A reader asked: Dr. Hurd, what are your thoughts on informing on the safety of a drug such as heroin (which I assume you think should be legal as well) and do you think drugs such as this should be sold in stores?
The overriding principle here is whether we’re sovereign over our own bodies, minds and lives—or we’re not.
If we are, then no external authority has a right to prevent us from putting into our bodies whatever we wish. This includes, heroin, marijuana, or even outright poison, for that matter.
Reality, using our own rational minds—should we elect to do so—is what we answer to; not any other authority, least of all one imposed or interpreted by the average politician or bureaucrat.
We all are—or at least should be—free to make our own assessments of what’s right, true and real. I don’t see taking heroin as rational behavior. Anybody who attempts to use heroin recreationally will likely encounter problems with that choice, whether the choice is legal or not.
Likewise, the illegality of heroin does not prevent, and will never prevent, people from consuming that substance if they wish to do so. Anyone who thinks the law stops an addict from going after what he or she wants hasn’t spent much time dealing with an addict.
A lot of people don’t see it this way. They see allowing freedom to purchase heroin as equivalent to endorsing heroin. It’s actually no such thing. Endorsing something as a political right has nothing whatsoever to do with morality, regardless of how one defines morality (if one does at all).
When you endorse the legality of activities such as abusing heroin, it’s not heroin you’re endorsing; it’s the principle of individual rights and ownership over every aspect of one’s life. Your life is your own to cherish and develop, or squander and destroy. This choice belongs to nobody else but yourself, and nobody can choose for you, regardless.
Some will ask: What will happen to society when drugs become legal? I don’t really get the question. Some people will use or abuse these substances when they become legal, just as they did when they weren’t legal. If anything, society will become a better place because police will no longer have to concentrate on managing or controlling a dangerous and gun-ridden black market for substances. Police can concentrate solely on restraining criminals. Drug dealers can trade their products in peace, rather than on the streets dodging bullets and harming innocent victims.
Others ask: Won’t people run out of control if we allow things like heroin to become legal? Again, I don’t understand. The negative consequences of drug abuse for the individuals who engage in it will exist the same as before, whether those drugs are legal or not. Just as some people were alcoholics both during and after Prohibition, the same holds true for drug abuse. Are we to assume that if heroin became legal, most of the people who now refrain from using it will suddenly start doing so? If society is that far gone, then legalization of heroin is the least of our worries.
Admittedly, it is hard to come out in favor of outright drug legalization in the midst of an expanding welfare-entitlement state such as our own. For that reason, you won’t find me advocating drug legalization as the first or most important requirement of establishing a free society.
As it stands, if we legalized all drugs now, millions of drug-addicted people could legally claim benefits from the welfare state—unemployment, food stamps, welfare, even disability/SSI since substance abuse is considered a medical illness. Drug addicts are shielded from the consequences of their choices by a protective government state who guarantees the bare minimum required for living, as an entitlement.
I can understand the insanity of proposing drug legalization, especially drugs such as heroin, in the midst of an entitlement state with greater numbers of people dependent on government benefits all the time.
Clearly, before legalizing drugs we have to confront the fiscal monster and moral injustice of having a gigantic and expansive government seeking to hook as many people as possible on government sustenance.
However, both issues are varieties of the same fundamental principle: Does an individual’s life belong to himself, or does it not?
If we really are sovereign over our own lives, then government has no business preventing us from taking drugs such as heroin. But for the same reason, the government likewise has no basis for forcing some people to take care of others who become dependent on drugs. That’s what entitlement and welfare benefits do, in principle and in practice.
Most people who defend welfare benefits do so on the premise that, “Those paying for them can afford them, while those receiving the benefits cannot.” But that isn’t the point. The point is you are forcing charity at the point of a gun. Whether the person being forced to pay for the charity is a billionaire, or a middle-class person who could use a big reduction in taxes and is entitled to spend his own money on other things—in either case, the government is forcing people to engage in charity.
And because the government provides benefits to people regardless of their own personal choices (e.g., drug abuse) that might have contributed to their impoverishment, you have a recipe for continued expansion of the number of people dependent on government benefits. Government is the enabler to end all enablers, with a trillion dollar pocketbook.
So yes, heroin should be legal. But so should giving to the charity of your choice—or not giving at all, if that’s your choice.
I realize that not everyone receiving government benefits is a drug addict. But the coercive nature of these programs makes drug legalization seem ludicrous so long as those entitlements and benefits are guaranteed.
Before legalizing something as seriously harmful as heroin, we have to legalize freedom and individual rights—across the board. Who knows? If freedom, liberty, individual rights and the rational intelligence and self-responsibility which give rise to them became the norm, there would probably be a lot less substance abuse going on in the first place.
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