drugs should be banned essay

You are using an outdated browser. Upgrade your browser today or install Google Chrome Frame to better experience this site.

Should drugs be legalized? Legalization pros and cons

Source: Composite by G_marius based on Chuck Grimmett's image

Should drugs be legalized? Why? Is it time to lift the prohibition on recreational drugs such as marijuana and cocaine? Can we stop drug trafficking? if so what would be the best way to reduce consumption?

Public health problem

Drugs continue to be one of the greatest problems for public health . Although the consumption of some substances has declined over time, new drugs have entered the market and become popular. In the USA, after the crack epidemic, in the 80s and early 90s, and the surge of methamphetamine, in the 90s and early 21st century, there is currently a prescription opioid crisis . The number of casualties  from these opioids, largely bought in pharmacies, has overtaken the combined deaths from cocaine and heroine overdose. There are million of addicts to these substances which are usually prescribed by a doctor. This is a relevant twist to the problem of drugs because it shows that legalization or criminalization may not always bring the desire solution to the problem of drug consumption. On the other hand there is also evidence of success in reducing drug abuse through legal reform. This is the case of Portuguese decriminalization of drug use, which has show a dramatic decrease in drug related crime, overdoses and HIV infections. 

History of prohibition of drugs

There are legal recreational drugs , such as alcohol and  tobacco , and other recreational drugs which are prohibited. The history of  prohibition of drugs is long. Islamic Sharia law, which dates back to the 7th century, banned some intoxicating substances, including alcohol. Opium consumption was later prohibited in China and Thailand. The  Pharmacy Act 1868 in the United Kingdom was the first modern law in Europe regulating drug use. This law prohibited the distribution of poison and drugs, and in particular opium and derivates. Gradually other Western countries introduced laws to limit the use of opiates.  For instance in San Francisco smoking opium was banned in 1875 and in Australia opium sale was prohibited in 1905 . In the early 20th century, several countries such as Canada, Finland, Norway, the US and Russia, introduced alcohol prohibitions . These alcohol prohibitions were unsucessful and lifted later on. Drug prohibitions were strengthened around the world from the 1960s onward. The US was one of the main proponents of a strong stance against drugs, in particular since Richad Nixon declared the "War on Drugs ." The "War on Drugs" did not produced the results expected. The demand for drugs grew as well as the number of addicts. Since production and distribution was illegal, criminals took over its supply.  Handing control of the drug trade to organized criminals has had disastrous consequences across the globe. T oday, drug laws diverge widely across countries. Some countries have softer regulation and devote less resources to control drug trafficking, while in other countries the criminalization of drugs can entail very dire sentences. Thus while in some countries recreational drug use has been decriminalized, in others drug traficking is punished with life or death sentences.

Should drugs be legalized?

In many Western countries drug policies are considered ineffective and decriminalization of drugs has become a trend. Many experts have provided evidence on why drugs should be legal . One reason for legalization of recreational drug use is that the majority of adicts are not criminals and should not be treated as such but helped in other ways. The criminalization of drug users contributes to generating divides in our societies. The "War on Drugs" held by the governments of countries such as USA , Mexico, Colombia, and Indonesia, created much harm to society. Drug related crimes have not always decline after a more intolerant government stance on drugs. Prohibition and crime are often seen as correlated.

T here is also evidence of successful partial decriminalization in Canada, Switzerland, Portugal and Uruguay. Other countries such as Ireland seem to be following a similar path and are planning to decriminalize some recreational drugs soon.  Moreover, The United Nations had a special session on drugs on 2016r,  UNGASS 2016 , following the request of the presidents of Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala. The goal of this session was  to analyse the effects of the war on drugs. explore new options and establish a   new paradigm in international drug policy in order to prevent the flow of resources to organized crime organizations. This meeting was seen as an opportunity, and even a call, for far-reaching drug law reforms. However, the final outcome failed to change the status quo and to trigger any ambitious reform.

However, not everyone is convinced about the need of decriminalization of recreational drugs. Some analysts point to several reasons why  drugs should not be legalized  and t he media have played an important role in shaping the public discourse and, indirectly, policy-making against legalization. For instance, t he portrayal of of the issue in British media, tabloids in particular, has reinforced harmful, dehumanising stereotypes of drug addicts as criminals. At the moment the UK government’s response is to keep on making illegal new recreational drugs. For instance,  Psychoactive Substances Bill aims at criminalizing legal highs . Those supporting the bill argue that  criminalization makes more difficult for young people to have access to these drugs and could reduce the number of people who get addicted. 

List of recreational drugs

This is the  list of recreational drugs  (in alphabetic order) which could be subject to decriminalization in the future:

• Amfetamines (speed, whizz, dexies, sulph)
• Amyl nitrates (poppers, amys, kix, TNT)
• Cannabis (marijuana, hash, hashish, weed)
• Cocaine (crack, freebase, toot)
• Ecstasy (crystal, MDMA, E)
• Heroin (H, smack, skag, brown)
• Ketamine  (K, special K, green)
• LSD (acid, paper mushrooms, tripper)
• Magic mushrooms (mushies, magics)
• Mephedrone (meow meow, drone, m cat)
• Methamfetamines (yaba, meth, crank, glass)
• Painkillers, sedatives and tranquilizers (chill pills, blues, bricks)

Pros and cons of legalization of drugs

These are some of the most commonly argued pros of legalization :

• Government would see the revenues boosted due to the money collected from taxing drugs.
• Health and safety controls on these substances could be implemented, making recreational drugs less dangerous.
• Facilitate access for medicinal use. For instance cannabis is effective treating a range of conditions. Other recreational drugs could be used in similar ways.
• Personal freedom. People would have the capacity to decide whether they experiment with drugs without having to be considered criminals or having to deal with illegal dealers.
• Criminal gangs could run out of business and gun violence would be reduced.
• Police resources could be used in other areas and help increase security.
• The experience of decriminalization of drugs in some countries such as Portugal and Uruguay, has led to a decrease in drug related problems. 

Cons of decriminalizing drug production, distribution and use:

• New users for drugs. As in the case of legal recreational drugs, decriminalization does not imply reduction in consumption. If these substances are legal, trying them could become "more normal" than nowadays.
• Children and teenagers could more easily have access to drugs.
• Drug trafficking would remain a problem. If governments heavily tax drugs, it is likely that some criminal networks continue to produce and smuggle them providing a cheaper price for consumers.
• The first few countries which decide to legalize drugs could have problems of drug tourism.
• The rate of people driving and having accidents due drug intoxication could increase.
• Even with safety controls, drugs would continue to be a great public health problem and cause a range of diseases (damamge to the brain and lungs, heart diseases, mental health conditions).
• People may still become addicts and die from legalized drugs, as in America's opioid crisis.

What do think, should recreational drugs be legalized or decriminalized? Which of them?  Is legalising drugs being soft on crime?  Is the prohibition on drugs making the work of the police more difficult and diverting resources away from other more important issues? Join the discussion and share arguments and resources on the forum below .

Watch these videos on decriminalization of drugs

Vote to see result and collect 1 XP. Your vote is anonymous. If you change your mind, you can change your vote simply by clicking on another option.

Voting results

New to netivist?

Join with confidence, netivist is completely advertisement free. You will not receive any promotional materials from third parties.

Or sign in with your favourite Social Network:

Join the debate

In order to join the debate you must be logged in.

Already have an account on netivist? Just login . New to netivist? Create your account for free .

 Report Abuse and Offensive language

Was there any kind of offensive or inappropriate language used in this comment.

If you feel this user's conduct is unappropriate, please report this comment and our moderaters will review its content and deal with this matter as soon as possible.

NOTE: Your account might be penalized should we not find any wrongdoing by this user. Only use this feature if you are certain this user has infringed netivist's Terms of Service .

Our moderators will now review this comment and act accordingly. If it contains abusive or inappropriate language its author will be penalized.

Posting Comment

Your comment is being posted. This might take a few seconds, please wait.

Error Posting Comment

  error.

We are having trouble saving your comment. Please try again .

Most Voted Debates

Start a Debate

Would you like to create a debate and share it with the netivist community? We will help you do it!

Found a technical issue?

Are you experiencing any technical problem with netivist? Please let us know!

Help netivist

Help netivist continue running free!

Please consider making a small donation today. This will allow us to keep netivist alive and available to a wide audience and to keep on introducing new debates and features to improve your experience.

• What is netivist?
• Entertainment
• Top Debates
• Top Campaigns
• Provide Feedback

Follow us on social media:

 Share by Email

There was an error...

Email successfully sent to:

Join with confidence, netivist is completely advertisement free You will not recive any promotional materials from third parties

 Join netivist

Already have a netivist account?

If you already created your netivist account, please log in using the button below.

If you are new to netivist, please create your account for free and start collecting your netivist points!

You just leveled up!

Congrats you just reached a new level on Netivist. Keep up the good work.

Together we can make a difference

Follow us and don't miss out on the latest debates!

• Share full article

Advertisement

The World’s View on Drugs Is Changing. Which Side Are You On?

Should we decriminalize drugs, or legalize.

Today on “The Argument,” is it time to legalize all drugs?

Last November, an overwhelming majority of Oregonians voted to decriminalize most drugs via referendum. Medical marijuana is now legal in Alabama. And in a matter of months, cannabis products could be available to those who qualify.

Truth of the matter is, there’s not nearly been enough evidence that has been acquired as to whether or not it is a gateway drug. And I want a lot more before I legalize it nationally.

President Biden may not be ready for legalized, recreational marijuana, but many states are way ahead of him. Connecticut just became the 18th state to legalize recreational marijuana. And it’s not just weed. Several cities have recently decriminalized magic mushrooms, and Oregon just decriminalized possession of small amounts of all drugs, including heroin, methamphetamines, and cocaine. It seems like the War on Drugs is over and drugs won big. I’m Jane Coaston, and there seems to be more and more consensus that jailing our way out of the addiction crisis in the United States is not working. But even hardcore drug policy reformers have vastly different takes on how we get to a better place with drugs, like our guests today. Ismail Ali is the Policy and Advocacy Director at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, and Jonathan P. Caulkins is the H. Guyford Stever University Professor of Operations, Research, and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. I started out by asking Ismail to define the difference between drug decriminalization and legalization.

So when people think of decriminalization, they’re usually thinking of the reduction or elimination of criminal penalties, sometimes including civil penalties. And legalization tends to be when the law actually is fully recognizing, regulating activity from point A to point Z. So you can decriminalize, for example, personal use and possession. But if every behavior up to that point is still illegal, you have an island of maybe legal or decriminalized behavior in a sea of illegal behavior. So they get through all this illegal behavior to get to the legal behavior. And I think legalization implies a full spectrum, regulated approach to the whole piece.

Ismail, you do think that ultimately the goal would be to legalize all drugs. Why?

I do think that legal, regulated access is likely the best environment for a number of drugs, but I think it’s going to depend very much on the substance itself, and factors that have to do with the supply and demand questions with respect to where and how it’s produced. Not having a legally regulated system puts us in a position where the very, very large and lucrative drug trade, which exists, whether or not there’s a regulated industry, entirely is captured by underground actors with various levels of ethics and morals. And I think that that whole conversation around legal access must also look at — and has looked at, historically — the uptake of all substances in illegal markets, and then the effects of those behaviors. My mother’s family is Colombian, and they left Colombia in the 1980s as a result in part of the massive increase in cocaine violence and cartel use. And that continued underground. Engagement has not really ceased — not just with cocaine, but with a number of other drugs. And even Colombia now is having a very serious conversation at the governmental level about what it would look like to legally regulate cocaine, because — despite pressure from the U.S. and other actors, they have realized that, actually, having some sort of legally regulated system could be the way to reduce the violence in the country. So while I do think that legalizing drugs, which sounds like such a scary thing to a lot of people, really means bringing them under more regulatory control. It’s hard, I think, to really think through what an effective addiction response strategy at the social level would be while we’re under an environment of prohibition, because prohibition does exacerbate some of those secondary effects of drugs, like, for example, addiction independence.

I’m curious as to your thoughts, Jonathan, on decriminalization versus legalization.

These have to be decided drug by drug. Drugs are different. For a long time, we’ve had caffeine be legal. That was probably fine. I don’t think that it’s — one should be cavalier about other substances. Opioids make the point. The prescription opioid crisis was a crisis that killed tens of thousands of people every year for a drug that was highly regulated, much more so than the typical recreational drug. Opioids are intrinsically dangerous, much more so than caffeine or cannabis. It has to be decided on a case by case basis.

I think that that’s something that’s also important to note here, is that, for instance, in Oregon — Oregon just passed Measure 110, which makes possession of small amounts of LSD, methamphetamines, cocaine, and heroin punishable by a civil citation. That is not legalization. That is decriminalization. So I’m interested, Jonathan, can you talk about — when we’re talking about decriminalization, it sounds to me that it is still a civil penalty in Oregon to possess these — crimes. It’s like a traffic ticket, but that’s still a crime-ish.

