HaCKeRz KrOnIcKLeZ 3/HaCKeRz_KrOnIcKLeZ.iso/drugs/our.right.to.drugs

Internet Message Format | 1996-05-06 | 9KB

Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: alt.drugs
From: [e-mail] (the Objectivist)
Date: Wed,  6 Oct 1993 05:03:35 UTC
Subject: EXCERPTS: Our Right To Drugs

 Excerpts from _Our Right To Drugs: The Case For a Free Market_
 by Thomas Szasz
 (c) 1992
 ISBN 0-275-94216-3


 Casting a ballot is an important act, emblematic of our role as citizens. But
eating and drinking are much more important acts. If given a choice between
the freedom to choose what to ingest and what politician to vote for, few if
any would pick the latter.

 ...

 The trick to enacting and enforcing crassly hypocritical prohibitions, with
the conniving of the victimized population, lies in not saying what you mean
and avoiding direct legal rule making. Thus, the Founders did not declare, in
so many words, "To justify slavery, in the slave states blacks shall be
counted as property; and to apportion more congressional seats to the slave
states than they would have on the basis of their white population only, black
slaves shall be counted as three-fifths persons."

 ...

 ...There are three distinct drug markets in the United States today: 1) the
legal (free) market; 2) the medical (prescription) market; and 3) the illegal
("black") market. Because the cost of virtually all of the services we call
"drug treatment" is borne by parties other than the so-called patient, and
because most people submit to such treatment under legal duress, there is
virtually no free market at all in drug treatment. Try as we might, we cannot
escape the fact that the conception of a demand for goods and services in the
free market is totally different from the conception we now employ in
reference to drug use and drug treatment. In the free market, a demand is what
the customer wants; or as merchandising magnate Marshall Field put it, "The
customer is always right." In the prescription drug market, we seem to say,
"The doctor is always right": The physician decides what drug the patient
should "demand", and that is all he can legally get. Finally, in the
psychiatric drug market, we as a society are saying, "The patient is always
wrong": The psychiatrist decides what drug the mental patient "needs" and
compels him to consume it, by force if necessary.

 ...

 Naturally, drug companies defend the practice [of advertising]. "The ads,"
they say, "help educate patients and give consumers a chance to become more
involved in choosing the medication they want." But that laudable goal could
be better served by a free market in drugs. In my opinion, the practice of
advertising prescription drugs to the public fulfills a more odious function,
namely, to further infantalize the layman and, at the same time, undermine the
physician's medical authority. The policy puts physicians in an obvious bind.
Prescription laws give doctors monopolistic privilege to provide certain drugs
to certain persons, or withhold such drugs from them. However, the advertising
of prescription drugs encourages people to pressure their physicians to
prescribe the drugs they WANT, rather than the drugs the physicians believe
they need...Missing is any recognition of the way this practice reinforces the
role of the patient as helpless child, and of the doctor as providing or
withholding parent. After all, we know why certain breakfast food
advertisements are aimed at young children: Because while they cannot buy
these foods for themselves, they can pressure their parents to buy the
advertised cereals for them. Similarly, the American people cannot buy
prescription drugs, but they can pressure their doctors to prescribe the
advertised drugs for them.

 ...

 If ever there were services that are fictitious or even worse, they are our
current publicly financed drug treatment services. The wisdom of our language
reveals the truth and supports the cogency of these reflections. We do not
call convicts "comsumers of prison services", or conscripts "consumers of
military services"; but we call committed mental patients "consumers of mental
health services" and paroled addicts "consumers of drug treatment services".
We might as well call drug traffickers -- conscripted by the former drug czar
William Bennett for beheading -- "consumers of guillotine services". After
all, Dr. Guillotin was a doctor, and Mr. Bennett used to teach ethics.

 ...

 Although it is obvious that the American drug market is now completely state
controlled, most people seem at once unaware of this fact and pleased with it,
except when they want a drug they cannot get. Then they complain about the
unavailability of that particular drug. For example, cancer patients complain
that they cannot get Laetrile; AIDS patients that they cannot get unapproved
anti-AIDS drugs; women, that they cannot get unapproved chemical
abortifacients; terminally ill patients in pain, that they cannot get heroin;
and so on...Sadly, the very concept of a closure of the free market in drugs
is likely to ring vague and abstract to most people today. But the personal
and social consequences of a policy based on such a concept are anything but
abstract or vague...the voluntary coming together of honest and responsible
citizens, trading with one another in mutual trust and respect, has been
replaced by the deceitful and coercive manipulation of infantalized people by
corrupt and paternalistic authorities...helping politicians to impose their
will on the people by defining self-medication as a disease...

 ...

 Ever since Colonial times, the American people have displayed two powerful
but contradictory existential dispositions. THey looked inward, seeking to
perfect the self through a struggle for self-discipline; and outward, seeking
to perfect the world through the conquest of nature and the moral reform of
others. [Any guess which of the two is morally reprehensible? You got it. If
you want to change the world, change yourself first.] The result has been an
unusually intense ambivalence about a host of pleasure-producing acts (drug
use being but one) and an equally intense reluctance to confront this
ambivalence, embracing simultaneously both a magical-religious and rational-
scientific outlook on life.

 ...

 In 1914, Congress enacted another landmark piece of anti-drug legislation;
the Harrison Narcotic Act. Originally passed as a record-keeping law, it
quickly became a prohibition statute. In the course of the next seven years,
by a curious coincidence of history -- if, indeed, it is coincidence -- in
Rissua, the Soviet Union replaced the czarist empire, while in the United
States, the free market in drugs was replaced by federal drug prohibition
possessing unchallengeable authority. Excerpts from two key Supreme Court
decisions quickly tell the story.
 In 1915, in a test of the Harrison Act, the Court upheld it, but expressed
doubts about its constitutionality. "While the Opium Registration Act of
December 17, 1914, may have a moral end, as well as revenue, in view, this
court, in view of the grave doubt as to its constitutionality except as a
revenue measure, construes it as such."  Yet only six years later, the Court
considered objection to federal drug prohibition taboo...In 1914, trading in
and using drugs was a right. In 1915, limited federal drug controls were a
constitutionally questionable tax revenue measure. By 1921, the federal
government had gained not only complete control over so-called dangerous
drugs, but also a quasi-papal immunity to legal challenge of its authority.

 ...

 Although we now shamefully neglect and obscure the differences between vice
and crime -- and hence the differences between peaceful persuasion and
government coercion -- these differences form the pillars on which a free
society rests. Conversely, denying these distinctions (by metaphorical
bombast, sloppy thinking or political propaganda making use of both) is the
decisive step in transforming self-restraint into the restraint of others,
temperance into prohibition, persuasion into persecution, the moral ideals of
individuals into the immoral madness of crowds. All this [Lysander] Spooner
saw clearly:

         No one ever practices a vice with any...criminal intent. He
         practices his vice for his own happiness solely, and not from
         any malice toward others. Unless this clear distinction
         between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws,
         there can be on earth no such thing as individual right,
         liberty or property; no such things as the right of one man
         to the control of his own person and property, and the
         corresponding and co-equal rights of another man to the
         control of his own person and property.


 ...

 During the first two decades of this century, several protectionist programs
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