Could We Ever Justify Restraining Someone From Doing Drugs? (Part I)

by Danny Shahar

Exclusive to STR

January 2, 2008

I couldn’t help but feel honored by Glen Allport’s response to my article about drug prohibition and paternalism.  Glen can always be relied on for interesting ideas and a passionate writing style, and his reply did not disappoint.  His article was composed of two fundamental ideas.  First, he discussed the notion that people do not belong to other people, and that to prevent others from using drugs would be to violate their rights and to disrespect their individuality.  Second, he tried to put the dangers associated with drugs in perspective, pointing out how much more dangerous to our health everyday activities can be.  Glen’s approach is a classic and familiar one: “It would be wrong to do that, and there’s no reason to anyway.”  

I fully agree with Glen’s assessment of the relative dangers (or lack thereof) associated with drug use.  But I wonder if he is right about the idea that it is always a violation of someone’s rights to prevent them from taking drugs.  In a past article, I showed why such an intervention would not be justified for the purposes of imposing some higher morality on a drug user.  And I am with Glen on the idea that protecting people from the dangers of drug use could not justify prohibition.    

But I do think that there are at least two reasons why we might be able to justify stopping someone from using drugs.  To ensure that my thinking doesn’t get muddled, I’m going to separate the reasons into two articles.  The reason that will be the topic of this column is that a drug user might not fully realize the nature of the choice she is making, and so we might want to prevent her from making a poorly informed, and regrettable, decision from which she might be unable to recover.  

Both Glen and I are concerned with the idea that in asking for protection from bad choices, what we are doing is acknowledging our inability to make our own decisions, and effectively reducing ourselves to the level of children.  If this were the case, then it would seem that we would be doing ourselves a profound disrespect.  Our legislators are not benevolent parents who know how best to carry out a life.  They cannot possibly be expected to make our choices for us, and to lead us to true fulfillment and happiness.  

Further, even if our governors knew how we should live our lives, and were able to force us to make the choices that we ought to make, it would be clear that our lives would not be enriched as a result.  An integral part of being a worthwhile person is having the ability to make one’s own choices, and learning from one’s own mistakes.  Being protected from all possible disappointment and pain, then, would be condemnation.  Accordingly, to forcefully protect someone in such a way would be the most profound disrespect to her individuality and personhood.  

But does this mean that we can never forcefully protect someone from making a bad decision without violating her rights?  Adapting an example from John Stuart Mill, imagine if we are walking down the street on an extremely foggy day, and we see a jogger on his way past us, listening to music on his headphones.  We see him heading straight for a bridge which runs directly over a canyon.  We know that the bridge is out, and that the fog is so thick that the jogger would be likely to run straight over the edge, plummeting to his death in the canyon below.  We try to call out to the jogger, but he can’t hear us over his music.  Would we be justified, then, in grabbing him in order to explain to him that he would be risking his life by jogging onto the bridge?  

The intuitive answer here, I think, is that we would indeed be justified in doing this.  But could we, by the same token, prohibit the jogger from continuing on his way once we had made our case?  I don’t think so.  So what’s important in our restraining the jogger does not seem to be the danger itself, but rather the lack of awareness of the danger.  Once we have told the jogger what dangers he would face by going onto the bridge, the lack of awareness would be gone, and we would have to let him make his own decision.  

The same sort of thing could, I think, be reasonably applied to drugs.  Drugs can be dangerous, not only to one’s health, but to one’s ability to lead a meaningful, fulfilling life.  People who take drugs without properly understanding the nature of their decision could end up by squandering their only shot at happiness, instead condemning themselves to lives of hazy gloom.  But as I wrote in my aforementioned article about paternalism, there are very good reasons why people would want to take drugs, in spite of the risks and dangers associated with taking them.  Standing between people and their choices is profoundly disrespectful of their ability to function as individuals.  Standing between people and choices that they would not make if they had the facts, however, doesn’t seem to be.  

So what does this mean for policy?  As far as I can tell, prohibition goes out the door.  But I’m not sure that complete legalization is the only justifiable outcome.  If someone were forced to speak with a doctor, or attend an information session, before being permitted to purchase drugs, I don’t see any reason why we would want to say that it would constitute an objectionable violation of her right to make her own decisions.  Of course, there are a number of other reasons why such a policy could be objectionable.  Who are these informants?  If someone already sufficiently understood the dangers, would she still have to be “informed” about her decision?  Are we to be expected to pay for this information?  The list goes on.  But all I’m saying is that it doesn’t seem disrespectful of someone’s individuality to force them to be aware of the facts about their dangerous decisions if their potential mistake could be ruinous.  I wonder, though, if Glen would agree . . . .