Yeah, with the ish. The other thing it’s important to say is that, usually, when people talk decriminalization, they’re talking about decriminalizing or changing the consequences for people possessing amounts suitable for personal use. Whereas if you just say legalize, without any qualification, the presumption is you’re legalizing supply. So there is a big difference there. And sometimes it helps to keep them straight by remembering a third term, which is legalizing use. So decriminalization is usually reducing penalties for use so that you don’t have people getting a criminal record for use. Then you can go a step farther, as Ismail was saying, and legalize use, meaning you don’t even get the equivalent of a fine or a traffic ticket. Both of those are very different than legalizing supply.

Jonathan, you made a really fascinating argument in a piece called “The Drug Policy Roulette,” and I’d like you to explain more about this, because it actually was counterintuitive for me, which is — my view was that legalizing drugs would do what the end of Prohibition did for alcohol, which is when you aren’t legally allowed to drink, you can drink all the time. But with the end of Prohibition and with a regulated alcohol market, you have places — you have counties that are dry. You have a liquor store that can only be open from this time to this time. There are prohibitions on drunk driving, and societal prohibitions against when you can — like, drinking in the morning, drinking by yourself, this is looked down on. And I think societal prohibitions play into how we think about using drugs and alcohol anyway. But in the case of drugs, you made the point in this piece that one of the issues that would be unexpected from this is that prohibition makes drugs expensive, and that drugs like heroin and cocaine would actually be pretty cheap to obtain if they were legalized, because a part of what makes them expensive is what’s called compensating wage differentials. Namely, it’s really hard to bring cocaine into the United States. You are paying for the cost of how hard it is to bring cocaine into the United States. But with that price collapse, the taxes required to make it so that you weren’t just having cheap cocaine everywhere would be incredibly high, which would then contribute to the kind of gray market smuggling that we see with cigarette smuggling in the United States and in other countries. This is a financial issue I had never thought about.

Sure. The first point is that prohibition prevents one from producing these things in straightforward ways. None of the drugs are hard to produce. If it was legal and you could allow a regular company to do it, then they become very cheap. You can see that, for instance, just in the price of cocaine in Colombia is about 1 percent or 2 percent what it is in the streets in the United States. And the illegal distribution system effectively charges $15,000 to move a kilogram from Bogota to New York City that would cost $70 on FedEx. So prohibition makes things far more expensive than it would be if they were legal. As a practical matter, there’s no way that we will have taxes high enough to prevent prices from declining substantially. And that is in part because there probably wouldn’t be the political will, but also in part because of practicalities. Drugs are very potent in the sense that it doesn’t take very much material. A daily cannabis user using one and a half grams a day consumes only a little more than a pound over a year, about the same weight as one 20 ounce can of beer. So we just can’t effectively collect very high taxes on these easy to smuggle commodities.

Yeah, and many people have talked now for some years about this concept, the Iron Law of Prohibition, which maybe it would be good to bring in here, which is essentially the idea that because smuggling is such a lucrative activity, and because smuggling smaller things, more concentrated substances is easier, it actually incentivizes higher concentrations of substances to be taken across borders. So for example, if you want to take enough heroin for 500 people, you need a trunk of a car. If you want to take enough fentanyl for 500 people, you need something about the size of your phone or maybe much, much, much smaller. So there might be the case where as smuggling gets more difficult, it’s actually incentivizing higher concentrations of drugs, because it’s easier to smuggle those drugs as opposed to ones that take up more physical space.

Well, we should unpack this, though. I mean, the movement from heroin to fentanyl is not a response to a change in the legal status of either substance. But the Iron Law of Prohibition has been completely refuted by the experience with cannabis legalization. It’s the iron law that holds no water. Cannabis did not exceed average potency of 5 percent until 2000, and now it’s — typical flower potency in a legal stores is over 20 percent. And we now have common use of vapes and dabs, which are much more potent than that. So the Iron Law of Prohibition has just been disproved by experience with cannabis legalization.

I’d probably push back on that a bit, because cannabis is also produced in state. We’re not talking as much about taking things across borders, but the big difference is that with a lot of cannabis products, they’re being produced at the place or near the place they’re being used, which is different from things that are crossing international borders.

The weight of drugs doesn’t matter much at all after they are legal, because the weight is so small. Again, I make reference this —

Yeah, no. I agree after they are legal, for sure.

So it doesn’t matter that at the moment we’re in this weird situation where we have a bunch of state specific markets. That’s a temporary artifact of the fact that there’s not yet national legalization. Once there’s national legalization, we can no longer have these state specific markets because of the Interstate Commerce Clause in the Constitution.

Jonathan, you brought up the opioid crisis. And I think that there have been a host of people who’ve written on how they used to support drug legalization. And the opioid epidemic and how it took place changed their minds. And I want to point to a great piece — my former colleague at Vox, German Lopez, wrote about this, where he said that essentially with opioids, you had companies that got a hold of a product. They marketed it irresponsibly and lobbied for lax rules in influencing government, and people died. As he points out, the United States historically is very bad at regulating drugs. Ismail, does the experience of the opioid epidemic — has that changed your viewpoint on what legalization would look like?

No, because I don’t see legalization as only a question of the regulations that have to do with the drug. I think that there are factors beyond just the way opioids are regulated and are regulated that has to do with why there’s a crisis today. And I actually personally tend to frame it as an overdose crisis. I do think opioids are a big part of that. But if you’ve been following the numbers for the last couple of years, it’s absolutely the case that overdoses with methamphetamine and other drugs are also extremely intensely increasing. And the way that, as you said, a certain framework of pharmaceutical regulation has operated with certain opioids is such a good example of what I imagine legalization to be. Like, I think if I were putting together a thinking through with people — what would be an ideal legalization scheme? And I really agree with what Jonathan said, where it’s a case by case basis. And there may be drugs that don’t need or shouldn’t have fully legally regulated systems, and maybe decriminalization is the appropriate environment for that. And maybe decriminalization of certain kinds of behaviors — and I think one really good example that feels like it’s at the center of this is this question about advertising and marketing. I think that what companies are allowed to say, what claims they’re allowed to make, how they’re allowed to advertise, what expectations are setting with consumers — those factors are pretty significant. That’s not to say that if there wasn’t the aggressive marketing campaign with some of these opioids that we’d be in the same or a different position today. It’s really difficult to tell. It’s a system that has been highly affected by interests that are not in that of the consumer, not in the interest of the public. When society was flooded with cigarette ads, a lot of people started smoking more cigarettes. That’s not — and of course, there’s a risk to smoking cigarettes. But to me, that’s an artificial pressure that comes from the market and its incentives. And I think that once you take out some of those things to the extent that that’s possible in a legal market, you might actually be able to adjust some of those outcomes.

But I think that’s the point. It’s easy to imagine an ideal legalization, but that’s not what we’re going to get. We’re going to get the legalization that comes out of our political process and institutions. And marketing is the concrete example. Once a product is legalized, the companies that produce it will enjoy First Amendment commercial free speech protections that will allow them to market.

Should they?

It doesn’t matter whether they should or should not. In the United States, under our Constitution, which protects commercial free speech, they will. In another country, with a different constitution, the government would have greater power to restrict advertising. Many of the current restrictions on cannabis advertising only are constitutional because it is still illegal under federal law.

Yeah, I spent a brief time looking at some of the ads that were made for OxyContin. And there’s one that says that, when you know acetaminophen won’t be enough, OxyContin 12 Hour — which is, like, acetaminophen is Tylenol. And going from Tylenol to OxyContin is a real — it’s a real leap. But I think that gets to something I’m curious about — because the United States has been a leader in determining the control of drug trade and practice, Jonathan, how do you think hypothetically that a legalization or decriminalization would impact international markets? Do you think that there would be a collapse in the price, internationally, of cocaine or heroin? What would that even look like?

Yeah, it’s a great question. And sort of the short answer is that in any place that legalizes and allows for profit industry, you’re going to see a price collapse. And because these things are so easy to smuggle, that would put downward pressure on other countries that are connected commercially to the country that legalized. And in an interconnected world, that’s a lot of places. You’re seeing some of this already, even without legalization, from the switch to synthetics which can be produced anywhere and are easier to produce surreptitiously than with crop based products. And legalization would be a little bit like the innovation of fentanyl coming into the market. It would greatly reduce the cost of production. And over time, that puts downward pressure on prices.

Ismail, I know that your organization has been thinking a lot about this with regard to psychedelics, so whether that’s LSD, whether that’s the use with MDMA in Oregon and other places, psychedelics and the use of psychedelics is getting increasing state support. The California State Senate in June of this year passed a bill that would legalize the social sharing and possession and use of psychedelics. It’s something that’s coming around. What does that look like, and how has your organization participated in that conversation?

Yeah, a couple of things. So I work for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which was founded in 1986 after MDMA was criminalized in an emergency scheduling decision by the D.E.A. MDMA — best known as the active ingredient in ecstasy. It’s now— through MAPS and the Public Benefit Corporation, which we work with — in that entity is taking MDMA through the F.D.A. process, with the intention of having it recognized as a prescription medicine. But while we’re focusing primarily on MDMA, it’s absolutely the case that one of the large goals and kind of value systems that MAPS has utilized over the last 35 years is toward legal, regulated access for psychedelic substances, and specifically, in a legal, medical, or cultural context. And while my personal perspective on this does have to do with really shifting drug laws for all of the substances involved, it is absolutely true that psychedelics are experiencing a kind of like zeitgeist, or some sort of like resurgence in society, now that we have a couple of decades of solid clinical and observational data, you know, depending on the substance, depending on the environment, that show that they may have benefits for certain people in certain mental health contexts. That’s happening simultaneously to this renewed awareness of the spiritual use of some of these substances in certain contexts, which regulatory and structurally speaking, looks very different from like a medicalized, or like, a medical adjacent system. So you mentioned Measure 110 in Oregon. At the same time, Oregon also passed Measure 109, which is a legal psilocybin services system, and psilocybin being the active ingredient in what people call magic mushrooms. And that’s relevant, because it’s actually the first legalized, or attempt at a legalized regulated system for access to one of these substances aside from cannabis. And I’ll just say — to kind of close this thought — that psychedelics are an interesting bridge, because while I think some people want them to be the silver bullet for mental health. And they have all these benefits, and it’s certainly true that for certain people and in certain contexts, they do have tremendous benefit. But they do come with risks. And the thing about psychedelics is that they’re actually more known for their psychological risks as opposed to their physical risks.

And that’s a really interesting thing, because it brings up how we actually navigate and handle mental health in the United States.

I want to push back very lightly on that, because I think that when — in D.C., the language around the decriminalization of mushrooms, which I supported, it very much implied that not only should mushrooms be decriminalized, but that you should do them.

I think that this gets into the question of — we don’t necessarily exist in the ideal regulatory and cultural marketplace for legalized psychedelics or legalized drugs in general. And I’m curious as to how you’re thinking about how, yes, it would be fantastic if these drugs would be used in these safe contexts, in these — whether secular or religious ceremonies, or with the right groups of people. But they won’t be. And I’m curious how you’re thinking about this.

Well, this brings me to the question of education, which we haven’t touched on too much in this conversation yet. I think that the current legal status of psychedelics has — and all drugs - has significantly warped the education that people receive about them. I was part of the DARE generation, and when I learned that —

Oh, I was too.

I was too. Some would say it did not prove effective.

Totally. Do you remember the doobies with the big googly eyes, like, they’re going to come get you. Like, when I learned that methamphetamine and marijuana were not the same, that were they were not equally dangerous, which is what I was taught in sixth grade, I experienced a big rupture where I actually — it was probably the beginning for me of beginning to really doubt what education I was receiving, not just about drugs, but about other things in general. And I would say now, especially looking back at what feels like propaganda for the drug war, it makes it really difficult to trust what kind of education and information people are getting. So to answer your question, you’re right. There’s absolutely no way to control the way people use drugs. Like, there’s no guarantee that even with the best regulatory system and the best policy in every way, people will use them the way that we want every time. However, I do think that stigma and misinformation and drug hysteria contributes to people using drugs in less educated ways. And that’s not to say that more information would fix the overdose crisis. It would not fix a lot of these issues with addiction. But I do think that with psychedelics specifically and especially, better education about the environment would make quite a big difference. One of the most persuasive things I can say when I’m doing advocacy work around psychedelics is that psychedelic therapy is not that fun. I mean, it is true that people can have super ecstatic and joyous experiences with psychedelics, but psychedelic therapy as a treatment modality is actually quite challenging. And dealing with one’s own internalized trauma is not a particularly fun process. It’s not something you want to do at a festival surrounded by your friends. You want to do it in a safe place, maybe with a blanket and some chill music going on, in a room where you can do that with people who you can trust. So it’s — a lot of that has to do with the environment that people are in. And because all psychedelics are equally illegal and you can’t do them anywhere, then that means you can do them anywhere, you know.

Yeah, when you’re surrounded by 90,000 people, it’s maybe not the best time to maybe encounter God.

