Drugs: What Are They?
I begin with my own country, as an example which will let me suggest an orientation for our discussions. The United States, as is well known, has a very large “drug problem.” The problem is real, but it has been conceptualized improperly. The U.S. government defines the problem as one of “drug” or “narcotic” use, and goes on to conceptualizes this area of human behavior as a police problem: people are using substances that “appropriate experts have defined as things they should not be using, and thereby doing themselves and others harm. The solution to this problem is to enhance the police power so that these “narcotics” or “drug” users can be discovered and, through the use of the criminal sanction, prevented from continuing to use. Those who supply users with “narcotics” must similarly be prevented, by use of the criminal sanction, from continuing to give users the means to harm themselves.
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