Liberal Views on Drug Legalization

There has been a debate on legalizing drug use for quite some time now. Most legalizers are liberals, and their views on drug policy are consistent with liberal views on other issues. This paper will outline the liberal view of legalizing drugs.

Liberals do not generally trust individuals to make reasonable choices about drug use, and they think government should adopt policies that attempt to discourage drug use. But liberal legalizers do not like using police power to achieve this goal, especially when that power is directed at drug users as opposed to drug sellers. Thus, although liberal legalizers want government to reduce the harms from drug abuse, they prefer approaches other than prohibition.

The liberal view on legalization reflects an assessment of the relative harms of drug use versus drug prohibition, and in that sense is similar to the libertarian calculus. But liberals put less weight on consumer sovereignty, and they are not as fundamentally suspicious of government prohibitions as are libertarians. Thus, for commodities viewed as substantially harmful (e.g., tobacco), liberals are willing to consider prohibition, but for commodities viewed as relatively benign (e.g., marijuana), they find prohibition excessive (Boyd 1998). Liberals agree on the fact that prohibition has many undesired consequences. These include the infringements on civil liberties that are an inevitable consequence of attempts to sanction victimless crimes; the corruption and violence fostered in foreign countries by U.S. attempts to enforce prohibition; the increased frequency of overdoses and accidental poisonings that results from the poor quality control in black markets; the increased property crime that results from elevated drug prices; and the violence that results because participants in black markets settle disagreements with guns rather than lawyers. Liberal legalizers argue, therefore, that the arrest and prosecution of drug users is ill-advised and that current enforcement of prohibition against drug suppliers is excessive (Manfredi, 2001).

Perhaps the biggest thing that is unique about liberals is that liberals prefer decriminalization or other partial measures as suppose to outright legalization. Under full legalization, the production, distribution, sale and possession of drugs are all legal; the law treats drugs like any other commodity. Under decriminalization, the possession of drugs is not subject to criminal sanctions, but penalties against production, distribution and sale remain in place. Thus, drugs are not legal commodities (Manfredi, 2001). This liberal preference for decriminalization derives from several sources. Liberals regard freedoms practiced by individuals as more important than freedoms practiced by businesses; thus, they defend the right to consume drugs more ardently than the right to sell drugs. Liberals also regard the pursuit of profits with skepticism, which makes them more hostile toward drug sellers than toward drug users. Focus on decriminalization is consistent with the liberal view that the main negative of prohibition is its adverse treatment of drug users (Boyd 1998).

Many liberal legalizers do advocate more than just decriminalizing possession. The specific proposals, however, involve substantial government control over the production, distribution and sale of drugs. Some proposals, for example, permit the sale of drugs only through government-owned stores, as occurs for liquor in certain places. Other proposals require consumers to have special government IDs in order to buy drugs. Still other proposals retain much of the current legal regime while allowing a more free distribution of drugs through medical channels, as in the British system of narcotic maintenance, or via clinics, as in methadone maintenance (Boyd 1998).

For many liberals, the answer is to legalize marijuana only. Since liberals are not convinced individuals make reasonable decisions on their own, their views on which drugs to legalize reflect their views on which drugs are relatively benign and which drugs are relatively harmful. Most observers regard marijuana as far less dangerous than cocaine, heroin, or other illegal drugs, which means liberals see legalization as obvious for marijuana but less compelling with respect to other drugs (Manfredi, 2001).

An issue that separates liberal and other views on drug policy is government-funded treatment for drug abuse. The typical liberal view is that government expenditure on interdiction should be scaled back or eliminated, with these funds transferred to the budget for drug-abuse treatment. The liberal support for government-funded drug-abuse treatment partly reflects the view that drug use should be reduced, although by means other than police power. It also reflects the view that drug addiction is a treatable disease that is not controllable by individuals (Boyd 1998).

Although support for subsidized treatment is widespread among liberal legalizers, this view is not uniform. Some liberals advocate legalization