Why Can't More People See The Obvious Distinction Between Banning & Disapproving?

There was mass outrage yesterday in response to a London jazz bar whose job advert specified they wanted 'extremely attractive staff' who 'must be comfortable wearing heels'. Now personally this doesn't seem like a very great place to either work or visit - it seems quite superficially minded, and will probably have a client base that reflects this. Hopefully, if enough people act with their feet, then this jazz club will be hit with lower profits, and may then look to advertise more prudently (because the point is, it's easy to hire good looking females if you want to without having to state that's what you're looking for on the job advert).  

Notice what I did in the above paragraph - I told you about my personal feelings towards the advert and the jazz bar. What I would not do, and nor should anyone else, is say that this advert should be taken down or banned from existing. Because one of the basic principles of being free citizens who enjoy personal liberty is that if you happen to run your own business you should be able to hire whoever you like. 

If you make bad decisions you may suffer loss of profits, and develop a bad reputation - sometimes you may even go out of business - but a society that thinks it can tell you who you can and cannot employ is an oppressive wolf, even if it appears to be dressed in the clothing of protective sheep. C.S Lewis put it well:

The example I've given above pretty well summarises why I write as I do on a broader level. That is to say, people know how to run their lives better than any state, monarchy or government. That's not a blanket truism for every single individual in the world, but it's true for the vast majority of people, and it's true in the majority of ways that relate to how we live our lives by making cost/benefit analyses and exercise freedom of choice.

Governments are always going on about the welfare of its citizens - but the irony they miss is that a lot of what they do compromises the welfare those citizens would otherwise enjoy. Take an obvious and frequent example - the price of alcohol. Every government policy is based on the notion that alcohol is bad for its users. It is, but it is also good for its users, because the people who drink alcohol wilfully choose the pleasures and accept the costs. 

Alcohol drinkers are people for whom the pleasure of social drinking outweighs the risk of death, liver damage, addiction and a shorter life. If they valued better health and longer lives they'd drink less or not at all. If you're in the first group then drinking lots of alcohol delivers a net gain; if you’re in the second group then drinking lots of alcohol delivers a net loss.

Because it is impossible for the state to know how much every individual values health, exercise, weight training, smoking, alcohol, casual sex, and so forth, it is impossible for the government to know better than its citizens what is good for them. A good government would understand this, and seek to minimise its involvement in our lives to enhance our welfare and liberty.

But: and here's the important but - there is one important caveat – people’s decisions are affected by the information they have. A lot of people are informed enough to make rational choices about whether they want to drink alcohol. But some people are not. If they’ve lived in a house in which drunkenness was the norm, or in which information about healthy living was scarce, they may not properly understand the benefits or costs. Misinformation increases the likelihood that you’ll either underestimate the costs or underestimate the benefits.

Light regulation is fine

So clearly, for this reason, being a libertarian doesn't mean adopting a 100% erosion of regulatory influence. Many regulatory laws are superfluous, but not all of them are. We need laws that protect factory employees from working in dangerous conditions unbeknown to them. If two people know the details and engage in a mutually beneficial transaction, then state involvement is mostly superfluous. But if Jack is employing Jill and putting her life at risk due to faulty equipment or dodgy wiring, I don't want Jill to be devoid of protection through the law.

Where the law works for me is when it guards people against harms that live outside of anything that could be defined as a mutually beneficial transaction with transparency. But there are lots of ways the government harms mutually beneficial transactions and makes the nation worse off. Here are three examples off the top of my head.

1) A government will impose import tariffs on consumers at prices they wanted to pay, and tell them it's for their own good because they are only better off if they doing more exporting than importing (which even a simpleton ought to know isn't true).

2) A government will use taxpayers' money to bail out or subsidise a failing industry that has simply been outcompeted by other industries abroad or has lost its relevance by ever-changing technology. In doing so they will make their citizens believe they are doing good thing, even though there is a huge net loss, and that a lot of that loss is felt by British consumers and by other British industries that trade with these foreign companies two, three, four or five steps down the line.

