Stuart Mill’s Harm Principle as it Relates to Illegal Drug Usage
This paper will not deal with legal drugs, only illegal and addictive ones.
If an act causes harm to the person who commits it (and not to anyone else), according to Mill’s Harm Principle, there would be nothing wrong with it. I do agree with this with one caveat related to drug use; his Principle only condemns drugs when they cause damage to people other than their users, whereas I condemn them because of their addictive nature. It is near impossible for a person who is addicted to drugs to quit; and it may not have been their choice in the first place (i.e., their parents did drugs, they were tricked by a friend or dealer, etc.). Thus, they were essentially coerced by the drugs to continue using them after they were coerced into taking them. They quite literally did not know what they were getting themselves into and once addictive drugs are used once, most people become immediately addicted. Drug addiction should be disallowed because, Mill’s principle can be restated as maximum freedom from coercion, and if drugs are coercive, then any amount of drug use is a violation of liberty. If we want to ensure the greatest maximum liberty, one should be able to make choices according to what they as developed, coercion-free adults want, not their drug-addled brain’s carnal desire for more drugs. Addictive and mind-altering drugs are, essentially, an inanimate type of coercion. I agree with Mill’s Principle but would add to it that the acts of one cannot be coerced by another, including inanimate objects such as drugs; anytime a thing causes coercion, it becomes society’s issue to restrict it by virtue of ensuring the greatest possible liberty.
A counterargument, that I believe Mill would have made, would be who am I to assume my own infallibility while claiming drugs are coercive.[1] In this one case, yes, I do believe the numbers speak for themselves when it comes to how addictive drugs scientifically cause addiction and cause the users thought process to deteriorate.
Do Drugs Qualify as Society’s Issue based on the Harm Principle?
In America, an estimated 9.2% of the population older than 12 uses drugs, or 23.9 million.[2] Of those, 70,630, or around .2%, die due to overdose per year.[3] To put that in perspective, that is 2.5% of the total deaths in America per year. Drug overdose deaths are the 8th most common cause of death in America, and if added together with suicide by people who have drugs in their system, that figure jumps to 7th, just a few thousand deaths below Alzheimer’s disease.[4] Around half of American adults have a family member or close friend who is or has been addicted to drugs.[5] Drugs also cost America $750 billion annually in costs related to crime, lost work productivity, and healthcare.[6]
Mill says that what one person does to themselves can obviously affect others and that, once it does affect the user’s responsibilities or the emotions or interests of others, it should become society’s issue.[7] As the statistics above can easily convince anyone, the emotions and interests and the user’s responsibilities are all severely affected. To take the point further, who could argue that 23.9 million people using drugs and losing $750 billion annually is not a significant detriment to American society as a whole? All it takes to ruin a family’s life, at least temporally, is for one of their members to die. As mentioned above, 2.5% of the families that must hear that and have their entire emotional life toppled owe their agony to drugs. Additionally, drug users have friends that would be hurt, albeit to a lesser extent than the family, by the death of their friend. The list goes on in a myriad of ways in which the extent of drug use in America today should be the public’s business, however, in a society that does not have a drug pandemic, Mill’s Principle would fail to criticize, which is where my edit is crucial.
Societal Control of Drugs as a Way of Ensuring Minimum Coercion
Mill’s argument for preserving personal liberty if the Harm Principle is not violated can be restated as a way of ensuring minimum coercion in a society. I believe that the addiction to drugs can be likened to coercion in that they alter their user’s natural though process in a real and material way that restricts, or at least hinders, the user’s freedom of thought.
Most of the “popular” drugs today work by tricking the brain to release a burst of dopamine, creating the “high” sensation.[8] Dopamine is how a brain identifies and reinforces, beneficial behaviors.[9] Normally, when your brain receives dopamine, is causes certain changes in neural activity that can form a habit, thus reenforcing the action.[10] The strength of the habit is based on the dopamine produced. The amount of dopamine that drugs produce is so much greater than any other activity, that it dwarfs all the healthier ones, such as eating or hydrating, causing your body to seek drugs at the cost of the healthier habits.[11] Also because of the quantity of dopamine, your brain creates a powerful connection between the drug, your surroundings when you take it, and dopamine production, thus teaching your brain to seek drugs.[12] In summary, a drug user, based on the chemistry of the user’s brains and the dopamine-producing nature of drugs, is compelled to seek out and consume drugs. Drugs have hijacked the user’s own brain chemistry and have dwarfed other considerations, such as food, the user’s family, or even survival, causing him to neglect them and other basic considerations for drugs.
I argue that any drug that causes these changes should be a matter of public interest because some considerations have been converted into custom, as they ought to be, as Mill explained.[13] These include food, water, and other issues essential to human survival and the continuation of society. If a drug interferes with these basic considerations, it is coercing the user into doing something that no normal human would not do, and that is objectively wrong when perceived by the drug-free population. In summary, drugs cause your brain chemistry to alter such that objective considerations are disregarded; thus, drugs coerce you to do them at the cost of those basic considerations. They are therefor subject to Mill’s principle and subsequently, public interests and restriction.
Conclusion
Mill’s Harm Principle obviously disallows drugs in America because of the scale of the drug issue and the massive damage it causes. However, I argue that in any society drugs should be disallowed because they are coercive to their users. Inanimate objects can be coercive and often are through addiction. Since Mill’s principle of preserving liberty, except in cases of harm, can be rephrased as ensuring the minimum coercion in a society, then the addiction, and thus coercion, that drugs cause should be disallowed. A person’s claim to uniqueness is unlimited, and that is why drugs should be outlawed, because they restrict their users’ minds such that they cannot make their own decisions on what they want to do with their liberty. Drugs alter their user’s, to borrow a term from Mill, “own mode,” such that it is no longer theirs.[14]
[1] Mill, J. S. (1986). In On liberty (p. 19). essay, Prometheus Books.
[2] US Department of Health and Human Services, Drug Facts (2014). US Gov. Link.
[3] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021, March 3). Drug Overdose Deaths. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Link.
[4] Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2015). Substance Use and Suicide: A Nexus Requiring a Public Health Approach. In Brief. Link.
[5] Gramlich, J. (2020, May 30). 46% in U.S. have friend or family member who's been addicted to drugs. Pew Research Center. Link.
[6] National Institute on Drug Abuse. (n.d.). Costs of Substance Abuse. NIDA Archives. Link.
[7] Mill, J. S. (1986). In On liberty (p. 88). essay, Prometheus Books.
[8] National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2020, July 10). Drugs and the Brain. National Institute on Drug Abuse. Link.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Mill, J. S. (1986). In On liberty (p. 73). essay, Prometheus Books.
[14] Ibid.