Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, is currently waging a horrific war against drug use in his country. Thousands of suspected junkies and dealers have been killed. The latest news out of the country is the advent of “drop boxes.” These allow everyday Filipinos to anonymously accuse fellow citizens of being drug dealers or users, a veritable death sentence. Duterte has said of the issue, “Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now, there is three million drug addicts. I’d be happy to slaughter them.” As of July 2017, he enjoys an approval rating of 82 percent.
Needless to say, the Filipino and U.S. approaches to drug enforcement differ greatly. We do not employ extrajudicial murder squads to rid our streets of drug users. However, we do have an alarming tendency to imprison nonviolent offenders. Besides not actually working, punishment of drug use is based on faulty moral reasoning. To put it simply, drug use should not be considered an offense at all.
Vilification of addicts is instead based on a rigid, puritanical and outdated morality that has no purpose in the 21st century. It is absurd that a significant portion of Americans believe that pursuing a pleasurable feeling is reprehensible. The majority of our lives are spent in the constitutionally enshrined pursuit of happiness. We choose our friends, our spouses, the food we eat and the clothes we wear all based on the way they make us feel. Doing some things feel good, and people tend to seek out these activities rather than ones that do not. What is being high if not a brief period of extreme pleasure?
Of course, this seemingly leaves out some crucial information. Illegal drugs may be briefly fun, but they also ruin lives. The point I was making above is not that drugs are not bad for people. They are. But their use, or even their abuse, is not worthy of criminal punishment. It is driven by the same basic wants and needs that motivate us all, and since drugs have no directly negative effect on other people, they are not in any way morally wrong. Like many “victimless crimes,” there is no need for this to be criminal.
Our drug war is often justified by the health risks of illegal drugs, rather than any moral repulsion. There is an obvious contradiction here. The condemnation of drug use cannot be about concern for users, or else they would not be thrown in jail. Putting that aside, there can be no argument based on protecting communities that do not involve treatment and care rather than prison sentences.
We know from decades of experience that unless we are willing to take the extreme steps being taken in the Philippines, the drug war will do very little to curb actual drug use. According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, use of most illicit drugs has been steadily increasing. Only tobacco use has decreased since 2002. In fact, the most notable effect of the drug war on drug-affected communities has been the imprisonment of thousands of nonviolent people. A suspiciously large portion of these people tend to be black and low-income.
We face serious problems in our society. Drug abuse, and the opioid crisis in particular, is among them. Our approach to such societal ills should not be one of blanket and unthinking condemnation.
The world has never been hurt by understanding the perspectives and needs of others too well. We should learn to look for the kindest, most rational solution first — before we imprison any one of our citizens unnecessarily. The triumph of reason-based morality — where the interests of the least well-off are considered — should be one of a democracy’s defining features. As of today, we are unlike Duterte in tactics, but similar in underlying philosophy, and that is truly repulsive.