3) A government will distort the natural and important information-carrying signal of value by imposing price floors and price ceilings because it follows the lead of the majority of its citizens who are almost wholly ignorant on these matters.

Those are just three examples that first spring to mind - as regular readers of my blog will know, there are dozens of other examples.

I've always said, I'm fine with light government regulation for health and safety standards, protection against nefarious use of asymmetry of information, a stable rule of law, property rights, etc - but the moment the state interferes in the natural mechanism of prices, supply and demand, I want them to relinquish their control.

Pondering our freedoms

All that said, here's where things get a little knottier. Being a libertarian I don't want the state to interfere much in our freedoms - therefore, I don't want them banning things related to what we do to our bodies, like abortion, prostitution and drug-taking. But being a Christian, I do disapprove of those things - not in the sense of being sententious or judgemental against partakers in those activities, but simply in thinking that they are bad for us and harmful to the people involved, and therefore undesirable.  

But quite why so many people think that that means we ought to call for their criminalisation is peculiar to me. There is nothing terribly inconsistent about believing things to be socially undesirable yet still not wanting them criminalised. After all, infidelity is one of the most socially hurtful things, so is unkindness, but no one thinks they should be illegal.

Just because some of us don't want the state telling us how to behave when it comes to abortion, prostitution and drugs, it doesn't mean we need to proclaim those things as wonderful - it is easy to simultaneously value the liberty to do these things and the prudence to advise against them. And this is perhaps the key take home lesson - we must be wise of the difference between banning and disapproving: they are not always natural bedfellows.

Some personal thoughts
I have to confess, while (hopefully) most balanced minds can agree that making abortion illegal would be a terrible thing, I'm not actually very comfortable with the idea of making prostitution legal (by which I mean brothels, as technically it is not illegal to pay someone for sex - what is illegal is soliciting in a public place, kerb crawling, owning or managing a brothel, pimping and pandering), and I'm still very torn on the issue of drug legality.

The main issue I have with laws against prostitution and drugs is that it creates an underground sub-culture, which in itself brings additional criminality. On the one hand, making it legal would eradicate much of the underground sub-culture that puts young women at risk (although not all of it), but on the other hand keeping some things illegal has positive societal influence in that it tries to avoid normalising things that are possibly social undesirable.

It would seem, then, that people who disagree about the (il)legality of activities may disagree on whether an activity is desirable, or they may simply disagree about to what extent the state should interfere in our liberties. For example, I think brothels are socially undesirable from a Christian perspective, but from the libertarian perspective that doesn't necessarily mean I want them to be illegal. I perhaps could argue that the costs of prohibition (underground sub-culture, state suppressing our liberties, home office costs) are not a worthy price to pay, and that allowing this socially undesirable act is the lesser of two costs. Someone else, on the other hand, may disagree that it is socially undesirable, and call for its legality on grounds of social approval as well.

For me, whether an act is socially (un)desirable or not, and whether it should be illegal or not are perhaps two parts of the same question about whether the act harms anyone else in a way that's socially undesirable. I say 'socially undesirable' because almost all acts cause some social inconvenience to others, even buying the last newspaper on the rack, or joining a queue on a busy road, but no one seriously thinks these acts should be illegal.

Is it socially undesirable to have an abortion to the extent that it should be illegal? I'd argue definitely not, because the rights of a woman over her own body always trump the right of the state to force her to keep a baby. But do the rights of a woman over her own body extend to selling her body for sex in a brothel and taking drugs? One could possibly argue a case for selling sex in a brothel - it's her body and if she wants to use it to sell sex she is perfectly entitled to do so. The social harms would be that this kind of transaction becomes more normalised, and it may encourage more married men to pay for sex. But as we've said, affairs harm relationships and the children, but no one is saying they should be illegal. As long as the profession was well regulated to guard against exploitation and, rather like it is in the ordinary workplace, I think I could argue for its legalisation, and for people's freedom to engage in sex for money if they fancied.

Drugs is the most difficult issue for me

This just leaves drugs, and I'm afraid that even as a libertarian, of the three, I find drugs the most difficult, for reasons I'll explain. I was challenged by a friend, who said something along the lines of "I find it odd that you claim to be a libertarian and yet support legislation restricting access to currently illegal drugs. Care to elaborate why this isn't oxymoronic?"

