>>> Part 12 of 15...
The Crusaders' war on the Infidel dramatized their unwavering devotion
to the True Faith.  The Communists' war on private property dramatized
their unwavering devotion to the ideal of a society free of economic
exploitation.  America's war on drugs dramatizes our unwavering
devotion to the ideal of a "drug-free" society.  The right analogy for
America's war on drugs is not the Vietnam War, but Communism.
The Soviet Union was the embodiment of the principle that private
property is evil.  To protect people from dangerous capitalists, the
USSR criminalized leaving the country without permission.  The Russians
are now paying the price of their anti-capitalist mentality.
Today, the United States is the embodiment of the principle that self-
medication is evil.  To protect people from rejecting protection from
dangerous drugs, the U.S. criminalizes self-medication without a
prescription.  We arc now paving the price of our anti-drug mentality.
William Bennett is right: Drug use and drug controls arc primarily
moral issues.  But whereas Bennett sees self medication as wicked and
drug criminalization as virtuous, I see self-medication as a basic
human right (with unqualified responsibility for its consequences) and
drug criminalization as sinful (hypocritical and unenforceable).
Among the sins of the drug warriors, I view the following as especially
important: 1) destroying Americans' attachment to, indeed their very
understanding of, limited government; 2) converting tort law into an
instrument of economic redistribution and the principle of caveat
emptor into that of caveat vendor; 3) turning doctors into drug
monopolists (by making the purchase of most drugs, especially
"pleasure-producing" drugs, illegal without a physician's
prescription), and perverting the medical criteria of disease and
treatment (by defining certain "bad" choices as diseases, and certain
"good" coercions as treatments); 4) obscuring the obvious fact that all
biologically active substances are potentially dangerous (in certain
doses, to some persons, under certain circumstances); 5) converting the
relationship between doctor and patient from a contract between two
responsible adults into a domination-dependence relationship; and
6) redefining the relationship between drug seller and drug buyer from
a contract between two responsible adults into a victimization
relationship.
In his great work Ancient Law, Sir Henry Maine articulated his famous
general proposition: "The movement of the progressive societies has
hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract." The war on drugs is
but one manifestation, albeit a very important one, of a radical
reversal of this movement.  Gradually, the American polity has become
transformed from a limited government (the Rule of Law) into an
unlimited Therapeutic State (relations based on status).
I reject my fellow panelists' sympathetic stance toward medical drug
controls.  To treat people in great pain effectively, we do not need
more "compassion"; we simply need a social setting where individuals
have legal access to narcotics and where doctors can administer such
drugs in conformity with their patients' wants, without fear of
criminal penalties for overprescribing, or civil penalties for
malpractice, or both.  Prescribing heroin and methadone for addicts is
not the solution, but the very epitome of the problem.  Enough said.
In a secular society committed to individual liberty and personal
responsibility, the legislator's task is to enact laws to govern the
behavior of adults, not children (whose management is primarily the
responsibility of their parents).  Once a person loses sight of this
fact, it is easy to convince him that protecting children from drugs
justifies making drugs difficult to obtain for adults.
Drugs are, of course, not the only dangerous artifacts in our
environment.  Electricity, household appliances and cleansers, and
countless other products of human inventiveness endanger, injure, and
kill children.  We accept these inventions that, in the long run, make
our lives healthier and safer, and adapt to them by teaching children
to cope realistically with the risks they pose.  Harassing adults and
depriving them of rights will not work as a substitute for disciplining
children.
Our obsession with the necessity of drug controls is closely
intertwined with our attitudes toward self-harm and health care on the
one hand, and, on the other hand, with our attitudes toward the
manufacturer's and provider's tort liability for substances and
interventions classified as "medical." In contemporary medical-
political discourse, the issue of free will is raised only to assert
its absence, and hence the unsuitability of market relations in
connection with drugs and health care.  To be sure, it makes no sense
to let people make important choices if we believe that they are unable
to choose, because they are the victims of addiction or mental illness.
We try to prevent our children from putting foreign bodies into their
nostrils or other body cavities.  Why?  Partly because we love them and
partly because their self injury causes us a lot of trouble.  In
proportion as we treat adults like children-lifting the economic burden
of medical care from their shoulders and placing it on everyone else's
shoulders-we create a set of monstrous incentives whose reality we
refuse to acknowledge.  Protecting everyone from having to pay for his
own health care and at the same time making everyone pay for everyone
else's health care not only infantilizes everyone, but encourages
everyone to meddle in everyone else's life (in order to reduce the
medical services others require).
 >>> Continued to next message...
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