THE MARIJUANA REFERENDUMS: BOLSTERING THE THERAPEUTIC STATE
>
> Thomas Szasz
>
> Drug prohibitionists were alarmed last November, when
>voters in Arizona and California endorsed the referendums
>permitting the use of marijuana for "medical purposes."
>Opponents of drug prohibition ought to be even more alarmed:
>The advocates of medical marijuana have embraced a tactic that
>retards the repeal of drug prohibition and reinforces the moral
>legitimacy of prevailing drug policies. Instead of steadfastly
>maintaining that the war on drugs is an intrinsically evil
>enterprise, the reformers propose replacing legal sanctions with
>medical tutelage, a principle destined to further expand the
>medical control of everyday behavior.
>
> Not surprisingly, the drug prohibition establishment
>reacted to the passage of the marijuana referendums as the
>Vatican might react to an outbreak of heretical schism. Senator
>Orrin G. Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
>declared: "We can't let this go without a response." Arizona
>Senator Jon Kyl told the Judiciary Committee: "I am
>extraordinarily embarrassed," adding that he believed most
>Arizona voters who supported the referendum "were deceived."
>Naturally. Only a person who had fallen into error could
>approve of sin. Too many critics of the war on drugs continue
>to refuse to recognize that their adversaries are priests waging
>a holy war on Satanic chemicals, not statesmen who respect the
>people and whose sole aim is to give them access to the best
>possible information concerning the benefits and risks of
>biologically active substances.
>
> From Colonial times until 1914, Americans were the authors
>of their own drug policy: They decided what substances to avoid
>or use, controlled the drugusing behavior of their children,
>and assumed responsibility for their personal conduct. Since
>1914, the control of, and responsibility for, drug use by
>adults as well as children has been gradually transferred
>from citizens to agents of the state, principally physicians.
>
> Supporters of the marijuana referendums portray their
>policies as acts of compassion "to help the chronically or
>terminally ill." James E. Copple, president of Community Anti
>Drug Coalitions of America, counters: "They are using the AIDS
>victims and terminally ill as props to promote the use of
>marijuana." He is right. Former Surgeon General Joycelyn
>Elders declares: "I think that we can really legalize
>marijuana." If by "legalizing" she means repealing marijuana
>prohibition, then she does not know what she is talking about.
>We have sunk so low in the war on drugs that, at present,
>legalizing marijuana in the United States is about as practical
>as is legalizing Scotch in Saudi Arabia. A 1995 Gallup Poll
>found that 85 percent of the respondents opposed legalizing
>illicit drugs.
>
> Supporters of the marijuana referendums are posturing as
>advocates of medical "responsibility" toward "sick patients."
>Physicians complain of being deprived of their right to free
>speech. It won't work. The government can outresponsible the
>doctors any day. Physicians have "prescription privileges," a
>euphemism for what is, in effect, the power to issue patients ad
>hoc licenses to buy certain drugs. This makes doctors major
>players in the state apparatus denying people their right to
>drugs, thereby denying them the option of responsible drug use
>and abdicating their own responsibilities to the government: "We
>will not turn a blind eye toward our responsibility," declared
>Attorney General Janet Reno at a news conference on December 30,
>1996, where the Administration announced "that doctors in
>California and Arizona who ordered for their patients any drugs
>like marijuana . . . could lose their prescription privileges and
>even face criminal charges." I don't blame the doctors for
>wanting to forget the Satanic pact they have forged with the
>state, but they should not expect the government not to remind
>them of it.
>
> The American people as well as their elected
>representatives support the war on drugs. The mainstream media
>addresses the subject in a language that precludes rational
>debate: crimes related to drug prohibition are systematically
>described as "drugrelated." Perhaps most important, Americans
>in everincreasing numbers seem to be deeply, almost
>religiously, committed to a medicalized view of life. Thus,
>Dennis Peron, the originator of the California marijuana
>proposition, believes that since relieving stress is beneficial
>to health, "any adult who uses marijuana does so for medical
>reasons." Similarly, Ethan Nadelmann, director of the
>Lindesmith Center (the George Soros think tank for drug policy),
>states: "The next step is toward arguing for a more rational
>drug policy," such as distributing hypodermic needles and
>increasing access to methadone for heroin addicts. These self
>declared opponents of the war on drugs are blind to the fatal
>compromise entailed in their use of the phrase "rational
>policy."
>
> If we believe we have a right to a free press, we do not
>seek a rational book policy or reading policy; on the contrary,
>we would call such a policy "censorship" and a denial of our
>First Amendment rights.
>
> If we believe we have a right to freedom of religion, we
>do not seek a rational belief policy or religion policy; on the
>contrary, we would call such a policy "religious persecution"
>and a denial of the Constitutionally mandated separation of
>church and state.
>
> So long as we do not believe in freedom of, and
>responsibility for, drug use, we cannot mount an effective
>opposition against medicalstatist drug controls. In a free
>society, the duty of the government is to protect individuals
>from others who might harm them; it is not the government's
>business to protect individuals from harming themselves. Mis
>ranking these governmental functions precludes the possibility
>of repealing our drug laws. Presciently, C. S. Lewis had
>warned against yielding to the temptations of medical tutelage:
>"Of all the tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good
>of its victims may be the most oppressive . . . . To be 'cured'
>against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard
>as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet
>reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed
>with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
>
> Although at present we cannot serve the cause of liberty
>by repealing the drug laws, we can betray that cause by
>supporting the fiction that selfmedication is a disease,
>prohibiting it is a public health measure, and punishing it is a
>treatment.
>
>Thomas Szasz, M.D.,
>Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus,
>SUNY Health Science Center
>750 East Adams Street
>Syracuse, New York, 13210
>
>Email responses may be sent c/o jschale@american.edu
>Dr. Schaler will forward all responses to Dr. Szasz.
>
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>
>Comments on this Szasz article? This was originally posted by
>"Dr. Jeffrey A. Schaler"
>ReplyTo: NUVUPSY Against the Medical Model of Behavior
>
>
>(Note: This article is reproduced here at the request and
>permission of the author. The article appeared in the March
>1997 issue of LIBERTY, Volume 10, No. 4, pp. 4748, and is
>titled "Marijuana SellOut." Permission to reprint this article
>here was submitted to the editor of LIBERTY, R.W. Bradshaw.
>Subscription information and back issues of LIBERTY are
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