As I indicated, I'm still not 100% sure how I feel about the issue of drugs like cannabis and their legality. I said earlier that where the law works for me is when it guards people against harms that live outside of anything that could be defined as a mutually beneficial transaction with transparency. And I understand the liberalising argument that if Jack wants to smoke weed, and Jill wants to take LSD, and Geoff wants to get drunk, and Mary wants to ride a horse, and so on, that they should be free to do as they wish provided it doesn't harm others.

But heroin does harm to more than just the user - its addiction is behind so much crime - and that wouldn't change if it was legalised, because as far as I can see, for the addict demand for the drug exceeds affordability, so they turn to crime, or in the case of young girls, they get sold into prostitution against their will to feed their habit.

So although small state works well for me in areas in which people have lucid self-determination, I think there are quite a lot of people that do require a strong state that can legislate of their behalf. Maybe that's not an argument against legalising cannabis, but I feel it is an argument against legalising heroin.

I was challenged though by a friend to read some Douglas Husak on this. He makes the point that heroin, and opiates in general, are still lower harm than even alcohol, according to ISCD. And we now know that diamorphine can effectively be "brewed" - very cheaply - the lab that discovered it has put it on hold until someone in government can tell them how to handle it, but the upshot of it is that some sugar water and GM yeast can create it by the vat load like beer.

He also made the challenging point that it is perfectly possible in the right circumstances to maintain a heroin habit. Like alcohol, it will catch up with your good health eventually, but it does not require crime to fund it except that it is controlled so heavily. The illegal supply chain makes it many hundreds of times more expensive than it need be. And some of the worst effects are because people who are desperate for it in that market are lured into other things - the man in the white BMW doesn't care whether he sells you rubbish diamorphine, or crack, and you don't care what you get so long as it does something.

It's also worth mentioning that diamorphine (heroin) is the world’s most powerful painkiller. It and the less powerful morphine are used currently in UK hospitals. So the question is whether various chemical compounds should be classified into 1) freely available, 2) licensed over-the-counter, 3) prescription, 4) hospital controlled and 5) illegal. It’s a big and complex debate.

I think at the moment I'm concerned about legalising heroin outside of the medical profession because it does so much harm to people's lives, and to the countless victims of crime, exploited girls, etc. If we got to a situation where it could be intelligently bought and sold without the criminal/exploitation factor, rather like alcohol is now, I'd be more up for it. I just think that we are not at that stage yet, for all sorts of complex reasons. Take countries like Mexico and Colombia - they certainly don't seem ready yet.

I suppose, finally, there is a quite interesting subtext for me regarding the drugs issue - a kind of meta-analysis - in that I'm quite torn about the legalisation of some of these drugs, but am also not entirely sure why I'm so torn or what it would take to make me adopt a more convinced viewpoint. Would more information change my mind? Is it that the wider issues are too intractable to formulate a solid but philosophically justifiable conviction? Or is it that there is no easy answer and that being able to see merit and demerit from each side means a somewhere-in-between position is the most intellectually tenable? I'm not entirely sure.  

Er, No, Cannabis Legalisation Will Not Raise £1bn In Extra Taxes

There was a claim in the UK's Independent newspaper paper recently that Cannabis legalisation in UK would raise £1bn a year in taxes – and they are not even talking about gains to the economy in terms of reduced costs in law and enforcement – they only mean a projected view of the approximate value of the black market drugs trade and the extra tax they think the treasury would get by taxing those transactions. We are told that this conclusion is the result of getting together a so-called 'panel of experts' who apparently came up with 'the most detailed plans ever drawn up for the liberalisation of UK drug laws'.

Alas, if only they'd invited someone who understands economics to join their panel, they would have had a better chance of realising that the headline is, at best, misleading, and at worst, plain nonsense. What they mean when they tell us this is that the economy will be better off to the tune of about £1 billion once the government gets all the tax from what would be legalised drug sales. But the reality is very different. What they've done is simply over-inflate the figure by not understanding the economics of how tax and money are generated. Let me explain.