On the psychedelics, the people who are optimistic about legalization are often very optimistic about the potential of education. My caution is when you allow a for profit industry, a lot of the education, quote unquote, is going to be provided by the industry. You referred earlier to — I may get the details wrong, but I think it might have been a Purdue advertisement that said when Tylenol is not enough, take Oxy. I mean, I don’t have the details right, but that is them trying to educate you about the right — in their mind — set and setting for drug use, not for your benefit, but for their profits’ benefit. Legalizing supply is night and day different than just decriminalizing. The power of the market that is unleashed when you create corporations that make money by inducing greater use of their product, coupled with — intrinsically, some of these products are appealing or addictive — that’s a potent combination we need to be very careful about.

Hi, Jane. My name is Blake and I live in Boston. One thought that’s been occupying my mind, and something I talked to my dad and family about, is on cryptocurrency — in particular, Bitcoin. And I guess one thing that I’ve been struggling with is trying to determine whether I believe it’s something that’s going to stick around or if it’s just a fad. It’s been really hard for me to find sources that are objective and look at both sides of the coin, no pun intended there. Thanks so much. Take care.

Hi Blake. Well, I have a lot of thoughts on cryptocurrency, but I think the question isn’t it a fad, or is it something that’s going to stick around forever, because the answer to both of those can be yes. I don’t think cryptocurrency is going to save the world. I also think that it’s going to be around for a long time. And it’s something that I’d like to learn more about. But I have a feeling that both sides tend to overstate either the importance or the lack of importance of cryptocurrency. That seems to be how this kind of thing goes.

What are you arguing about with your family, your friends, your frenemies? Tell me about the big debate you’re having in a voicemail by calling 347-915-4324, and we might play an excerpt of it on a future episode. Jonathan, can you talk a little bit about overdoses and the potential health impacts?

Opioids are particularly dangerous in terms of overdose risk, but what makes them less problematic because we do have pharmacological therapies for them, methadone being the original and most famous — perhaps buprenorphine. We do not have anything like that in terms of pharmacotherapies for the common stimulants. And it makes a difference, because if you’re going to legalize — particularly legalize supply, allow for profit companies to promote the use, you’re going to get more use. You’ll get more dependence. And it’s a very different thing. If you are choosing policies that promote dependence to something for which there is no real effective treatment, as opposed to opioids — it’s not that opioids are gentle, but we do at least have a treatment.

Ismail, how do we think about recovery, and how do we think about the aftershocks of legalization? I’m just curious how you think about addiction in this conversation.

Yeah, I have what might be a slightly unpopular opinion, especially in today’s time. Like, addiction itself — let’s say, like, drug dependency, to be a little more specific — itself, I don’t necessarily see as a social harm or a social bad. I think that a lot of people manage a lot of addictions totally fine, regularly, because it’s not disruptive to them, because they have access to a safe supply of what it is that they’re addicted to. Of course, the effects of a caffeine addiction or caffeine dependency are significantly less dramatic and less likely to cause some sort of antisocial behavior than a withdrawal from a different substance. But I think that what both Jonathan and you have mentioned, Jane, that I think is more relevant, has to do with the consequences and the secondary effects — of course, on the individual, but especially on society. Alcohol is a great example, because we do have what people would consider a safe supply of alcohol. It’s a regulated product with tons and tons of social externalities that are still there. The difference is that the purchase, the manufacture, the use of alcohol — if criminalized, I believe, would make our current alcohol related issues worse. But I do think that the big difference with other substances is that because they’re criminalized, you have all of those effects, those secondary antisocial effects of dependence or antisocial use, et cetera. And you have the additional layer of criminalization for the use itself. I’m curious about — especially Jonathan’s perspective on this, because there are examples where certain countries like Switzerland are using heroin to manage heroin addiction. Right, they’re actually allowing people to have a safe, consistent supply of heroin. In places like Portugal and Spain, you have a huge percentage of people who were on heroin in the ‘80s and ‘90s who’ve transitioned onto methadone, and are still on methadone decades later. But they’re able to have jobs. They’re able to have families. They’re able to do x, y, z — so.

I think this gets right to the heart of where you and I differ, if I may. I mean, on the last — we had legal supply of prescription opioids and still had a lot of overdoses. There’s no question that an inconsistent supply exacerbates the problem. But I don’t think legal supply of opioids would eliminate overdoses. But to be more fundamental about it, you and I differ on whether or not legal supply necessarily can stabilize a person who is dependent on the substance. To me, that’s substance specific. Caffeine and nicotine are two drugs for which if you have legal supply that is not adulterated and so on, the person can function in everyday life just fine, even if they are dependent. But for the stimulants — crack, methamphetamine, and for alcohol, just providing abundant amounts of unadulterated, free supply does not let those people stabilize their lives. And that has terrible repercussions for them and their families.

Yeah and I would just — to clarify, I don’t necessarily think that an uninterrupted, as much as you want, supply of any drug is going to be good for everyone. Like, I —

Well, that’s what for profit companies are going to want to supply if we legalize.

But there is nuance there. But my question — actually, back to you is — I wonder about your thoughts about why there hasn’t been the same — because while there is a tremendous amount of methamphetamine use, it’s not the case as far as I understand that the increase in methamphetamine use is a result of increased, for example, prescribing of dexamphetamine or other amphetamine analogs that are legal for various treatments, whereas you do see a little bit more of that shift from prescription opioids to underground use of opiates with that market. So I hear what you’re saying. And it seems to be the case that a regulated, safe supply of something like Adderall actually doesn’t have the same effect as in bringing people into a super unregulated, dangerous, unadulterated market in the same way you see with opioids. And it’s true that we also don’t have the pharmaceutical interventions for stimulants as we do with opioids, but I wonder what makes that different. Why are people going to meth in that way versus the other?

Yes, stimulants is a broad category. And some of them are tougher than others. I mean, at some level caffeine is a stimulant, but it’s not a very powerful one, to speak informally, whereas methamphetamine definitely is. Adderall is more on the caffeine end of the spectrum, blessedly, although there is actually some diversion of Adderall. But it’s a different feel. This is like somebody with access to Adderall selling it or giving it to their friend in college to help them study, because they think it’s going to be a performance enhancing smart drug. But on the whole —

I’ve never I’ve never heard of that happening, ever — definitely don’t know anything about that.

Adderall’s worth talking about for a minute here, because it does illustrate the phenomenon that — the trick with providing generous supply to some people is, in part, can they make money by diverting it to other people — money, or do favors for friends. The prescription opioids got out of control for a whole bunch of reasons, many reasons. But one of them was the fact that there was already this value in the illegal market. And you also could seek a prescription based on symptoms that could not be objectively assessed by the clinician. And that combination was a problem. You could show up and say, oh, my back hurts a lot. Give me these things for the cost of a co-pay, and I can turn around and sell them for a lot of money. We’re going to always be vulnerable if you, through the medical system, provide subsidized access to anything for which there is demand in the illegal market. And Adderall does have that character. It just fortunately is nowhere near as bad for you, or risk of overdose, as the opioids were.

Yeah, or meth. I hear that. That makes a lot of sense, and I appreciate that answer. And also I think that the other factor, especially with regulated stimulants — and this is, I think also one of the questions with respect to regulations in general, which is method of administration. Because I do think that the fact that you don’t have smokable amphetamines or injectable amphetamines through regulated system also means that people who are accessing it through a regulated market tend to be doing it in a way that’s not going to have the same super rapid onset, and then related withdrawal, et cetera that you might have with methamphetamine use or other related things.

Yeah, I’ll agree with that. And then it’s also location of administration. So cocaine is available as a medicine. It turns out to be a vasoconstrictor and topical anesthetic that’s useful in minor surgeries. We have no problem with diversion of medical cocaine to illegal markets, because it’s only used inside the medical facility, administered by the clinician. So if we were to talk about, like, psychedelics used by a psychiatrist, on site, under supervision, that sort of medical use would have next to no risk of diversion to a market. But if we were ever to say to somebody, here are two pills a day for the next month. Take them home, do what you want with them. Then, there’s much greater risk of some of those being diverted into the market.

Yeah, and just to clarify — the way that psychedelics are being incorporated into health care now, it’s more like a procedure or a surgery than it is like other psychiatric interventions, where it actually is in the presence of a therapist or a psychiatrist or someone who has specific training to work with both these altered states of consciousness as well with the substances themselves.

Jonathan, I’m curious. Are we asking some of the wrong questions about consumption and distribution if we’re thinking about something as big as what decriminalization or legalization of substances beyond marijuana would look like?

Well, first of all, the bigness of decriminalize and legalize are very, very different. Decriminalization would be a big change, but it’s not a change the world. Legalization of supply, that’s totally different. You said that’s a big shake up. It’s a once in a century event. I would just stress — it’s a once and for all time event. Once you create a legal industry, it’s going to be really hard to get rid of it. When you create a legal industry, you create a powerful lobbying force. One of the challenges we have is regulatory capture. It’s already starting with cannabis. We haven’t even gotten to national legalization yet. But you just presume- - if you’re going to legalize supply of something, presume that there will be regulatory capture, presume you will never go back. And presume that a lot of the regulations are actually going to be shaped by what’s in the industry interests much more so than public health. Public health doesn’t tend to win in the lobbying battles against industry.

I totally agree that legalizing drugs, legalizing supply would be a generational event. It would be a massive, massive shift in the way things are done — even though, as I like to remind people, drugs were legal and traded until about 100 years ago. And it was US pressure on international actors that really brought us into the realm of prohibition that we have now — among others, because even large colonial powers, the Dutch and the English and others, were very happily trading a lot of these drugs for a long time before prohibition in its current form existed. So I also think that we are in a new paradigm in the sense that people have much more awareness and a willingness to talk through the stigma around the dependency and addiction and so on. And that does give me hope, that as we look at these questions around advertising and marketing and so on, that maybe it is possible that these public health perspectives could be better considered. I hope that our experience with tobacco and with opioids could lead to a more rational drug policy with respect to legal access of other substances. That could be naively optimistic, but I feel like as a policy reform advocate, if I’m not somewhat optimistic, then there’s really no point to going forward. And I think it’s really good to have some level of possibility for what there could be beyond where — we currently are.

I admire that optimism. I’m usually the one who’s accused of being optimistic. Compared to you, I guess I’m the jaded, cynical one. We’ll see.

Jonathan, Ismail, thank you so much for joining me. And I really appreciated this conversation.

Good. It was a joy to be here.

Thanks so much, Jonathan. Thank you so much, Jane.

Ismail Ali is a Policy and Advocacy Director at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Jonathan P. Caulkins is the H. Guyford Stever University Professor of Operations, Research, and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. If you want to learn more about drug policy of the United States, I recommend “Is There A Case For Legalizing Heroin” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells in The New Yorker, published in April of 2021. For the other side, you can read “The Drug Policy Roulette” by Jonathan P. Caulkins and Michael A.C. Lee in the National Affairs Summer 2012 edition. And listen to “Michael Pollan’s ‘Trip Report,’” an episode on The New York Times opinion podcast “Sway.” You can find links to all of these in our episode notes.

“The Argument” is a production of New York Times opinion. It’s produced by Phoebe Lett, Elisa Gutierrez, and Vishakha Darbha, edited by Alison Bruzek and Sarah Geis, with original music and sound design by Isaac Jones. Additional engineering by Carole Sabouraud, and additional mixing by Sonia Herrero. Fact checking by Kate Sinclair, and audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks this week to Kristin Lin.

• December 14, 2022   •   40:31 The Libertarian Party Became Too Extreme for Me, So I Changed My Political Allegiance
• December 7, 2022   •   31:32 Should America Intervene in Haiti? ‘Go to Hell’ and Other Views
• November 30, 2022   •   34:51 How to Perform Normalcy — and Why the Democrats Should Give It a Try
• November 16, 2022   •   27:49 Has Donald Trump Lost His Grip on the Republican Party?
• November 9, 2022   •   26:31 Donald Trump Was the Midterm’s Biggest Loser
• November 2, 2022   •   35:21 The Price of $5 Donations: Is Small-Dollar Fund-Raising Doing More Harm Than Good?
• October 26, 2022   •   36:21 ‘Maybe Gen Z Is Just Kinder’: How America’s Youngest Voters Are Shaping Politics
• October 19, 2022   •   31:24 Has Polling Broken Politics?
• October 12, 2022   •   39:53 Is America Headed for Another Civil War?
• October 5, 2022   •   31:58 Are You ‘Third-Party-Curious’? Andrew Yang and David Jolly Would Like a Word.
• September 28, 2022   •   32:23 After Dobbs: What Is Feminist Sex?
• September 21, 2022   •   32:58 After Dobbs: Feminism Beyond the Gender Binary

Produced by ‘The Argument’

Medical marijuana is now legal in more than half of the country . The cities of Denver, Seattle , Washington and Oakland, Calif., have also decriminalized psilocybin (the psychedelic element in “magic mushrooms”). Oregon went one step further, decriminalizing all drugs in small quantities, including heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.

Attitudes toward drugs have changed considerably over the years. But the question of whether all drugs should be legalized continues to be contentious. How much have attitudes toward illegal drugs changed? And why?

[You can listen to this episode of “The Argument” on Apple , Spotify or Google or wherever you get your podcasts .]

