.”
Dalrymple further criticizes the philosophic argument by stating:
(2) The pragmatic argument
Before criticizing it, Dalrymple starts by steelmanning the argument for why drugs should be legalized:
Dalrymple hints, through his laissez-faire exaggeration of a drug free-for-all, that perhaps large social issues won’t automatically resolve themselves with happily-ever-after fairytale endings if drugs are legalized. He next highlights what the road-to-hell can look like when well-intended policies are enacted:
Alarmingly high numbers… Is that accurate? According to the CDC: “15% of high school students reported having ever used select illicit or injection drugs—cocaine, inhalants, heroin, methamphetamines, hallucinogens, or ecstasy.”
Young people’s brains are still developing. They make risky decisions. And those decisions can have long-term consequences. The CDC reports that “the majority of adults who have a substance use disorder started using substances during their teen and young adult years.”
Dalrymple continues with what happens when the well-intended government opts to become the local drug dealer:
This NIH paper confirms that alcohol is an elastic good. That is, the lower the price of alcohol, the more of it is consumed.
And, of course, with the increased consumption of alcohol comes negative effects to the drinker’s health (in terms of liver damage, gout, alcohol poisoning, etc) and to the health and safety of those around the drinker. According to the WHO, “the relationship between alcohol consumption and aggressive behavior has been well documented in epidemiological studies.”
That’s just alcohol. What would happen if we legalized even more addictive drugs? Fortunately, we don’t have to wonder. The state of Oregon experimented with full decriminalization in 2020. Their intention was to encourage treatment for addicts, rather than punishing them for drug use. Four years later the experiment was shut down.
Legislators defied their voters’ well-intentioned decriminalization law and made possession of hard drugs a crime again. Why? Choosing not to punish addicts, and making prosecuting dealers more difficult, worsened the existing fentanyl crisis and led to more overdose deaths.
Another place that famously implemented decriminalization was Portugal. After twenty years from when the policy was first instituted, experts can now evaluate the effectiveness. This article summarizes Portugal's policy:
Before the policy went into effect in 2001, Portugal had record-high heroin usage and HIV infections. So far the policy has had mixed results.
Even though initial results were positive, in recent years government budget cuts slashed the country’s progress:
This begs the question: what is an addict’s life worth? If they’re not contributing to the economy, are their lives worth less than a regular person's life? These are uncomfortable questions, but Portuguese policy makers implicitly decide the value of addicts’ lives when they choose to withhold tax dollars from (historically successful) addiction programs.
It seems that decriminalization, when implemented properly, has potential. But the lifeblood of these programs, and the life-and-blood of addicts, will perpetually hang in the balance depending upon which political administration is in power.
Putting aside the self-destructive behaviors that drugs can induce, Dalrymple also highlights the danger to bystanders. Certain drugs have pharmacological properties that are known to increase a person’s propensity for violence:
Hard drugs like crack cocaine are associated with violence. This NIH paper evaluated the effects of crack cocaine on drug users attending treatment clinics in São Paulo, Brazil. The results:
Finally, Dalrymple challenges the narrative that there’s an easy solution to the problem of drugs:
In an ideal world, do I wish responsible adults could decide to use hard drugs for themselves? Yes. But we don’t live in an ideal world.
The essay was first published in the book Our Culture, What’s Left of It.