Of course the economy wouldn't be £1bn better off in taxes with the legalisation of cannabis. The tax generated from drugs involves a lot of tax that would have come in via some other route - it's not going to be a huge net gain. In other words, the tax the drug sellers paid through drug purchases when drug dealing became legalised is simply money that the participants would have paid through spending it by some other means when drug dealing was illegal.

Although there will be some gains to the economy in terms of reduced costs in law and enforcement, and in the reduced cost of production and sales (there will now be no costs in avoiding detection) which will as a result also increase consumer surplus, any money that is spent is tax revenue for the government, whether it is on drugs, food, car parts, or whatever.

What the article writer doesn't get is that legalising drugs will increase tax revenue as a proportion through drug sales, but it will be offset by a proportional reduction elsewhere, as people spending taxable money on drugs will be spending less elsewhere.

Perhaps an illustration will help. Tom is a drug dealer, and Dick buys currently illegal drugs from him at a cost of £100 per week. As things stand, when Dick gives Tom £100, there is no drug-buying tax, because the sale is a black market one. The government legalises drug-buying and slaps a 20% tax on drug sales. Now when Dick gives Tom £100, Tom has to give the government £20, meaning the Treasury is £20 better off, right? Not quite.

Prior to drug-buying becoming legal, it's true that when Dick gives Tom £100 the treasury doesn't collect its 20% tax from the drug deal. But it still collects its tax the next time Tom spends some of that £100. So Tom, having £100 instead of £80, uses the money to buy food, drink, petrol or clothes, at which point the treasury gets its tax. There is certainly no big net gain, it's just that the new law would mean the treasury gets its tax from Tom via the drugs sale, instead from Tom via the sale of food, drink, petrol or clothes. Or suppose, as may happen, Tom doesn't spend it yet, but hides it under the floorboards. Well, then, any 'black market money' that stays hidden under drug dealers' floorboards is money that keeps prices down, until that money is eventually spent, at which point it is taxed.

There is not going to be a £1 billion net gain, or anything like it. Increased tax revenues almost never amount to net gains for the economy - they are simply money transferred from some people’s pockets to other people’s pockets. To show how silly this is, imagine if everyone whose surname begins with A to M gave five pounds to everyone whose surname begins with N to Z. Sure Mr Zimbardo would be better off than Mr Adams in the transaction, but no one sensible would argue that the economy as a whole is better off. There is no net gain, only a transfer of resources.

When it comes to drugs and taxes, once you factor in that drug users will end up paying most of those taxes anyway when they spend the money outside of drug use, and the fact that the transfer almost certainly has administrative and deadweight costs to the economy, it's laughable how much of a mess of the argument the article writer makes.

On Addiction: The Philosophical Muser vs. Peter Hitchens

I sometimes have the odd email exchange with Peter Hitchens, and did so again a couple of days ago, this time about the so-called war on drugs. I've blogged about his drug views before (see here), but in our exchange I ended up challenging his peculiar views about addiction by sending him this blog post of mine, on which he wrote the following in the comments section:

(PH) You're going to have to decide whether you accept the concept of 'addiction' or not. You can't simultaneously refer to 'addicts' and say that addiction is a 'life choice'. The key to this is realising that the advocates of this fiction use it to mean different things at different times, an unsustainable inconsistency which would not survive ten minutes, if 'addiction' weren't so valuable to moral revolutionaries who wish to destroy the idea that we have free will.

So in his wisdom Peter Hitchens wants to deny that addiction exists at all, calling it a fiction that can’t survive a moment’s serious analysis. Here's what I responded with:

(JK) I actually can refer to 'addicts' and in the same blog say that addiction is a 'life choice' - the two aren't mutually exclusive, but you must phrase it aright, because I didn't say that addiction is a life choice, I said that humans can make life choices that lead to addiction. It's a big difference.