This week, Jane Coaston talks to Ismail Ali, the policy and advocacy director for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, and Jonathan P. Caulkins, a professor of operations research and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, about the pros and cons of legalizing all drugs.

Mentioned in this episode:

“ Is there a Case for Legalizing Heroin? ” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells in The New Yorker

“ The Drug-Policy Roulette ” by Jonathan P. Caulkins and Michael A.C. Lee in the National Affairs Summer 2012 edition

“ Michael Pollan’s ‘Trip Report,’ ” on The New York Times Opinion podcast “Sway”

(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)

Thoughts? Email us at [email protected] or leave us a voice mail message at (347) 915-4324. We want to hear what you’re arguing about with your family, your friends and your frenemies. (We may use excerpts from your message in a future episode.)

By leaving us a message, you are agreeing to be governed by our reader submission terms and agreeing that we may use and allow others to use your name, voice and message.

“The Argument” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Elisa Gutierrez and Vishakha Darbha and edited by Alison Bruzek and Sarah Geis; fact-checking by Kate Sinclair; music and sound design by Isaac Jones; mixing by Sonia Herrero, and audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

• Criminal Justice
• Study Guides
• Should Drugs Be Legalized?
• The Process of Criminal Justice
• The Politics of Criminal Justice
• Which Model Crime Control or Due Process
• The Structure of Criminal Justice
• Racial Disparities
• Is the Criminal Justice System Racist?
• Citizen Participation
• Rights Consciousness and Civil Liberties
• Part I Offenses
• Drugs and Crime
• Guns and Crime
• Does Gun Control Reduce Crime?
• Definitions of Crime
• Types of Crime
• Sources of Criminal Law
• The Nature of Criminal Law
• Functions of Criminal Law
• Legal Elements of a Crime
• Legal Defenses, Justifications for Crimes
• The Limits of Criminal Law
• Developing the New Police
• Frontier Justice
• Progressive Police Reform
• Crime Control Decades (1919–1959)
• Policing the Social Crises of the 1960s
• Crime Control Revisited (1970s–1990s)
• Policing Colonial America
• Law Enforcement Goes High‐Tech
• Should Police Take DNA Samples?
• Police Systems
• Police Organization
• Police Strategies
• Does Community Policing Prevent Crime?
• The Nature of Police Work
• The Exclusionary Rule
• Fifth Amendment: Right to Remain Silent
• Citizens' Rights: A Barrier to Justice?
• Criminal Procedure and the Constitution
• The Right to Privacy
• Police Brutality
• Deadly Force
• Police Corruption
• Employment Discrimination
• Affirmative Action: A Tool for Justice?
• Police Perjury
• Federal Courts
• Heavy Caseloads and Delay
• Remove Judges Who Are “Soft on Crime”
• State Courts
• The Posttrial Process
• Should Plea Bargaining Be Abolished?
• Introducing Defendants' Rights
• The Pretrial Process
• The Trial Process
• Prosecutorial Discretion
• Important Relationships for Prosecutors
• Case‐Management Policies
• Prosecutorial Misconduct
• Headhunting: Effective in Organized-Crime Combat?
• Introducing the Prosecutors
• Types of Prosecutors
• Defense Strategies
• Ineffective Assistance of Counsel
• Do Most Defense Attorneys Distort Truth?
• Introducing the Defense Attorneys
• The Adversary Justice System
• Types of Defense
• Sentencing Statutes and Guidelines
• Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished?
• Theories of Punishment
• Types of Sentences
• Prisoners' Rights
• Can Imprisoning More Criminals Cut Crime?
• A Separate System for Juveniles
• Minorities in Juvenile Justice
• Myths About Juvenile Justice
• Should Juveniles Be Tried as Adults?
• Juveniles' Responsibilities and Rights

The main solutions to the drug problem focus on supply and demand. Supply‐side solutions include initiatives aimed at pressuring drug‐producing countries to halt the exporting of illegal drugs, intercepting drugs before smugglers can get them across American borders, passing tougher drug laws, cracking down on drug dealers, and sentencing drug manufacturers and dealers to long prison terms. Demand‐side solutions include drug education and drug treatment. A more radical approach suggests legalization (in other words, removal of drug offense from criminal codes) as the only viable solution.

Drugs should be legalized

There are numerous arguments for drug legalization.

Criminal prohibition of drugs has not eliminated or substantially reduced drug use.

The drug war has cost society more than drug abuse itself. Costs include the $16 billion the federal government alone spent to fight drugs in 1998. Of this $16 billion, $10.5 billion pays for measures to reduce the supply of drugs. Most of these measures involve law enforcement efforts to interdict or intercept drug supplies at the borders. Costs also include corruption, damage to poor and minority neighborhoods, a world‐wide black market in illegal drugs, the enrichment of criminal organizations through their involvement in the drug trade, and an increase in predatory crimes, such as robberies and burglaries, committed by drug addicts who are enslaved to drugs.

Most illegal drugs are no more harmful than legal substances, such as cigarettes and alcohol, and therefore, drugs should be treated the same as these other substances.

Legalization would free up billions of dollars that the government now spends on police, courts, and corrections to wage war on drugs and would produce significant tax revenues. The money saved could then be spent on drug education, drug treatment, and law enforcement initiatives directed at more serious crimes.

Drug prohibition infringes on civil liberties. The U.S. Supreme Court has decided that because drugs are such a horrible thing, it is okay to bend the Fourth Amendment (which relates to searches and seizures) in order to make it easier to secure convictions in drug cases.

Drugs should not be legalized

There are also many arguments against legalization.

Legalization would increase the number of casual users which, in turn, would increase the number of drug abusers.

More drug users, abusers, and addicts would mean more health problems and lower economic productivity.

Although legalization might result in savings in expensive criminal justice costs and provide tax revenues, increased public‐health costs and reduced economic productivity due to more drug‐dependent workers would offset the financial benefits of legalization.

The argument based on the analogy between alcohol and tobacco versus psychoactive drugs is weak because its conclusion—psychoactive drugs should be legalized—does not follow from its premises. It is illogical to say that because alcohol and tobacco take a terrible toll (for example, they are responsible for 500,000 premature deaths each year), a heavy toll from legalization is therefore acceptable. Indeed, the reverse seems more logical: prohibit the use of alcohol, tobacco, and psychoactive drugs because of the harm they all do. Additionally, marijuana, heroin, cocaine, crack, and the rest of the psychoactive drugs are not harmless substances—they have serious negative consequences for the health of users and addictive liability.

Evaluating drug legalization

Is legalization a gamble worth taking? Arguments on both sides are persuasive. What should we do if we can neither clearly accept nor reject drug legalization? One approach proposed as being sensible is to suspend judgment, to recognize that proponents of legalization are partly right (that the drug war has proven ineffective in reducing drug abuse and crime associated with drugs), and to realize that it is time to explore new approaches.

Previous The Limits of Criminal Law

Next Developing the New Police

Your complimentary articles

You’ve read one of your four complimentary articles for this month.

You can read four articles free per month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

On Moral Arguments Against Recreational Drug Use

Rob lovering considers some of the arguments, and what they amount to..

December 5, 2015, marked the eighty-second anniversary of the United States’ repeal of the National Prohibition Act, an erstwhile constitutional ban on ‘intoxicating beverages’. The Act’s repeal did not bring an end in the U.S. to the legal prohibition of every intoxicating substance, of course – the recreational use of cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, and many other intoxicating substances remains illegal; but it did reinstate alcohol as one of many intoxicating substances – of many drugs , lest there be any confusion – that Americans are legally permitted to use recreationally. The list also includes caffeine and nicotine.

One might wonder why all countries currently legally permit the recreational use of some drugs, such as caffeine, nicotine, and (usually) alcohol, but prohibit the recreational use of others, such as cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and (usually) marijuana. The answer lies not simply in the harm the use of these drugs might cause, but in the perceived immorality of their use. As former U.S. Drug Czar William Bennett once put it, “I find no merit in the legalizers’ case. The simple fact is that drug use is wrong. And the moral argument, in the end, is the most compelling argument” ( Drugs: Should We Legalize, Decriminalize or Deregulate? , ed. Jeffrey A. Schaler, 1998, p.65). Yet, despite strong rhetoric from the prohibitionists, it is surprisingly difficult to discern their reasons for believing that the recreational use of certain drugs is morally wrong. Most of the time, no reasons are even provided: it is simply declared, à la Bennett, that using some drugs recreationally is morally impermissible.

This is not to say that there are no reasons for believing that using some drugs recreationally is wrong. Indeed, there is a wide array of arguments for the immorality of certain recreational drug use, ranging from the philosophically rudimentary to the philosophically sophisticated. But the vast majority of these arguments are unsuccessful, and those that succeed are quite limited in scope.

Some Rudimentary Arguments

Take, for example, one of the philosophically rudimentary arguments: Recreational drug use is generally unhealthy for the user; therefore, recreational drug use is wrong.

Now it is true that recreational drug use is generally unhealthy for the user in one respect or another, to one degree or another. Just how unhealthy it is for the user depends not only on which drug, but on the amount and frequency of its use, the manner in which it is administered, the health of the person using it, and more. In any case, there is little question that recreational drug use is generally unhealthy for the user.

But does it follow then that recreational drug use is wrong ? It does if the mere fact that an activity is generally unhealthy – or, more broadly, generally harmful – to the one who engages in it renders that activity morally wrong. However, this idea is very difficult to justify. Indeed, there seem to be conditions under which harming oneself, even damaging one’s health, does not involve wrongdoing, such as when the harm is done with one’s voluntary, informed consent. From boxing to BASE jumping, playing contact sports to mixed martial arts, snowboarding to bull-riding – each of these activities can be and often is unhealthy to the individuals who engage in them; but none of them seem to be thereby morally wrong when those engaging in them do so with their voluntary, informed consent. Imprudent, perhaps, but not immoral. Or consider people who eat unhealthy food and refuse to exercise. Their voluntary and informed eating of unhealthy food and refusing to exercise does not seem to be morally wrong in and of itself.

Here’s another philosophically rudimentary argument: Recreational drug use is unnatural; therefore, recreational drug use is wrong.

Now there are at least seven different meanings of ‘unnatural’ that one may employ in this argument: statistically abnormal or unusual; not practiced by nonhuman animals; does not proceed from an innate desire; violates an organ’s principal purpose; gross or disgusting; artificial; and contrary to divine intention. But regardless of which meaning is employed, this argument is also unsuccessful.

Consider just one meaning of ‘unnatural’: ‘artificial’. What’s typically meant by the claim that recreational drug use is artificial is that it involves inducing mental states that would not have occurred were it not for human intervention or contrivance. But what’s wrong with artificially inducing mental states? This is precisely what individuals taking medication for depression or bipolar disorder do; yet hardly anyone believes that taking medication for depression or bipolar disorder is wrong. Granted, artificially inducing mental states for depression or bipolar disorder differs from artificially inducing mental states for recreational purposes in a particular and perhaps morally significant way: the former use is medical in nature while the latter is not. But if the claim, as here, is simply that it is wrong to artificially induce mental states, then why the mental states are artificially induced makes no difference to the argument. Furthermore, even if the reason the mental states are artificially induced were relevant to the argument, this would not necessarily entail that artificially inducing mental states for recreational purposes renders doing so wrong. Indeed, we have good reasons to think that artificially inducing mental states for recreational purposes is morally permissible in some cases: by way of listening to music or reading a novel, for instance. Both the music and the novel are products of human contrivance. To that extent, the mental states induced by listening to music or reading a novel are induced artificially. Nevertheless, there seems to be nothing immoral about artificially inducing mental states by doing either of these things.

There are many other philosophically rudimentary arguments: one grounds the supposed wrongness of recreational drug use in the claim that it squanders the user’s talents; another in the claim that the pleasure of recreational drug use is unearned, and so on – but let this suffice for now. Equivalent analogies can be cited to show why these other arguments don’t work either.

More Sophisticated Arguments

More philosophically sophisticated arguments for the moral wrongness of certain recreational drug use fare no better. Consider the following argument: By using drugs recreationally, the user instrumentalizes himself; therefore, recreational drug use is wrong. To instrumentalize oneself is to use oneself for a purpose to which one, as a rational moral agent, cannot in principle agree. (A rational moral agent is someone who can think in terms of moral reasons and act on that basis.) Most simply put, to instrumentalize oneself is to agree to behavior to which one could not rationally assent. For instance, if Joe necessarily desires x , then Joe cannot rationally agree to behavior that thwarts x , since doing so would involve contradicting himself – for were Joe to assent to behavior that thwarts that which he necessarily desires, Joe would be at once desiring both x and not- x .

So, does recreational drug use involve using oneself for a purpose to which one cannot in principle agree? That depends on what the purpose of recreational drug use is. This, in turn, depends partly on the drug in question. For the sake of space, let us consider the recreational use of just one drug: marijuana.

Typically, the purpose of using marijuana recreationally is to get high. The question, then, is whether the marijuana user can in principle rationally agree to the end of getting high. At first glance, it appears she can – the individual agreeing to get high does not on the face of things seem to be contradicting herself in doing so. But to be sure about this, we need to determine whether a pot smoker necessarily desires something that getting high thwarts.

