| OUR SOCIETY is on the move. The UK is moving gradually towards a new resolution of "The Drugs Question". Change is slow. Traditional attitudes, beliefs and fears hinder the process. But over the next decade, each nation in the global village will reach its own accommodation between prohibition and personal freedom, between the liberal and the authoritarian ethos. There will be a new "settlement". For our future quality of life, and the style of our future civic order, the terms of that settlement will be decisive. LIBERTY , it is suggested, has a key role to play in forging that new settlement. The issues at stake have for centuries interpenetrated the evolution of civic order, in every society, on every continent. Yet nowhere are the issues of principle so clearly drawn as in the consumption of psychoactive substances, where individuals take command of their own state of mind. Seat-belts and crash-helmets may raise the same issues of principle, but they have far less resonance. Walking on the Cairngorms, climbing Everest, hang-gliding from Mont Blanc: they all raise precisely the same issues of principle, but lack the capacity to capture the imagination, or to command the intellect. It is the private, personal consumption of "drugs" which triggers the defining debate which is now upon us. Mankind has always been attracted by substances which affect subjective states of mind, which relieve tiredness, stimulate the senses, intensify the emotions, promote elation and counter depression. To human beings, as intelligent and self-conscious creatures, psychoactive substances have always offered help and solace in preparing for war, for athletic competition, for social interaction, for sex, for fighting demons, for experiencing flights of the imagination, for dreaming dreams. The phenomenon is so widespread, found in so many human societies, that it seems universal. Beer, wine, distilled spirits, tobacco, coca, caffeine, cannabis, heroin, laudanum, opiates and hallucinogens - they have all served their turn, and are in regular use the world over. And the rapid commercial development of licensed chemical stimulants, the "designer drugs", is likely to add to that list. Viagra is likely to be the precursor of many other stimulants, both psychoactive and otherwise. These substances bring widespread personal pleasure to millions, solace, escape, stimulation, relief from pain, and above all relief from boredom and from the frustration of ambition, which are distinctly human burdens. Some have been shown to have an adverse mental or physical effect, some to cause lasting harm, and they all have differing addictive propensities. But the mere possibility of harmful personal consequences is not, and cannot be, sufficient to justify intervention by the state. |
By what right does any Government, in a free society,
presume to interfere with this process? The deployment of
coercive intervention should be challenged, from the outset,
as a matter of first principle. Die Gedanken sind frei.
"Our thoughts are free", said Goethe. The individual's own state of mind is the ultimate zone of freedom, where no Government should enter in. This view was expressed most cogently in a July 1999 Commons debate by the MP for West Dorset, Oliver Letwin "I pose this question partly to myself,
but also to my Honourable Friends and to Labour Members
who consider themselves to be proponents of liberty. How
do we feel competent to prohibit the use of such (psychoactive) substances when noone suggests that their use amounts to an imposition by one upon another?... How do we feel competent
to decide that we should pass laws to prevent people from harming themselves?" By contradistinction, totalitarian regimes have been marked by a refusal to accept the ultimate freedom of the mind, the ultimate sovereignty of the individual. The persecution of religion in the USSR, the contemporary persecution of Falun Gong in China, the intolerance of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan - these go to the very core of individual freedom. But in UK society, accustomed as we have become to the assertion of personal freedoms,
to deny to a private person, who is harming no other, the right
to seek personal solace, stimulation or relief in the
intoxication of his choice - that constitutes a self-evident civil wrong.
A society that becomes accustomed to this invasion of privacy by the state will rapidly become insensitive to other invasions. The "drugs laws" of the UK, and their invasive enforcement, are illegitimate in principle and objectionable in practice. They should be repealed and replaced by a new liberal civic order, based on respect for the individual and upon the simple assertion of personal freedom. If any individual becomes addicted to a psychoactive substance, and is harmed by that addiction, medical treatment should be made
available equitably, as for other medical conditions. And it is
wholly acceptable for the state to regulate the modalities of
"lawful supply". But where the consumption of a psychoactive
substance represents a private act, reflecting a private decision,
with only individual consequences, there can be no foundation
for any state preventive intervention at all, in its consumption,
its procurement or its supply. This is an issue upon which
LIBERTY should take a firm stand of principle, and should
seek to give a liberal lead.
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