Most don't choose the addiction, they choose activities that can lead to addiction. That's why I used the sun-tan analogy in the article. Going to the tanning shop is a life choice. The mutations that increase your chances of skin cancer are not a life choice, but they are the results of a life choice to visit the tanning shop. If you want to avoid this risk of skin cancer, don't go to tanning shops or partake in excessive sunbathing.

Similarly, taking drugs like heroin is a free choice. However, the physiological dependencies that occur as a result of this are not a life choice - they are the body's involuntary reaction to the need for more of heroin's constituencies. If you want to avoid the risk of being a heroin addict, don't take heroin. If you choose to take heroin you may become an addict - meaning that you are an 'addict' who made life choices that led to your addiction state, so no inconsistency.

In addition to that, it's often in a very weighted sense that we talk about a life choice to indulge in substances that lead to addiction. That is to say, there is some indication that most drug addicts are addicts for socio-economic and bad personal background reasons weighted against them, more than they are for reasons intrinsically about the drugs. For that reason alone, it's not just the fact that Peter Hitchens is wrong empirically that is his problem (and he is wrong empirically - for example, there is quite good evidence that addictive behaviour is a lot do to with genetic predisposition - as studies exhibit higher rates of addiction among monozygotic [identical] twins rather than dizygotic [fraternal] twins, which clearly suggests genetic factors) - it's that he lacks so much sympathy for people who've ended up on different paths to him - that's got to be the main reason so many people respond in such a negative way to him.

My theory about addiction

I have a theory about addiction; it's that addictive behaviour falls along a similar line to a law know as the principle of least effort, which is that things in nature will, in terms of effort, naturally choose the path of least resistance. Not only are we all potential addicts in any number of areas of life, with our background and experiences being key driving forces; on closer inspection almost all of us are at the extreme end of the addictive spectrum at given times, and are probably periodically addicted to things through genetic weakness and temporary diminution of willpower.

Perhaps the reason so many of us are below the radar is that the principle of least effort is, for many, so transitory that it rarely registers in our social circles. But whether it's not being able to stop eating those chocolate biscuits we started, or curb our enthusiasm for the final two or three glasses of Jack Daniels when we're on a pub night out, or even finding it difficult to resist putting a new song we really love on repeat, our propensity for addiction is there (albeit often unconsciously) in small doses as well as in those extreme cases that stand out more. 

That would also suggest to me that the age-old chicken and egg question - whether they take drugs because they are addictive, or whether they are addictive because they take drugs - is probably based on antecedents that were laid down long before. As a Christian it would be good if Peter Hitchens exemplified a bit more of Christ's character in his appraisal of other people's weaknesses. Then again, he is not alone - too often we could all the same about ourselves.

 

* Photos courtesy of www.rehab.com and dailymail.co.uk

 

Drug & Alcohol Addiction: Illness Or Life Choice?



Most academic papers I've read on alcoholism and drug addiction favour the view that they are more akin to an illness than a life choice.  The principal reason for this seems to be that such activity alters brain states in ways that are beyond the control of the users. This seems to me to be a flawed argument.  Just because an activity brings about physiological ramifications doesn’t mean that it should be seen as an illness.  Excessive sun-bathing alters the state of my skin beyond my control, and excessive junk food alters the state of my body weight beyond my control - but we'd be on dodgy ground if we tried to claim that sun-bathing and bad eating are illnesses rather than choices we undertake of our own volition.  If we are always cautious in exposing our skin to the sun, and always sensible in our choice of health foods, we can avoid the ill-effects that occur as a result of excessive sun-bathing and junk food.  Similarly, if we always drink sensibly and avoid drug taking we can avoid the ill-effects that occur as a result of indulging in excessive alcohol and drugs.

Given the foregoing, then, my feeling is that alcoholism and drug addiction constitute life choices, not illness or disease.  That said, I'm fully seized of the ways in which alcoholism and drugs upset the natural cognitive protocols, and disturb people's desires and needs. To that end there appears to be some kind of correlation between drug dependence and addiction, which may then be considered in accordance with psychological underpinnings (such as depression, absence of ambition, low self-esteem, myopia, and lack of confidence) of which these addictions are by-products.  I will even concur that addictive behaviour is a lot do to with genetic predisposition - as studies exhibit higher rates of addiction among monozygotic (identical) twins rather than dizygotic (fraternal) twins, which clearly suggests genetic factors. 