Although lots of things might be proposed here, but again for the sake of space, I will consider just one: Perhaps as a rational moral agent, the pot smoker necessarily desires all that is required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency. And it may be that not being high – in a word, sobriety – is required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency. Two questions now arise: do rational moral agents necessarily desire all that is required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency? And, is sobriety required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency?

Properly addressing the first question would involve a lengthy digression into the nature of rational moral agency. Instead, I will simply assume that rational moral agents do necessarily desire all that is required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency.

This brings us to the second question: Is sobriety required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency? Arguably not . To be sure, sobriety may be required for the optimal exercise of rational moral agency, but it is not required for the exercise, much less the preservation, of rational moral agency. The high individual can and typically does think in terms of moral reasons and act on that basis. As Jeffrey Reiman writes, “Even drug-beclouded individuals know the difference between right and wrong and can understand when they are hurting others and so on” ( Critical Moral Liberalism: Theory & Practice , 1997, p.89).

Getting high, then, does not necessarily thwart all that is required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency. Accordingly, the marijuana user can indeed agree in principle to the end of getting high, even given that she necessarily desires all that is required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency. Substitute alcohol, cocaine, heroin, or ecstasy for marijuana here, and similar arguments may be proffered for the view that users of these drugs can also agree in principle to the end of these drugs’ intoxicating effects – at least up to the point of the incapacity of rational thought.

Another philosophically sophisticated argument for the wrongness of recreational drug use is worth mentioning, given its popularity: By using drugs recreationally, the user may become addicted and thereby diminish his autonomy; therefore, recreational drug use is wrong.

Perhaps the most important word in this argument is ‘autonomy’. And although there are many definitions of this word, for present purposes we will use ‘the capacity to govern oneself’.

It is clear that, generally speaking, recreational drug users may become addicted to their drug of choice. Indeed, in Drug Legalization: For and Against (eds. Rod L. Evans and Irwin M. Berent, 1994), psychiatrist Michael Gazzaniga estimates that there is a ten per cent chance that any user of any drug will become addicted to it.

To what extent a drug is addictive may be determined in a number of ways, two of the more common ways being by establishing how likely it is that an occasional user of a drug becomes a habitual user of it; and by establishing how difficult it is for the habitual user to quit (see for instance Jim Leitzel, Regulating Vice: Misguided Prohibitions and Realistic Controls , 2008, p.61). Under both methods, nicotine is considered the most addictive of commonly-used drugs. Marijuana is much less addictive. Alcohol, heroin, and cocaine all fall somewhere in between nicotine and marijuana. And some recreational drugs, such as LSD and other hallucinogens, are considered virtually non-addictive, if at all: as Brian Penrose writes, “Whatever else may be true of [hallucinogens], they’re more or less universally recognized as non-addictive” ( Regulating Vice ).

However, even given that recreational drug users may become addicted to their drug of choice, and, in turn, diminish their autonomy to a greater or lesser degree, this does not itself render recreational drug use wrong. After all, most of us diminish our capacity to govern ourselves from time to time in ways that appear to be morally innocuous. Consider someone who is having trouble sleeping and decides to take a sleeping pill. In doing so, the individual chooses a course of action that will result in the diminishing of his capacity to govern himself. But does he thereby do something morally impermissible? It seems not.

Of course, taking a sleeping pill involves the use of a drug. And since what is at issue here is the moral status of using drugs – recreationally, of course, but using drugs nonetheless – it might be helpful to invoke a case that does not involve the use of a drug. So consider enlisting in the military. Those who do so diminish their capacity to govern themselves rather severely – with respect to where and with whom one resides, when one goes to and gets out of bed, what and when one eats and drinks, whom one considers to be an enemy, whom one considers to be an ally, whose commands one deems authoritative and obeys, what one considers to be acceptable conduct, under what conditions one will kill another human being, and so on. Even so, it does not seem to be morally wrong to join the military – at least, not on the grounds that doing so diminishes one’s capacity to govern oneself. (It may be imprudent in some ways, of course.) This suggests that other cases involving a less-than-extreme diminishing of one’s capacity to govern oneself are not morally wrong either.

To be sure, the diminishing of one’s capacity to govern oneself that occurs through joining the military is not the result of using a drug. But again, this fact is inconsequential to the argument. If it is precisely the diminishing of one’s capacity to govern oneself that renders certain recreational drug use wrong, as is alleged here, then any activity that involves the diminishing of one’s capacity to govern oneself will also be wrong, regardless of the means by which this is achieved.

To make this clear, suppose that what makes murder morally impermissible is that it involves the intentional permanent destruction of an innocent individual’s consciousness against their will. On this supposition, any activity that involves the intentional permanent destruction of an innocent individual’s consciousness against their will should be morally impermissible – including the intentional rendering of an innocent individual permanently comatose against their will. The means by which the permanent destruction of the individual’s consciousness is achieved is different in the comatose case, of course; but it is the permanent destruction of the individual’s consciousness nonetheless – so rendering someone comatose will be wrong for the same reason that murder is wrong. Similarly, if diminishing one’s capacity to govern oneself is morally wrong in and of itself, then joining the military is thereby morally wrong. But this is implausible.

There are many other philosophically sophisticated arguments – one which grounds the wrongness of recreational drug use in the claim that it blocks basic goods; another which grounds it in the claim that it degrades the user, and so on – but the preceding considerations will do for now.

Much more can also be said about each of the arguments above, and I have done just that in my book A Moral Defense of Recreational Drug Use (2015). Suffice it to say that if the objections that I have raised against these arguments for the immorality of recreational drug use are cogent, then to that extent the moral case for legally prohibiting recreational drug use is undermined.

© Rob Lovering 2016

Rob Lovering is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. His book A Moral Defense of Recreational Drug Use is available from Palgrave Macmillan.

This site uses cookies to recognize users and allow us to analyse site usage. By continuing to browse the site with cookies enabled in your browser, you consent to the use of cookies in accordance with our privacy policy . X

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• BMJ Open Access

How to justify a ban on doping?

This article deals with arguments that challenge the possibility of an ethical justification for a doping ban.

Hypothesis/purpose

It shows that a justification for the doping ban is only possible if its implementation can be safeguarded.

Study design

Systematic review.

Based on the proposition of the game theory, this article examines the scope of the arguments of naturalness, health, equal opportunity and fairness used in scientific literature.

Results/conclusions

Ceteris paribus, athletes will always prefer a situation that presents no health risk to a situation in which they face a threat to their health. They will therefore consent to a doping ban on the condition that it is ensured that all parties are bound to this rule, so that anyone complying with the rules will not be afraid of losing the competition as a result. For even if we condoned self-harm, it could still be argued plausibly that the individual should not suffer more disadvantages than absolutely necessary for the sake of gaining an advantage over others. Of course, it is possible to plead for a restricted approval of doping measures with acceptable risk. But even taking minor risks would not seem sensible under the condition that all participants without exception adhere to the same conditions when there is the option to renounce the (avoidable) risks. So as far as the use of performance-enhancing substances or methods is concerned, we can maintain that even if minor health risks are to be expected, a ban on doping can be justified from an ethical point of view.

In the discussion on the question of whether a ban on doping can be ethically justified, a number of terms are used in different constellations and classifications, especially terms like naturalness, health, fairness and equality of opportunity. This paper attempts to critically examine existing arguments by clarifying their normative status and argumentative relation. The aim is to provide a coherent argumentative base for the ethical justification of a ban on doping.

Justification of the doping ban

To consider doping from an ethical point of view initially means asking for reasons why certain substances or methods that increase physical performance are banned, and to contrast these with reasons that speak for an approval of such substances or methods. This raises the issue of what actually is considered doping and what is not. There are two definitional strategies fundamentally conceivable. A broad definition—given the case that the ban on certain performance-enhancing substances and methods can be justified—comprises the permitted as well as prohibited forms of doping. A narrow definition is confined to those forms of doping that must be prohibited (this, of course, does not release from the obligation to justify the ban). For the following considerations, I will combine the two strategies in such a way that, as long as the justification for a ban is still in question, I have chosen the broad definition, but when discussing the questions of implementation once the questions of justification have been clarified, the narrow definition shall be applied.

First of all, we shall define doping as the use of substances or methods that serve athletic performance enhancement. Besides the ‘classic’ doping methods, what is known as gene doping 1 2 promises new possibilities. This is the technology which is used to influence the genetic makeup and—through the expression of respective genetic information—to modify physiological properties with the aim of improving performance. This is aimed at influencing growth, structure, strength, endurance or the regeneration of skeletal muscle, or improving oxygen dispersal and energy supply. The modification of the expression of genetic information is principally achieved with or without the application of genetic elements. We shall differentiate between methods that apply genes or genetic elements to individual tissue cells (gene doping in the stricter sense), and methods that modify the transmission of genetic information (gene doping in the broader sense), both with the intent of influencing the specific control processes.

Yet how can the ban on doping be justified ? One of the most frequently discussed models of justification is the naturalness argument . In this case, doping is defined as an unnatural increase in athletic performance. You should not use performance-enhancing substances (or methods, as shall always be implicit in the following) that either the body cannot produce or fails to produce in sufficient quantities. In case of a descriptive intention, it is possible to strictly differentiate between substances that are produced by the body itself (this also applies to gene doping, where effective elements are not applied directly, but indirectly to the body, which in turn activates individual body cells to produce the relevant performance-enhancing substances). It is doubtful, however, whether this can be turned into a prescriptive statement. 3 This is because, on the one hand, foreign substances with performance-enhancing effect can also be used to soothe pain or to cure injuries, and consequently there is no reason to generally discredit such agents; 4 on the other hand, it is because substances produced naturally in the body can be used for doping purposes and then the question arises, what distinguishes the natural from the unnatural use of the respective substances. The first part of this reasoning can be countered by arguing that the medically indicated use of foreign substances, which also have a performance-enhancing effect, may lead to a distortion of competition (this is particularly relevant for the distinction between gene doping and gene therapy—eg, when considering methods for muscle or bone regeneration—which is difficult once such methods are established). Although his argument is certainly apt, in individual cases, for justifying the exclusion from a competition for reasons of fairness, not, however, for generally founding a ban on doping on the criterion of naturalness. This would necessitate a fundamental ban on the medically non-indicated use of foreign substances, but then the reasons for this ban would be unclear. Moreover, according to the criterion of naturalness—and this concerns the second part of the reasoning—increasing performance through the reproduction or enhancement of substances produced naturally in the body would also have to be dismissed, which, of course, gives rise to the question of how the legitimate supply of substances that are not produced in sufficient quantities by the body should be distinguished from the illegitimate supply. For reasons of fairness, it may seem worth considering—theoretically, at least—imposing a ban on individual methods (such as altitude training) as competitive distortion (quite apart from the practicability of this). It is then again the argument of fairness and not that of naturalness which allows the imposition of a general ban on respective methods.

The second important justification model is the argument of the athlete ' s health . The use of performance-enhancing substances is only safe if the athlete's health does not suffer any short-term or long-term damage. This is the point at which it is important to discuss the dimensions of what may be classified as harmful. The intake of anabolic steroids, for example, may lead to an increased risk of arteriosclerosis: the heart muscle mass increases, the myocardial perfusion deteriorates and the liver is damaged, leading to liver failure. Erythropoietin (EPO) primarily leads to ‘thick blood’ and the danger of thromboses, with the additional risk of heart attack. 5 In gene doping, the use of, for example, viral transport vectors (gene shuttles) may have health effects that go beyond the risks encountered in tradition doping (eg when building the cardiac muscle leads to undesired side effects). Besides the place of action , problems may also arise when controlling the amount and the point in time for the production of the desired effect. 6 Immune reactions, leukaemia-like conditions or even death are examples of the risks associated with the use of gene doping.

In traditional doping as in gene doping, it is often argued that there are always transitional areas between what can be considered harmful and what not. However, there are also cases where there is a clear-cut distinction that can be drawn with good judgement (we will return to this issue later on). Moreover, there is the question of whether there are substances that do not directly harm the athlete's health, but which may lead to addiction and should be banned for this reason. Medical research must find answers to all these questions on the basis of empirical findings. Yet these questions do not fundamentally speak against the legitimacy of founding the doping ban on the criterion of harmfulness. It is often argued against the argument of health that certain disciplines in sports are in themselves harmful, yet continue to be practised. 7 However, exactly this can—at least from an ethical point of view—provide the reason for banning unhealthy sports types or practices. The extended argument that sports as a whole bears risks can be rejected with the statement that—with reference to a certain set of rules—you can expect risks to be immanent in the respective game, but to avoid these you would have to give up the game itself. 8 It would be sensible to accept the risks immanent in a certain sport, which are (only) in this sense unavoidable, and simultaneously take precautions that all additional, and thus avoidable, risks should be eliminated. Therefore, the first conclusion could be that harming the athlete's health (in his or her own interest) should be avoided by banning certain substances or methods. Of course, we take (far higher) health risks in everyday life to achieve effects unachievable without these risks (regardless of a ban on doping, the risks associated with a specific type of sport remain). However, it is rational to avoid unnecessary risks. Given equal circumstances, athletes would reasonably be in favour of a setting without doping as opposed to one with doping, because there is no alteration with regard to the competitive output. The participants therefore collectively gain an advantage by abstaining from doping. It is necessary to demonstrate that the only way of preventing an individual disadvantage is by ensuring that the ban on doping can be implemented for all participants in equal measure.

