Mind Alteration

Drug-policy scholar Ethan Nadelmann on turning people against drug prohibition

Jacob Sullum from the July 1994 issue

(Page 3 of 5)

This deep-seated fear of drugs is totally inconsistent with the scientific evidence, and it's inconsistent to a large extent with people's personal experience. There's an analogy here with homosexuals. Thirty years ago, almost everyone in the country knew someone who was gay. They just didn't know they knew somebody who was gay. Now they do. Well, 60 to 70 million Americans have violated the drug laws; everybody knows somebody who has used illegal drugs. But not everyone knows that they know them.

Of the huge part of our generation who have used drugs, how many have told their parents, to this day, even though they are now successful professionals and parents and what have you? There's a need to come out of the closet and talk openly about drug use. As things stand, the only kind of use that is visible is either the dysfunctional drug use or the media portraits of it. So there's this incredibly skewed view of what drugs are about.

I think that may be changing. I've noticed a real loosening in the past year in terms of people talking about their drug use, an opening up about that. And you can't get away from the fact that we now have a president who smoked but didn't inhale and a vice president who smoked and did inhale. It's probably the case that half the administration has used illicit drugs. You can only sustain the hypocrisy so long.

Reason: What sort of mistakes have you seen advocates of reform make when they're addressing a general audience? Are there mistakes that libertarians in particular tend to make?

Nadelmann: A lot of people are looking for a way out of the current morass but don't know what to do with the radical alternative. They just don't see how to get from here to there. And the libertarians have maybe not thought enough about how you move people down that spectrum, because a lot of those intermediate steps involve compromise measures that are inherently distasteful to libertarians.

On the positive side, the libertarians are articulating a pretty clear set of principles which resonate with a certain sector of the country and which are important. So I'm glad the libertarians are out there, even though occasionally I have to deal with the people who say, "Well, you want to sell crack in candy stores," because that's what Milton Friedman or Thomas Szasz would do. I have to say, "No, that's not the only approach; there are a whole range of other things, and I don't even know if that's the ideal." It may in fact be the ultimate goal. Their assumption that no one is going to buy those products, more or less, because other products are around may in fact be true.

Probably the most serious mistake I've seen is the tendency of so many academics and others to write for a very limited audience. I've always been conscious of the need to write for a wider audience. Even when I wrote for Science or Foreign Policy, I tried to write in a way that was accessible. I'll spend the time to write something for Rolling Stone rather than a more narrow, academic journal.

Reason: Should advocates of reform tie the issue of illegal drugs to the issue of prescription drugs?

Nadelmann: I took a poll of the Princeton Working Group, asking how many people believe that we should eliminate the doctor's role as a gatekeeper. This is the fundamental element of the prescription drug system, which really lies at the heart of drug control, as Thomas Szasz and others have recognized. The group was almost evenly split.

On a broad rhetorical level, the relationship between prohibition and the prescription drug system is beyond the understanding or imagination of a lot of the people who casually think about this issue. They just haven-t seen the connection. I'm not tempted to use it in my own speeches. except for the most sophisticated audiences. People are so accustomed to the idea that doctors have control over this. But one of the things that we're going to do at the Center [on Markets and Morals] is a seminar series that raises the issue of whether we need a prescription drug system.

Reason: In an article you wrote for the Summer 1992 issue of Daedalus, you note that the "public health" approach to drugs has totalitarian implications if you follow it to its logical conclusion. Yet you support this approach to some extent. How do you decide which public-health measures are acceptable and which go too far?

Nadelmann: It's a matter of how far it infringes on individual autonomy. I see the slippery slope. It's a matter of drawing the line somewhere. I'm inclined to say we should look for restrictions which infringe less on individual autonomy.

I look on the notion of a totally free market in, say, cigarettes, without the government playing any sort of inhibitory role, as not a desirable thing. I actually think the government should play some role in shaping society--especially the external environment, but even in encouraging people to act in their own interests--but that it should do so with a much softer hand than it' s using in a whole range of areas. I'm willing to use the tax system to discourage consumption among kids, and even among adults to some extent. But I'd be wary of using more invasive measures. I'm sympathetic to the idea of banning vending machines for cigarettes. But then [ACLU Executive Director] Ira Glasser says, "First you ban cigarette machines. The next thing you'll be banning is condom machines." So he sees that slippery slope, and I see where he's coming from. I'm undecided. Same thing with advertising. One of the biggest problems for libertarians, it seems to me, is how you devise methods to limit access by kids that don t infringe too much on adults.

I think it-s legitimate for government to play a role in trying to discourage people from using cigarettes. If they want to put the information out there, that sounds fine to me. But I find incredibly distasteful the way that they're demonizing cigarette users now. What's happening now, with [FDA Commissioner David] Kessler, is they're heading in a prohibitionist direction, which is something I would regard as very bad on both policy grounds and ethical grounds.

Reason: You've written that drug policy should minimize the harm caused both by drugs and by government intervention. What are the weaknesses of this cost-benefit approach?