But the underlying truth seems to be that there is a lot of dogma circulated around the idea of alcoholism and drugs constituting illness or disease - and I don't think this is helpful because it leads many people astray by having them think that willingness to recover is powerless in the teeth of illness.  Hence, my position is that tough love is a very powerful tool of renewal so long as it is employed with kindness, love and grace. 

Individuals plagued by alcohol and drugs are often able to overcome their plight with sheer determination, persistence, and help and encouragment from others - I've seen it happen.  The key for them was that it was not seen as an illness for which they needed treatment, but as a life situation brought about by the willingness to participate in something physiologically, psychologically and socially destructive, and that the impact of this participation was sufficiently degenerative to elicit in the sufferer a diligent and galvanised approach to recovery.  Not everyone can manage this, but that doesn't mean what they have is an illness - it just means that the power of the will is hard to summon up.  I'm not that surprised; I think there is a lot of tragedy and pathos attached to being human - and we all struggle in so many ways. Drugs and alcohol taken in excess are two ways to anaesthetise people against the thrall of human pressure, hardship and tumult - and one can get so lost in them (as one can in religion or extreme politics or cupidity) as they can provide a numbing effect that partially negates the many psychological and emotional problems we face.  Realising these things amount to life choices helps us see that our destiny lies in our control – and this can only be a good thing in encouraging addicts to set themselves free and make a clean break, and in pre-empting potential addicts from ever going down such a destructive route in the first place. 

* Picture courtesy of care2.com

Legalisation of Drugs: Yes or No?

It's been a busy few days - but one recent spat that caught my eye was the discussion about drugs between Russell Brand and Peter Hitchens on Newsnight.  Russell Brand said he believed drugs should be legalised, and that we should soften up and treat addiction as an illness. His argument is that we shouldn't be a nation that 'criminalises' drug addicts. Peter Hitchens wants a much tougher approach; punishing offenders and filtrating more intense national disincentive in the hope that nascent drug users won't even start to use them for fear of punitive consequences.  I think both of them are making fundamental mistakes in their reasoning.

Let’s start with Russell Brand; he, and many other pro-legalisers like him, usually base their views on two simple errors.  1) That legalising drugs means we can then begin to tax drug users and improve the economy.  And 2) That legalising drugs will not 'criminalise' people who are beset by addiction.  I might point out first off that laws don't criminalise people - breaking those laws is what criminalises people.  Now I don't know if the Government has its laws on drugs spot on, but I suspect (with ambiguous strength) that it has, because drugs do an awful lot of harm and addiction to them induces a lot of crime, so it seems right that they should be illegal. 

It may be pointed out that alcohol also does a lot of harm and induces a lot of crime (in both cases more than some of the soft drugs) but that's not an argument in favour of legalising drugs, because if minimising harm and crime in society is your main aim then it's more an argument in favour of making alcohol illegal (which virtually no one supports, for good reason).  It is true that some people drink in moderation, and enjoy alcohol recreationally without very much harm to society, so it wouldn't be fair on them to make it illegal.  But that's largely irrelevant; it’s equally true that some people take drugs in moderation and enjoy them recreationally without very much harm to society.  Those people could make the same argument in favour of legalising drugs. 

No, it actually shows something different; it shows that legality and illegality is often part of a historical legacy that either is or is not modified according to the changing climate. This will show what I mean.  Pretend there's never been any such thing as alcohol.  Tomorrow someone combines ethanol with other compounds and proposes to trial on the market this new product call 'alcoholic drinks'.  The Government monitors its effect on society, filming those effects on the first night of public consumption.  Numerous drunken people go out on the town, losing their inhibitions, peeing in doorways, hurling abuse at passes by, having fights, trying to coax staggering drunk girls into bed, and throwing up all over the streets.  Next day a committee looks back at the effects of this new product called 'alcoholic drinks'.  It would never get past the trial stage - they'd stamp it 'illegal' right from the off.  So ‘effects vs. legality’ doesn’t always pertain to prudent practices or sound foresight.