Implementing the doping ban

If you argue from the point of view of the individual interest of the athlete not to harm his or her health, the problem of implementation subsequently emerges. Although we are able to justify why doping (now only used in its narrow definition) should be banned—it should not damage the athlete's health—we must, however, consider ways of implementing this ban. For it is clear that the athlete, who follows the logic of this argument and renounces the use of harmful, performance-enhancing substances, will be outperformed by the one who does not, because we can expect him or her to lose the competition. This means that we are faced with the ethically relevant issue that individual self-commitment, for which there are substantial reasons, can be exploited. In more concrete terms, we are dealing with conflicting values, and the competing values are ‘health’ on the one hand and ‘success’ on the other. The question now is how to solve this conflict.

Let us consider the situation in which an athlete contemplates whether to resort to doping or not, following the maxim of the famous American coach Vince Lombardi, to whom the following sentence is attributed: ‘Winning isn’t everything, it's the only thing!’ This means that for an athlete the value of success may be of higher value than his or her own health. If athletes are seeking success (something we can at least assume) and do not know which values the other players prefer, this results in the following logic that is visualised in a matrix ( figure 1 ). From the point of view of A, there is the following consideration: if B has a non-doping strategy , A will achieve the best result if he resorts to doping; for if A also adopts a non-doping strategy, he can only achieve his second best result. Let us now consider the case in which B adopts a doping strategy . This is where A will achieve his third best result, if he also adopts the doping strategy; the worst strategy for him would be to adopt a non-doping strategy while B resorts to doping. In this case, doping is also the better strategy. The same result applies to B. The outcome of this constellation is that for both contestants doping is the dominant strategy (a setting commonly referred to in ethics and game theory as prisoner’s dilemma). 9 Indeed, the use of game theory is not an entirely new approach. Gunnar Breivik focuses mainly on success and fairness as conflicting goals. This way, rules of fairness preventing defection can be established, but this approach does not rule out all parties involved collectively agreeing on the doping strategy. In my opinion, this strategy can only be rejected on rational grounds if health is added as a goal. Another weakness of Breivik’s rationale is his suggestion to overcome defection through moral appeals and fair motives. On the one hand, there is empirical evidence suggesting the ineffectiveness of such appeals causing fair motives to deteriorate. This is why a moralisation may run the risk of tolerating the unilateral exploitation of moral motives. In this respect, dilemmas cannot be resolved without sanctionable rules (which Breivik acknowledges in addition to the moral appeal, although he does not establish a systematic connection between motives and rules). 10

Doping as a prisoners’ dilemma.

Basically, there are three conceivable strategies. A first possibility is for athletes to change their order of preferences (eg, on grounds of a moral appeal, as suggested by Breivik) and promote health to their top consideration as far as values are concerned. In reality, this is rather unlikely to happen. However, we would merely be dealing with a contingent phenomenon; otherwise there would be no doping problem. A second possibility would be for the contenders to come to a mutual agreement to do without doping. However, they will not be able to rely on this simply because of the existence of such an agreement, as the incentive to defect and to exploit the moral advance of the others, remains. A third possibility is to establish binding rules and regulations , which means making doping an offence and threatening any action against this norm with sanctions. This is the only way to reliably effect change in the individual's judgement. Therefore, in addition to the value of health, which is the first restrictive condition when using non-natural performance-enhancing substances, we require a second restrictive condition, which is a legal perspective to guarantee that all athletes will renounce the intake of harmful agents. Against this backdrop it becomes evident that even the proposal to liberalise doping, on the proviso that athletes keep a (non-public) ‘drug diary’ in which they must record all employed substances and methods (there will be a threat of sanctions, such as publishing the records), is inappropriate, as this will not help to overcome the above-mentioned dilemma. (1) In no way will this eliminate, as is the claim, the incentive to create new substances and methods because—just as with the strict ban on doping—the use of previously unknown agents can mean victory and the athlete concerned may even accept the risk of being detected and punished. (2) If all athletes would follow this rule and lay open all substances and methods (because we assume that any kind of doping can be successfully detected), so that indeed there would be no incentive to create new substances as those could immediately be copied, thus preventing a competitive advantage, there would be the decisive disadvantage that this rule would establish a system of collective, self-inflicted damage as far as the athlete's health is concerned. This is why the strict ban on doping is the better rule.

Equal opportunity and fairness

The necessity to establish rules that collectively apply to competitive sports is handled by many authors under the terms of equal opportunity and fairness. 11 Both terms mark constituents of competition and can therefore be called inherent characteristics of competitive sports: they issue from the logic of the competition itself. Whereas in the following I will consider the term equal opportunity as being the general conditions of admission , as they foremost guarantee the uncertainty of the outcome of the game (eg, the distinction between men and women or of weight classes in the individual disciplines), I will use the term fairness to denote the adherence to the underlying rules of the game or discipline (eg, offside or foul). The conditions of admission shall also include equipment or training methods, the admission or possible exclusion of which would follow pragmatic instead of ethical considerations (for even here a foreseen imbalance would prejudice the outcome of the competition). Under this consideration, doping would be a breach of sporting fairness that would destroy the fundamental safeguard of equal opportunity. Ensuring fairness and equal opportunity in this case is linked to the observance of rules.

Let us take a closer look at both terms. We could use the term equal opportunities to illuminate the following argument that would be in support of the liberalisation of doping: doping helps compensate for natural imbalances and therefore it is essential to ensure equality in the competition. 12 There are two possible reactions to this. (1) Either all athletes react uniformly to the given method. Then it would be more sensible not to do anything at all in case of immanent health risks, as this would only prolong the existing imbalances, as shall be shown in more detail later on. (2) Or the athletes react differently to the given method. In this case, it would be possible to establish equality, given the technical possibilities. Even if we countered the argument that in this case the natural lottery of different talents is only substituted by the natural lottery of various reactions to one and the same measure with the argument, that knowledge founded on evidence about the respective effects could lead to a fair central distribution, one must consider that not all differences in performance can be levelled out through medical intervention. And this again raises the question of whether it is worth taking the risks, even if they are so minute and improbable, if the desired effect can only be predicted to a certain extent. 8

So let us turn to the term fairness: linking the rule of fairness to the guiding principles of health , the breach of which should be prevented in the interest of the individual athlete, results in the following: ceteris paribus, athletes will always prefer a situation that presents no health risk to a situation in which they face a threat to their health. They will therefore consent to a doping ban on the condition that it is ensured that all parties are bound to this rule, so that anyone complying with the rules will not be afraid of losing the competition as a result. 13 For even if we condoned self-harm, it could still be argued plausibly that the individual should not suffer more disadvantages than absolutely necessary for the sake of gaining an advantage over others. Of course, it is possible to plead for a restricted approval of doping measures with acceptable risk. But even taking minor risks would not seem sensible under the condition that all participants without exception adhere to the same conditions when there is the option to renounce the (avoidable) risks (even if, as already mentioned, there will always be a debate about what is healthy and what is individually unhealthy). So as far as the use of performance-enhancing substances or methods is concerned, we can maintain that even if minor health risks are to be expected, a ban on doping can be justified from an ethical point of view. 14

So we can only reliably solve the conflict of values—health versus success—by introducing an enforceable rule, and we can assume that all parties involved can agree to the introduction of this rule. The existence of dilemma structures, as depicted in the matrix, or—to put it differently—existing stimuli for defection must therefore be removed through the introduction of enforceable rules. 10 There are two conclusions to be drawn here. (1) The obligatory force of the ban on doping is linked to control and sanction mechanisms that must be established by means of appropriate statutory regulations. 15 This is where detection methods play a decisive role. Without doubt, the extent of sanctions and the rigour of their application are discretionary. However, to participate in a sport and accept its rules is a voluntary action. 16 That is precisely what makes this situation different from that of any other citizen, who indeed needs to be protected from inconsiderate and excessive access by the state. In principle, unnecessary self-inflicted damage can be prevented by collective self-commitments, for example, the requirement to wear a seat belt. The connection of a useful action with an action causing only (collective) disadvantages can be dissolved in this manner. Tests are not undesirable interferences in the privacy of non-doping athletes, who refuse to dope because the doping competitors will be exposed through tests and are also not undesirable interferences in the privacy of doping competitors, because they, if given the choice, would prefer a world without doping over a world with doping. The potential of game theory lies precisely in its ability to illustrate that athletes do not control the outcome of a game individually but only collectively.

(2) Apart from this, creating incentive structures is also conceivable, for example, rewarding performance maintained over years or promoting self-commitment to health checks, etc. Moreover, it may make sense to eliminate existing incentives that are considered unfavourable, for example, by splitting disciplines requiring extreme endurance into several individual stages. The model proposed here therefore identifies the insufficiency of the theoretical approaches that treat doping as being primarily an issue of individual ethics . 17 Instead of individual self-commitment, the consensus of excluding harmful performance-enhancing methods through collective self-commitment comes to the fore. Individual self-commitment would be faced with the problem of anyone following this maxim would be a disadvantage in the sporting event. A discourse on the correct rules must therefore precede a discourse on the correct attitude. Only against a backdrop of generally obliging and enforceable rule based on consensus— social ethics —a moral attitude can be established: that of treating one’s own body with care and moderation, through the introduction of a rule acceptable to all parties concerned that will not present a disadvantage to the individual or the collective.

At this point, we need to revert to the argument of naturalness. It is argued that, if one viewed both the usage of substances foreign to the body and natural substances in the athletes’ body for performance enhancement as unnatural, the prescriptive inference of a ban of these technologies could be justified. In fact, this paper claims in descriptive terms (agreeing with Pawlenka) that it is plausible to consider the increased use of the body's own substances as a means of performance enhancement as unnatural, respectively artificial in contrast to the natural production of these substances, which is the prerequisite for the prescriptive consequence illustrated above. If there is no descriptive difference, a corresponding prescriptive conclusion cannot be established. Hence, in prescriptive terms, the question is why the increased use of the body's own substances should be subjected to a ban. In principle, it appears conceivable to permit all athletes to make use of these methods. The prohibition of this method could be established on the rationale of individual defection, that is, to prevent unfair distortions of competition, not because the method is unnatural. A prohibition could also be established with regard to collective defection, if the method is health damaging. One could also argue that the increased supply with endogenous substances is not, in descriptive terms, unnatural. Even in this case, the prescriptive consequences would not be definitive, that is, whether or not this method is to be considered doping and whether it should be banned or not. The argument that potentially health-damaging technologies should be forbidden by collective rationality if the same goals can be achieved without these methods also applies in this case. Therefore, the prescriptive application of the category of naturalness, respectively the distinction between natural and unnatural, is rejected in this context.

Criticising some arguments concerning ethics in sport

It also becomes clear that doping cannot be considered an irrational action . The explanation for this is simple, and basically we have already seen it. If all other participants would abstain from doping, it would be the best solution for the individual to turn to doping. Doping, in this respect, would be individually rational. Of course, you may argue that the athlete must accept that his or her health will be harmed. Balancing health and success, however, can only be performed individually, which means that one cannot generally say that health is more important than success for a human being. Let us assume that an athlete could win international fame and prize money, a situation that will leave him financially secure for the rest of his life, and against this would be a reasonable risk of damaging his health, with which he would be able to live or which could even be cured. It could be rational to accept this risk in order to exploit the opportunity to win (the fact that this assumption is realistic is shown by ref. 18 ).

There is no external logic in this case, which could intervene in the internal rationale of the athlete and oust the Lombardi logic. We can only intervene in the internal rationale of a person if we change the rules within which he or she acts such that the person who has to obey these rules is able to agree to the limitation of his freedom of action. This means that the athletes (participants) are faced with the problem that the individual and the collective view may diverge. Even if athletes agree that a world without doping and its negative consequences is better than a world with doping and the respective damages, if this view thus could be collectively rational, it could factually be the best solution for the individual to let all others renounce doping and then win the competition uncontended. Doping can only not be considered as the result of a rational decision if a ban has been imposed and its implementation has been ensured. Then it will indeed be collectively and individually rational to renounce doping.

The attempt to challenge the argument that doping is an infringement on equal opportunities with the suggestion that there are never equal opportunities in sports if you consider training practice and the infrastructure in which rival contenders are acting continues to be unacceptable. 19 Of course, one must admit that there may be asynchronicities in the development of training methods or equipment, etc. All participants, however, should in principle be able to make up leeway. If it were—as already implied—clear from the start that these inequalities would continue to exist and it would be impossible for some to close the gap, a competition (which cannot be a veritable competition) could not even develop because nobody would be interested in it. If, however, equal opportunities would in principal be enabled through rules, then one could also approve doping for all parties, thus all above-mentioned criticism would lead nowhere on this issue.

