In the wake of 4/20, there’s something I can’t get out of my head: the legalization of drugs. Perhaps it’s fighting a long-odds battle against society for something I believe in, but it gives me a large amount of pleasure. Almost as if I’m taking a drug myself.
Most pleas for legalization begin with scientific data showing that the dangers of drugs are highly exaggerated. I could spout statistics about the lethal dose of marijuana, LSD, and psilocybin mushrooms being several thousand times the effective dose, making it virtually impossible to harm yourself by overdosing. I could point out that the most addictive drug and the one most highly correlated to violence are nicotine and alcohol, respectively, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. But I have done this many times, and each time I find people’s strongest objections to drug use do not lie in the realm of science.
After making that point, I always get the same statement: “But drugs ruin your life. What about the people who don’t work, ignore their family, and do drugs instead?” This is the biggest obstacle to legalizing drugs, one that has been recited to students in DARE and spoken by fearful parents for a long time. Mainstream society views pursuing pleasure through the use of drugs as extremely distasteful and an illegitimate activity.
People view drugs as a trick, a way to achieve pleasure without doing anything to deserve it, and in a way this makes sense. Our bodies are designed to reward us for doing things that are good strategies in the evolutionary sense — competing with others, as in sports, or working hard to accomplish a task, or interacting socially, like my frequent debates on this topic. In many instances these activities produce nothing but the enjoyment of their participants — no different than drugs.
In his famous experiment, James Olds attached electrodes to the pleasure center of a rat’s brain that gave a shock when the rat pressed a lever. The rat, unapologetic and seemingly unaware of our conceptions, pressed rapidly until it collapsed from exhaustion. Those who dislike drugs are quick to say it shows how drugs can take over a life, but there is a side missing: the rat experienced pleasure so intense, it was willing to forego food and drink to get it. We may think reward through activity is the proper way of life, but the rat had other ideas.
So now to my point (finally). Imposing your beliefs about legitimate pursuit of happiness and pleasure is no different than imposing views about race or sexual orientation. The objective of life is deeply personal, and denying people a chance to pursue their goals is a very selfish thing to do. Drugs grant real pleasure, which can be incredibly valuable to many people. I prefer to pursue pleasure striving for social and legal change, like many of you, but disagreeing with people who take drugs does not justify denying things that make them happy.
Ben’s pupils get dilated when he argues. Contact him at bjmorin@asu.edu