As for the argument that drug legalisation will improve the economy by giving the government tens of millions in tax revenue – well it’s simply not the sort of thing that anyone who understands the costs and benefits of taxation would say.  Given the ubiquity of this ‘Legalisation of drugs = more money for the economy’ argument, I must conclude that this misunderstanding applies to a lot of people.  Tax revenues are not a net gain for the British economy; they are simply money transferred from some people’s pockets to other people’s pockets.  To show how silly this is, imagine if everyone whose surname begins with A to M gave five pounds to everyone whose surname begins with N to Z.  Sure Mr Zimbardo would be better off than Mr Adams in the transaction, but no one sensible would argue that the economy as a whole had grown.  Furthermore, the tax the drug sellers paid through drug purchases when drug dealing became legalised is simply money that the drug sellers would have paid through spending it by some other means when drug dealing was illegal.

Not only is tax revenue neutral with regard to society’s gains or losses, it is equally the case that humans may well spend their own money much more prudently than the Government would spend it.  What the Government spends the tax revenue on may be a net benefit to society, but it may just as likely be a net loss to society.  If the Government spends it on public services, then society has some gain (although not necessarily a net gain).  If it spends it on a disastrous and costly eco project, or a foreign war, or a nuclear missile program then society probably would incur a net loss.

There is one way that legalising drugs yields a societal gain.  Quite simply, there is a cost to society of law enforcement.  This isn’t so much a financial cost, but it costs society in other ways.  It costs police time and court time that could be used making a difference in places and situations that are more deserving of it.  And it costs skills and resources, because everybody who is sent to prison for drug dealing is no longer able to contribute to society.  A prisoner cannot build anything, or clean offices, or fix photocopiers, or be a bus driver, or care for his elderly relatives, or contribute anything that serves society by way of skill and time. 

Now to Peter Hitchens.  Peter Hitchens’ position is overly simplistic, and can thus be dismissed in the same simplistic way. Just ask yourself how we could possibly filter into society a more intense disincentive that would seep throughout Britain. Every solution he offers is not only vastly inadequate to the complexity of the subject, it's a solution that doesn't have the power to influence against the many other predominant factors involved. Terms like 'tougher laws' and 'greater incentives' are examples of meaningless abstractions, serving no real use in the political sphere.  Tougher laws will only do some good for our well-being if we can cope with even more people in prison, and find ways to manage the increased need for rehabilitation.  Simply uttering the phrase 'tougher laws' helps no one.  Having better methods of education and rehabilitation – now that would help.

And ‘greater incentives’ won't do much good unless we can tackle the roots of the problem, which is where the mindfulness of education and rehabilitation comes in; Why are so many people on drugs? How do we alter the conditions that give rise to drug addiction? How do we get people to value their lives in ways that mean they no longer wish to take drugs?  These, and other questions like them, are the other side of the incentives coin.  We’ve made a mistake in eroding away the incentives for good that people used to have, but British culture has evolved so much, with modern generations being too much like chameleons - fading into the colour of post-sixties counter-culturalism. Politicians cannot just reintroduce something into society that has all but eroded away from large parts of the culture.  So while I have sympathy with Peter Hitchens, his arguments are misjudged - not because they are wrong as ideals, but because they are impotent.

I don’t know if we should legalise drugs (I suspect we shouldn’t), but at least (unlike Russell Brand and Peter Hitchens) we ought to show an ambivalence with the correct form of reasoning.  Here is the reason I don’t know if we should.  To get an accurate reflection of society’s perception of the costs and benefits, we would need to ask those against legalisation how much they would be willing to pay to have drugs legalised, and those for legislation how much they’d be prepared to pay to prevent drugs being legalised.  The total of the highest aggregate bid minus the total of the lowest aggregate bid is the total benefit of the winning policy.  And no one can do this, so instead we work with assumptions based on pieces of an incomplete jigsaw – which our patchwork analysis indicates that the majority of people favour the prevention of drugs being legalised.  That is roughly why the drug laws are the way they are.