This is why we, as we have seen, also consider the value of health on which we must found the ban on doping. To prevent any asymmetries from forming, that is, that only a few will abide by the ban and then surely lose, it is necessary to include the rule of fairness, or better: to establish fairness as an enforceable rule. 20 Because doping presents the dominant strategy, provided that there is no binding rule, we can conclude that mere appeals without institutional provisions will have no effect, and in the long term will lead to the erosion of moral attitudes. 21 This does not intend to discredit moral appeals in general. 22 Moral appeals by institutions, providing information on possible health risks or on the consequences of breaching the rules of the competition, must be supported by enforceable rules ensuring that those adhering to the rules of the competition are not at a disadvantage. If the law cannot prohibit something efficiently, action cannot be taken against it, for example, in the case of potentially health-damaging substances, which cannot be detected in an athlete’s body. This becomes visible in the moral bindingness as well: people can only be demanded by law to refrain from an action considered immoral, if the enforcement of such a rule can be guaranteed for all parties involved. Someone cannot be morally demanded to (not) do something, if it cannot be enforced legally. From this insight, the conclusion can be drawn that deficits in the legal enforceability need to be removed if possible. If it is not possible to remove these deficits, moral demands should not be directed at individuals.

Paternalism

When banning doping, can this be considered a paternalistic intervention, and can such an intervention be ethically justified? It is justified—and this is where relevant literature reveals great consensus—to intervene through action or omission where a person is harming himself or herself as a result of unknown or unintentional consequences . This also applies if there is no evidence for deliberate decisions or actions, where we can thus only talk of behaviour. For such cases, it is plausible that the cause of this behaviour or this decision or action should not be considered to be part of the respective person. Instead, we should deal with the underlying mental and external factors as a cause. This, for example, applies to wrong convictions regarding the relationship between cause and effect. 23 Events that fall under this description can be treated as a natural phenomenon and can be captured with the harm-to-others principle (such as if a person had to be protected from the harmful effects of a natural phenomenon). Therefore, they do not present a case of paternalistic action. From an ethical point of view, it is therefore not legitimate and mandatory to inform an athlete about the underlying health risk factors. 24 To put it differently: athletes must always be comprehensively informed about the risks their actions involve to take autonomous decisions for or against those actions. The case is different if a person harms himself or herself through known or intended consequences of doping. With regard to the competitive sport which is our concern here, one must observe that such a decision or action also has an effect on all other athletes in the competition, which, in turn, refers to (breached) principle of fairness. By means of a mutual self-commitment or collective voluntary agreement, the parties involved can submit to a rule, which they can universally approve of. Self-legislation is autonomy and needs to be distinguished from paternalism. Clearly, this only applies if the situation is designed to be resistant to exploitation. This way, individual and collective disadvantages are prevented. It is rational to grant an institution the ability to intervene in our freedom of action in a paternalistic manner, if the same goals can thus be achieved precisely without unnecessary risks. The freedom of the individual is not limited by paternalism in as far as we may assume that athletes engage in their sport by their own free will and always have the opportunity to give up their career.

Competing interests: None declared.

Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

• Free Samples
• Premium Essays
• Editing Services Editing Proofreading Rewriting
• Extra Tools Essay Topic Generator Thesis Generator Citation Generator GPA Calculator Study Guides Donate Paper
• Essay Writing Help
• About Us About Us Testimonials FAQ
• Studentshare
• SHOULD DRUGS BE BANNED

SHOULD DRUGS BE BANNED - Essay Example

• Subject: English
• Type: Essay
• Level: Masters
• Pages: 3 (750 words)
• Downloads: 2
• Author: cronajake

Extract of sample "SHOULD DRUGS BE BANNED"

Production of illegal drugs occurs mainly in underdeveloped countries where poor farmers are exploited by drug traffickers. Drug production business causes several environmental damages and involves a high rate of corruption and criminal activities. Recent technological advancements like electronic money laundering have enabled drug traffickers to earn huge profits. Even in those countries which are economically benefitted by the drug production business the problems created by these drug traffickers more often debilitates these benefits and the growth of the country.

Among the drugs the illegal trade of cocaine and marijuana has spread from urban cities to small rural towns. The use of these drugs has stabilized at high rates and is affecting the health and safety of the American population. It has also increased the rate of violent and criminal activities associated with drug trafficking. Trafficking of these drugs by Mexican, Columbian and Canadian organizations has increased over the past years. In addition media, internet and groups favoring legalization of these drugs have increased the popularity and sale of these drugs (Almanac of Policy Issues, 2004).

On a health basis large consumption of illicit drugs has adverse effects on the health such as birth defects, poor performance in academics, negative psychological effects such as anger, excitement and aggression, neurological problems in case of drug overdose and involvement in criminal and violent activities. Consumption of harder drugs such as crack cocaine is associated with severe psychological and pharmacological effects and has increased the emergency hospital admissions related to its use.

Consumption of illegal drugs also affects social relations of individuals and increases the rate of accidents and other disasters. It also causes unnecessary financial burden both for the individual and the government which spends for police, military, and expenditure for treatment and welfare programs. Another major concern in the recent years has been the rise of HIV related infections among those using drug injections (UNRISD, 1994). Drug trade can be controlled by law and order measures, effective government regulatory policies and strategies, provision of alternative opportunities of income generation for farmers involved in the production of these drugs, implementing harsh sanctions on consumers, and designing effective awareness strategies can all help to reduce the demand for illicit drugs (UNRISD, 1994).

In his message against drug abuse and trafficking, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon has called for a concerted effort by governments, law and order, society and the media to promote greater awareness about the potential harmful effects of these drugs. He further added that providing alternative work opportunities for farmers could help bring about a change. Ban also cited the drug rehabilitation program offered at a center in northern Italy which had changed the lives of nearly 1200 men and women (Chakwe, 2013).

In an earlier report Ban cited the pathetic state of the Afghan people, a majority of whom are involved in drug production and trafficking and called for the need of vigilant law enforcement measures to

• essay on corporal punishment should be banned in schools
• why zoos should not be banned
• Cited: 1 times
• Copy Citation Citation is copied Copy Citation Citation is copied Copy Citation Citation is copied

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF SHOULD DRUGS BE BANNED

Performance-enhancing drugs in sports, performance enhancing drugs, issue of legalising drugs, use of drugs in sports, should drugs be legalized, drugs and sports, should recreational drugs be banned in modern society, legalization of performance enhancing drugs in sports.

• TERMS & CONDITIONS
• PRIVACY POLICY
• COOKIES POLICY

How bad is vaping and should it be banned?

Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne), Curtin University

PhD Candidate (Psychiatry) & Research Assistant, University of Newcastle

Disclosure statement

Nicole Lee works as a consultant in the health sector and a psychologist in private practice. She has previously received funding by Australian and state governments, NHMRC and other bodies for evaluation and research into alcohol and other drug prevention and treatment.

Brigid Clancy is an Associate at 360Edge, a drug and alcohol consultancy company.

University of Newcastle and Curtin University provide funding as members of The Conversation AU.

View all partners

Vaping regularly makes headlines, with some campaigning to make e-cigarettes more available to help smokers quit, while others are keen to see vaping products banned, citing dangers, especially for teens.

So just how dangerous is it? We have undertaken an evidence check of vaping research . This included more than 100 sources on tobacco harm reduction, vaping prevalence and health effects, and what other countries are doing in response. Here’s what we found.

How does vaping compare to smoking?

Smoking is harmful. It’s the leading preventable cause of death in Australia. It causes 13% of all deaths , including from lung, mouth, throat and bladder cancer, emphysema, heart attack and stroke, to name just a few. People who smoke regularly and don’t quit lose about ten years of life compared with non-smokers.

Nicotine, a mild stimulant, is the active ingredient in both cigarettes and nicotine vaping products. It’s addictive but isn’t the cause of cancer or the other diseases related to smoking.

Ideally, people wouldn’t be addicted to nicotine, but having a safe supply without the deadly chemicals, for instance by using nicotine patches or gum, is safer than smoking. Making these other sources available is known as “harm reduction”.

Vaping is not risk-free, but several detailed reviews of the evidence plus a consensus of experts have all estimated it’s at least 95% safer to vape nicotine than to smoke tobacco. The risk of cancer from vaping, for example, has been estimated at less than 1%.

These reviews looked at the known dangerous chemicals in cigarettes, and found there were very few and in very small quantities in nicotine vapes. So the argument that we won’t see major health effects for a few more decades is causing more alarm than is necessary.

Is ‘everyone’ vaping these days?

Some are concerned about the use of vaping products by teens, but currently available statistics show very few teens vape regularly. Depending on the study, between 9.6% and 32% of 14-17-year-olds have tried vaping at some point in their lives.

But less than 2% of 14-17-year-olds say they have used vapes in the past year. This number doubled between 2016 and 2019, but is still much lower than the rates of teen smoking (3.2%) and teen alcohol use (32%).

It’s the same pattern we see with drugs other than alcohol: a proportion of people try them but only a very small proportion of those go on to use regularly or for a long time. Nearly 60% of people who try vaping only use once or twice .

Smoking rates in Australia have declined from 24% in 1991 to 11% in 2019 because we have introduced a number of very successful measures such as restricting sales and where people can smoke, putting up prices, introducing plain packaging, and improving education and access to treatment programs.

But it’s getting harder to encourage the remaining smokers to quit with the methods that have worked in the past. Those still smoking tend to be older , more socially disadvantaged , or have mental health problems.

Read more: My teen's vaping. What should I say? 3 expert tips on how to approach 'the talk'

Should we ban vapes?

So we have a bit of a dilemma. Vaping is much safer than smoking, so it would be helpful for adults to have access to it as an alternative to cigarettes. That means we need to make them more available and accessible.

But ideally we don’t want teens who don’t already smoke to start regular vaping. This has led some to call for a “ crackdown ” on vaping.

But we know from a long history of drug prohibition - like alcohol prohibition in the 1920s - that banning or restricting vaping could actually do more harm than good.

Banning drugs doesn’t stop people using them - more than 43% of Australians have tried an illicit drug at least once. And it has very little impact on the availability of drugs.

But prohibition does have a number of unintended consequences, including driving drugs underground and creating a black market or increasing harms as people switch to other drugs, which are often more dangerous.

The black market makes drugs more dangerous because there is no way to control quality. And it makes it easier, not harder, for teens to access them, because there are no restrictions on who can sell or buy them.

Read more: Learning about the health risks of vaping can encourage young vapers to rethink their habit

Are our current laws working?

In 2021, Australia made it illegal to possess and use nicotine vaping products without a prescription. We are the only country in the world to take this path.

The problem is even after more than a year of this law, only 8.6% of people vaping nicotine have a prescription, meaning more than 90% buy them illegally.

Anecdotal reports even suggest an increase in popularity of vaping among teens since these laws were introduced. At best, they are not helping.

It may seem counterintuitive, but the way to reduce the black market is to make quality-controlled vapes and liquids more widely available, but restricted to adults. If people could access vaping products legally they wouldn’t buy them on the black market and the black market would decline.

We also know from many studies on drug education in schools that when kids get accurate, non-sensationalised information about drugs they tend to make healthier decisions. Sensationalised information can have the opposite effect and increase interest in drugs . So better education in schools and for parents and teachers is also needed, so they know how to talk to kids about vaping and what to do if they know someone is vaping.

What have other countries done?

Other countries allow vapes to be legally sold without a prescription, but impose strict quality controls and do not allow the sale of products to people under a minimum age. This is similar to our regulation of cigarettes and alcohol.

The United Kingdom has minimum standards on manufacturing, as well as restrictions on purchase age and where people can vape.

Aotearoa New Zealand introduced a unique plan to reduce smoking rates by imposing a lifetime ban on buying cigarettes. Anyone born after January 1 2009 will never be able to buy cigarettes, so the minimum age you can legally smoke keeps increasing. At the same time, NZ increased access to vaping products under strict regulations on manufacture, purchase and use.

As of late last year, all US states require sellers to have a retail licence, and sales to people under 21 are banned. There are also restrictions on where people can vape.

A recent study modelled the impact of increasing access to nicotine vaping products in Australia. It found it’s likely there would be significant public health benefits by relaxing the current restrictive policies and increasing access to nicotine vaping products for adults.

The question is not whether we should discourage teens from using vaping products or whether we should allow wider accessibility to vaping products for adults as an alternative to smoking. The answer to both those questions is yes.

The key question is how do we do both effectively without one policy jeopardising the outcomes of the other?

If we took a pragmatic harm-reduction approach, as other countries have done, we could use our very successful model of regulation of tobacco products as a template to achieve both outcomes.

Read more: It's safest to avoid e-cigarettes altogether – unless vaping is helping you quit smoking

• Tobacco control

Senior Lecturer - Earth System Science

Operations Coordinator

Sydney Horizon Educators (Identified)

Deputy Social Media Producer

Associate Professor, Occupational Therapy

Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Performance Enhancing Drugs — Why Performance Enhancing Drugs Should Be Banned in All Levels of Sport

Why Performance Enhancing Drugs Should Be Banned in All Levels of Sport

• Categories: Performance Enhancing Drugs

About this sample

Words: 1691 |

Published: Dec 16, 2021

Words: 1691 | Pages: 4 | 9 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: Nursing & Health

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 891 words

6 pages / 2570 words

1 pages / 435 words

1 pages / 673 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Performance Enhancing Drugs

Bowers, M. B. (1998). Doping and performance-enhancing drugs. In B. R. Brown (Ed.), Ethical issues in sport (pp. 3-16). Sage Publications.Dixon, K. (2008). Steroid testing and legalising performance enhancing drugs: The [...]

Performance enhancing drugs used in various sporting events in order to give competitors an advantage over their opponents have been involved in widespread use that can even be traced back to the first Olympic games. Ancient [...]

The topic and discussion over most athletes’ use of performance-enhancing substances such as muscle builders, (steroids), is getting more challenging as biotechnologies like gene therapy become a reality. The accessibility of [...]

Laws and rules govern sports in order to make it more entertaining as well as ensuring that the participants are using their skills to compete. There is a reason why there exists so many sports and the reason is that not [...]

The use of steroids in sports has been a controversial topic that has raised concerns about fairness, health risks, and the integrity of athletic competition. This essay examines the impact of steroids on sports, the ethical [...]

Medical marijuana uses can be traced back as early as 2337 B.C when an emperor named Shen Neng had taunted cannabis tea as a treatment for gout. Rheumatism And even poor memory. He had written a book called Mitch Earleywine, He [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Enhancement Drugs in Sports Should Be Banned: An Argumentative Paper Research Paper

Introduction, performance enhancement drugs: total ban is the way to go, performance enhancement drugs: leveling the playing field, use of performance enhancement drugs: spectacular performance, works cited.

The use of enhancement drugs and other performance enhancement substances in sports is not a new phenomenon. However, as Murray (11) notes, the means used by sports persons to achieve this enhancement are increasing. This is especially so given the increasing competitiveness in sports in contemporary society. The prospect of winning a gold medal in a period of two years will make a sports man do anything that they consider likely to enhance their performance.

A case in point is the 2007 Mitchell Report that looked into this practice in American sports. According to this report, Major League base ball sports personalities in this country confessed or were found to have engaged in this practice at one point or another in their career (Murray 11). Similar reports have found that use of performance enhancement drugs in sports is prevalent in other sports such as cycling, football and others.

There are other forms of performance enhancement apart from the use of drugs. This is for example the use of sports equipment that increases the performance of the athlete. An example is the use of special swim suits to reduce water resistance in swimming, use of special waxes and fluids in skiing and such others (Katz 113).

In the light of these developments, stakeholders in the sporting industry, including the public, have continued to argue whether performance enhancement drugs should be legalized or not. The debate surrounds the use of drugs, given that the equipments used for the same purpose do not raise equal controversy. On one end of the continuum, there are those who are of the view that these drugs should be legalized, arguing that the basis on which the same are banned is insufficient.

On the extreme end of the continuum, there are those who advocate for a total ban of these substances, arguing that the status quo as it is should be maintained. This school of thought cites several reasons for this, raging from negative effects on individual health and unfairness in sport.

This paper is going to highlight the beliefs of the author as far as this debate is concerned. This author is of the view that the performance enhancement drugs in sports should be banned, and severe disciplinary actions should be meted to those who violate the same. In this paper, the author is going to state and support the reasons why they believe this should be so. Opposing arguments will be identified and refuted.

The performance enhancement drugs should have no place in the world of sports. The drugs are not only harmful to the athletes as individuals, but they also affect those around them, including fellow competitors, future athletes and the public in general. This is the reason why the justifications by the opponents of the total ban, that segment of the society advocating for the use of these drugs, appears so unconvincing.

Performance Enhancement Drugs: Freedom of Choice?

Those who argue for the legalization of performance enhancement drugs in sports are of the view that the athletes are just enjoying and practicing their freedom of choice, something they are entitled to under the constitution (Endersby 15). They are of the view that if the sports persons wish to ingest the drugs, they should be allowed to do so. After all, it is their body that will be affected in case of negative health consequences. The athletes should be taken as adults, individuals able to make rational choices and decisions in life.

The decision to take performance enhancement drugs, as opposed to undertaking in sports without the benefit of the drugs, is a rational one (Schermer 86). This is given the fact that there is a lot of information out there, information that can be accessed by the athletes, regarding the benefits and effects of the drugs.

By using the performance enhancement drugs, the athletes are in effect infringing on the freedom of other athletes in the field (Schermer 86). This is despite the fact that they are enjoying their freedom of choice. If the competing athletes want to succeed against those who have taken performance enhancement drugs, then they have no option but to ingest the same drugs. In this light, it is obvious that these athletes have been coerced to use these drugs.

It is obvious that the freedom of choice for these athletes have been violated by the virtue of leaving them with no alternatives to select from (Endersby 6). The rights of these athletes who do not wish to take these drugs should be protected by banning those taking them and banishing them from sporting.

Natural and Unnatural Distinction

Those advocating for the use of these drugs are of the view that the distinction between that which is natural and that which is not, as argued by the opponents of drug use, is untenable and unviable (Maguire 8). They are of the view that sports persons already take supplements and such other stuff that are anything but natural. Exercises in simulated environments, specially made sports’ apparels and dietary supplements used by athletes are not natural. These things give the athletes who access them undue advantage over those who can not.

It is a fact beyond doubt that the line between legal and illegal performance enhancement is fluid and blurred. However, it is important to note that the line should be maintained nonetheless.

The first reason for this is to protect those using drugs from adverse health effects. If the athletes can not protect themselves, then they should be protected from themselves. The other reason why this line should be maintained, as blurred as it is, is to safeguard the tradition of natural competition between athletes using their natural talents and versatility.

It is notable that a distinction, albeit blurred, exists between the consumption of a balanced diet by the athlete and using steroids and other drugs that increase performance of the athlete. If a genuine and distinct natural competition is to be maintained, then use of drugs should be shunned.

There are those who are convinced that legalization of performance enhancement drugs such as steroids will ensure a level playing field for all the athletes (Maguire 11). This is especially so given the fact that, despite their illegal status, these drugs continue to be used by athletes in the field.

A case in point is the Olympic Games of the year 2000, which was marred by allegations of doping among the athletes (Murray 15). The fact that these drugs were already banned did not deter the athletes from using them, which led to stripping off medals from those athletes suspected and confirmed to have engaged in doping.

In light of this, according to proponents of these drugs, those athletes who do not engage in this practice have the playing field steeped against them. According to this school of thought, legalization will ensure that all the players have equal access to these drugs.

Currently, they argue, only those athletes who have the means and the muscle to access these drugs are assured of stunning performance in the field. Those without the means, especially those from developing and economically emaciated countries, are obviously disadvantaged.

However, this argument by the proponents does not hold water, and it is not enough to justify legalization of these drugs. By legalizing these drugs, the authorities will be in effect unleashing terror on the athletes. Currently, the adverse health effects on athletes, including hormonal imbalances and such others, is limited to those few and daring athletes.

Try to imagine what will happen when the entire stable in China Olympics is filled with athletes riding high on drugs. It is a fact that the performance for the spectators will be a thing to behold. But it is important to try and think what will happen to these athletes when they are through with performing for the spectators.

The damage to their bodies will be extensive, especially given the fact that legalization will encourage experimentation with new and untested drug combinations. Female athletes will turn into women with characteristics of men, given the amount of steroids pumped into their system. This, the author believes, is not worth two hours of glory under the lights of cameras.

Katz (121) is of the view that legalization of steroids and other drugs, ostensibly to level the playing ground, will have more adverse effects than benefits. This author compares the scenario after legalization to what they refer to as a “race for arms” (Katz 122). This is whereby each athlete will want to access better and powerful drugs than their competitor.

As such, they will make sure that they access these drugs through any means, even if they are regulated under the envisaged legalized system. Legalization will be like letting loose a run away juggernaut, letting it destroy anything on its path.

Entertainment has become an indispensable feature of contemporary society. This is especially so given the fact that after spending time in the fast paced lane that is urban life, individuals need to wind down during their leisure time. Entertainment has become a means to achieving this relaxation. It is no doubt sports is a major form of entertainment used by humans in contemporary society to escape, albeit momentarily, from the vagaries of life.

This being the case, it is important to make this form of entertainment as interesting as possible. According to proponents of drugs in sports, this practice makes the activity more interesting. The increased action on the pitch, according to these proponents, is more entertaining than the lackluster performance displayed by the so-called natural athletes.

Again, this argument as propounded by this school of thought is not convincing enough. Fans and the public in general are more attracted to competition between individual sports men. Solo performances, no matter how stunning they are, do not arouse the same level of excitement as a close race between two performers.

It is also important to note that fans are not attracted to the raw power displayed by the athletes on these drugs. Rather, they are more attracted to the skills displayed, skills that are better displayed when the performer is natural.

Endersby, Alastair. Drugs in Sport. International Debate Education Association. 06 November 2010 https://idebate.org/debatabase/topic_details.php?topicID=28#discussion

Katz, Grace. Why Prohibit Performance Enhancers? American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2008, 12(7); 9-12.

Maguire, Joseph. Drugs and Sports: What does it mean to be Human? Journal of Medical Ethics, 2008 34(9); 7-11.

Murray, Thomas H. Sports Enhancement. American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2008, 2(8); 34-36.

Schermer, Maurice. On the Argument that Enhancement is “Cheating”. Journal of Medical Ethics, 2006 33(3); 34-39.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, December 5). Enhancement Drugs in Sports Should Be Banned: An Argumentative Paper. https://ivypanda.com/essays/enhancement-drugs-in-sports-should-be-banned-an-argumentative-paper/

"Enhancement Drugs in Sports Should Be Banned: An Argumentative Paper." IvyPanda , 5 Dec. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/enhancement-drugs-in-sports-should-be-banned-an-argumentative-paper/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Enhancement Drugs in Sports Should Be Banned: An Argumentative Paper'. 5 December.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Enhancement Drugs in Sports Should Be Banned: An Argumentative Paper." December 5, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/enhancement-drugs-in-sports-should-be-banned-an-argumentative-paper/.

1. IvyPanda . "Enhancement Drugs in Sports Should Be Banned: An Argumentative Paper." December 5, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/enhancement-drugs-in-sports-should-be-banned-an-argumentative-paper/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Enhancement Drugs in Sports Should Be Banned: An Argumentative Paper." December 5, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/enhancement-drugs-in-sports-should-be-banned-an-argumentative-paper/.

• Steroids in Baseball
• Steroid use in professional sports
• Sports and Steroids: Society’s Acceptance or Rejection of Steroids in Sports
• The Use of Steroids in Baseball
• Steroid Misuse in Today's Society
• Steroids and Clinical Treatments
• Argumentative Essay Writing
• Steroid Abuse Can Lead to Serious Health Hazards
• Use of Steroids in the MLB
• Banning Violent Video Games Argumentative Essay
• Anabolic Steroid Use in Professional and Collegiate Sports
• Drug and Anabolic Steroid Usage in the Athletic Setting
• Modest Proposal on Using Steroids
• Steroids Usage in Bodybuilding: Debate Position
• Essay about Exercise - Benefits

Need an essay writer for me? Connect now!

Feeling tired to write drafts on your own or you do not have ample ideas to write with? Be it anything, our writers are here to assist you with the best essay writing service. With our service, you will save a lot of time and get recognition for the academic assignments you are given to write. This will give you ample time to relax as well. Let our experts write for you. With their years of experience in this domain and the knowledge from higher levels of education, the experts can do brilliant essay writing even with strict deadlines. They will get you remarkable remarks on the standard of the academic draft that you will write with us.

Margurite J. Perez

4 reasons to write my essay with us!

You are always welcome to check some of our previously done projects given on our website and then judge it for yourself. Apart from that, we can give you 4 significant reasons to be a part of our customer base:

• Only professional ‘my essay writer', who are highly qualified and a master in their academic field, will write for you
• Quality control is rigorously maintained by us and is thoroughly aligned with the given question brief and instructions.
• We will also provide you with a thorough Plagiarism report by the Turnitin software which will ensure the originality of the draft
• You are free to revise your draft with us till you are contented with the subject matter.

Is buying essays online safe?

Shopping through online platforms is a highly controversial issue. Naturally, you cannot be completely sure when placing an order through an unfamiliar site, with which you have never cooperated. That is why we recommend that people contact trusted companies that have hundreds of positive reviews.

As for buying essays through sites, then you need to be as careful as possible and carefully check every detail. Read company reviews on third-party sources or ask a question on the forum. Check out the guarantees given by the specialists and discuss cooperation with the company manager. Do not transfer money to someone else's account until they send you a document with an essay for review.

Good online platforms provide certificates and some personal data so that the client can have the necessary information about the service manual. Service employees should immediately calculate the cost of the order for you and in the process of work are not entitled to add a percentage to this amount, if you do not make additional edits and preferences.

Megan Sharp